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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Amabel Channice, by Anne Douglas Sedgwick
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Amabel Channice
+
+Author: Anne Douglas Sedgwick
+
+Release Date: April 28, 2009 [EBook #28631]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMABEL CHANNICE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Jennie Gottschalk and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+Amabel Channice
+
+
+BY
+
+Anne Douglas Sedgwick
+
+AUTHOR OF "THE RESCUE," "PATHS OF JUDGEMENT," "A FOUNTAIN
+SEALED," ETC.
+
+
+
+
+NEW YORK The Century Co. 1908
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1908, by THE CENTURY CO.
+
+_Published October, 1908_
+
+
+THE DE VINNE PRESS
+
+
+
+
+AMABEL CHANNICE
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+Lady Channice was waiting for her son to come in from the garden. The
+afternoon was growing late, but she had not sat down to the table,
+though tea was ready and the kettle sent out a narrow banner of steam.
+Walking up and down the long room she paused now and then to look at the
+bowls and vases of roses placed about it, now and then to look out of
+the windows, and finally at the last window she stopped to watch
+Augustine advancing over the lawn towards the house. It was a grey stone
+house, low and solid, its bareness unalleviated by any grace of ornament
+or structure, and its two long rows of windows gazed out resignedly at a
+tame prospect. The stretch of lawn sloped to a sunken stone wall; beyond
+the wall a stream ran sluggishly in a ditch-like channel; on the left
+the grounds were shut in by a sycamore wood, and beyond were flat
+meadows crossed in the distance by lines of tree-bordered roads. It was
+a peaceful, if not a cheering prospect. Lady Channice was fond of it.
+Cheerfulness was not a thing she looked for; but she looked for peace,
+and it was peace she found in the flat green distance, the far, reticent
+ripple of hill on the horizon, the dark forms of the sycamores. Her only
+regret for the view was that it should miss the sunrise and sunset; in
+the evenings, beyond the silhouetted woods, one saw the golden sky; but
+the house faced north, and it was for this that the green of the lawn
+was so dank, and the grey of the walls so cold, and the light in the
+drawing-room where Lady Channice stood so white and so monotonous.
+
+She was fond of the drawing-room, also, unbeautiful and grave to sadness
+though it was. The walls were wainscotted to the ceiling with ancient
+oak, so that though the north light entered at four high windows the
+room seemed dark. The furniture was ugly, miscellaneous and
+inappropriate. The room had been dismantled, and in place of the former
+drawing-room suite were gathered together incongruous waifs and strays
+from dining- and smoking-room and boudoir. A number of heavy chairs
+predominated covered in a maroon leather which had cracked in places;
+and there were three lugubrious sofas to match.
+
+By degrees, during her long and lonely years at Charlock House, Lady
+Channice had, at first tentatively, then with a growing assurance in her
+limited sphere of action, moved away all the ugliest, most trivial
+things: tattered brocade and gilt footstools, faded antimacassars,
+dismal groups of birds and butterflies under glass cases. When she sat
+alone in the evening, after Augustine, as child or boy, had gone to bed,
+the ghostly glimmer of the birds, the furtive glitter of a glass eye
+here and there, had seemed to her quite dreadful. The removal of the
+cases (they were large and heavy, and Mrs. Bray, the housekeeper, had
+looked grimly disapproving)--was her crowning act of courage, and ever
+since their departure she had breathed more freely. It had been easier
+to dispose of all the little colonies of faded photographs that stood on
+cabinets and tables; they were photographs of her husband's family and
+of his family's friends, people most of whom were quite unknown to her,
+and their continued presence in the abandoned house was due to
+indifference, not affection: no one had cared enough about them to put
+them away, far less to look at them. After looking at them for some
+years,--these girls in court dress of a bygone fashion, huntsmen holding
+crops, sashed babies and matrons in caps or tiaras,--Lady Channice had
+cared enough to put them away. She had not, either, to ask for Mrs.
+Bray's assistance or advice for this, a fact which was a relief, for
+Mrs. Bray was a rather dismal being and reminded her, indeed, of the
+stuffed birds in the removed glass cases. With her own hands she
+incarcerated the photographs in the drawers of a heavily carved bureau
+and turned the keys upon them.
+
+The only ornaments now, were the pale roses, the books, and, above her
+writing-desk, a little picture that she had brought with her, a
+water-colour sketch of her old home painted by her mother many years
+ago.
+
+So the room looked very bare. It almost looked like the parlour of a
+convent; with a little more austerity, whitened walls and a few thick
+velvet and gilt lives of the saints on the tables, the likeness would
+have been complete. The house itself was conventual in aspect, and Lady
+Channice, as she stood there in the quiet light at the window, looked
+not unlike a nun, were it not for her crown of pale gold hair that shone
+in the dark room and seemed, like the roses, to bring into it the
+brightness of an outer, happier world.
+
+She was a tall woman of forty, her ample form, her wide bosom, the
+falling folds of her black dress, her loosely girdled waist, suggesting,
+with the cloistral analogies, the mournful benignity of a bereaved
+Madonna. Seen as she stood there, leaning her head to watch her son's
+approach, she was an almost intimidating presence, black, still, and
+stately. But when the door opened and the young man came in, when, not
+moving to meet him, she turned her head with a slight smile of welcome,
+all intimidating impressions passed away. Her face, rather, as it
+turned, under its crown of gold, was the intimidated face. It was
+curiously young, pure, flawless, as though its youth and innocence had
+been preserved in some crystal medium of prayer and silence; and if the
+nun-like analogies failed in their awe-inspiring associations, they
+remained in the associations of unconscious pathos and unconscious
+appeal. Amabel Channice's face, like her form, was long and delicately
+ample; its pallor that of a flower grown in shadow; the mask a little
+over-large for the features. Her eyes were small, beautifully shaped,
+slightly slanting upwards, their light grey darkened under golden
+lashes, the brows definitely though palely marked. Her mouth was pale
+coral-colour, and the small upper lip, lifting when she smiled as she
+was smiling now, showed teeth of an infantile, milky whiteness. The
+smile was charming, timid, tentative, ingratiating, like a young girl's,
+and her eyes were timid, too, and a little wild.
+
+"Have you had a good read?" she asked her son. He had a book in his
+hand.
+
+"Very, thanks. But it is getting chilly, down there in the meadow. And
+what a lot of frogs there are in the ditch," said Augustine smiling,
+"they were jumping all over the place."
+
+"Oh, as long as they weren't toads!" said Lady Channice, her smile
+lighting in response. "When I came here first to live there were so many
+toads, in the stone areas, you know, under the gratings in front of the
+cellar windows. You can't imagine how many! It used quite to terrify me
+to look at them and I went to the front of the house as seldom as
+possible. I had them all taken away, finally, in baskets,--not killed,
+you know, poor things,--but just taken and put down in a field a mile
+off. I hope they didn't starve;--but toads are very intelligent, aren't
+they; one always associates them with fairy-tales and princes."
+
+She had gone to the tea-table while she spoke and was pouring the
+boiling water into the teapot. Her voice had pretty, flute-like ups and
+downs in it and a questioning, upward cadence at the end of sentences.
+Her upper lip, her smile, the run of her speech, all would have made one
+think her humorous, were it not for the strain of nervousness that one
+felt in her very volubility.
+
+Her son lent her a kindly but rather vague attention while she talked to
+him about the toads, and his eye as he stood watching her make the tea
+was also vague. He sat down presently, as if suddenly remembering why he
+had come in, and it was only after a little interval of silence, in
+which he took his cup from his mother's hands, that something else
+seemed to occur to him as suddenly, a late arriving suggestion from her
+speech.
+
+"What a horribly gloomy place you must have found it."
+
+Her eyes, turning on him quickly, lost, in an instant, their uncertain
+gaiety.
+
+"Gloomy? Is it gloomy? Do you feel it gloomy here, Augustine?"
+
+"Oh, well, no, not exactly," he answered easily. "You see I've always
+been used to it. You weren't."
+
+As she said nothing to this, seeming at a loss for any reply, he went on
+presently to talk of other things, of the book he had been reading, a
+heavy metaphysical tome; of books that he intended to read; of a letter
+that he had received that morning from the Eton friend with whom he was
+going up to Oxford for his first term. His mother listened, showing a
+careful interest usual with her, but after another little silence she
+said suddenly:
+
+"I think it's a very nice place, Charlock House, Augustine. Your father
+wouldn't have wanted me to live here if he'd imagined that I could find
+it gloomy, you know."
+
+"Oh, of course not," said the young man, in an impassive, pleasant
+voice.
+
+"He has always, in everything, been so thoughtful for my comfort and
+happiness," said Lady Channice.
+
+Augustine did not look at her: his eyes were fixed on the sky outside
+and he seemed to be reflecting--though not over her words.
+
+"So that I couldn't bear him ever to hear anything of that sort," Lady
+Channice went on, "that either of us could find it gloomy, I mean. You
+wouldn't ever say it to him, would you, Augustine." There was a note at
+once of urgency and appeal in her voice.
+
+"Of course not, since you don't wish it," her son replied.
+
+"I ask you just because it happens that your father is coming," Lady
+Channice said, "tomorrow;--and, you see, if you had this in your mind,
+you might have said something. He is coming to spend the afternoon."
+
+He looked at her now, steadily, still pleasantly; but his colour rose.
+
+"Really," he said.
+
+"Isn't it nice. I do hope that it will be fine; these Autumn days are so
+uncertain; if only the weather holds up we can have a walk perhaps."
+
+"Oh, I think it will hold up. Will there be time for a walk?"
+
+"He will be here soon after lunch, and, I think, stay on to tea."
+
+"He didn't stay on to tea the last time, did he."
+
+"No, not last time; he is so very busy; it's quite three years since we
+have had that nice walk over the meadows, and he likes that so much."
+
+She was trying to speak lightly and easily. "And it must be quite a year
+since you have seen him."
+
+"Quite," said Augustine. "I never see him, hardly, but here, you know."
+
+He was still making his attempt at pleasantness, but something hard and
+strained had come into his voice, and as, with a sort of helplessness,
+her resources exhausted, his mother sat silent, he went on, glancing at
+her, as if with the sudden resolution, he also wanted to make very sure
+of his way;--
+
+"You like seeing him more than anything, don't you; though you are
+separated."
+
+Augustine Channice talked a great deal to his mother about outside
+things, such as philosophy; but of personal things, of their relation to
+the world, to each other, to his father, he never spoke. So that his
+speaking now was arresting.
+
+His mother gazed at him. "Separated? We have always been the best of
+friends."
+
+"Of course. I mean--that you've never cared to live
+together.--Incompatibility, I suppose. Only," Augustine did not smile,
+he looked steadily at his mother, "I should think that since you are so
+fond of him you'd like seeing him oftener. I should think that since he
+is the best of friends he would want to come oftener, you know."
+
+When he had said these words he flushed violently. It was an echo of his
+mother's flush. And she sat silent, finding no words.
+
+"Mother," said Augustine, "forgive me. That was impertinent of me. It's
+no affair of mine."
+
+She thought so, too, apparently, for she found no words in which to tell
+him that it was his affair. Her hands clasped tightly in her lap, her
+eyes downcast, she seemed shrunken together, overcome by his tactless
+intrusion.
+
+"Forgive me," Augustine repeated.
+
+The supplication brought her the resource of words again. "Of course,
+dear. It is only--I can't explain it to you. It is very complicated.
+But, though it seems so strange to you,--to everybody, I know--it is
+just that: though we don't live together, and though I see so little of
+your father, I do care for him very, very much. More than for anybody in
+the world,--except you, of course, dear Augustine."
+
+"Oh, don't be polite to me," he said, and smiled. "More than for anybody
+in the world; stick to it."
+
+She could but accept the amendment, so kindly and, apparently, so
+lightly pressed upon her, and she answered him with a faint, a grateful
+smile, saying, in a low voice:--"You see, dear, he is the noblest person
+I have ever known." Tears were in her eyes. Augustine turned away his
+own.
+
+They sat then for a little while in silence, the mother and son.
+
+Her eyes downcast, her hands folded in an attitude that suggested some
+inner dedication, Amabel Channice seemed to stay her thoughts on the
+vision of that nobility. And though her son was near her, the thoughts
+were far from him.
+
+It was characteristic of Augustine Channice, when he mused, to gaze
+straight before him, whatever the object might be that met his unseeing
+eyes. The object now was the high Autumnal sky outside, crossed only
+here and there by a drifting fleet of clouds.
+
+The light fell calmly upon the mother and son and, in their stillness,
+their contemplation, the two faces were like those on an old canvas,
+preserved from time and change in the trance-like immutability of art.
+In colour, the two heads chimed, though Augustine's hair was vehemently
+gold and there were under-tones of brown and amber in his skin. But the
+oval of Lady Channice's face grew angular in her son's, broader and more
+defiant; so that, palely, darkly white and gold, on their deep
+background, the two heads emphasized each other's character by contrast.
+Augustine's lips were square and scornful; his nose ruggedly bridged;
+his eyes, under broad eyebrows, ringed round the iris with a line of
+vivid hazel; and as his lips, though mild in expression, were scornful
+in form, so these eyes, even in their contemplation, seemed fierce.
+Calm, controlled face as it was, its meaning for the spectator was of
+something passionate and implacable. In mother and son alike one felt a
+capacity for endurance almost tragic; but while Augustine's would be the
+endurance of the rock, to be moved only by shattering, his mother's was
+the endurance of the flower, that bends before the tempest, unresisting,
+beaten down into the earth, but lying, even there, unbroken.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+The noise and movement of an outer world seemed to break in upon the
+recorded vision of arrested life.
+
+The door opened, a quick, decisive step approached down the hall, and,
+closely following the announcing maid, Mrs. Grey, the local squiress,
+entered the room. In the normal run of rural conventions, Lady Channice
+should have held the place; but Charlock House no longer stood for what
+it had used to stand in the days of Sir Hugh Channice's forbears. Mrs.
+Grey, of Pangley Hall, had never held any but the first place and a
+consciousness of this fact seemed to radiate from her competent
+personality. She was a vast middle-aged woman clad in tweed and leather,
+but her abundance of firm, hard flesh could lend itself to the roughest
+exigences of a sporting outdoor life. Her broad face shone like a ripe
+apple, and her sharp eyes, her tight lips, the cheerful creases of her
+face, expressed an observant and rather tyrannous good-temper.
+
+"Tea? No, thanks; no tea for me," she almost shouted; "I've just had tea
+with Mrs. Grier. How are you, Lady Channice? and you, Augustine? What a
+man you are getting to be; a good inch taller than my Tom. Reading as
+usual, I see. I can't get my boys to look at a book in vacation time.
+What's the book? Ah, fuddling your brains with that stuff, still, are
+you? Still determined to be a philosopher? Do you really want him to be
+a philosopher, my dear?"
+
+"Indeed I think it would be very nice if he could be a philosopher,"
+said Lady Channice, smiling, for though she had often to evade Mrs.
+Grey's tyranny she liked her good temper. She seemed in her reply to
+float, lightly and almost gaily above Mrs. Grey, and away from her. Mrs.
+Grey was accustomed to these tactics and it was characteristic of her
+not to let people float away if she could possibly help it. This matter
+of Augustine's future was frequently in dispute between them. Her feet
+planted firmly, her rifle at her shoulder, she seemed now to take aim at
+a bird that flew from her.
+
+"And of course you encourage him! You read with him and study with him!
+And you won't see that you let him drift more and more out of practical
+life and into moonshine. What does it do for him, that's what I ask?
+Where does it lead him? What's the good of it? Why he'll finish as a
+fusty old don. Does it make you a better man, Augustine, or a happier
+one, to spend all your time reading philosophy?"
+
+"Very much better, very much happier, I find:--but I don't give it all
+my time, you know," Augustine answered, with much his mother's manner of
+light evasion. He let Mrs. Grey see that he found her funny; perhaps he
+wished to let her see that philosophy helped him to. Mrs. Grey gave up
+the fantastic bird and turned on her heel.
+
+"Well, I've not come to dispute, as usual, with you, Augustine. I've
+come to ask you, Lady Channice, if you won't, for once, break through
+your rules and come to tea on Sunday. I've a surprise for you. An old
+friend of yours is to be of our party for this week-end. Lady Elliston;
+she comes tomorrow, and she writes that she hopes to see something of
+you."
+
+Mrs. Grey had her eye rather sharply on Lady Channice; she expected to
+see her colour rise, and it did rise.
+
+"Lady Elliston?" she repeated, vaguely, or, perhaps, faintly.
+
+"Yes; you did know her; well, she told me."
+
+"It was years ago," said Lady Channice, looking down; "Yes, I knew her
+quite well. It would be very nice to see her again. But I don't think I
+will break my rule; thank you so much."
+
+Mrs. Grey looked a little disconcerted and a little displeased. "Now
+that you are growing up, Augustine," she said, "you must shake your
+mother out of her way of life. It's bad for her. She lives here, quite
+alone, and, when you are away--as you will have to be more and more, for
+some time now,--she sees nobody but her village girls, Mrs. Grier and me
+from one month's end to the other. I can't think what she's made of. I
+should go mad. And so many of us would be delighted if she would drop in
+to tea with us now and then."
+
+"Oh, well, you can drop in to tea with her instead," said Augustine. His
+mother sat silent, with her faint smile.
+
+"Well, I do. But I'm not enough, though I flatter myself that I'm a good
+deal. It's unwholesome, such a life, downright morbid and unwholesome.
+One should mingle with one's kind. I shall wonder at you, Augustine, if
+you allow it, just as, for years, I've wondered at your father."
+
+It may have been her own slight confusion, or it may have been something
+exasperating in Lady Channice's silence, that had precipitated Mrs. Grey
+upon this speech, but, when she had made it, she became very red and
+wondered whether she had gone too far. Mrs. Grey was prepared to go far.
+If people evaded her, and showed an unwillingness to let her be kind to
+them--on her own terms,--terms which, in regard to Lady Channice, were
+very strictly defined;--if people would behave in this unbecoming and
+ungrateful fashion, they only got, so Mrs. Grey would have put it, what
+they jolly well deserved if she gave them a "stinger." But Mrs. Grey did
+not like to give Lady Channice "stingers"; therefore she now became red
+and wondered at herself.
+
+Lady Channice had lifted her eyes and it was as if Mrs. Grey saw walls
+and moats and impenetrable thickets glooming in them. She answered for
+Augustine: "My husband and I have always been in perfect agreement on
+the matter."
+
+Mrs. Grey tried a cheerful laugh;--"You won him over, too, no doubt."
+
+"Entirely."
+
+"Well, Augustine," Mrs. Grey turned to the young man again, "I don't
+succeed with your mother, but I hope for better luck with you. You're a
+man, now, and not yet, at all events, a monk. Won't you dine with us on
+Saturday night?"
+
+Now Mrs. Grey was kind; but she had never asked Lady Channice to dinner.
+The line had been drawn, firmly drawn years ago--and by Mrs. Grey
+herself--at tea. And it was not until Lady Channice had lived for
+several years at Charlock House, when it became evident that, in spite
+of all that was suspicious, not to say sinister, in her situation, she
+was not exactly cast off and that her husband, so to speak, admitted her
+to tea if not to dinner,--it was not until then that Mrs. Grey voiced at
+once the tolerance and the discretion of the neighbourhood and said:
+"They are on friendly terms; he comes to see her twice a year. We can
+call; she need not be asked to anything but tea. There can be no harm in
+that."
+
+There was, indeed, no harm, for though, when they did call in Mrs.
+Grey's broad wake, they were received with gentle courtesy, they were
+made to feel that social contacts would go no further. Lady Channice had
+been either too much offended or too much frightened by the years of
+ostracism, or perhaps it was really by her own choice that she adopted
+the attitude of a person who saw people when they came to her but who
+never went to see them. This attitude, accepted by the few, was resented
+by the many, so that hardly anybody ever called upon Lady Channice. And
+so it was that Mrs. Grey satisfied at once benevolence and curiosity in
+her staunch visits to the recluse of Charlock House, and could feel
+herself as Lady Channice's one wholesome link with the world that she
+had rejected or--here lay all the ambiguity, all the mystery that, for
+years, had whetted Mrs. Grey's curiosity to fever-point--that had
+rejected her.
+
+As Augustine grew up the situation became more complicated. It was felt
+that as the future owner of Charlock House and inheritor of his mother's
+fortune Augustine was not to be tentatively taken up but decisively
+seized. People had resented Sir Hugh's indifference to Charlock House,
+the fact that he had never lived there and had tried, just before his
+marriage, to sell it. But Augustine was yet blameless, and Augustine
+would one day be a wealthy not an impecunious squire, and Mrs. Grey had
+said that she would see to it that Augustine had his chance. "Apparently
+there's no one to bring him out, unless I do," she said. "His father, it
+seems, won't, and his mother can't. One doesn't know what to think, or,
+at all events, one keeps what one thinks to oneself, for she is a good,
+sweet creature, whatever her faults may have been. But Augustine shall
+be asked to dinner one day."
+
+Augustine's "chance," in Mrs. Grey's eye, was her sixth daughter,
+Marjory.
+
+So now the first step up the ladder was being given to Augustine.
+
+He kept his vagueness, his lightness, his coolly pleasant smile, looking
+at Mrs. Grey and not at his mother as he answered: "Thanks so much, but
+I'm monastic, too, you know. I don't go to dinners. I'll ride over some
+afternoon and see you all."
+
+Mrs. Grey compressed her lips. She was hurt and she had, also, some
+difficulty in restraining her temper before this rebuff. "But you go to
+dinners in London. You stay with people."
+
+"Ah, yes; but I'm alone then. When I'm with my mother I share her life."
+He spoke so lightly, yet so decisively, with a tact and firmness beyond
+his years, that Mrs. Grey rose, accepting her defeat.
+
+"Then Lady Elliston and I will come over, some day," she said. "I wish
+we saw more of her. John and I met her while we were staying with the
+Bishop this Spring. The Bishop has the highest opinion of her. He said
+that she was a most unusual woman,--in the world, yet not of it. One
+feels that. Her eldest girl married young Lord Catesby, you know; a very
+brilliant match; she presents her second girl next Spring, when I do
+Marjory. You must come over for a ride with Marjory, soon, Augustine."
+
+"I will, very soon," said Augustine.
+
+When their visitor at last went, when the tramp of her heavy boots had
+receded down the hall, Lady Channice and her son again sat in silence;
+but it was now another silence from that into which Mrs. Grey's shots
+had broken. It was like the stillness of the copse or hedgerow when the
+sportsmen are gone and a vague stir and rustle in ditch or underbrush
+tells of broken wings or limbs, of a wounded thing hiding.
+
+Lady Channice spoke at last. "I wish you had accepted for the dinner,
+Augustine. I don't want you to identify yourself with my peculiarities."
+
+"I didn't want to dine with Mrs. Grey, mother."
+
+"You hurt her. She is a kind neighbour. You will see her more or less
+for all of your life, probably. You must take your place, here,
+Augustine."
+
+"My place is taken. I like it just as it is. I'll see the Greys as I
+always have seen them; I'll go over to tea now and then and I'll ride
+and hunt with the children."
+
+"But that was when you were a child. You are almost a man now; you are a
+man, Augustine; and your place isn't a child's place."
+
+"My place is by you." For the second time that day there was a new note
+in Augustine's voice. It was as if, clearly and definitely, for the
+first time, he was feeling something and seeing something and as if,
+though very resolutely keeping from her what he felt, he was, when
+pushed to it, as resolutely determined to let her see what he saw.
+
+"By me, dear," she said faintly. "What do you mean?"
+
+"She ought to have asked you to dinner, too."
+
+"But I would not have accepted; I don't go out. She knows that. She
+knows that I am a real recluse."
+
+"She ought to have asked knowing that you would not accept."
+
+"Augustine dear, you are foolish. You know nothing of these little
+feminine social compacts."
+
+"Are they only feminine?"
+
+"Only. Mere crystallised conveniences. It would be absurd for Mrs. Grey,
+after all these years, to ask me in order to be refused."
+
+There was a moment's silence and then Augustine said: "Did she ever ask
+you?"
+
+The candles had been lighted and the lamp brought in, making the corners
+of the room look darker. There was only a vague radiance about the
+chimney piece, the little candle-flames doubled in the mirror, and the
+bright circle where Lady Channice and her son sat on either side of the
+large, round table. The lamp had a green shade, and their faces were in
+shadow. Augustine had turned away his eyes.
+
+And now a strange and painful thing happened, stranger and more painful
+than he could have foreseen; for his mother did not answer him. The
+silence grew long and she did not speak. Augustine looked at her at last
+and saw that she was gazing at him, and, it seemed to him, with helpless
+fear. His own eyes did not echo it; anger, rather, rose in them, cold
+fierceness, against himself, it was apparent, as well as against the
+world that he suspected. He was not impulsive; he was not demonstrative;
+but he got up and put his hand on her shoulder. "I don't mean to torment
+you, like the rest of them," he said. "I don't mean to ask--and be
+refused. Forget what I said. It's only--only--that it infuriates me.--To
+see them all.--And you!--cut off, wasted, in prison here. I've been
+seeing it for a long time; I won't speak of it again. I know that there
+are sad things in your life. All I want to say, all I wanted to say
+was--that I'm with you, and against them."
+
+She sat, her face in shadow beneath him, her hands tightly clasped
+together and pressed down upon her lap. And, in a faltering voice that
+strove in vain for firmness, she said: "Dear Augustine--thank you. I
+know you wouldn't want to hurt me. You see, when I came here to live, I
+had parted--from your father, and I wanted to be quite alone; I wanted
+to see no one. And they felt that: they felt that I wouldn't lead the
+usual life. So it grew most naturally. Don't be angry with people, or
+with the world. That would warp you, from the beginning. It's a good
+world, Augustine. I've found it so. It is sad, but there is such
+beauty.--I'm not cut off, or wasted;--I'm not in prison.--How can you
+say it, dear, of me, who have you--and _him_."
+
+Augustine's hand rested on her shoulder for some moments more. Lifting
+it he stood looking before him. "I'm not going to quarrel with the
+world," he then said. "I know what I like in it."
+
+"Dear--thanks--" she murmured.
+
+Augustine picked up his book again. "I'll study for a bit, now, in my
+room," he said. "Will you rest before dinner? Do; I shall feel more easy
+in my conscience if I inflict Hegel on you afterwards."
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Lady Channice did not go and rest. She sat on in the shadowy room gazing
+before her, her hands still clasped, her face wearing still its look of
+fear. For twenty years she had not known what it was to be without fear.
+It had become as much a part of her life as the air she breathed and any
+peace or gladness had blossomed for her only in that air: sometimes she
+was almost unconscious of it. This afternoon she had become conscious.
+It was as if the air were heavy and oppressive and as if she breathed
+with difficulty. And sitting there she asked herself if the time was
+coming when she must tell Augustine.
+
+What she might have to tell was a story that seemed strangely
+disproportionate: it was the story of her life; but all of it that
+mattered, all of it that made the story, was pressed into one year long
+ago. Before that year was sunny, uneventful girlhood, after it grey,
+uneventful womanhood; the incident, the drama, was all knotted into one
+year, and it seemed to belong to herself no longer; she seemed a
+spectator, looking back in wonder at the disaster of another woman's
+life. A long flat road stretched out behind her; she had journeyed over
+it for years; and on the far horizon she saw, if she looked back, the
+smoke and flames of a burning city--miles and miles away.
+
+Amabel Freer was the daughter of a rural Dean, a scholarly, sceptical
+man. The forms of religion were his without its heart; its heart was her
+mother's, who was saintly and whose orthodoxy was the vaguest symbolic
+system. From her father Amabel had the scholar's love of beauty in
+thought, from her mother the love of beauty in life; but her loves had
+been dreamy: she had thought and lived little. Happy compliance, happy
+confidence, a dawn-like sense of sweetness and purity, had filled her
+girlhood.
+
+When she was sixteen her father had died, and her mother in the
+following year. Amabel and her brother Bertram were well dowered.
+Bertram was in the Foreign Office, neither saintly nor scholarly, like
+his parents, nor undeveloped like his young sister. He was a capable,
+conventional man of the world, sure of himself and rather suspicious of
+others. Amabel imagined him a model of all that was good and lovely. The
+sudden bereavement of her youth bewildered and overwhelmed her; her
+capacity for dependent, self-devoting love sought for an object and
+lavished itself upon her brother. She went to live with an aunt, her
+father's sister, and when she was eighteen her aunt brought her to
+London, a tall, heavy and rather clumsy country girl, arrested rather
+than developed by grief. Her aunt was a world-worn, harassed woman; she
+had married off her four daughters with difficulty and felt the need of
+a change of occupation; but she accepted as a matter of course the duty
+of marrying off Amabel. That task accomplished she would go to bed every
+night at half past ten and devote her days to collecting coins and
+enamels. Her respite came far more quickly than she could have imagined
+possible. Amabel had promise of great beauty, but two or three years
+were needed to fulfill it; Mrs. Compton could but be surprised when Sir
+Hugh Channice, an older colleague of Bertram's, a fashionable and
+charming man, asked for the hand of her unformed young charge. Sir Hugh
+was fourteen years Amabel's senior and her very guilelessness no doubt
+attracted him; then there was the money; he was not well off and he
+lived a life rather hazardously full. Still, Mrs. Compton could hardly
+believe in her good-fortune. Amabel accepted her own very simply; her
+compliance and confidence were even deeper than before. Sir Hugh was the
+most graceful of lovers. His quizzical tenderness reminded her of her
+father, his quasi-paternal courtship emphasized her instinctive trust in
+the beauty and goodness of life.
+
+So at eighteen she was married at St. George's Hanover Square and wore a
+wonderful long satin train and her mothers lace veil and her mother's
+pearls around her neck and hair. A bridesmaid had said that pearls were
+unlucky, but Mrs. Compton tersely answered:--"Not if they are such good
+ones as these." Amabel had bowed her head to the pearls, seeing them,
+with the train, and the veil, and her own snowy figure, vaguely, still
+in the dreamlike haze. Memories of her father and mother, and of the
+dear deanery among its meadows, floating fragments of the poetry her
+father had loved, of the prayers her mother had taught her in childhood,
+hovered in her mind. She seemed to see the primrose woods where she had
+wandered, and to hear the sound of brooks and birds in Spring. A vague
+smile was on her lips. She thought of Sir Hugh as of a radiance lighting
+all. She was the happiest of girls.
+
+Shortly after her marriage, all the radiance, all the haze was gone. It
+had been difficult then to know why. Now, as she looked back, she
+thought that she could understand.
+
+She had been curiously young, curiously inexperienced. She had expected
+life to go on as dawn for ever. Everyday light had filled her with
+bleakness and disillusion. She had had childish fancies; that her
+husband did not really love her; that she counted for nothing in his
+life. Yet Sir Hugh had never changed, except that he very seldom made
+love to her and that she saw less of him than during their engagement.
+Sir Hugh was still quizzically tender, still all grace, all deference,
+when he was there. And what wonder that he was little there; he had a
+wide life; he was a brilliant man; she was a stupid young girl; in
+looking back, no longer young, no longer stupid, Lady Channice thought
+that she could see it all quite clearly. She had seemed to him a sweet,
+good girl, and he cared for her and wanted a wife. He had hoped that by
+degrees she would grow into a wise and capable woman, fit to help and
+ornament his life. But she had not been wise or capable. She had been
+lonely and unhappy, and that wide life of his had wearied and confused
+her; the silence, the watching attitude of the girl were inadequate to
+her married state, and yet she had nothing else to meet it with. She had
+never before felt her youth and inexperience as oppressive, but they
+oppressed her now. She had nothing to ask of the world and nothing to
+give to it. What she did ask of life was not given to her, what she had
+to give was not wanted. She was very unhappy.
+
+Yet people were kind. In especial Lady Elliston was kind, the loveliest,
+most sheltering, most understanding of all her guests or hostesses. Lady
+Elliston and her cheerful, jocose husband, were Sir Hugh's nearest
+friends and they took her in and made much of her. And one day when, in
+a fit of silly wretchedness, Lady Elliston found her crying, she had put
+her arms around her and kissed her and begged to know her grief and to
+comfort it. Even thus taken by surprise, and even to one so kind, Amabel
+could not tell that grief: deep in her was a reticence, a sense of
+values austere and immaculate: she could not discuss her husband, even
+with the kindest of friends. And she had nothing to tell, really, but of
+herself, her own helplessness and deficiency. Yet, without her telling,
+for all her wish that no one should guess, Lady Elliston did guess. Her
+comfort had such wise meaning in it. She was ten years older than
+Amabel. She knew all about the world; she knew all about girls and their
+husbands. Amabel was only a girl, and that was the trouble, she seemed
+to say. When she grew older she would see that it would come right;
+husbands were always so; the wider life reached by marriage would atone
+in many ways. And Lady Elliston, all with sweetest discretion, had asked
+gentle questions. Some of them Amabel had not understood; some she had.
+She remembered now that her own silence or dull negation might have
+seemed very rude and ungrateful; yet Lady Elliston had taken no offence.
+All her memories of Lady Elliston were of this tact and sweetness, this
+penetrating, tentative tact and sweetness that sought to understand and
+help and that drew back, unflurried and unprotesting before rebuff,
+ready to emerge again at any hint of need,--of these, and of her great
+beauty, the light of her large clear eyes, the whiteness of her throat,
+the glitter of diamonds about and above: for it was always in her most
+festal aspect, at night, under chandeliers and in ball-rooms, that she
+best remembered her. Amabel knew, with the deep, instinctive sense of
+values which was part of her inheritance and hardly, at that time, part
+of her thought, that her mother would not have liked Lady Elliston,
+would have thought her worldly; yet, and this showed that Amabel was
+developing, she had already learned that worldliness was compatible with
+many things that her mother would have excluded from it; she could see
+Lady Elliston with her own and with her mother's eyes, and it was
+puzzling, part of the pain of growth, to feel that her own was already
+the wider vision.
+
+Soon after that the real story came. The city began to burn and smoke
+and flames to blind and scorch her.
+
+It was at Lady Elliston's country house that Amabel first met Paul
+Quentin. He was a daring young novelist who was being made much of
+during those years; for at that still somewhat guileless time to be
+daring had been to be original. His books had power and beauty, and he
+had power and beauty, fierce, dreaming eyes and an intuitive, sudden
+smile. Under his aspect of careless artist, his head was a little turned
+by his worldly success, by great country-houses and flattering great
+ladies; he did not take the world as indifferently as he seemed to.
+Success edged his self-confidence with a reckless assurance. He was an
+ardent student of Nietzsche, at a time when that, too, was to be
+original. Amabel met this young man constantly at the dances and country
+parties of a season. And, suddenly, the world changed. It was not dawn
+and it was not daylight; it was a wild and beautiful illumination like
+torches at night. She knew herself loved and her own being became
+precious and enchanting to her. The presence of the man who loved her
+filled her with rapture and fear. Their recognition was swift. He told
+her things about herself that she had never dreamed of and as he told
+them she felt them to be true.
+
+To other people Paul Quentin did not speak much of Lady Channice. He
+early saw that he would need to be discreet. One day at Lady Elliston's
+her beauty was in question and someone said that she was too pale and
+too impassive; and at that Quentin, smiling a little fiercely, remarked
+that she was as pale as a cowslip and as impassive as a young Madonna;
+the words pictured her; her fresh Spring-like quality, and the peace, as
+of some noble power not yet roused.
+
+In looking back, it was strange and terrible to Lady Channice to see how
+little she had really known this man. Their meetings, their talks
+together, were like the torchlight that flashed and wavered and only
+fitfully revealed. From the first she had listened, had assented, to
+everything he said, hanging upon his words and his looks and living
+afterward in the memory of them. And in memory their significance seemed
+so to grow that when they next met they found themselves far nearer than
+the words had left them.
+
+All her young reserves and dignities had been penetrated and dissolved.
+It was always themselves he talked of, but, from that centre, he waved
+the torch about a transformed earth and showed her a world of thought
+and of art that she had never seen before. No murmur of it had reached
+the deanery; to her husband and the people he lived among it was a mere
+spectacle; Quentin made that bright, ardent world real to her, and
+serious. He gave her books to read; he took her to hear music; he showed
+her the pictures, the statues, the gems and porcelains that she had
+before accepted as part of the background of life hardly seeing them.
+From being the background of life they became, in a sense, suddenly its
+object. But not their object--not his and hers,--though they talked of
+them, looked, listened and understood. To Quentin and Amabel this beauty
+was still background, and in the centre, at the core of things, were
+their two selves and the ecstasy of feeling that exalted and terrified.
+All else in life became shackles. It was hardly shock, it was more like
+some immense relief, when, in each other's arms, the words of love, so
+long implied, were spoken. He said that she must come with him; that she
+must leave it all and come. She fought against herself and against him
+in refusing, grasping at pale memories of duty, honour, self-sacrifice;
+he knew too well the inner treachery that denied her words. But, looking
+back, trying not to flinch before the scorching memory, she did not know
+how he had won her. The dreadful jostle of opportune circumstance; her
+husband's absence, her brother's;--the chance pause in the empty London
+house between country visits;--Paul Quentin following, finding her
+there; the hot, dusty, enervating July day, all seemed to have pushed
+her to the act of madness and made of it a willess yielding rather than
+a decision. For she had yielded; she had left her husband's house and
+gone with him.
+
+They went abroad at once, to France, to the forest of Fontainebleau. How
+she hated ever after the sound of the lovely syllables, hated the memory
+of the rocks and woods, the green shadows and the golden lights where
+she had walked with him and known horror and despair deepening in her
+heart with every day. She judged herself, not him, in looking back; even
+then it had been herself she had judged. Though unwilling, she had been
+as much tempted by herself as by him; he had had to break down barriers,
+but though they were the barriers of her very soul, her longing heart
+had pressed, had beaten against them, crying out for deliverance. She
+did not judge him, but, alone with him in the forest, alone with him in
+the bland, sunny hotel, alone with him through the long nights when she
+lay awake and wondered, in a stupor of despair, she saw that he was
+different. So different; there was the horror. She was the sinner; not
+he. He belonged to the bright, ardent life, the life without social bond
+or scruple, the life of sunny, tolerant hotels and pagan forests; but
+she did not belong to it. The things that had seemed external things,
+barriers and shackles, were the realest things, were in fact the inner
+things, were her very self. In yielding to her heart she had destroyed
+herself, there was no life to be lived henceforth with this man, for
+there was no self left to live it with. She saw that she had cut herself
+off from her future as well as from her past. The sacred past judged her
+and the future was dead. Years of experience concentrated themselves
+into that lawless week. She saw that laws were not outside things; that
+they were one's very self at its wisest. She saw that if laws were to be
+broken it could only be by a self wiser than the self that had made the
+law. And the self that had fled with Paul Quentin was only a passionate,
+blinded fragment, a heart without a brain, a fragment judged and
+rejected by the whole.
+
+To both lovers the week was one of bitter disillusion, though for
+Quentin no such despair was possible. For him it was an attempt at joy
+and beauty that had failed. This dulled, drugged looking girl was not
+the radiant woman he had hoped to find. Vain and sensitive as he was, he
+felt, almost immediately, that he had lost his charm for her; that she
+had ceased to love him. That was the ugly, the humiliating side of the
+truth, the side that so filled Amabel Channice's soul with sickness as
+she looked back at it. She had ceased to love him, almost at once.
+
+And it was not guilt only, and fear, that had risen between them and
+separated them; there were other, smaller, subtler reasons, little
+snakes that hissed in her memory. He was different from her in other
+ways.
+
+She hardly saw that one of the ways was that of breeding; but she felt
+that he jarred upon her constantly, in their intimacy, their helpless,
+dreadful intimacy. In contrast, the thought of her husband had been with
+her, burningly. She did not say to herself, for she did not know it, her
+experience of life was too narrow to give her the knowledge,--that her
+husband was a gentleman and her lover, a man of genius though he were,
+was not; but she compared them, incessantly, when Quentin's words and
+actions, his instinctive judgments of men and things, made her shrink
+and flush. He was so clever, cleverer far than Hugh; but he did not
+know, as Sir Hugh would have known, what the slight things were that
+would make her shrink. He took little liberties when he should have been
+reticent and he was humble when he should have been assured. For he was
+often humble; he was, oddly, pathetically--and the pity for him added to
+the sickness--afraid of her and then, because he was afraid, he grew
+angry with her.
+
+He was clever; but there are some things cleverness cannot reach. What
+he failed to feel by instinct, he tried to scorn. It was not the
+patrician scorn, stupid yet not ignoble, for something hardly seen,
+hardly judged, merely felt as dull and insignificant; it was the
+corroding plebeian scorn for a suspected superiority.
+
+He quarrelled with her, and she sat silent, knowing that her silence,
+her passivity, was an affront the more, but helpless, having no word to
+say. What could she say?--I do love you: I am wretched: utterly wretched
+and utterly destroyed.--That was all there was to say. So she sat, dully
+listening, as if drugged. And she only winced when he so far forgot
+himself as to cry out that it was her silly pride of blood, the
+aristocratic illusion, that had infected her; she belonged to the caste
+that could not think and that picked up the artist and thinker to amuse
+and fill its vacancy.--"We may be lovers, or we may be performing
+poodles, but we are never equals," he had cried. It was for him Amabel
+had winced, knowing, without raising her eyes to see it, how his face
+would burn with humiliation for having so betrayed his consciousness of
+difference. Nothing that he could say could hurt her for herself.
+
+But there was worse to bear: after the violence of his anger came the
+violence of his love. She had borne at first, dully, like the slave she
+felt herself; for she had sold herself to him, given herself over bound
+hand and foot. But now it became intolerable. She could not
+protest,--what was there to protest against, or to appeal to?--but she
+could fly. The thought of flight rose in her after the torpor of despair
+and, with its sense of wings, it felt almost like a joy. She could fly
+back, back, to be scourged and purified, and then--oh far away she saw
+it now--was something beyond despair; life once more; life hidden,
+crippled, but life. A prayer rose like a sob with the thought.
+
+So one night in London her brother Bertram, coming back late to his
+rooms, found her sitting there.
+
+Bertram was hard, but not unkind. The sight of her white, fixed face
+touched him. He did not upbraid her, though for the past week he had
+rehearsed the bitterest of upbraidings. He even spoke soothingly to her
+when, speechless, she broke into wild sobs. "There, Amabel, there.--Yes,
+it's a frightful mess you've made of things.--When I think of
+mother!--Well, I'll say nothing now. You have come back; that is
+something. You _have_ left him, Amabel?"
+
+She nodded, her face hidden.
+
+"The brute, the scoundrel," said Bertram, at which she moaned a
+negation.--"You don't still care about him?--Well, I won't question you
+now.--Perhaps it's not so desperate. Hugh has been very good about it;
+he's helped me to keep the thing hushed up until we could make sure. I
+hope we've succeeded; I hope so indeed. Hugh will see you soon, I know;
+and it can be patched up, no doubt, after a fashion."
+
+But at this Amabel cried:--"I can't.--I can't.--Oh--take me away.--Let
+me hide until he divorces me. I can't see him."
+
+"Divorces you?" Bertram's voice was sharp. "Have you disgraced
+publicly--you and us? It's not you I'm thinking of so much as the family
+name, father and mother. Hugh won't divorce you; he can't; he shan't.
+After all you're a mere child and he didn't look after you." But this
+was said rather in threat to Hugh than in leniency to Amabel.
+
+She lay back in the chair, helpless, almost lifeless: let them do with
+her what they would.
+
+Bertram said that she should spend the night there and that he would see
+Hugh in the morning. And:--"No; you needn't see him yet, if you feel you
+can't. It may be arranged without that. Hugh will understand." And this
+was the first ray of the light that was to grow and grow. Hugh would
+understand.
+
+She did not see him for two years.
+
+All that had happened after her return to Bertram was a blur now. There
+were hasty talks, Bertram defining for her her future position, one of
+dignity it must be--he insisted on that; Hugh perfectly understood her
+wish for the present, quite fell in with it; but, eventually, she must
+take her place in her husband's home again. Even Bertram, intent as he
+was on the family honour, could not force the unwilling wife upon the
+merely magnanimous husband.
+
+Her husband's magnanimity was the radiance that grew for Amabel during
+these black days, the days of hasty talks and of her journey down to
+Charlock House.
+
+She had never seen Charlock House before; Sir Hugh had spoken of the
+family seat as "a dismal hole," but, on that hot July evening of her
+arrival, it looked peaceful to her, a dark haven of refuge, like the
+promise of sleep after nightmare.
+
+Mrs. Bray stood in the door, a grim but not a hostile warder: Amabel
+felt anyone who was not hostile to be almost kind.
+
+The house had been hastily prepared for her, dining-room and
+drawing-room and the large bedroom upstairs, having the same outlook
+over the lawn, the sycamores, the flat meadows. She could see herself
+standing there now, looking about her at the bedroom where gaiety and
+gauntness were oddly mingled in the faded carnations and birds of
+paradise on the chintzes and in the vastness of the four-poster, the
+towering wardrobes, the capacious, creaking chairs and sofas. Everything
+was very clean and old; the dressing-table was stiffly skirted in darned
+muslins and near the pin-cushion stood a small, tight nosegay, Mrs.
+Bray's cautious welcome to this ambiguous mistress.
+
+"A comfortable old place, isn't it," Bertram had said, looking about,
+too; "You'll soon get well and strong here, Amabel." This, Amabel knew,
+was said for the benefit of Mrs. Bray who stood, non-committal and
+observant just inside the door. She knew, too, that Bertram was
+depressed by the gauntness and gaiety of the bedroom and even more
+depressed by the maroon leather furniture and the cases of stuffed birds
+below, and that he was at once glad to get away from Charlock House and
+sorry for her that she should have to be left there, alone with Mrs.
+Bray. But to Amabel it was a dream after a nightmare. A strange,
+desolate dream, all through those sultry summer days; but a dream shot
+through with radiance in the thought of the magnanimity that had spared
+and saved her.
+
+And with the coming of the final horror, came the final revelation of
+this radiance. She had been at Charlock House for many weeks, and it was
+mid-Autumn, when that horror came. She knew that she was to have a child
+and that it could not be her husband's child.
+
+With the knowledge her mind seemed unmoored at last; it wavered and
+swung in a nightmare blackness deeper than any she had known. In her
+physical prostration and mental disarray the thought of suicide was with
+her. How face Bertram now,--Bertram with his tenacious hopes? How face
+her husband--ever--ever--in the far future? Her disgrace lived and she
+was to see it. But, in the swinging chaos, it was that thought that kept
+her from frenzy; the thought that it did live; that its life claimed
+her; that to it she must atone. She did not love this child that was to
+come; she dreaded it; yet the dread was sacred, a burden that she must
+bear for its unhappy sake. What did she not owe to it--unfortunate
+one--of atonement and devotion?
+
+She gathered all her courage, armed her physical weakness, her wandering
+mind, to summon Bertram and to tell him.
+
+She told him in the long drawing-room on a sultry September day, leaning
+her arms on the table by which she sat and covering her face.
+
+Bertram said nothing for a long time. He was still boyish enough to feel
+any such announcement as embarrassing; and that it should be told him
+now, in such circumstances, by his sister, by Amabel, was nearly
+incredible. How associate such savage natural facts, lawless and
+unappeasable, with that young figure, dressed in its trousseau white
+muslin and with its crown of innocent gold. It made her suddenly seem
+older than himself and at once more piteous and more sinister. For a
+moment, after the sheer stupor, he was horribly angry with her; then
+came dismay at his own cruelty.
+
+"This does change things, Amabel," he said at last.
+
+"Yes," she answered from behind her hands.
+
+"I don't know how Hugh will take it," said Bertram.
+
+"He must divorce me now," she said. "It can be done very quietly, can't
+it. And I have money. I can go away, somewhere, out of England--I've
+thought of America--or New Zealand--some distant country where I shall
+never be heard of; I can bring up the child there."
+
+Bertram stared at her. She sat at the table, her hands before her face,
+in the light, girlish dress that hung loosely about her. She was fragile
+and wasted. Her voice seemed dead. And he wondered at the unhappy
+creature's courage.
+
+"Divorce!" he then said violently; "No; he can't do that;--and he had
+forgiven already; I don't know how the law stands; but of course you
+won't go away. What an idea; you might as well kill yourself outright.
+It's only--. I don't know how the law stands. I don't know what Hugh
+will say."
+
+Bertram walked up and down biting his nails. He stopped presently before
+a window, his back turned to his sister, and, flushing over the words,
+he said: "You are sure--you are quite sure, Amabel, that it isn't Hugh's
+child. You are such a girl. You can know nothing.--I mean--it may be a
+mistake."
+
+"I am quite sure," the unmoved voice answered him. "I do know."
+
+Bertram again stood silent. "Well," he said at last, turning to her
+though he did not look at her, "all I can do is to see how Hugh takes
+it. You know, Amabel, that you can count on me. I'll see after you, and
+after the child. Hugh may, of course, insist on your parting from it;
+that will probably be the condition he'll make;--naturally. In that case
+I'll take you abroad soon. It can be got through, I suppose, without
+anybody knowing; assumed names; some Swiss or Italian village--" Bertram
+muttered, rather to himself than to her. "Good God, what an odious
+business!--But, as you say, we have money; that simplifies everything.
+You mustn't worry about the child. I will see that it is put into safe
+hands and I'll keep an eye on its future--." He stopped, for his
+sister's hands had fallen. She was gazing at him, still dully--for it
+seemed that nothing could strike any excitement from her--but with a
+curious look, a look that again made him feel as if she were much older
+than he.
+
+"Never," she said.
+
+"Never what?" Bertram asked. "You mean you won't part from the child?"
+
+"Never; never," she repeated.
+
+"But Amabel," with cold patience he urged; "if Hugh insists.--My poor
+girl, you have made your bed and you must lie on it. You can't expect
+your husband to give this child--this illegitimate child--his name. You
+can't expect him to accept it as his child."
+
+"No; I don't expect it," she said.
+
+"Well, what then? What's your alternative?"
+
+"I must go away with the child."
+
+"I tell you, Amabel, it's impossible," Bertram in his painful anxiety
+spoke with irritation. "You've got to consider our name--my name, my
+position, and your husband's. Heaven knows I want to be kind to you--do
+all I can for you; I've not once reproached you, have I? But you must be
+reasonable. Some things you must accept as your punishment. Unless Hugh
+is the most fantastically generous of men you'll have to part from the
+child."
+
+She sat silent.
+
+"You do consent to that?" Bertram insisted.
+
+She looked before her with that dull, that stupid look. "No," she
+replied.
+
+Bertram's patience gave way, "You are mad," he said. "Have you no
+consideration for me--for us? You behave like this--incredibly, in my
+mother's daughter--never a girl better brought up; you go off with
+that--that bounder;--you stay with him for a week--good
+heavens!--there'd have been more dignity if you'd stuck to him;--you
+chuck him, in one week, and then you come back and expect us to do as
+you think fit, to let you disappear and everyone know that you've
+betrayed your husband and had a child by another man. It's mad, I tell
+you, and it's impossible, and you've got to submit. Do you hear? Will
+you answer me, I say? Will you promise that if Hugh won't consent to
+fathering the child--won't consent to giving it his name--won't consent
+to having it, as his heir, disinherit the lawful children he may have by
+you--good heavens, I wonder if you realize what you are asking!--will
+you promise, I say, if he doesn't consent, to part from the child?"
+
+She did look rather mad, her brother thought, and he remembered, with
+discomfort, that women, at such times, did sometimes lose their reason.
+Her eyes with their dead gaze nearly frightened him, when, after all his
+violence, his entreaty, his abuse of her, she only, in an unchanged
+voice, said "No."
+
+He felt then the uselessness of protestation or threat; she must be
+treated as if she were mad; humored, cajoled. He was silent for a little
+while, walking up and down. "Well, I'll say no more, then. Forgive me
+for my harshness," he said. "You give me a great deal to bear, Amabel;
+but I'll say nothing now. I have your word, at all events," he looked
+sharply at her as the sudden suspicion crossed him, "I have your word
+that you'll stay quietly here--until you hear from me what Hugh says?
+You promise me that?"
+
+"Yes," his sister answered. He gave a sigh for the sorry relief.
+
+That night Amabel's mind wandered wildly. She heard herself, in the
+lonely room where she lay, calling out meaningless things. She tried to
+control the horror of fear that rose in her and peopled the room with
+phantoms; but the fear ran curdling in her veins and flowed about her,
+shaping itself in forms of misery and disaster. "No--no--poor
+child.--Oh--don't--don't.--I will come to you. I am your mother.--They
+can't take you from me."--this was the most frequent cry.
+
+The poor child hovered, wailing, delivered over to vague, unseen sorrow,
+and, though a tiny infant, it seemed to be Paul Quentin, too, in some
+dreadful plight, appealing to her in the name of their dead love to save
+him. She did not love him; she did not love the child; but her heart
+seemed broken with impotent pity.
+
+In the intervals of nightmare she could look, furtively, fixedly, about
+the room. The moon was bright outside, and through the curtains a pallid
+light showed the menacing forms of the two great wardrobes. The four
+posts of her bed seemed like the pillars of some vast, alien temple, and
+the canopy, far above her, floated like a threatening cloud. Opposite
+her bed, above the chimney-piece, was a deeply glimmering mirror: if she
+were to raise herself she would see her own white reflection, rising,
+ghastly.--She hid her face on her pillows and sank again into the abyss.
+
+Next morning she could not get up. Her pulses were beating at fever
+speed; but, with the daylight, her mind was clearer. She could summon
+her quiet look when Mrs. Bray came in to ask her mournfully how she was.
+And a little later a telegram came, from Bertram.
+
+Her trembling hands could hardly open it. She read the words. "All is
+well." Mrs. Bray stood beside her bed. She meant to keep that quiet look
+for Mrs. Bray; but she fainted. Mrs. Bray, while she lay tumbled among
+the pillows, and before lifting her, read the message hastily.
+
+From the night of torment and the shock of joy, Amabel brought an
+extreme susceptibility to emotion that showed itself through all her
+life in a trembling of her hands and frame when any stress of feeling
+was laid upon her.
+
+After that torment and that shock she saw Bertram once, and only once,
+again;--ah, strange and sad in her memory that final meeting of their
+lives, though this miraculous news was the theme of it. She was still in
+bed when he came, the bed she did not leave for months, and, though so
+weak and dizzy, she understood all that he told her, knew the one
+supreme fact of her husband's goodness. He sent her word that she was to
+be troubled about nothing; she was to take everything easily and
+naturally. She should always have her child with her and it should bear
+his name. He would see after it like a father; it should never know that
+he was not its father. And, as soon as she would let him, he would come
+and see her--and it. Amabel, lying on her pillows, gazed and gazed: her
+eyes, in their shadowy hollows, were two dark wells of sacred wonder.
+Even Bertram felt something of the wonder of them. In his new gladness
+and relief, he was very kind to her. He came and kissed her. She seemed,
+once more, a person whom one could kiss. "Poor dear," he said, "you have
+had a lot to bear. You do look dreadfully ill. You must get well and
+strong, now, Amabel, and not worry any more, about anything. Everything
+is all right. We will call the child Augustine, if it's a boy, after
+mother's father you know, and Katherine, if it's a girl, after her
+mother: I feel, don't you, that we have no right to use their own names.
+But the further away ones seem right, now. Hugh is a trump, isn't he?
+And, I'm sure of it, Amabel, when time has passed a little, and you feel
+you can, he'll have you back; I do really believe it may be managed.
+This can all be explained. I'm saying that you are ill, a nervous
+breakdown, and are having a complete rest."
+
+She heard him dimly, feeling these words irrelevant. She knew that Hugh
+must never have her back; that she could never go back to Hugh; that her
+life henceforth was dedicated. And yet Bertram was kind, she felt that,
+though dimly feeling, too, that her old image of him had grown
+tarnished. But her mind was far from Bertram and the mitigations he
+offered. She was fixed on that radiant figure, her husband, her knight,
+who had stooped to her in her abasement, her agony, and had lifted her
+from dust and darkness to the air where she could breathe,--and bless
+him.
+
+"Tell him--I bless him,"--she said to Bertram. She could say nothing
+more. There were other memories of that day, too, but even more dim,
+more irrelevant. Bertram had brought papers for her to sign, saying: "I
+know you'll want to be very generous with Hugh now," and she had raised
+herself on her elbow to trace with the fingers that trembled the words
+he dictated to her.
+
+There was sorrow, indeed, to look back on after that. Poor Bertram died
+only a month later, struck down by an infectious illness. He was not to
+see or supervise the rebuilding of his sister's shattered life, and the
+anguish in her sorrow was the thought of all the pain that she had
+brought to his last months of life: but this sorrow, after the phantoms,
+the nightmares, was like the weeping of tears after a dreadful weeping
+of blood. Her tears fell as she lay there, propped on her pillows--for
+she was very ill--and looking out over the Autumn fields; she wept for
+poor Bertram and all the pain; life was sad. But life was good and
+beautiful. After the flames, the suffocation, it had brought her here,
+and it showed her that radiant figure, that goodness and beauty embodied
+in human form. And she had more to help her, for he wrote to her, a few
+delicately chosen words, hardly touching on their own case, his and
+hers, but about her brother's death and of how he felt for her in her
+bereavement, and of what a friend dear Bertram had been to himself.
+"Some day, dear Amabel, you must let me come and see you" it ended; and
+"Your affectionate husband."
+
+It was almost too wonderful to be borne. She had to close her eyes in
+thinking of it and to lie very still, holding the blessed letter in her
+hand and smiling faintly while she drew long soft breaths. He was always
+in her thoughts, her husband; more, far more, than her coming child. It
+was her husband who had made that coming a thing possible to look
+forward to with resignation; it was no longer the nightmare of desolate
+flights and hidings.
+
+And even after the child was born, after she had seen its strange little
+face, even then, though it was all her life, all her future, it held the
+second place in her heart. It was her life, but it was from her husband
+that the gift of life had come to her.
+
+She was a gentle, a solicitous, a devoted mother. She never looked at
+her baby without a sense of tears. Unfortunate one, was her thought, and
+the pulse of her life was the yearning to atone.
+
+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?--Abélard and Héloise?--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."
+
+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."
+
+Lady Elliston had gathered herself together though still, it was
+evident, bewildered. "I don't mean to blame Hugh so much. It was your
+fault, too, I suppose. You asked for the cloister, I know."
+
+"No; I didn't ask for it. I asked to be allowed to go away and hide
+myself. The cloister, too, was a gift,--like my name, my undishonoured
+child."
+
+"Dear, dear Amabel," said Lady Elliston, gazing at her, "how beautiful
+of you to be able to feel like that."
+
+"It isn't I who am beautiful"; Amabel's lips trembled a little now and
+her eyes filled suddenly with tears. Tears and trembling seemed to bring
+hardness rather than softening to her face; they were like a chill
+breeze, like an icy veil, and the face, with its sorrow, was like a
+winter's landscape.
+
+"He is so beautiful that he would never let anyone know or understand
+what I owe him: he would never know it himself: there is something
+simple and innocent about such men: they do beautiful things
+unconsciously. You know him well: you are far nearer him than I am: but
+you can't know what the beauty is, for you have never been helpless and
+disgraced and desperate nor needed anyone to lift you up. No one can
+know as I do the angel in my husband."
+
+Lady Elliston sat silent. She received Amabel's statements steadily yet
+with a little wincing, as though they had been bullets whistling past
+her head; they would not pierce, if one did not move; yet an involuntary
+compression of the lips and flutter of the eyelids revealed a rather
+rigid self-mastery. Only after the silence had grown long did she
+slightly stir, move her hand, turn her head with a deep, careful breath,
+and then say, almost timidly; "Then, he has lifted you up, Amabel?--You
+are happy, really happy, in your strange life?"
+
+Amabel looked down. The force of her vindicating ardour had passed from
+her. With the question the hunted, haunted present flooded in. Happy?
+Yesterday she might have answered "yes," so far away had the past
+seemed, so forgotten the fear in which she had learned to breathe. Today
+the past was with her and the fear pressed heavily upon her heart. She
+answered in a sombre voice: "With my past what woman could be happy. It
+blights everything."
+
+"Oh--but Amabel--" Lady Elliston breathed forth. She leaned forward,
+then moved back, withdrawing the hand impulsively put out.--"Why?--Why?--"
+she gently urged. "It is all over: all passed: all forgotten. Don't--ah
+don't let it blight anything."
+
+"Oh no," said Amabel, shaking her head. "It isn't over; it isn't
+forgotten; it never will be. Hugh cannot forget--though he has
+forgiven. And someday, I feel it, Augustine will know. Then I shall
+drink the cup of shame to the last drop."
+
+"Oh!--" said Lady Elliston, as if with impatience. She checked herself.
+"What can I say?--if you will think of yourself in this preposterous
+way.--As for Augustine, he does not know and how should he ever know?
+How could he, when no one in the world knows but you and I and Hugh."
+
+She paused at that, looking at Amabel's downcast face. "You notice what
+I say, Amabel?"
+
+"Yes; that isn't it. He will guess."
+
+"You are morbid, my poor child.--But do you notice nothing when I say
+that only we three know?"
+
+Amabel looked up. Lady Elliston met her eyes. "I came today to tell you,
+Amabel. I felt sure you did not know. There is no reason at all, now,
+why you should dread coming out into the world--with Augustine. You need
+fear no meetings. You did not know that he was dead."
+
+"He?"
+
+"Yes. He. Paul Quentin."
+
+Amabel, gazing at her, said nothing.
+
+"He died in Italy, last week. He was married, you know, quite happily;
+an ordinary sort of person; she had money; he rather let his work go.
+But they were happy; a large family; a villa on a hill somewhere;
+pictures, bric-à-brac and bohemian intellectualism. You knew of his
+marriage?"
+
+"Yes; I knew."
+
+The tears had risen to Lady Elliston's eyes before that stricken, ashen
+face; she looked away, murmuring: "I wanted to tell you, when we were
+alone. It might have come as such an ugly shock, if you were unprepared.
+But, now, there is no danger anymore. And you will come out, Amabel?"
+
+"No;--never.--It was never that."
+
+"But what was it then?"
+
+Amabel had risen and was looking around her blindly.
+
+"It was.--I have no place but here.--Forgive me--I must go. I can't talk
+any more."
+
+"Yes; go; do go and lie down." Lady Elliston, rising too, put an arm
+around her shoulders and took her hand. "I'll come again and see you. I
+am going up to town for a night or so on Tuesday, but I bring Peggy down
+here for the next week-end. I'll see you then.--Ah, here is Augustine,
+and tea. He will give me my tea and you must sleep off your headache.
+Your poor mother has a very bad headache, Augustine. I have tried her.
+Goodbye, dear, go and rest."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+An hour ago Augustine had found his mother in tears; now he found her
+beyond them. He gave her his arm, and, outside in the hall, prepared to
+mount the stairs with her; but, shaking her head, trying, with miserable
+unsuccess, to smile, she pointed him back to the drawing-room and to his
+duties of host.
+
+"Ah, she is very tired. She does not look well," said Lady Elliston. "I
+am glad to see that you take good care of her."
+
+"She is usually very well," said Augustine, standing over the tea-tray
+that had been put on the table between him and Lady Elliston. "Let's
+see: what do you have? Sugar? milk?"
+
+"No sugar; milk, please. It's such a great pleasure to me to meet your
+mother again."
+
+Augustine made no reply to this, handing her her cup and the plate of
+bread and butter.
+
+"She was one of the loveliest girls I have ever seen," Lady Elliston
+went on, helping herself. "She looked like a Madonna--and a
+cowslip.--And she looks like that more than ever." She had paused for a
+moment as an uncomfortable recollection came to her. It was Paul Quentin
+who had said that: at her house.
+
+"Yes," Augustine assented, pleased, "she does look like a cowslip; she
+is so pale and golden and tranquil. It's funny you should say so," he
+went on, "for I've often thought it; but with me it's an association of
+ideas, too. Those meadows over there, beyond our lawn, are full of
+cowslips in Spring and ever since I can remember we have picked them
+there together."
+
+"How sweet"; Lady Elliston was still a little confused, by her blunder,
+and by his words. "What a happy life you and your mother must have had,
+cloistered here. I've been telling your mother that it's like a
+cloister. I've been scolding her a little for shutting herself up in it.
+And now that I have this chance of talking to you I do very much want to
+say that I hope you will bring her out a little more."
+
+"Bring her out? Where?" Augustine inquired.
+
+"Into the world--the world she is so fitted to adorn. It's ridiculous
+this--this fad of hers," said Lady Elliston.
+
+"Is it a fad?" Augustine asked, but with at once a lightness and
+distance of manner.
+
+"Of course. And it is bad for anyone to be immured."
+
+"I don't think it has been bad for her. Perhaps this is more the world
+than you think."
+
+"I only mean bad in the sense of sad."
+
+"Isn't the world sad?"
+
+"What a strange young man you are. Do you really mean to say that you
+like to see your mother--your beautiful, lovely mother--imprisoned in
+this gloomy place and meeting nobody from one year's end to the other?"
+
+"I have said nothing at all about my likes," said Augustine, smiling.
+
+Lady Elliston gazed at him. He startled her almost as much as his mother
+had done. What a strange young man, indeed; what strange echoes of his
+father and mother in him. But she had to grope for the resemblances to
+Paul Quentin; they were there; she felt them; but they were difficult to
+see; while it was easy to see the resemblances to Amabel. His father was
+like a force, a fierceness in him, controlled and guided by an influence
+that was his mother. And where had he found, at nineteen, that
+assurance, an assurance without his father's vanity or his mother's
+selflessness? Paul Quentin had been assured because he was so absolutely
+sure of his own value; Amabel was assured because, in her own eyes, she
+was valueless; this young man seemed to be without self-reference or
+self-effacement; but he was quite self-assured. Had he some mental
+talisman by which he accurately gauged all values, his own included? He
+seemed at once so oddly above yet of the world. She pulled herself
+together to remember that he was, only, nineteen, and that she had had
+motives in coming, and that if these motives had been good they were now
+better.
+
+"You have said nothing; but I am going to ask you to say something"; she
+smiled back at him. "I am going to ask you to say that you will take me
+on trust. I am your friend and your mother's friend."
+
+"Since when, my mother's?" Augustine asked. His amiability of aspect
+remained constant.
+
+"Since twenty years."
+
+"Twenty years in which you have not seen your friend."
+
+"I know that that looks strange. But when one shuts oneself away into a
+cloister one shuts out friends."
+
+"Does one?"
+
+"You won't trust me?"
+
+"I don't know anything about you, except that you have made my mother
+ill and that you want something of me."
+
+"My dear young man I, at all events, know one thing about you very
+clearly, and that is that I trust you."
+
+"I want nothing of you," said Augustine, but he still smiled, so that
+his words did not seem discourteous.
+
+"Nothing? Really nothing? I am your mother's friend, and you want
+nothing of me? I have sought her out; I came today to see and
+understand; I have not made her ill; she was nearly crying when we came
+into the room, you and I, a little while ago. What I see and understand
+makes me sad and angry. And I believe that you, too, see and understand;
+I believe that you, too, are sad and angry. And I want to help you. I
+want you, when you come into the world, as you must, to bring your
+mother. I'll be waiting there for you both. I am a sort of
+fairy-godmother. I want to see justice done."
+
+"I suppose you mean that you are angry with my father and want to see
+justice done on him," said Augustine after a pause.
+
+Again Lady Elliston sat suddenly still, as if another, an unexpected
+bullet, had whizzed past her. "What makes you say that?" she asked after
+a moment.
+
+"What you have said and what you have seen. He had been making her cry,"
+said Augustine. He was still calm, but now, under the calm, she heard,
+like the thunder of the sea in caverns deep beneath a placid headland,
+the muffled sound of a hidden, a dark indignation.
+
+"Yes," she said, looking into his eyes; "that made me angry; and that he
+should take all her money from her, as I am sure he does, and leave her
+to live like this."
+
+Augustine's colour rose. He turned away his eyes and seemed to ponder.
+
+"I do want something of you, after all; the answer to one question," he
+said at last. "Is it because of him that she is cloistered here?"
+
+In a flash Lady Elliston had risen to her emergency, her opportunity.
+She was grave, she was ready, and she was very careful.
+
+"It was her own choice," she said.
+
+Augustine pondered again. He, too, was grave and careful She saw how,
+making use of her proffered help, he yet held her at a distance. "That
+does not answer my question," he said. "I will put it in another way. Is
+it because of some evil in his life that she is cloistered?"
+
+Lady Elliston sat before him in one of the high-backed chairs; the light
+was behind her: the delicate oval of her face maintained its steady
+attitude: in the twilit room Augustine could see her eyes fixed very
+strangely upon him. She, too, was perhaps pondering. When at last she
+spoke, she rose in speaking, as if her answer must put an end to their
+encounter, as if he must feel, as well as she, that after her answer
+there could be no further question.
+
+"Not altogether, for that," she said; "but, yes, in part it is because
+of what you would call an evil in his life that she is cloistered."
+
+Augustine walked with her to the door and down the stone passage
+outside, where a strip of faded carpet hardly kept one's feet from the
+cold. He was nearer to her in this curious moment of their parting than
+he had been at all. He liked Lady Elliston in her last response; it was
+not the wish to see justice wreaked that had made it; it was mere truth.
+
+When they had reached the hall door, he opened it for her and in the
+fading light he saw that she was very pale. The Grey's dog-cart was
+going slowly round and round the gravel drive. Lady Elliston did not
+look at him. She stood waiting for the groom to see her.
+
+"What you asked me was asked in confidence," she said; "and what I have
+told you is told in confidence."
+
+"It wasn't new to me; I had guessed it," said Augustine. "But your
+confirmation of what I guessed is in confidence."
+
+"I have been your father's life-long friend," said Lady Elliston; "He is
+not an evil man."
+
+"I understand. I don't misjudge him."
+
+"I don't want to see justice done on him," said Lady Elliston. The groom
+had seen her and the dog-cart, with a brisk rattle of wheels, drew up to
+the door. "It isn't a question of that; I only want to see justice done
+_for_ her."
+
+All through she had been steady; now she was sweet again. "I want to
+free her. I want you to free her. And--whenever you do--I shall be
+waiting to give her to the world again."
+
+They looked at each other now and Augustine could answer, with another
+smile; "You are the world, I suppose."
+
+"Yes; I am the world," she accepted. "The actual fairy-godmother, with a
+magic wand that can turn pumpkins into coaches and put Cinderellas into
+their proper places."
+
+Augustine had handed her up to her seat beside the groom. He tucked her
+rug about her. If he had laid aside anything to meet her on her own
+ground, he, too, had regained it now.
+
+"But does the world always know what _is_ the proper place?" was his
+final remark as she drove off.
+
+She did not know that she could have found an answer to it.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Amabel was sitting beside her window when her son came in and the face
+she turned on him was white and rigid.
+
+"My dear mother," said Augustine, coming up to her, "how pale you are."
+
+She had been sitting there for all that time, tearless, in a stupor of
+misery. Yes, she answered him, she was very tired.
+
+Augustine stood over her looking out of the window. "A little walk
+wouldn't do you good?" he asked.
+
+No, she answered, her head ached too badly.
+
+She could find nothing to say to him: the truth that lay so icily upon
+her heart was all that she could have said: "I am your guilty mother. I
+robbed you of your father. And your father is dead, unmourned, unloved,
+almost forgotten by me." For that was the poison in her misery, to know
+that for Paul Quentin she felt almost nothing. To hear that he had died
+was to hear that a ghost had died.
+
+What would Augustine say to her if the truth were spoken? It was now a
+looming horror between them. It shut her from him and it shut him away.
+
+"Oh, do come out," said Augustine after a moment: "the evening's so
+fine: it will do you good; and there's still a bit of sunset to be
+seen."
+
+She shook her head, looking away from him.
+
+"Is it really so bad as that?"
+
+"Yes; very bad."
+
+"Can't I do anything? Get you anything?"
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+"I'm so sorry," said Augustine, and, suddenly, but gravely,
+deliberately, he stooped and kissed her.
+
+"Oh--don't!--don't!" she gasped. She thrust him away, turning her face
+against the chair. "Don't: you must leave me.--I am so unhappy."
+
+The words sprang forth: she could not repress them, nor the gush of
+miserable tears.
+
+If Augustine was horrified he was silent. He stood leaning over her for
+a moment and then went out of the room.
+
+She lay fallen in her chair, weeping convulsively. The past was with
+her; it had seized her and, in her panic-stricken words, it had thrust
+her child away. What would happen now? What would Augustine say? What
+would he ask? If he said nothing and asked nothing, what would he think?
+
+She tried to gather her thoughts together, to pray for light and
+guidance; but, like a mob of blind men locked out from sanctuary, the
+poor, wild thoughts only fled about outside the church and fumbled at
+the church door. Her very soul seemed shut against her.
+
+She roused herself at last, mechanically telling herself that she must
+go through with it; she must dress and go down to dinner and she must
+find something to say to Augustine, something that would make what had
+happened to them less sinister and inexplicable.
+
+--Unless--it seemed like a mad cry raised by one of the blind men in the
+dark,--unless she told him all, confessed all; her guilt, her shame, the
+truths of her blighted life. She shuddered; she cowered as the cry came
+to her, covering her ears and shutting it out. It was mad, mad. She had
+not strength for such a task, and if that were weakness--oh, with a long
+breath she drew in the mitigation--if it were weakness, would it not be
+a cruel, a heartless strength that could blight her child's life too, in
+the name of truth. She must not listen to the cry. Yet strangely it had
+echoed in her, almost as if from within, not from without, the dark,
+deserted church; almost as if her soul, shut in there in the darkness,
+were crying out to her. She turned her mind from the sick fancy.
+
+Augustine met her at dinner. He was pale but he seemed composed. They
+spoke little. He said, in answer to her questioning, that he had quite
+liked Lady Elliston; yes, they had had a nice talk; she seemed very
+friendly; he should go and see her when he next went up to London.
+
+Amabel felt the crispness in his voice but, centered as she was in her
+own self-mastery, she could not guess at the degree of his.
+
+After dinner they went into the drawing-room, where the old, ugly lamp
+added its light to the candles on the mantel-piece.
+
+Augustine took his book and sat down at one side of the table. Amabel
+sat at the other. She, too, took a book and tried to read; a little time
+passed and then she found that her hands were trembling so much that she
+could not. She slid the book softly back upon the table, reaching out
+for her work-bag. She hoped Augustine had not seen, but, glancing up at
+him, she saw his eyes upon her.
+
+Augustine's eyes looked strange tonight. The dark rims around the iris
+seemed to have expanded. Suddenly she felt horribly afraid of him.
+
+They gazed at each other, and she forced herself to a trembling,
+meaningless smile. And when she smiled at him he sprang up and came to
+her. He leaned over her, and she shrank back into her chair, shutting
+her eyes.
+
+"You must tell me the truth," said Augustine. "I can't bear this. _He_
+has made you unhappy.--_He_ comes between us."
+
+She lay back in the darkness, hearing the incredible words.
+
+"He?--What do you mean?"
+
+"He is a bad man. And he makes you miserable. And you love him."
+
+She heard the nightmare: she could not look at it.
+
+"My husband bad? He is good, more good than you can guess. What do you
+mean by speaking so?"
+
+With closed eyes, shutting him out, she spoke, anger and terror in her
+voice.
+
+Augustine lifted himself and stood with his hands clenched looking at
+her.
+
+"You say that because you love him. You love him more than anything or
+anyone in the world."
+
+"I do. I love him more than anyone or anything in the world. How have
+you dared--in silence--in secret--to nourish these thoughts against the
+man who has given you all you have."
+
+"He hasn't given me all I have. You are everything in my life and he is
+nothing. He is selfish. He is sensual. He is stupid. He doesn't know
+what beauty or goodness is. I hate him," said Augustine.
+
+Her eyes at last opened on him. She grasped her chair and raised
+herself. Whose hands were these, desecrating her holy of holies. Her
+son's? Was it her son who spoke these words? An enemy stood before her.
+
+"Then you do not love me. If you hate him you do not love me,"--her
+anger had blotted out her fear, but she could find no other than these
+childish words and the tears ran down her face.
+
+"And if you love him you cannot love me," Augustine answered. His
+self-mastery was gone. It was a fierce, wild anger that stared back at
+her. His young face was convulsed and livid.
+
+"It is you who are bad to have such false, base thoughts!" his mother
+cried, and her eyes in their indignation, their horror, struck at him,
+accused him, thrust him forth. "You are cruel--and hard--and
+self-righteous.--You do not love me.--There is no tenderness in your
+heart!"--
+
+Augustine burst into tears. "There is no room in your heart for me!--"
+he gasped. He turned from her and rushed out of the room.
+
+       *     *     *     *     *
+
+A long time passed before she leaned forward in the chair where she had
+sat rigidly, rested her elbows on her knees, buried her face in her
+hands.
+
+Her heart ached and her mind was empty: that was all she knew. It had
+been too much. This torpor of sudden weakness was merciful. Now she
+would go to bed and sleep.
+
+It took her a long time to go upstairs; her head whirled, and if she had
+not clung to the baluster she would have fallen.
+
+In the passage above she paused outside Augustine's door and listened.
+She heard him move inside, walking to his window, to lean out into the
+night, probably, as was his wont. That was well. He, too, would sleep
+presently.
+
+In her room she said to her maid that she did not need her. It took her
+but a few minutes tonight to prepare for bed. She could not even braid
+her uncoiled hair. She tossed it, all loosened, above her head as she
+fell upon the pillow.
+
+She heard, for a little while, the dull thumping of her heart. Her
+breath was warm in a mesh of hair beneath her cheek; she was too sleepy
+to put it away. She was wakened next morning by the maid. Her curtains
+were drawn and a dull light from a rain-blotted world was in the room.
+
+The maid brought a note to her bedside. From Mr. Augustine, she said.
+
+Amabel raised herself to hold the sheet to the light and read:--
+
+"Dear mother," it said. "I think that I shall go and stay with Wallace
+for a week or so. I shall see you before I go up to Oxford. Try to
+forgive me for my violence last night. I am sorry to have added to your
+unhappiness. Your affectionate son--Augustine."
+
+Her mind was still empty. "Has Mr. Augustine gone?" she asked the maid.
+
+"Yes, ma'am; he left quite early, to catch the eight-forty train."
+
+"Ah, yes," said Amabel. She sank back on her pillow. "I will have my
+breakfast in bed. Tea, please, only, and toast."--Then, the long habit
+of self-discipline asserting itself, the necessity for keeping strength,
+if it were only to be spent in suffering:--"No, coffee, and an egg,
+too."
+
+She found, indeed, that she was very hungry; she had eaten nothing
+yesterday. After her bath and the brushing and braiding of her hair, it
+was pleasant to lie propped high on her pillows and to drink her hot
+coffee. The morning papers, too, were nice to look at, folded on her
+tray. She did not wish to read them; but they spoke of a firmly
+established order, sustaining her life and assuring her of ample pillows
+to lie on and hot coffee to drink, assuring her that bodily comforts
+were pleasant whatever else was painful. It was a childish, a still
+stupefied mood, she knew, but it supported her; an oasis of the
+familiar, the safe, in the midst of whirling, engulfing storms.
+
+It supported her through the hours when she lay, with closed eyes,
+listening to the pour and drip of the rain, when, finally deciding to
+get up, she rose and dressed very carefully, taking all her time.
+
+Below, in the drawing-room, when she entered, it was very dark. The fire
+was unlit, the bowls of roses were faded; and sudden, childish tears
+filled her eyes at the desolateness. On such a day as this Augustine
+would have seen that the fire was burning, awaiting her. She found
+matches and lighted it herself and the reluctantly creeping brightness
+made the day feel the drearier; it took a long time even to warm her
+foot as she stood before it, leaning her arm on the mantel-piece.
+
+It was Saturday; she should not see her girls today; there was relief in
+that, for she did not think that she could have found anything to say to
+them this morning.
+
+Looking at the roses again, she felt vexed with the maid for having left
+them there in their melancholy. She rang and spoke to her almost sharply
+telling her to take them away, and when she had gone felt the tears rise
+with surprise and compunction for the sharpness.
+
+There would be no fresh flowers in the room today, it was raining too
+hard. If Augustine had been here he would have gone out and found her
+some wet branches of beech or sycamore to put in the vases: he knew how
+she disliked a flowerless, leafless room, a dislike he shared.
+
+How the rain beat down. She stood looking out of the window at the
+sodden earth, the blotted shapes of the trees. Beyond the nearest
+meadows it was like a grey sheet drawn down, confusing earth and sky and
+shutting vision into an islet.
+
+She hoped that Augustine had taken his mackintosh. He was very forgetful
+about such things. She went out to look into the bleak, stone hall hung
+with old hunting prints that were dimmed and spotted with age and damp.
+Yes, it was gone from its place, and his ulster, too. It had been a
+considered, not a hasty departure. A tweed cloak that he often wore on
+their walks hung there still and, vaguely, as though she sought
+something, she turned it, looked at it, put her hands into the worn,
+capacious pockets. All were empty except one where she found some
+withered gorse flowers. Augustine was fond of stripping off the golden
+blossoms as they passed a bush, of putting his nose into the handful of
+fragrance, and then holding it out for her to smell it, too:--"Is it
+apricots, or is it peaches?" she could hear him say.
+
+She went back into the drawing-room holding the withered flowers. Their
+fragrance was all gone, but she did not like to burn them. She held them
+and bent her face to them as she stood again looking out. He would by
+now have reached his destination. Wallace was an Eton friend, a nice
+boy, who had sometimes stayed at Charlock House. He and Augustine were
+perhaps already arguing about Nietzsche.
+
+Strange that her numbed thoughts should creep along this path of custom,
+of maternal associations and solicitudes, forgetful of fear and sorrow.
+The recognition came with a sinking pang. Reluctantly, unwillingly, her
+mind was forced back to contemplate the catastrophe that had befallen
+her. He was her judge, her enemy: yet, on this dismal day, how she
+missed him. She leaned her head against the window-frame and the tears
+fell and fell.
+
+If he were there, could she not go to him and take his hand and say
+that, whatever the deep wounds they had dealt each other, they needed
+each other too much to be apart. Could she not ask him to take her back,
+to forgive her, to love her? Ah--there full memory rushed in. Her heart
+seemed to pant and gasp in the sudden coil. Take him back? When it was
+her steady fear as well as her sudden anger that had banished him, he
+thought he loved her, but that was because he did not know and it was
+the anger rather than the love of Augustine's last words that came to
+her. He loved her because he believed her good, and that imaginary
+goodness cast a shadow on her husband. To believe her good Augustine had
+been forced to believe evil of the man she loved and to whom they both
+owed everything.
+
+He had said that he was shut out from her heart, and it was true, and
+her heart broke in seeing it. But it was by more than the sacred love
+for her husband that her child was shut out. Her past, her guilt, was
+with her and stood as a barrier between them. She was separated from him
+for ever. And, looking round the room, suddenly terrified, it seemed to
+her that Augustine was dead and that she was utterly alone.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+She did not write to Augustine for some days. There seemed nothing that
+she could say. To say that she forgave him might seem to put aside too
+easily the deep wrong he had done her and her husband; to say that she
+longed to see him and that, in spite of all, her heart was his, seemed
+to make deeper the chasm of falseness between them.
+
+The rain fell during all these days. Sometimes a pale evening sunset
+would light the western horizon under lifted clouds and she could walk
+out and up and down the paths, among her sodden rose-trees, or down into
+the wet, dark woods. Sometimes at night she saw a melancholy star
+shining here and there in the vaporous sky. But in the morning the grey
+sheet dropped once more between her and the outer world, and the sound
+of the steady drip and beat was like an outer echo to her inner
+wretchedness.
+
+It was on the fourth day that wretchedness turned to bitter
+restlessness, and that to a sudden resolve. Not to write, not even to
+say she forgave, might make him think that her heart was still hardened
+against him. Her fear had blunted her imagination. Clearly now she saw,
+and with an anguish in the vision, that Augustine must be suffering too.
+Clearly she heard the love in his parting words. And she longed so to
+see, to hear that love again, that the longing, as if with sudden
+impatience of the hampering sense of sin, rushed into words that might
+bring him.
+
+She wrote:--"My dear Augustine. I miss you very much. Isn't this dismal
+weather. I am feeling better. I need not tell you that I do forgive you
+for the mistake that hurts us both." Then she paused, for her heart
+cried out "Oh--come back soon"; but she did not dare yield to that cry.
+She hardly knew that, with uncertain fingers, she only repeated
+again:--"I miss you very much. Your affectionate mother."
+
+This was on the fourth day.
+
+On the afternoon of the fifth she stood, as she so often stood, looking
+out at the drawing-room window. She was looking and listening, detached
+from what she saw, yet absorbed, too, for, as with her son, this
+watchfulness of natural things was habitual to her.
+
+It was still raining, but more fitfully: a wind had risen and against a
+scudding sky the sycamores tossed their foliage, dark or pale by turns
+as the wind passed over them. A broad pool of water, dappling
+incessantly with rain-drops, had formed along the farther edge of the
+walk where it slanted to the lawn: it was this pool that Amabel was
+watching and the bobbin-like dance of drops that looked like little
+glass thimbles. The old leaden pipes, curiously moulded, that ran down
+the house beside the windows, splashed and gurgled loudly. The noise of
+the rushing, falling water shut out other sounds. Gazing at the dancing
+thimbles she was unaware that someone had entered the room behind her.
+
+Suddenly two hands were laid upon her shoulders.
+
+The shock, going through her, was like a violent electric discharge. She
+tingled from head to foot, and almost with terror. "Augustine!" she
+gasped. But the shock was to change, yet grow, as if some alien force
+had penetrated her and were disintegrating every atom of her blood.
+
+"No, not Augustine," said her husband's voice: "But you can be glad to
+see me, can't you, Amabel?"
+
+He had taken off his hands now and she could turn to him, could see his
+bright, smiling face looking at her, could feel him as something
+wonderful and radiant filling the dismal day, filling her dismal heart,
+with its presence. But the shock still so trembled in her that she did
+not move from her place or speak, leaning back upon the window as she
+looked at him,--for he was very near,--and putting her hands upon the
+window-sill on either side. "You didn't expect to see me, did you," Sir
+Hugh said.
+
+She shook her head. Never, never, in all these years, had he come again,
+so soon. Months, always, sometimes years, had elapsed between his
+visits.
+
+"The last time didn't count, did it," he went on, in speech vague and
+desultory yet, at the same time, intent and bright in look. "I was so
+bothered; I behaved like a selfish brute; I'm sure you felt it. And you
+were so particularly kind and good--and dear to me, Amabel."
+
+She felt herself flushing. He stood so near that she could not move
+forward and he must read the face, amazed, perplexed, incredulous of its
+joy, yet all lighted from his presence, that she kept fixed on him. For
+ah, what joy to see him, to feel that here, here alone of all the world,
+was she safe, consoled, known yet cared for. He who understood all as no
+one else in the world understood, could stand and smile at her like
+that.
+
+"You look thin, and pale, and tired," were his next words. "What have
+you been doing to yourself? Isn't Augustine here? You're not alone?"
+
+"Yes; I am alone. Augustine is staying with the Wallace boy."
+
+With the mention of Augustine the dark memory came, but it was now of
+something dangerous and hostile shut away, yes, safely shut away, by
+this encompassing brightness, this sweetness of intent solicitude. She
+no longer yearned to see Augustine.
+
+Sir Hugh looked at her for some moments, when, she said that she was
+alone, without speaking. "That is nice for me," he then said. "But how
+miserable,--for you,--it must have been. What a shame that you should
+have been left alone in this dull place,--and this wretched weather,
+too!--Did you ever see such weather." He looked past her at the rain.
+
+"It has been wretched," said Amabel; but she spoke, as she felt, in the
+past: nothing seemed wretched now.
+
+"And you were staring out so hard, that you never heard me," He came
+beside her now, as if to look out, too, and, making room for him, she
+also turned and they looked out at the rain together.
+
+"A filthy day," said Sir Hugh, "I can't bear to think that this is what
+you have been doing, all alone."
+
+"I don't mind it, I have the girls, on three mornings, you know."
+
+"You mean that you don't mind it because you are so used to it?"
+
+She had regained some of her composure:--for one thing he was beside
+her, no longer blocking her way back into the room. "I like solitude,
+you know," she was able to smile.
+
+"Really like it?"
+
+"Sometimes."
+
+"Better than the company of some people, you mean?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But not better than mine," he smiled back. "Come, do encourage me, and
+say that you are glad to see me."
+
+In her joy the bewilderment was growing, but she said that, of course,
+she was glad to see him.
+
+"I've been so bored, so badgered," said Sir Hugh, stretching himself a
+little as though to throw off the incubus of tiresome memories; "and
+this morning when I left a dull country house, I said to myself: Why not
+go down and see Amabel?--I don't believe she will mind.--I believe that,
+perhaps, she'll be pleased.--I know that I want to go very much.--So
+here I am:--very glad to be here--with dear Amabel."
+
+She looked out, silent, blissful, and perplexed.
+
+He was not hard; he was not irritated; all trace of vexed preoccupation
+was gone; but he was not the Sir Hugh that she had seen for all these
+twenty years. He was new, and yet he reminded her of something, and the
+memory moved towards her through a thick mist of years, moved like a
+light through mist. Far, sweet, early things came to her as its heralds;
+the sound of brooks running; the primrose woods where she had wandered
+as a girl; the singing of prophetic birds in Spring. The past had never
+come so near as now when Sir Hugh--yes, there it was, the fair, far
+light--was making her remember their long past courtship. And a shudder
+of sweetness went through her as she remembered, of sweetness yet of
+unutterable sadness, as though something beautiful and dead had been
+shown to her. She seemed to lean, trembling, to kiss the lips of a
+beautiful dead face, before drawing over it the shroud that must cover
+it for ever.
+
+Sir Hugh was silent also. Her silence, perhaps, made him conscious of
+memories. Presently, looking behind them, he said:--"I'm keeping you
+standing. Shall we go to the fire?"
+
+She followed him, bending a little to the fire, her arm on the
+mantel-shelf, a hand held out to the blaze. Sir Hugh stood on the other
+side. She was not thinking of herself, hardly of him. Suddenly he took
+the dreaming hand, stooped to it, and kissed it. He had released it
+before she had time to know her own astonishment.
+
+"You did kiss mine, you know," he smiled, leaning his arm, too, on the
+mantel-shelf and looking at her with gaily supplicating eyes. "Don't be
+angry."
+
+The shroud had dropped: the past was gone: she was once more in the
+present of oppressive, of painful joy.
+
+She would have liked to move away and take her chair at some distance;
+but that would have looked like flight; foolish indeed. She summoned her
+common-sense, her maturity, her sorrow, to smile back, to say in a voice
+she strove to make merely light: "Unusual circumstances excused me."
+
+"Unusual circumstances?"
+
+"You had been very kind. I was very grateful."
+
+Sir Hugh for a moment was silent, looking at her with his intent,
+interrogatory gaze. "You are always kind to me," he then said. "I am
+always grateful. So may I always kiss your hand?"
+
+Her eyes fell before his. "If you wish to," she answered gravely.
+
+"You frighten me a little, do you know," said Sir Hugh. "Please don't
+frighten me.--Are you really angry?--_I_ don't frighten you?"
+
+"You bewilder me a little," Amabel murmured. She looked into the fire,
+near tears, indeed, in her bewilderment; and Sir Hugh looked at her,
+looked hard and carefully, at her noble figure, her white hands, the
+gold and white of her leaning head. He looked, as if measuring the
+degree of his own good fortune.
+
+"You are so lovely," he then said quietly.
+
+She blushed like a girl.
+
+"You are the most beautiful woman I know," said Sir Hugh. "There is no
+one like you," He put his hand out to hers, and, helplessly, she yielded
+it. "Amabel, do you know, I have fallen in love with you."
+
+She stood looking at him, stupefied; her eyes ecstatic and appalled.
+
+"Do I displease you?" asked Sir Hugh.
+
+She did not answer.
+
+"Do I please you?" Still she gazed at him, speechless.
+
+"Do you care at all for me?" he asked, and, though grave, he smiled a
+little at her in asking the question. How could he not know that, for
+years, she had cared for him more than for anything, anyone?
+
+And when he asked her this last question, the oppression was too great.
+She drew her hand from his, and laid her arms upon the mantel-shelf and
+hid her face upon them. It was a helpless confession. It was a helpless
+appeal.
+
+But the appeal was not understood, or was disregarded. In a moment her
+husband's arms were about her.
+
+This was new. This was not like their courtship.--Yet, it reminded
+her,--of what did it remind her as he murmured words of victory, clasped
+her and kissed her? It reminded her of Paul Quentin. In the midst of the
+amazing joy she knew that the horror was as great.
+
+"Ah don't!--how can you!--how can you!" she said.
+
+She drew away from him but he would not let her go.
+
+"How can I? How can I do anything else?" he laughed, in easy yet excited
+triumph. "You do love me--you darling nun!"
+
+She had freed her hands and covered her face: "I beg of you," she
+prayed.
+
+The agony of her sincerity was too apparent. Sir Hugh unclasped his
+arms. She went to her chair, sat down, leaned on the table, still
+covering her eyes. So she had leaned, years ago, with hidden face, in
+telling Bertram of the coming of the child. It seemed to her now that
+her shame was more complete, more overwhelming. And, though it
+overwhelmed her, her bliss was there; the golden and the black streams
+ran together.
+
+"Dearest,--should I have been less sudden?" Sir Hugh was beside her,
+leaning over her, reasoning, questioning, only just not caressing her.
+"It's not as if we didn't know each other, Amabel: we have been
+strangers, in a sense;--yet, through it all--all these years--haven't we
+felt near?--Ah darling, you can't deny it;--you can't deny you love me."
+His arm was pressing her.
+
+"Please--" she prayed again, and he moved his hand further away, beyond
+her crouching shoulder.
+
+"You are such a little nun that you can't bear to be loved?--Is that it?
+But you'll have to learn again. You are more than a nun: you are a
+beautiful woman: young; wonderfully young. It's astonishing how like a
+girl you are."--Sir Hugh seemed to muse over a fact that allured. "And
+however like a nun you've lived--you can't deny that you love me."
+
+"You haven't loved me," Amabel at last could say.
+
+He paused, but only for a moment. "Perhaps not: but," his voice had now
+the delicate aptness that she remembered, "how could I believe that
+there was a chance for me? How could I think you could ever come to
+care, like this, when you had left me--you know--Amabel."
+
+She was silent, her mind whirling. And his nearness, as he leaned over
+her, was less ecstasy than terror. It was as if she only knew her love,
+her sacred love again, when he was not near.
+
+"It's quite of late that I've begun to wonder," said Sir Hugh. "Stupid
+ass of course, not to have seen the jewel I held in my hand. But you've
+only showed me the nun, you darling. I knew you cared, but I never knew
+how much.--I ought to have had more self-conceit, oughtn't I?"
+
+"I have cared. You have been all that is beautiful.--I have cared more
+than for anything.--But--oh, it could not have been this.--This would
+have killed me with shame," said Amabel.
+
+"With shame? Why, you strange angel?"
+
+"Can you ask?" she said in a trembling voice.
+
+His hand caressed her hair, slipped around her neck. "You nun; you
+saint.--Does that girlish peccadillo still haunt you?"
+
+"Don't--oh don't--call it that--call me that!--"
+
+"Call you a saint? But what else are you?--a beautiful saint. What other
+woman could have lived the life you've lived? It's wonderful."
+
+"Don't. I cannot bear it."
+
+"Can't bear to be called a saint? Ah, but, you see, that's just why you
+are one."
+
+She could not speak. She could not even say the only answering word: a
+sinner. Her hands were like leaden weights upon her brows. In the
+darkness she heard her heart beating heavily, and tried and tried to
+catch some fragment of meaning from her whirling thoughts.
+
+And as if her self-condemnation were a further enchantment, her husband
+murmured: "It makes you all the lovelier that you should feel like that.
+It makes me more in love with you than ever: but forget it now. Let me
+make you forget it. I can.--Darling, your beautiful hair. I remember
+it;--it is as beautiful as ever.--I remember it;--it fell to your
+knees.--Let me see your face, Amabel."
+
+She was shuddering, shrinking from him.--"Oh--no--no.--Do you not
+see--not feel--that it is impossible--"
+
+"Impossible! Why?--My darling, you are my wife;--and if you love me?--"
+
+They were whirling impossibilities; she could see none clearly but one
+that flashed out for her now in her extremity of need, bright, ominous,
+accusing. She seized it:--"Augustine."
+
+"Augustine? What of him?" Sir Hugh's voice had an edge to it.
+
+"He could not bear it. It would break his heart."
+
+"What has he to do with it? He isn't all your life:--you've given him
+most of it already."
+
+"He is, he must be, all my life, except that beautiful part that you
+were:--that you are:--oh you will stay my friend!"--
+
+"I'll stay your lover, your determined lover and husband, Amabel.
+Darling, you are ridiculous, enchanting--with your barriers, your
+scruples." The fear, the austerity, he felt in her fanned his ardour to
+flame. His arms once more went round her; he murmured words of
+lover-like pleading, rapturous, wild and foolish. And, though her love,
+her sacred love for him was there, his love for her was a nightmare to
+her now. She had lost herself, and it was as though she lost him, while
+he pleaded thus. And again and again she answered, resolute and
+tormented:--"No: no: never--never. Do not speak so to me.--Do not--I beg
+of you."
+
+Suddenly he released her. He straightened himself, and moved away from
+her a little. Someone had entered.
+
+Amabel dropped her hands and raised her eyes at last. Augustine stood
+before them.
+
+Augustine had on still his long travelling coat; his cap, beaded with
+raindrops, was in his hand; his yellow hair was ruffled. He had entered
+hastily. He stood there looking at them, transfixed, yet not astonished.
+He was very pale.
+
+For some moments no one of them spoke. Sir Hugh did not move further
+from his wife's side: he was neither anxious nor confused; but his face
+wore an involuntary scowl.
+
+The deep confusion was Amabel's. But her husband had released her; no
+longer pleaded; and with the lifting of that dire oppression the
+realities of her life flooded her almost with relief. It was impossible,
+this gay, this facile, this unseemly love, but, as she rejected and put
+it from her, the old love was the stronger, cherished the more closely,
+in atonement and solicitude, the man shrunk from and repulsed. And in
+all the deep confusion, before her son,--that he should find her so,
+almost in her husband's arms,--a flash of clarity went through her mind
+as she saw them thus confronted. Deeper than ever between her and
+Augustine was the challenge of her love and his hatred; but it was that
+sacred love that now needed safeguards; she could not feel it when her
+husband was near and pleading; Augustine was her refuge from oppression.
+
+She rose and went to him and timidly clasped his arm. "Dear Augustine, I
+am so glad you have come back. I have missed you so."
+
+He stood still, not responding to her touch: but, as she held him, he
+looked across the room at Sir Hugh. "You wrote you missed me. That's why
+I came."
+
+Sir Hugh now strolled to the fire and stood before it, turning to face
+Augustine's gaze; unperturbed; quite at ease.
+
+"How wet you are dear," said Amabel. "Take off this coat."
+
+Augustine stripped it off and flung it on a chair. She could hear his
+quick breathing: he did not look at her. And still it seemed to her that
+it was his anger rather than his love that protected her.
+
+"He will want to change, dearest," said Sir Hugh from before the fire.
+"And,--I want to finish my talk with you."
+
+Augustine now looked at his mother, at the blush that overwhelmed her as
+that possessive word was spoken. "Do you want me to go?"
+
+"No, dear, no.--It is only the coat that is wet, isn't it. Don't go: I
+want to see you, of course, after your absence.--Hugh, you will excuse
+us; it seems such a long time since I saw him. You and I will finish our
+talk on another day.--Or I will write to you."
+
+She knew what it must look like to her husband, this weak recourse to
+the protection of Augustine's presence; it looked like bashfulness, a
+further feminine wile, made up of self-deception and allurement, a
+putting off of final surrender for the greater sweetness of delay. And
+as the reading of him flashed through her it brought a strange pang of
+shame, for him; of regret, for something spoiled.
+
+Sir Hugh took out his watch and looked at it. "Five o'clock. I told the
+station fly to come back for me at five fifteen. You'll give me some
+tea, dearest?"
+
+"Of course;--it is time now.--Augustine, will you ring?"
+
+The miserable blush covered her again.
+
+The tea came and they were silent while the maid set it out. Augustine
+had thrown himself into a chair and stared before him. Sir Hugh, very
+much in possession, kept his place before the fire. Catching Amabel's
+eye he smiled at her. He was completely assured. How should he not be?
+What, for his seeing, could stand between them now?
+
+When the maid was gone and Amabel was making tea, he came and stood over
+her, his hands in his pockets, his handsome head bent to her, talking
+lightly, slightly jesting, his voice pitched intimately for her ear, yet
+not so intimately that any unkindness of exclusion should appear.
+Augustine could hear all he said and gauge how deep was an intimacy that
+could wear such lightness, such slightness, as its mask.
+
+Augustine, meanwhile, looked at neither his mother nor Sir Hugh. Turned
+from them in his chair he put out his hand for his tea and stared before
+him, as if unseeing and unhearing, while he drank it.
+
+It was for her sake, Amabel knew, that Sir Hugh, raising his voice
+presently, as though aware of the sullen presence, made a little effort
+to lift the gloom. "What sort of a time have you had, Augustine?" he
+asked. "Was the weather at Haversham as bad as everywhere else?"
+
+Augustine did not turn his head in replying:--"Quite as bad, I fancy."
+
+"You and young Wallace hammered at metaphysics, I suppose."
+
+"We did."
+
+"Nice lad."
+
+To this Augustine said nothing.
+
+"They're such a solemn lot, the youths of this generation," said Sir
+Hugh, addressing Amabel as well as Augustine: "In my day we never
+bothered ourselves much about things: at least the ones I knew didn't.
+Awfully empty and frivolous. Augustine and his friends would have
+thought us. Where we used to talk about race horses they talk about the
+Absolute,--eh, Augustine? We used to go and hear comic-operas and they
+go and hear Brahms. I suppose you do go and hear Brahms, Augustine?"
+
+Augustine maintained his silence as though not conceiving that the
+sportive question required an answer and Amabel said for him that he was
+very fond of Brahms.
+
+"Well, I must be off," said Sir Hugh. "I hope your heart will ache ever
+so little for me, Amabel, when you think of the night you've turned me
+out into."
+
+"Oh--but--I don't turn, you out,"--she stammered, rising, as, in a gay
+farewell, he looked at her.
+
+"No? Well, I'm only teasing. I could hardly have managed to stay this
+time--though,--I might have managed, Amabel--. I'll come again soon,
+very soon," said Sir Hugh.
+
+"No," her hand was in his and she knew that Augustine had turned his
+head and was looking at them:--"No, dear Hugh. Not soon, please. I will
+write." Sir Hugh looked at her smiling. He glanced at Augustine; then
+back at her, rallying her, affectionately, threateningly, determinedly,
+for her foolish feints. He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it.
+"Write, if you want to; but I'm coming," he said. He nodded to Augustine
+and left the room.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+It was, curiously enough, a crippling awkwardness and embarrassment that
+Amabel felt rather than fear or antagonism, during that evening and the
+morning that followed. Augustine had left the room directly after Sir
+Hugh's departure. When she saw him again he showed her a face resolutely
+mute. It was impossible to speak to him; to explain. The main facts he
+must see; that her husband was making love to her and that, however deep
+her love for him, she rejected him.
+
+Augustine might believe that rejection to be for his own sake, might
+believe that she renounced love and sacrificed herself from a maternal
+sense of duty; and, indeed, the impossibility of bringing that love into
+her life with Augustine had been the clear impossibility that had
+flashed for her in her need; she had seized upon it and it had armed her
+in her reiterated refusal. But how tell Augustine that there had been
+more than the clear impossibility; how tell him that deeper than
+renouncement was recoil? To tell that would be a disloyalty to her
+husband; it would be almost to accuse him; it would be to show Augustine
+that something in her life was spoiled and that her husband had spoiled
+it. So perplexed, so jaded, was she, so tossed by the conflicting
+currents of her lesser plight, that the deeper fears were forgotten: she
+was not conscious of being afraid of Augustine.
+
+The rain had ceased next morning. The sky was crystalline; the wet earth
+glittered in Autumnal sunshine.
+
+Augustine went out for his ride and Amabel had her girls to read with.
+There was a sense of peace for her in finding these threads of her life
+unknotted, smooth and simple, lying ready to her hand.
+
+When she saw Augustine at lunch he said that he had met Lady Elliston.
+
+"She was riding with Marjory and her girl."
+
+"Oh, she is back, then." Amabel was grateful to him for his everyday
+tone.
+
+"What is Lady Elliston's girl like?"
+
+"Pretty; very; foolish manners I thought; Marjory looked bewildered by
+her."
+
+"The manners of girls have changed, I fancy, since my day; and she isn't
+a boy-girl, like our nice Marjory, either?"
+
+"No; she is a girl-girl; a pretty, forward, conceited girl-girl," said
+the ruthless Augustine. "Lady Elliston is coming to see you this
+afternoon; she asked me to tell you; she says she wants a long talk."
+
+Amabel's weary heart sank at the news.
+
+"She is coming soon after lunch," said Augustine.
+
+"Oh--dear--"--. She could not conceal her dismay.
+
+"But you knew that you were to see her again;--do you mind so much?"
+said Augustine.
+
+"I don't mind.--It is only;--I have got so out of the way of seeing
+people that it is something of a strain."
+
+"Would you like me to come in and interrupt your talk?" asked Augustine
+after a moment.
+
+She looked across the table at him. Still, in her memory, preoccupied
+with the cruelty of his accusation, it was the anger rather than the
+love of his parting words the other day that was the more real. He had
+been hard in kindness, relentless in judgment, only not accusing her,
+not condemning her, because his condemnation had fixed on the innocent
+and not on the guilty--the horror of that, as well as the other horror,
+was between them now, and her guilt was deepened by it. But, as she
+looked, his eyes reminded her of something; was it of that fancied cry
+within the church, imprisoned and supplicating? They were like that cry
+of pain, those eyes, the dark rims of the iris strangely expanding, and
+her heart answered them, ignorant of what they said.
+
+"You are thoughtful for me, dear; but no," she replied, "it isn't
+necessary for you to interrupt."
+
+He looked away from her: "I don't know that it's not necessary," he
+said. After lunch they went into the garden and walked for a little in
+the sunlight, in almost perfect silence. Once or twice, as though from
+the very pressure of his absorption in her he created some intention of
+speech and fancied that her lips had parted with the words, Augustine
+turned his head quickly towards her, and at this, their eyes meeting, as
+it were over emptiness, both he and she would flush and look away again.
+The stress between them was painful. She was glad when he said that he
+had work to do and left her alone.
+
+Amabel went to the drawing-room and took her chair near the table. A
+sense of solitude deeper than she had known for years pressed upon her.
+She closed her eyes and leaned back her head, thinking, dimly, that now,
+in such solitude as this, she must find her way to prayer again. But
+still the door was closed. It was as if she could not enter without a
+human hand in hers. Augustine's hand had never led her in; and she could
+not take her husband's now.
+
+But her longing itself became almost a prayer as she sat with closed
+eyes. This would pass, this cloud of her husband's lesser love. When he
+knew her so unalterably firm, when he saw how inflexibly the old love
+shut out the new, he would, once more, be her friend. Then, feeling him
+near again, she might find peace. The thought of it was almost peace.
+Even in the midst of yesterday's bewildered pain she had caught glimpses
+of the old beauty; his kindly speech to Augustine, his making of ease
+for her; gratitude welled up in her and she sighed with the relief of
+her deep hope. To feel this gratitude was to see still further beyond
+the cloud. It was even beautiful for him to be able to "fall in love"
+with her--as he had put it: that the manifestations of his love should
+have made her shrink was not his fault but hers; she was a nun; because
+she had been a sinner. She almost smiled now, in seeing so clearly that
+it was on her the shadow rested. She could not be at peace, she could
+not pray, she could not live, it seemed to her, if he were really
+shadowed. And after the smile it was almost with the sense of dew
+falling upon her soul that she remembered the kindness, the chivalrous
+protection that had encompassed her through the long years. He was her
+friend, her knight; she would forget, and he, too, would forget that he
+had thought himself her lover.
+
+She did not know how tired she was, but her exhaustion must have been
+great, for the thoughts faded into a vague sweetness, then were gone,
+and, suddenly opening her eyes, she knew that she had fallen asleep,
+sitting straightly in her chair, and that Lady Elliston was looking at
+her.
+
+She started up, smiling and confused. "How absurd of me:--I have been
+sleeping.--Have you just come?"
+
+Lady Elliston did not smile and was silent. She took Amabel's hand and
+looked at her; she had to recover herself from something; it may have
+been the sleeping face, wasted and innocent, that had touched her too
+deeply. And her gravity, as of repressed tears, frightened Amabel. She
+had never seen Lady Elliston look so grave. "Is anything the matter?"
+she asked. For a moment longer Lady Elliston was silent, as though
+reflecting. Then releasing Amabel's hand, she said: "Yes: I think
+something is the matter."
+
+"You have come to tell me?"
+
+"I didn't come for that. Sit down, Amabel. You are very tired, more
+tired than the other day. I have been looking at you for a long time.--I
+didn't come to tell you anything; but now, perhaps, I shall have
+something to tell. I must think."
+
+She took a chair beside the table and leaned her head on her hand
+shading her eyes. Amabel had obeyed her and sat looking at her guest.
+
+"Tell me," Lady Elliston said abruptly, and Amabel today, more than of
+sweetness and softness, was conscious of her strength, "have you been
+having a bad time since I saw you? Has anything happened? Has anything
+come between you and Augustine? I saw him this morning, and he's been
+suffering, too: I guessed it. You must be frank with me, Amabel; you
+must trust me: perhaps I am going to be franker with you, to trust you
+more, than you can dream."
+
+She inspired the confidence her words laid claim to; for the first time
+in their lives Amabel trusted her unreservedly.
+
+"I have had a very bad time," she said: "And Augustine has had a bad
+time. Yes; something has come between Augustine and me,--many things."
+
+"He hates Hugh," said Lady Elliston.
+
+"How can you know that?"
+
+"I guessed it. He is a clever boy: he sees you absorbed; he sees your
+devotion robbing him; perhaps he sees even more, Amabel; I heard this
+morning, from Mrs. Grey, that Hugh had been with you, again, yesterday.
+Amabel, is it possible; has Hugh been making love to you?"
+
+Amabel had become very pale. Looking down, she said in a hardly audible
+voice; "It is a mistake.--He will see that it is impossible."
+
+Lady Elliston for a moment was silent: the confirming of her own
+suspicion seemed to have stupefied her. "Is it impossible?" she then
+asked.
+
+"Quite, quite impossible."
+
+"Does Hugh know that it is impossible?"
+
+"He will.--Yesterday, Augustine came in while he was here;--I could not
+say any more."
+
+"I see: I see"; said Lady Elliston. Her hand fell to the table now and
+she slightly tapped her finger-tips upon it. There was an ominous rhythm
+in the little raps. "And this adds to Augustine's hatred," she said.
+
+"I am afraid it is true. I am afraid he does hate him, and how terrible
+that is," said Amabel, "for he believes him to be his father."
+
+"By instinct he must feel the tie unreal."
+
+"Yet he has had a father's kindness, almost, from Hugh."
+
+"Almost. It isn't enough you know. He suspects nothing, you think?"
+
+"It is that that is so terrible. He doesn't suspect me: he suspects him.
+He couldn't suspect evil of me. It is my guilt, and his ignorant hatred
+that is parting us." Amabel was trembling; she leaned forward and
+covered her face with her hands.
+
+The very air about her seemed to tremble; so strange, so incredibly
+strange was it to hear her own words of helpless avowal; so strange to
+feel that she must tell Lady Elliston all she wished to know.
+
+"Parting you? What do you mean? What folly!--what impossible folly! A
+mother and a son, loving each other as you and Augustine love, parted
+for that. Oh, no," said Lady Elliston, and her own voice shook a little:
+"that can't be. I won't have that."
+
+"He would not love me, if he knew."
+
+"Knew? What is there for him to know? And how should he know? You won't
+be so mad as to tell him?"
+
+"It's my punishment not to dare to tell him--and to see my cowardice
+cast a shadow on Hugh."
+
+"Punishment? haven't you been punished enough, good heavens! Cowardice?
+it is reason, maturity; the child has no right to your secret--it is
+yours and only yours, Amabel. And if he did know all, he could not judge
+you as you judge yourself."
+
+"Ah, you don't understand," Amabel murmured: "I had forgotten to judge
+myself; I had forgotten my sin; it was Augustine who made me remember; I
+know now what he feels about people like me."
+
+Again Lady Elliston controlled herself to a momentary silence and again
+her fingers sharply beat out her uncontrollable impatience. "I live in a
+world, Amabel," she said at last, "where people when they use the word
+'sin,' in that connection, know that it's obsolete, a mere decorative
+symbol for unconventionality. In my world we don't have your cloistered
+black and white view of life nor see sin where only youth and trust and
+impulse were. If one takes risks, one may have to pay for them, of
+course; one plays the game, if one is in the ring, and, of course, you
+may be put out of the ring if you break the rules; but the rules are
+those of wisdom, not of morality, and the rule that heads the list is:
+Don't be found out. To imagine that the rules are anything more than
+matters of social convenience is to dignify the foolish game. It is a
+foolish game, Amabel, this of life: but one or two things in it are
+worth having; power to direct the game; freedom to break its rules; and
+love, passionate love, between a man and woman: and if one is strong
+enough one can have them all."
+
+Lady Elliston had again put her hand to her brow, shielding her eyes and
+leaning her elbow on the table, and Amabel had raised her head and sat
+still, gazing at her.
+
+"You weren't strong enough," Lady Elliston went on after a little pause:
+"You made frightful mistakes: the greatest, of course, was in running
+away with Paul Quentin: that was foolish, and it was, if you like to
+call foolishness by its obsolete name, a sin. You shouldn't have gone:
+you should have stayed: you should have kept your lover--as long as you
+wanted to."
+
+Again she paused. "Do I horrify you?"
+
+"No: you don't horrify me," Amabel replied. Her voice was gentle, almost
+musing; she was absorbed in her contemplation.
+
+"You see," said Lady Elliston, "you didn't play the game: you made a
+mess of things and put the other players out. If you had stayed, and
+kept your lover, you would have been, in my eyes, a less loveable but a
+wiser woman. I believe in the game being kept up; I believe in the
+social structure: I am one of its accredited upholders"; in the shadow
+of her hand, Lady Elliston slightly smiled. "I believe in the family,
+the group of shared interests, shared responsibilities, shared
+opportunities it means: I don't care how many lovers a woman has if she
+doesn't break up the family, if she plays the game. Marriage is a social
+compact and it's the woman's part to keep the home together. If she
+seeks love outside marriage she must play fair, she mustn't be an
+embezzling partner; she mustn't give her husband another man's children
+to support and so take away from his own children;--that's thieving. The
+social structure, the family, are unharmed, if one is brave and wise.
+Love and marriage can rarely be combined and to renounce love is to
+cripple one's life, to miss the best thing it has to give. You, at all
+events, Amabel, may be glad that you haven't missed it. What, after all,
+does our life mean but just that,--the power and feeling that one gets
+into it. Be glad that you've had something."
+
+Amabel, answering nothing, contemplated her guest.
+
+"So, as these are my views, imagine what I feel when I find you here,
+like this"; Lady Elliston dropped her hand at last and looked about her,
+not at Amabel: "when I find you, in prison, locked up for life, by
+yourself, because you were lovably unwise. It's abominable, it's
+shameful, your position, isolated here, and tolerated, looked askance at
+by these nobodies.--Ah--I don't say that other women haven't paid even
+more heavily than you've done; I own that, to a certain extent, you've
+escaped the rigours that the game exacts from its victims. But there was
+no reason why you should pay anything: it wasn't known, never really
+known--your brother and Hugh saw to that;--you could have escaped
+scot-free."
+
+Amabel spoke at last: "How, scot-free?" she asked.
+
+Lady Elliston looked hard at her: "Your husband would have taken you
+back, had you insisted.--You shouldn't have fallen in with his plans."
+
+"His plans? They were mine; my brother's."
+
+"And his. Hugh was glad to be rid of the young wife he didn't love."
+
+Again Amabel was trembling. "He might have been rid of her, altogether
+rid of her, if he had cared more for power and freedom than for pity."
+
+"Power? With not nearly enough money? He was glad to keep her money and
+be rid of her. If you had pulled the purse-strings tight you might have
+made your own conditions."
+
+"I do not believe you," said Amabel; "What you say is not true. My
+husband is noble."
+
+Lady Elliston looked at her steadily and unflinchingly. "He is not
+noble," she said.
+
+"What have you meant by coming here today? You have meant something! I
+will not listen to you! You are my husband's enemy;"--Amabel half
+started from her chair, but Lady Elliston laid her hand on her arm,
+looking at her so fixedly that she sank down again, panic-stricken.
+
+"He is not noble," Lady Elliston repeated. "I will not have you waste
+your love as you have wasted your life. I will not have this illusion of
+his nobility come between you and your son. I will not have him come
+near you with his love. He is not noble, he is not generous, he is not
+beautiful. He could not have got rid of you. And he came to you with his
+love yesterday because his last mistress has thrown him over--and he
+must have a mistress. I know him: I know all about him: and you don't
+know him at all. Your husband was my lover for over twenty years."
+
+A long silence followed her words. It was again a strange picture of
+arrested life in the dark room. The light fell quietly upon the two
+faces, their stillness, their contemplation--it seemed hardly more
+intent than contemplation, that drinking gaze of Amabel's; the draught
+of wonder was too deep for pain or passion, and Lady Elliston's eyes
+yielded, offered, held firm the cup the other drank. And the silence
+grew so long that it was as if the twenty years flowed by while they
+gazed upon each other.
+
+It was Lady Elliston's face that first showed change. She might have
+been the cup-bearer tossing aside the emptied cup, seeing in the slow
+dilation of the victim's eyes, the constriction of lips and nostrils,
+that it had held poison. All--all had been drunk to the last drop. Death
+seemed to gaze from the dilated eyes.
+
+"Oh--my poor Amabel--" Lady Elliston murmured; her face was stricken
+with pity.
+
+Amabel spoke in the cramped voice of mortal anguish.--"Before he married
+me."
+
+"Yes," Lady Elliston nodded, pitiful, but unflinching. "He married you
+for your money, and because you were a sweet, good, simple child who
+would not interfere."
+
+"And he could not have divorced me, because of you."
+
+"Because of me. You know the law; one guilty person can't divorce
+another. No one knew: no one has ever known: he and Jack have remained
+the best of friends:--but, of course, with all our care, it's been
+suspected, whispered. If I'd been less powerful the whispers might have
+blighted me: as it was, we thought that Bertram wasn't altogether
+unsuspecting. Hugh knew that it would be fatal to bring the matter into
+court;--I will say for Hugh that, in spite of the money, he wanted to.
+He could have married money again. He has always been extremely
+captivating. When he found that he would have to keep you, the money, of
+course, did atone. I suppose he has had most of your money by now," said
+Lady Elliston.
+
+Amabel shut her eyes. "Wasn't he even sorry for me?" she asked.
+
+Lady Elliston reflected and a glitter was in her eye; vengeance as well
+as justice armed her. "He is not unkind," she conceded: "and he was
+sorry after a fashion: 'Poor little girl,' I remember he said. Yes, he
+was very tolerant. But he didn't think of you at all, unless he wanted
+money. He is always graceful in his direct relations with people; he is
+tactful and sympathetic and likes things to be pleasant. But he doesn't
+mind breaking your heart if he doesn't have to see you while he is doing
+it. He is kind, but he is as hard as steel," said Lady Elliston.
+
+"Then you do not love him any longer," said Amabel. It was not a
+question, only a farther acceptance.
+
+And now, after only the slightest pause, Lady Elliston proved how deep,
+how unflinching was her courage. She had guarded her illicit passion all
+her life; she revealed it now. "I do love him," she said. "I have never
+loved another man. It is he who doesn't love me."
+
+From the black depths where she seemed to swoon and float, like a
+drowsy, drowning thing, the hard note of misery struck on Amabel's ear.
+She opened her eyes and looked at Lady Elliston. Power, freedom,
+passion: it was not these that looked back at her from the bereft and
+haggard eyes. "After twenty years he has grown tired," Lady Elliston
+said; and her candour seemed as inevitable as Amabel's had been: each
+must tell the other everything; a common bond of suffering was between
+them and a common bond of love, though love so differing. "I knew, of
+course, that he was often unfaithful to me; he is a libertine; but I was
+the centre; he always came back to me.--I saw the end approaching about
+five years ago. I fought--oh how warily--so that he shouldn't dream I
+was afraid;--it is fatal for a woman to let a man know she is
+afraid,--the brutes, the cruel brutes,"--said Lady Elliston;--"how we
+love them for their fear and pleading; how our fear and pleading hardens
+them against us." Her lips trembled and the tears ran down her cheeks.
+"I never pleaded; I never showed that I saw the change. I kept him, for
+years, by my skill. But the odds were too great at last. It was a year
+ago that he told me he didn't care any more. He was troubled, a little
+embarrassed, but quite determined that I shouldn't bother him. Since
+then it has been another woman. I know her; I meet her everywhere; very
+beautiful; very young; only married for three years; a heartless,
+rapacious creature. Hugh has nearly ruined himself in paying her
+jeweller's bills and her debts at bridge. And already she has thrown him
+over. It happened only the other day. I knew it was happening when I saw
+him here. I was glad, Amabel; I longed for him to suffer; and he will.
+He is a libertine of most fastidious tastes and he will not find many
+more young and beautiful women, of his world, to run risks for him. He,
+too, is getting old. And he has gone through nearly all his own
+money--and yours. Things will soon be over for him.--Oh--but--I love
+him--I love him--and everything is over for me.--How can I bear it!"
+
+She bent forward on her knees and convulsive sobs shook her.
+
+Her words seemed to Amabel to come to her from a far distance; they
+echoed in her, yet they were not the words she could have used. How dim
+was her own love-dream beside this torment of dispossession.
+What--who--had she loved for all these years? She could not touch or see
+her own grief; but Lady Elliston's grief pierced through her. She leaned
+towards her and softly touched her shoulder, her arm, her hand; she held
+the hand in hers. The sight of this loss of strength and dignity was an
+actual pain; her own pain was something elusive and unsubstantial; it
+wandered like a ghost vainly seeking an embodiment.
+
+"Oh, you angel--you poor angel!" moaned Lady Elliston. "There: that's
+enough of crying; it can't bring back my youth.--What a fool I am. If
+only I could learn to think of myself as free instead of maimed and left
+by the wayside. It is hard to live without love if one has always had
+it.--But I have freed you, Amabel. I am glad of that. It has been a
+cruel, but a right thing to do. He shall not come to you with his
+shameless love; he shall not come between you and your boy. You shan't
+misplace your worship so. It is Augustine who is beautiful and noble; it
+is Augustine who loves you. You aren't maimed and forsaken; thank heaven
+for that, dear."
+
+Lady Elliston had risen. Strong again, she faced her life, took up the
+reins, not a trace of scruple or of shame about her. It did not enter
+her mind to ask Amabel for forgiveness, to ask if she were despised or
+shrunk from: it did not enter Amabel's mind to wonder at the omission.
+She looked up at her guest and her lifted face seemed that of the
+drowned creature floating to the surface of the water.
+
+"Tell me, Amabel," Lady Elliston suddenly pleaded, "this is not going to
+blacken things for you; you won't let it blacken things. You will live;
+you will leave your prison and come out into the world, with your
+splendid boy, and live."
+
+Amabel slightly shook her head.
+
+"Oh, why do you say that? Has it hurt so horribly?"
+
+Amabel seemed to make the effort to think what it had done. She did not
+know. The ghost wailed; but she could not see its form.
+
+"Did you care--so tremendously--about him?"--Lady Elliston asked, and
+her voice trembled. And, for answer, the drowned eyes looked up at her
+through strange, cold tears.
+
+"Oh, my dear, my dear," Lady Elliston murmured. Her hand was still in
+Amabel's and she stood there beside her, her hand so held, for a long,
+silent moment. They had looked away from each other.
+
+And in the silence each knew that it was the end and that they would see
+each other no more. They lived in different planets, under different
+laws; they could understand, they could trust; but a deep, transparent
+chasm, like that of the ether flowing between two divided worlds, made
+them immeasurably apart.
+
+Yet, when she at last gently released Amabel's hand, drawing her own
+away. Lady Elliston said: "But,--won't you come out now?"
+
+"Out? Where?" Amabel asked, in the voice of that far distance.
+
+"Into the world, the great, splendid world."
+
+"Splendid?"
+
+"Splendid, if you choose to seize it and take what it has to give."
+
+After a moment Amabel asked: "Has it given you so much?"
+
+Lady Elliston looked at her from across the chasm; it was not dark, it
+held no precipices; it was made up only of distance. Lady Elliston saw;
+but she was loyal to her own world. "Yes, it has," she said. "I've
+lived; you have dreamed your life away. You haven't even a reality to
+mourn the loss of."
+
+"No," Amabel said; she closed her eyes and turned her head away against
+the chair; "No; I have lived too. Don't pity me."
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+It was past five when Augustine came into the empty drawing-room. Tea
+was standing waiting, and had been there, he saw, for some time. He rang
+and asked the maid to tell Lady Channice. Lady Channice, he heard, was
+lying down and wanted no tea. Lady Elliston had gone half an hour
+before. After a moment or two of deliberation, Augustine sat down and
+made tea for himself. That was soon over. He ate nothing, looking with a
+vague gaze of repudiation at the plate of bread and butter and the
+cooling scones.
+
+When tea had been taken away he walked up and down the room quickly,
+pausing now and then for further deliberation. But he decided that he
+would not go up to his mother. He went on walking for a long time. Then
+he took a book and read until the dressing-bell for dinner rang.
+
+When he went upstairs to dress he paused outside his mother's door, as
+she had paused outside his, and listened. He heard no sound. He stood
+still there for some moments before lightly rapping on the door. "Who is
+it?" came his mother's voice. "I; Augustine. How are you? You are coming
+down?"
+
+"Not tonight," she answered; "I have a very bad headache."
+
+"But let me have something sent up." After a moment his mother's voice
+said very sweetly; "Of course, dear." And she added "I shall be all
+right tomorrow."
+
+The voice sounded natural--yet not quite natural; too natural, perhaps,
+Augustine reflected. Its tone remained with him as something disturbing
+and prolonged itself in memory like a familiar note strung to a queer,
+forced pitch, that vibrated on and on until it hurt.
+
+After his solitary meal he took up his book again in the drawing-room.
+He read with effort and concentration, his brows knotted; his young
+face, thus controlled to stern attention, was at once vigilant for outer
+impressions and absorbed in the inner interest. Once or twice he looked
+up, as a coal fell with a soft crash from the fire, as a thin creeper
+tapped sharply on the window pane. His mother's room was above the
+drawing-room and while he read he was listening; but he heard no
+footsteps.
+
+Suddenly, dim, yet clear, came another sound, a sound familiar, though
+so rare; wheels grinding on the gravel drive at the other side of the
+house. Then, loud and startling at that unaccustomed hour, the old hall
+bell clanged through the house.
+
+Augustine found himself leaning forward, breathing quickly, his book
+half-closed. At first he did not know what he was listening for or why
+his body should be tingling with excitement and anger. He knew a moment
+later. There was a step in the hall, a voice. All his life Augustine had
+known them, had waited for them, had hated them. Sir Hugh was back
+again.
+
+Of course he was back again, soon,--as he had promised in the tone of
+mastery. But his mother had told him not to come; she had told him not
+to come, and in a tone that meant more than his. Did he not know?--Did
+he not understand?
+
+"No, dear Hugh, not soon.--I will write."--Augustine sprang to his feet
+as he entered the room.
+
+Sir Hugh had been told that he would not find his wife. His face wore
+its usual look of good-temper, but it wore more than its usual look of
+indifference for his wife's son. "Ah, tell Lady Channice, will you," he
+said over his shoulder to the maid. "How d'ye do, Augustine:" and, as
+usual, he strolled up to the fire.
+
+Augustine watched him as he crossed the room and said nothing. The maid
+had closed the door. From his wonted place Sir Hugh surveyed the young
+man and Augustine surveyed him.
+
+"You know, my dear fellow," said Sir Hugh presently, lifting the sole of
+his boot to the fire, "you've got devilish bad manners. You are
+devilishly impertinent, I may tell you."
+
+Augustine received the reproof without comment.
+
+"You seem to imagine," Sir Hugh went on, "that you have some particular
+right to bad manners and impertinence here, in this house; but you're
+mistaken; I belong here as well as you do; and you'll have to accept the
+fact."
+
+A convulsive trembling, like his mother's, passed over the young man's
+face; but whereas only Amabel's hands and body trembled, it was the
+muscles of Augustine's lips, nostrils and brows that were affected, and
+to see the strength of his face so shaken was disconcerting, painful.
+
+"You don't belong here while I'm here," he said, jerking the words out
+suddenly. "This is my mother's home--and mine;--but as soon as you make
+it insufferable for us we can leave it."
+
+"_You_ can; that's quite true," Sir Hugh nodded.
+
+Augustine stood clenching his hands on his book. Now, unconscious of
+what he did, he grasped the leaves and wrenched them back and forth as
+he stood silent, helpless, desperate, before the other's intimation. Sir
+Hugh watched the unconscious violence with interest.
+
+"Yes," he went on presently, and still with good temper; "if you make
+yourself insufferable--to your mother and me--you can go. Not that I
+want to turn you out. It rests with you. Only, you must see that you
+behave. I won't have you making her wretched."
+
+Augustine glanced dangerously at him.
+
+"Your mother and I have come to an understanding--after a great many
+years of misunderstanding," said Sir Hugh, putting up the other sole.
+"I'm--very fond of your mother,--and she is,--very fond of me."
+
+"She doesn't know you," said Augustine, who had become livid while the
+other made his gracefully hesitant statement.
+
+"Doesn't know me?" Sir Hugh lifted his brows in amused inquiry; "My dear
+boy, what do you know about that, pray? You are not in all your mother's
+secrets."
+
+Augustine was again silent for a moment, and he strove for self-mastery.
+"If I am not in my mother's secrets," he said, "she is not in yours. She
+does not know you. She doesn't know what sort of a man you are. You have
+deceived her. You have made her think that you are reformed and that the
+things in your life that made her leave you won't come again. But
+whether you are reformed or not a man like you has no right to come near
+a woman like my mother. I know that you are an evil man," said
+Augustine, his face trembling more and more uncontrollably; "And my
+mother is a saint."
+
+Sir Hugh stared at him. Then he burst into a shout of laughter. "You
+young fool!" he said.
+
+Augustine's eyes were lightnings in a storm-swept sky.
+
+"You young fool," Sir Hugh repeated, not laughing, a heavier stress
+weighting each repeated word.
+
+"Can you deny," said Augustine, "that you have always led a dissolute
+life? If you do deny it it won't help you. I know it: and I've not
+needed the echoes to tell me. I've always felt it in you. I've always
+known you were evil."
+
+"What if I don't deny it?" Sir Hugh inquired.
+
+Augustine was silent, biting his quivering lips.
+
+"What if I don't deny it?" Sir Hugh repeated. His assumption of
+good-humour was gone. He, too, was scowling now. "What have you to say
+then?"
+
+"By heaven,--I say that you shall not come near my mother."
+
+"And what if it was not because of my dissolute life she left me? What
+if you've built up a cock-and-bull romance that has no relation to
+reality in your empty young head? What then? Ask your mother if she left
+me because of my dissolute life," said Sir Hugh.
+
+The book in Augustine's wrenching hands had come apart with a crack and
+crash. He looked down at it stupidly.
+
+"You really should learn to control yourself--in every direction, my
+dear boy," Sir Hugh remarked. "Now, unless you would like to wreak your
+temper on the furniture, I think you had better sit down and be still. I
+should advise you to think over the fact that saints have been known
+before now to forgive sinners. And sinners may not be so bad as your
+innocence imagines. Goodbye. I am going up to see your mother. I am
+going to spend the night here."
+
+Augustine stood holding the shattered book. He gazed as stupidly at Sir
+Hugh as he had gazed at it. He gazed while Sir Hugh, who kept a rather
+wary eye fixed on him, left the fire and proceeded with a leisurely pace
+to cross the room: the door was reached and the handle turned, before
+the stupor broke. Sir Hugh, his eyes still fixed on his antagonist, saw
+the blanched fury, the start, as if the dazed body were awakening to
+some insufferable torture, saw the gathering together, the leap:--"You
+fool--you young fool!" he ground between his teeth as, with a clash of
+the half-opened door, Augustine pinned him upon it. "Let me go. Do you
+hear. Let me go." His voice was the voice of the lion-tamer, hushed
+before danger to a quelling depth of quiet.
+
+And like the young lion, drawing long breaths through dilated-nostrils,
+Augustine growled back:--"I will not--I will not.--You shall not go to
+her. I would rather kill you."
+
+"Kill me?" Sir Hugh smiled. "It would be a fight first, you know."
+
+"Then let it be a fight. You shall not go to her."
+
+"And what if she wants me to go to her.--Will you kill her first,
+too--"--The words broke. Augustine's hand was on his throat. Sir Hugh
+seized him. They writhed together against the door. "You mad-man!--You
+damned mad-man!--Your mother is in love with me.--I'll put you out of
+her life--"--Sir Hugh grated forth from the strangling clutch.
+
+Suddenly, as they writhed, panting, glaring their hatred at each other,
+the door they leaned on pushed against them. Someone outside was turning
+the handle, was forcing it open. And, as if through the shocks and
+flashes of a blinding, deafening tempest, Augustine heard his mother's
+voice, very still, saying: "Let me come in."
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+They fell apart and moved back into the room. Amabel entered. She wore a
+long white dressing-gown that, to her son's eyes, made her more than
+ever look her sainted self; she had dressed hastily, and, on hearing the
+crash below, she had wrapped a white scarf about her head and shoulders,
+covering her unbound hair. So framed and narrowed her face was that of a
+shrouded corpse: the same strange patience stamped it; her eyes, only,
+seemed to live, and they, too, were patient and ready for any doom.
+
+Quietly she had closed the door, and standing near it now she looked at
+them; her eyes fell for a moment upon Sir Hugh; then they rested on
+Augustine and did not leave him.
+
+Sir Hugh spoke first. He laughed a little, adjusting his collar and tie.
+
+"My dear,--you've saved my life. Augustine was going to batter my brains
+out on the door, I fancy."
+
+She did not look at him, but at Augustine.
+
+"He's really dangerous, your son, you know. Please don't leave me alone
+with him again," Sir Hugh smiled and pleaded; it was with almost his own
+lightness, but his face still twitched with anger.
+
+"What have you said to him?" Amabel asked.
+
+Augustine's eyes were drawing her down into their torment.--Unfortunate
+one.--That presage of her maternity echoed in her now. His stern young
+face seemed to have been framed, destined from the first for this
+foreseen misery.
+
+Sir Hugh had pulled himself together. He looked at the mother and son.
+And he understood her fear.
+
+He went to her, leaned over her, a hand above her shoulder on the door.
+He reassured and protected her; and, truly, in all their story, it had
+never been with such sincerity and grace.
+
+"Dearest, it's nothing. I've merely had to defend my rights. Will you
+assure this young firebrand that my misdemeanours didn't force you to
+leave me. That there were misdemeanours I don't deny; and of course you
+are too good for the likes of me; but your coming away wasn't my fault,
+was it.--That's what I've said.--And that saints forgive sinners,
+sometimes.--That's all I want you to tell him."
+
+Amabel still gazed into her son's eyes. It seemed to her, now that she
+must shut herself out from it for ever, that for the first time in all
+her life she saw his love.
+
+It broke over her; it threatened and commanded her; it implored and
+supplicated--ah the supplication beyond words or tears!--Selflessness
+made it stern. It was for her it threatened; for her it prayed.
+
+All these years the true treasure had been there beside her, while she
+worshipped at the spurious shrine. Only her sorrow, her solicitude had
+gone out to her son; the answering love that should have cherished and
+encompassed him flowed towards its true goal only when it was too late.
+He could not love her when he knew.
+
+And he was to know. That had come to her clearly and unalterably while
+she had leaned, half fallen, half kneeling, against her bed, dying, it
+seemed to her, to all that she had known of life or hope.
+
+But all was not death within her. In the long, the deadly stupor, her
+power to love still lived. It had been thrown back from its deep channel
+and, wave upon wave, it seemed heaped upon itself in some narrow abyss,
+tormented and shuddering; and at last by its own strength, rather than
+by thought or prayer of hers, it had forced an outlet.
+
+It was then as if she found herself once more within the church.
+Darkness, utter darkness was about her; but she was prostrated before
+the unseen altar. She knew herself once more, and with herself she knew
+her power to love.
+
+Her life and all its illusions passed before her; by the truth that
+irradiated the illusions, she judged them and herself and saw what must
+be the atonement. All that she had believed to be the treasure of her
+life had been taken from her; but there was one thing left to her that
+she could give:--her truth to her son. When that price was paid, he
+would be hers to love; he was no longer hers to live for. He should
+found his life on no illusions, as she had founded hers. She must set
+him free to turn away from her; but when he turned away it would not be
+to leave her in the loneliness and the terror of heart that she had
+known; it would be to leave her in the church where she could pray for
+him.
+
+She answered her husband after her long silence, looking at her son.
+
+"It is true, Augustine," she said. "You have been mistaken. I did not
+leave him for that."
+
+Sir Hugh drew a breath of satisfaction. He glanced round at Augustine.
+It was not a venomous glance, but, with its dart of steely intention, it
+paid a debt of vengeance. "So,--we needn't say anything more about it,"
+he said. "And--dearest--perhaps now you'll tell Augustine that he may go
+and leave us together."
+
+Amabel left her husband's side and went to her chair near the table. A
+strange calmness breathed from her. She sat with folded hands and
+downcast eyes.
+
+"Augustine, come here," she said.
+
+The young man came and stood before her.
+
+"Give me your hand."
+
+He gave it to her. She did not look at him but kept her eyes fixed on
+the ground while she clasped it.
+
+"Augustine," she said, "I want you to leave me with my husband. I must
+talk with him. He is going away soon. Tomorrow--tomorrow morning early,
+I will see you, here. I will have a great deal to say to you, my dear
+son."
+
+But Augustine, clutching her hand and trembling, looked down at her so
+that she raised her eyes to his.
+
+"I can't go, till you say something, now, Mother;"--his voice shook as
+it had shaken on that day of their parting, his face was livid and
+convulsed, as then;--"I will go away tonight--I don't know that I can
+ever return--unless you tell me that you are not going to take him
+back." He gazed down into his mother's eyes.
+
+She did not answer him; she did not speak. But, as he looked into them,
+he, too, for the first time, saw in them what she had seen in his.
+
+They dwelt on him; they widened; they almost smiled; they deeply
+promised him all--all--that he most longed for. She was his, her son's;
+she was not her husband's. What he had feared had never threatened him
+or her. This was a gift she had won the right to give. The depth of her
+repudiation yesterday gave her her warrant.
+
+And to Amabel, while they looked into each other's eyes, it was as if,
+in the darkness, some arching loveliness of dawn vaguely shaped itself
+above the altar.
+
+"Kiss me, dear Augustine," she said. She held up her forehead, closing
+her eyes, for the kiss that was her own.
+
+Augustine was gone. And now, before her, was the ugly breaking. But must
+it be so ugly? Opening her eyes, she looked at her husband as he stood
+before the fire, his wondering eyes upon her. Must it be ugly? Why could
+it not be quiet and even kind?
+
+Strangely there had gathered in her, during the long hours, the garnered
+strength of her life of discipline and submission. It had sustained her
+through the shudder that glanced back at yesterday--at the corruption
+that had come so near; it had given sanity to see with eyes of
+compassion the forsaken woman who had come with her courageous,
+revengeful story; it gave sanity now, as she looked over at her husband,
+to see him also, with those eyes of compassionate understanding; he was
+not blackened, to her vision, by the shadowing corruption, but, in his
+way, pitiful, too; all the worth of life lost to him.
+
+And it seemed swiftest, simplest, and kindest, as she looked over at
+him, to say:--"You see--Lady Elliston came this afternoon, and told me
+everything."
+
+Sir Hugh kept his face remarkably unmoved. He continued to gaze at his
+wife with an unabashed, unstartled steadiness. "I might have guessed
+that," he said after a short silence. "Confound her."
+
+Amabel made no reply.
+
+"So I suppose," Sir Hugh went on, "you feel you can't forgive me."
+
+She hesitated, not quite understanding. "You mean--for having married
+me--when you loved her?"
+
+"Well, yes; but more for not having, long ago, in all these years, found
+out that you were the woman that any man with eyes to see, any man not
+blinded and fatuous, ought to have been in love with from the
+beginning."
+
+Amabel flushed. Her vision was untroubled; but the shadow hovered. She
+was ashamed for him.
+
+"No"; she said, "I did not think of that. I don't know that I have
+anything to forgive you. It is Lady Elliston, I think, who must try and
+forgive you, if she can."
+
+Sir Hugh was again silent for a moment; then he laughed. "You dear
+innocent!--Well--I won't defend myself at her expense."
+
+"Don't," said Amabel, looking now away from him.
+
+Sir Hugh eyed her and seemed to weigh the meaning of her voice.
+
+He crossed the room suddenly and leaned over her:--"Amabel darling,--what
+must I do to atone? I'll be patient. Don't be cruel and punish me for too
+long a time."
+
+"Sit there--will you please." She pointed to the chair at the other side
+of the table.
+
+He hesitated, still leaning above her; then obeyed; folding his arms;
+frowning.
+
+"You don't understand," said Amabel. "I loved you for what you never
+were. I do not love you now. And I would never have loved you as you
+asked me to do yesterday."
+
+He gazed at her, trying to read the difficult riddle of a woman's
+perversity. "You were in love with me yesterday," he said at last.
+
+She answered nothing.
+
+"I'll make you love me again."
+
+"No: never," she answered, looking quietly at him. "What is there in you
+to love?"
+
+Sir Hugh flushed. "I say! You are hard on me!"
+
+"I see nothing loveable in you," said Amabel with her inflexible
+gentleness. "I loved you because I thought you noble and magnanimous;
+but you were neither. You only did not cast me off, as I deserved,
+because you could not; and you were kind partly because you are kind by
+nature, but partly because my money was convenient to you. I do not say
+that you were ignoble; you were in a very false position. And I had
+wronged you; I had committed the greater social crime; but there was
+nothing noble; you must see that; and it was for that I loved you."
+
+Sir Hugh now got up and paced up and down near her.
+
+"So you are going to cast me off because I had no opportunity for
+showing nobility. How do you know I couldn't have behaved as you
+believed I did behave, if only I'd had the chance? You know--you are
+hard on me."
+
+"I see no sign of nobility--towards anyone--in your life," Amabel
+answered as dispassionately as before.
+
+Sir Hugh walked up and down.
+
+"I did feel like a brute about the money sometimes," he
+remarked;--"especially that last time; I wanted you to have the house as
+a sort of salve to my conscience; I've taken almost all your money, you
+know; it's quite true. As to the rest--what Augustine calls my
+dissoluteness--I can't pretend to take your view; a nun's view." He
+looked at her. "How beautiful you are with that white round your face,"
+he said. "You are like a woman of snow."
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+When 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."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Amabel Channice, by Anne Douglas Sedgwick
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Amabel Channice, by Anne Douglas Sedgwick
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+Title: Amabel Channice
+
+Author: Anne Douglas Sedgwick
+
+Release Date: April 28, 2009 [EBook #28631]
+[Last updated: October 20, 2012]
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMABEL CHANNICE ***
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+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 300px;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="300" height="632" alt="cover" /><br /><br />
+</div>
+
+<h1>Amabel Channice</h1>
+
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>Anne Douglas Sedgwick</h2>
+
+<h5>AUTHOR OF "THE RESCUE," "PATHS OF JUDGEMENT," <br />"A FOUNTAIN
+SEALED," ETC.<br /><br /></h5>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 150px;">
+<img src="images/001.png" width="150" height="142" alt="icon" /><br /><br />
+</div>
+
+<h4>NEW YORK <br />The Century Co. <br />1908</h4>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h4>Copyright, 1908, by <br />THE CENTURY CO.</h4>
+
+<h5><i>Published October, 1908</i><br /><br /></h5>
+
+
+<h5>THE DE VINNE PRESS</h5>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="AMABEL_CHANNICE" id="AMABEL_CHANNICE"></a>AMABEL CHANNICE</h2>
+
+
+<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I</h2>
+
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="dropcap"><img src="images/ill-005.png"
+width="100" height="94" alt="L" title="L" /></span>ady Channice was waiting for her son to come in from the garden. The
+afternoon was growing late, but she had not sat down to the table,
+though tea was ready and the kettle sent out a narrow banner of steam.
+Walking up and down the long room she paused now and then to look at the
+bowls and vases of roses placed about it, now and then to look out of
+the windows, and finally at the last window she stopped to watch
+Augustine advancing over the lawn towards the house. It was a grey stone
+house, low and solid, its bareness unalleviated by any grace of ornament
+or structure, and its two long rows of windows gazed out resignedly at a
+tame prospect. The stretch of lawn sloped to a sunken stone wall; beyond
+the wall a stream ran sluggishly in a ditch-like channel; on the left
+the grounds were shut in by a sycamore wood, and beyond were flat
+meadows crossed in the distance by lines of tree-bordered roads. It was
+a peaceful, if not a cheering prospect. Lady Channice was fond of it.
+Cheerfulness was not a thing she looked for; but she looked for peace,
+and it was peace she found in the flat green distance, the far, reticent
+ripple of hill on the horizon, the dark forms of the sycamores. Her only
+regret for the view was that it should miss the sunrise and sunset; in
+the evenings, beyond the silhouetted woods, one saw the golden sky; but
+the house faced north, and it was for this that the green of the lawn
+was so dank, and the grey of the walls so cold, and the light in the
+drawing-room where Lady Channice stood so white and so monotonous.</p>
+
+<p>She was fond of the drawing-room, also, unbeautiful and grave to sadness
+though it was. The walls were wainscotted to the ceiling with ancient
+oak, so that though the north light entered at four high windows the
+room seemed dark. The furniture was ugly, miscellaneous and
+inappropriate. The room had been dismantled, and in place of the former
+drawing-room suite were gathered together incongruous waifs and strays
+from dining- and smoking-room and boudoir. A number of heavy chairs
+predominated covered in a maroon leather which had cracked in places;
+and there were three lugubrious sofas to match.</p>
+
+<p>By degrees, during her long and lonely years at Charlock House, Lady
+Channice had, at first tentatively, then with a growing assurance in her
+limited sphere of action, moved away all the ugliest, most trivial
+things: tattered brocade and gilt footstools, faded antimacassars,
+dismal groups of birds and butterflies under glass cases. When she sat
+alone in the evening, after Augustine, as child or boy, had gone to bed,
+the ghostly glimmer of the birds, the furtive glitter of a glass eye
+here and there, had seemed to her quite dreadful. The removal of the
+cases (they were large and heavy, and Mrs. Bray, the housekeeper, had
+looked grimly disapproving)&mdash;was her crowning act of courage, and ever
+since their departure she had breathed more freely. It had been easier
+to dispose of all the little colonies of faded photographs that stood on
+cabinets and tables; they were photographs of her husband's family and
+of his family's friends, people most of whom were quite unknown to her,
+and their continued presence in the abandoned house was due to
+indifference, not affection: no one had cared enough about them to put
+them away, far less to look at them. After looking at them for some
+years,&mdash;these girls in court dress of a bygone fashion, huntsmen holding
+crops, sashed babies and matrons in caps or tiaras,&mdash;Lady Channice had
+cared enough to put them away. She had not, either, to ask for Mrs.
+Bray's assistance or advice for this, a fact which was a relief, for
+Mrs. Bray was a rather dismal being and reminded her, indeed, of the
+stuffed birds in the removed glass cases. With her own hands she
+incarcerated the photographs in the drawers of a heavily carved bureau
+and turned the keys upon them.</p>
+
+<p>The only ornaments now, were the pale roses, the books, and, above her
+writing-desk, a little picture that she had brought with her, a
+water-colour sketch of her old home painted by her mother many years
+ago.</p>
+
+<p>So the room looked very bare. It almost looked like the parlour of a
+convent; with a little more austerity, whitened walls and a few thick
+velvet and gilt lives of the saints on the tables, the likeness would
+have been complete. The house itself was conventual in aspect, and Lady
+Channice, as she stood there in the quiet light at the window, looked
+not unlike a nun, were it not for her crown of pale gold hair that shone
+in the dark room and seemed, like the roses, to bring into it the
+brightness of an outer, happier world.</p>
+
+<p>She was a tall woman of forty, her ample form, her wide bosom, the
+falling folds of her black dress, her loosely girdled waist, suggesting,
+with the cloistral analogies, the mournful benignity of a bereaved
+Madonna. Seen as she stood there, leaning her head to watch her son's
+approach, she was an almost intimidating presence, black, still, and
+stately. But when the door opened and the young man came in, when, not
+moving to meet him, she turned her head with a slight smile of welcome,
+all intimidating impressions passed away. Her face, rather, as it
+turned, under its crown of gold, was the intimidated face. It was
+curiously young, pure, flawless, as though its youth and innocence had
+been preserved in some crystal medium of prayer and silence; and if the
+nun-like analogies failed in their awe-inspiring associations, they
+remained in the associations of unconscious pathos and unconscious
+appeal. Amabel Channice's face, like her form, was long and delicately
+ample; its pallor that of a flower grown in shadow; the mask a little
+over-large for the features. Her eyes were small, beautifully shaped,
+slightly slanting upwards, their light grey darkened under golden
+lashes, the brows definitely though palely marked. Her mouth was pale
+coral-colour, and the small upper lip, lifting when she smiled as she
+was smiling now, showed teeth of an infantile, milky whiteness. The
+smile was charming, timid, tentative, ingratiating, like a young girl's,
+and her eyes were timid, too, and a little wild.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you had a good read?" she asked her son. He had a book in his
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Very, thanks. But it is getting chilly, down there in the meadow. And
+what a lot of frogs there are in the ditch," said Augustine smiling,
+"they were jumping all over the place."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, as long as they weren't toads!" said Lady Channice, her smile
+lighting in response. "When I came here first to live there were so many
+toads, in the stone areas, you know, under the gratings in front of the
+cellar windows. You can't imagine how many! It used quite to terrify me
+to look at them and I went to the front of the house as seldom as
+possible. I had them all taken away, finally, in baskets,&mdash;not killed,
+you know, poor things,&mdash;but just taken and put down in a field a mile
+off. I hope they didn't starve;&mdash;but toads are very intelligent, aren't
+they; one always associates them with fairy-tales and princes."</p>
+
+<p>She had gone to the tea-table while she spoke and was pouring the
+boiling water into the teapot. Her voice had pretty, flute-like ups and
+downs in it and a questioning, upward cadence at the end of sentences.
+Her upper lip, her smile, the run of her speech, all would have made one
+think her humorous, were it not for the strain of nervousness that one
+felt in her very volubility.</p>
+
+<p>Her son lent her a kindly but rather vague attention while she talked to
+him about the toads, and his eye as he stood watching her make the tea
+was also vague. He sat down presently, as if suddenly remembering why he
+had come in, and it was only after a little interval of silence, in
+which he took his cup from his mother's hands, that something else
+seemed to occur to him as suddenly, a late arriving suggestion from her
+speech.</p>
+
+<p>"What a horribly gloomy place you must have found it."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes, turning on him quickly, lost, in an instant, their uncertain
+gaiety.</p>
+
+<p>"Gloomy? Is it gloomy? Do you feel it gloomy here, Augustine?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well, no, not exactly," he answered easily. "You see I've always
+been used to it. You weren't."</p>
+
+<p>As she said nothing to this, seeming at a loss for any reply, he went on
+presently to talk of other things, of the book he had been reading, a
+heavy metaphysical tome; of books that he intended to read; of a letter
+that he had received that morning from the Eton friend with whom he was
+going up to Oxford for his first term. His mother listened, showing a
+careful interest usual with her, but after another little silence she
+said suddenly:</p>
+
+<p>"I think it's a very nice place, Charlock House, Augustine. Your father
+wouldn't have wanted me to live here if he'd imagined that I could find
+it gloomy, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, of course not," said the young man, in an impassive, pleasant
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>"He has always, in everything, been so thoughtful for my comfort and
+happiness," said Lady Channice.</p>
+
+<p>Augustine did not look at her: his eyes were fixed on the sky outside
+and he seemed to be reflecting&mdash;though not over her words.</p>
+
+<p>"So that I couldn't bear him ever to hear anything of that sort," Lady
+Channice went on, "that either of us could find it gloomy, I mean. You
+wouldn't ever say it to him, would you, Augustine." There was a note at
+once of urgency and appeal in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not, since you don't wish it," her son replied.</p>
+
+<p>"I ask you just because it happens that your father is coming," Lady
+Channice said, "tomorrow;&mdash;and, you see, if you had this in your mind,
+you might have said something. He is coming to spend the afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her now, steadily, still pleasantly; but his colour rose.</p>
+
+<p>"Really," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it nice. I do hope that it will be fine; these Autumn days are so
+uncertain; if only the weather holds up we can have a walk perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I think it will hold up. Will there be time for a walk?"</p>
+
+<p>"He will be here soon after lunch, and, I think, stay on to tea."</p>
+
+<p>"He didn't stay on to tea the last time, did he."</p>
+
+<p>"No, not last time; he is so very busy; it's quite three years since we
+have had that nice walk over the meadows, and he likes that so much."</p>
+
+<p>She was trying to speak lightly and easily. "And it must be quite a year
+since you have seen him."</p>
+
+<p>"Quite," said Augustine. "I never see him, hardly, but here, you know."</p>
+
+<p>He was still making his attempt at pleasantness, but something hard and
+strained had come into his voice, and as, with a sort of helplessness,
+her resources exhausted, his mother sat silent, he went on, glancing at
+her, as if with the sudden resolution, he also wanted to make very sure
+of his way;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"You like seeing him more than anything, don't you; though you are
+separated."</p>
+
+<p>Augustine Channice talked a great deal to his mother about outside
+things, such as philosophy; but of personal things, of their relation to
+the world, to each other, to his father, he never spoke. So that his
+speaking now was arresting.</p>
+
+<p>His mother gazed at him. "Separated? We have always been the best of
+friends."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. I mean&mdash;that you've never cared to live
+together.&mdash;Incompatibility, I suppose. Only," Augustine did not smile,
+he looked steadily at his mother, "I should think that since you are so
+fond of him you'd like seeing him oftener. I should think that since he
+is the best of friends he would want to come oftener, you know."</p>
+
+<p>When he had said these words he flushed violently. It was an echo of his
+mother's flush. And she sat silent, finding no words.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother," said Augustine, "forgive me. That was impertinent of me. It's
+no affair of mine."</p>
+
+<p>She thought so, too, apparently, for she found no words in which to tell
+him that it was his affair. Her hands clasped tightly in her lap, her
+eyes downcast, she seemed shrunken together, overcome by his tactless
+intrusion.</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive me," Augustine repeated.</p>
+
+<p>The supplication brought her the resource of words again. "Of course,
+dear. It is only&mdash;I can't explain it to you. It is very complicated.
+But, though it seems so strange to you,&mdash;to everybody, I know&mdash;it is
+just that: though we don't live together, and though I see so little of
+your father, I do care for him very, very much. More than for anybody in
+the world,&mdash;except you, of course, dear Augustine."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't be polite to me," he said, and smiled. "More than for anybody
+in the world; stick to it."</p>
+
+<p>She could but accept the amendment, so kindly and, apparently, so
+lightly pressed upon her, and she answered him with a faint, a grateful
+smile, saying, in a low voice:&mdash;"You see, dear, he is the noblest person
+I have ever known." Tears were in her eyes. Augustine turned away his
+own.</p>
+
+<p>They sat then for a little while in silence, the mother and son.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes downcast, her hands folded in an attitude that suggested some
+inner dedication, Amabel Channice seemed to stay her thoughts on the
+vision of that nobility. And though her son was near her, the thoughts
+were far from him.</p>
+
+<p>It was characteristic of Augustine Channice, when he mused, to gaze
+straight before him, whatever the object might be that met his unseeing
+eyes. The object now was the high Autumnal sky outside, crossed only
+here and there by a drifting fleet of clouds.</p>
+
+<p>The light fell calmly upon the mother and son and, in their stillness,
+their contemplation, the two faces were like those on an old canvas,
+preserved from time and change in the trance-like immutability of art.
+In colour, the two heads chimed, though Augustine's hair was vehemently
+gold and there were under-tones of brown and amber in his skin. But the
+oval of Lady Channice's face grew angular in her son's, broader and more
+defiant; so that, palely, darkly white and gold, on their deep
+background, the two heads emphasized each other's character by contrast.
+Augustine's lips were square and scornful; his nose ruggedly bridged;
+his eyes, under broad eyebrows, ringed round the iris with a line of
+vivid hazel; and as his lips, though mild in expression, were scornful
+in form, so these eyes, even in their contemplation, seemed fierce.
+Calm, controlled face as it was, its meaning for the spectator was of
+something passionate and implacable. In mother and son alike one felt a
+capacity for endurance almost tragic; but while Augustine's would be the
+endurance of the rock, to be moved only by shattering, his mother's was
+the endurance of the flower, that bends before the tempest, unresisting,
+beaten down into the earth, but lying, even there, unbroken.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2>
+
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="dropcap"><img src="images/ill-223.png"
+width="100" height="100" alt="T" title="T" /></span>he noise and movement of an outer world seemed to break in upon the
+recorded vision of arrested life.</p>
+
+<p>The door opened, a quick, decisive step approached down the hall, and,
+closely following the announcing maid, Mrs. Grey, the local squiress,
+entered the room. In the normal run of rural conventions, Lady Channice
+should have held the place; but Charlock House no longer stood for what
+it had used to stand in the days of Sir Hugh Channice's forbears. Mrs.
+Grey, of Pangley Hall, had never held any but the first place and a
+consciousness of this fact seemed to radiate from her competent
+personality. She was a vast middle-aged woman clad in tweed and leather,
+but her abundance of firm, hard flesh could lend itself to the roughest
+exigences of a sporting outdoor life. Her broad face shone like a ripe
+apple, and her sharp eyes, her tight lips, the cheerful creases of her
+face, expressed an observant and rather tyrannous good-temper.</p>
+
+<p>"Tea? No, thanks; no tea for me," she almost shouted; "I've just had tea
+with Mrs. Grier. How are you, Lady Channice? and you, Augustine? What a
+man you are getting to be; a good inch taller than my Tom. Reading as
+usual, I see. I can't get my boys to look at a book in vacation time.
+What's the book? Ah, fuddling your brains with that stuff, still, are
+you? Still determined to be a philosopher? Do you really want him to be
+a philosopher, my dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed I think it would be very nice if he could be a philosopher,"
+said Lady Channice, smiling, for though she had often to evade Mrs.
+Grey's tyranny she liked her good temper. She seemed in her reply to
+float, lightly and almost gaily above Mrs. Grey, and away from her. Mrs.
+Grey was accustomed to these tactics and it was characteristic of her
+not to let people float away if she could possibly help it. This matter
+of Augustine's future was frequently in dispute between them. Her feet
+planted firmly, her rifle at her shoulder, she seemed now to take aim at
+a bird that flew from her.</p>
+
+<p>"And of course you encourage him! You read with him and study with him!
+And you won't see that you let him drift more and more out of practical
+life and into moonshine. What does it do for him, that's what I ask?
+Where does it lead him? What's the good of it? Why he'll finish as a
+fusty old don. Does it make you a better man, Augustine, or a happier
+one, to spend all your time reading philosophy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Very much better, very much happier, I find:&mdash;but I don't give it all
+my time, you know," Augustine answered, with much his mother's manner of
+light evasion. He let Mrs. Grey see that he found her funny; perhaps he
+wished to let her see that philosophy helped him to. Mrs. Grey gave up
+the fantastic bird and turned on her heel.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I've not come to dispute, as usual, with you, Augustine. I've
+come to ask you, Lady Channice, if you won't, for once, break through
+your rules and come to tea on Sunday. I've a surprise for you. An old
+friend of yours is to be of our party for this week-end. Lady Elliston;
+she comes tomorrow, and she writes that she hopes to see something of
+you."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Grey had her eye rather sharply on Lady Channice; she expected to
+see her colour rise, and it did rise.</p>
+
+<p>"Lady Elliston?" she repeated, vaguely, or, perhaps, faintly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; you did know her; well, she told me."</p>
+
+<p>"It was years ago," said Lady Channice, looking down; "Yes, I knew her
+quite well. It would be very nice to see her again. But I don't think I
+will break my rule; thank you so much."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Grey looked a little disconcerted and a little displeased. "Now
+that you are growing up, Augustine," she said, "you must shake your
+mother out of her way of life. It's bad for her. She lives here, quite
+alone, and, when you are away&mdash;as you will have to be more and more, for
+some time now,&mdash;she sees nobody but her village girls, Mrs. Grier and me
+from one month's end to the other. I can't think what she's made of. I
+should go mad. And so many of us would be delighted if she would drop in
+to tea with us now and then."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well, you can drop in to tea with her instead," said Augustine. His
+mother sat silent, with her faint smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I do. But I'm not enough, though I flatter myself that I'm a good
+deal. It's unwholesome, such a life, downright morbid and unwholesome.
+One should mingle with one's kind. I shall wonder at you, Augustine, if
+you allow it, just as, for years, I've wondered at your father."</p>
+
+<p>It may have been her own slight confusion, or it may have been something
+exasperating in Lady Channice's silence, that had precipitated Mrs. Grey
+upon this speech, but, when she had made it, she became very red and
+wondered whether she had gone too far. Mrs. Grey was prepared to go far.
+If people evaded her, and showed an unwillingness to let her be kind to
+them&mdash;on her own terms,&mdash;terms which, in regard to Lady Channice, were
+very strictly defined;&mdash;if people would behave in this unbecoming and
+ungrateful fashion, they only got, so Mrs. Grey would have put it, what
+they jolly well deserved if she gave them a "stinger." But Mrs. Grey did
+not like to give Lady Channice "stingers"; therefore she now became red
+and wondered at herself.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Channice had lifted her eyes and it was as if Mrs. Grey saw walls
+and moats and impenetrable thickets glooming in them. She answered for
+Augustine: "My husband and I have always been in perfect agreement on
+the matter."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Grey tried a cheerful laugh;&mdash;"You won him over, too, no doubt."</p>
+
+<p>"Entirely."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Augustine," Mrs. Grey turned to the young man again, "I don't
+succeed with your mother, but I hope for better luck with you. You're a
+man, now, and not yet, at all events, a monk. Won't you dine with us on
+Saturday night?"</p>
+
+<p>Now Mrs. Grey was kind; but she had never asked Lady Channice to dinner.
+The line had been drawn, firmly drawn years ago&mdash;and by Mrs. Grey
+herself&mdash;at tea. And it was not until Lady Channice had lived for
+several years at Charlock House, when it became evident that, in spite
+of all that was suspicious, not to say sinister, in her situation, she
+was not exactly cast off and that her husband, so to speak, admitted her
+to tea if not to dinner,&mdash;it was not until then that Mrs. Grey voiced at
+once the tolerance and the discretion of the neighbourhood and said:
+"They are on friendly terms; he comes to see her twice a year. We can
+call; she need not be asked to anything but tea. There can be no harm in
+that."</p>
+
+<p>There was, indeed, no harm, for though, when they did call in Mrs.
+Grey's broad wake, they were received with gentle courtesy, they were
+made to feel that social contacts would go no further. Lady Channice had
+been either too much offended or too much frightened by the years of
+ostracism, or perhaps it was really by her own choice that she adopted
+the attitude of a person who saw people when they came to her but who
+never went to see them. This attitude, accepted by the few, was resented
+by the many, so that hardly anybody ever called upon Lady Channice. And
+so it was that Mrs. Grey satisfied at once benevolence and curiosity in
+her staunch visits to the recluse of Charlock House, and could feel
+herself as Lady Channice's one wholesome link with the world that she
+had rejected or&mdash;here lay all the ambiguity, all the mystery that, for
+years, had whetted Mrs. Grey's curiosity to fever-point&mdash;that had
+rejected her.</p>
+
+<p>As Augustine grew up the situation became more complicated. It was felt
+that as the future owner of Charlock House and inheritor of his mother's
+fortune Augustine was not to be tentatively taken up but decisively
+seized. People had resented Sir Hugh's indifference to Charlock House,
+the fact that he had never lived there and had tried, just before his
+marriage, to sell it. But Augustine was yet blameless, and Augustine
+would one day be a wealthy not an impecunious squire, and Mrs. Grey had
+said that she would see to it that Augustine had his chance. "Apparently
+there's no one to bring him out, unless I do," she said. "His father, it
+seems, won't, and his mother can't. One doesn't know what to think, or,
+at all events, one keeps what one thinks to oneself, for she is a good,
+sweet creature, whatever her faults may have been. But Augustine shall
+be asked to dinner one day."</p>
+
+<p>Augustine's "chance," in Mrs. Grey's eye, was her sixth daughter,
+Marjory.</p>
+
+<p>So now the first step up the ladder was being given to Augustine.</p>
+
+<p>He kept his vagueness, his lightness, his coolly pleasant smile, looking
+at Mrs. Grey and not at his mother as he answered: "Thanks so much, but
+I'm monastic, too, you know. I don't go to dinners. I'll ride over some
+afternoon and see you all."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Grey compressed her lips. She was hurt and she had, also, some
+difficulty in restraining her temper before this rebuff. "But you go to
+dinners in London. You stay with people."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, yes; but I'm alone then. When I'm with my mother I share her life."
+He spoke so lightly, yet so decisively, with a tact and firmness beyond
+his years, that Mrs. Grey rose, accepting her defeat.</p>
+
+<p>"Then Lady Elliston and I will come over, some day," she said. "I wish
+we saw more of her. John and I met her while we were staying with the
+Bishop this Spring. The Bishop has the highest opinion of her. He said
+that she was a most unusual woman,&mdash;in the world, yet not of it. One
+feels that. Her eldest girl married young Lord Catesby, you know; a very
+brilliant match; she presents her second girl next Spring, when I do
+Marjory. You must come over for a ride with Marjory, soon, Augustine."</p>
+
+<p>"I will, very soon," said Augustine.</p>
+
+<p>When their visitor at last went, when the tramp of her heavy boots had
+receded down the hall, Lady Channice and her son again sat in silence;
+but it was now another silence from that into which Mrs. Grey's shots
+had broken. It was like the stillness of the copse or hedgerow when the
+sportsmen are gone and a vague stir and rustle in ditch or underbrush
+tells of broken wings or limbs, of a wounded thing hiding.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Channice spoke at last. "I wish you had accepted for the dinner,
+Augustine. I don't want you to identify yourself with my peculiarities."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't want to dine with Mrs. Grey, mother."</p>
+
+<p>"You hurt her. She is a kind neighbour. You will see her more or less
+for all of your life, probably. You must take your place, here,
+Augustine."</p>
+
+<p>"My place is taken. I like it just as it is. I'll see the Greys as I
+always have seen them; I'll go over to tea now and then and I'll ride
+and hunt with the children."</p>
+
+<p>"But that was when you were a child. You are almost a man now; you are a
+man, Augustine; and your place isn't a child's place."</p>
+
+<p>"My place is by you." For the second time that day there was a new note
+in Augustine's voice. It was as if, clearly and definitely, for the
+first time, he was feeling something and seeing something and as if,
+though very resolutely keeping from her what he felt, he was, when
+pushed to it, as resolutely determined to let her see what he saw.</p>
+
+<p>"By me, dear," she said faintly. "What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"She ought to have asked you to dinner, too."</p>
+
+<p>"But I would not have accepted; I don't go out. She knows that. She
+knows that I am a real recluse."</p>
+
+<p>"She ought to have asked knowing that you would not accept."</p>
+
+<p>"Augustine dear, you are foolish. You know nothing of these little
+feminine social compacts."</p>
+
+<p>"Are they only feminine?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only. Mere crystallised conveniences. It would be absurd for Mrs. Grey,
+after all these years, to ask me in order to be refused."</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment's silence and then Augustine said: "Did she ever ask
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>The candles had been lighted and the lamp brought in, making the corners
+of the room look darker. There was only a vague radiance about the
+chimney piece, the little candle-flames doubled in the mirror, and the
+bright circle where Lady Channice and her son sat on either side of the
+large, round table. The lamp had a green shade, and their faces were in
+shadow. Augustine had turned away his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>And now a strange and painful thing happened, stranger and more painful
+than he could have foreseen; for his mother did not answer him. The
+silence grew long and she did not speak. Augustine looked at her at last
+and saw that she was gazing at him, and, it seemed to him, with helpless
+fear. His own eyes did not echo it; anger, rather, rose in them, cold
+fierceness, against himself, it was apparent, as well as against the
+world that he suspected. He was not impulsive; he was not demonstrative;
+but he got up and put his hand on her shoulder. "I don't mean to torment
+you, like the rest of them," he said. "I don't mean to ask&mdash;and be
+refused. Forget what I said. It's only&mdash;only&mdash;that it infuriates me.&mdash;To
+see them all.&mdash;And you!&mdash;cut off, wasted, in prison here. I've been
+seeing it for a long time; I won't speak of it again. I know that there
+are sad things in your life. All I want to say, all I wanted to say
+was&mdash;that I'm with you, and against them."</p>
+
+<p>She sat, her face in shadow beneath him, her hands tightly clasped
+together and pressed down upon her lap. And, in a faltering voice that
+strove in vain for firmness, she said: "Dear Augustine&mdash;thank you. I
+know you wouldn't want to hurt me. You see, when I came here to live, I
+had parted&mdash;from your father, and I wanted to be quite alone; I wanted
+to see no one. And they felt that: they felt that I wouldn't lead the
+usual life. So it grew most naturally. Don't be angry with people, or
+with the world. That would warp you, from the beginning. It's a good
+world, Augustine. I've found it so. It is sad, but there is such
+beauty.&mdash;I'm not cut off, or wasted;&mdash;I'm not in prison.&mdash;How can you
+say it, dear, of me, who have you&mdash;and <i>him</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Augustine's hand rested on her shoulder for some moments more. Lifting
+it he stood looking before him. "I'm not going to quarrel with the
+world," he then said. "I know what I like in it."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear&mdash;thanks&mdash;" she murmured.</p>
+
+<p>Augustine picked up his book again. "I'll study for a bit, now, in my
+room," he said. "Will you rest before dinner? Do; I shall feel more easy
+in my conscience if I inflict Hegel on you afterwards."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2>
+
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="dropcap"><img src="images/ill-005.png"
+width="100" height="94" alt="L" title="L" /></span>ady Channice did not go and rest. She sat on in the shadowy room gazing
+before her, her hands still clasped, her face wearing still its look of
+fear. For twenty years she had not known what it was to be without fear.
+It had become as much a part of her life as the air she breathed and any
+peace or gladness had blossomed for her only in that air: sometimes she
+was almost unconscious of it. This afternoon she had become conscious.
+It was as if the air were heavy and oppressive and as if she breathed
+with difficulty. And sitting there she asked herself if the time was
+coming when she must tell Augustine.</p>
+
+<p>What she might have to tell was a story that seemed strangely
+disproportionate: it was the story of her life; but all of it that
+mattered, all of it that made the story, was pressed into one year long
+ago. Before that year was sunny, uneventful girlhood, after it grey,
+uneventful womanhood; the incident, the drama, was all knotted into one
+year, and it seemed to belong to herself no longer; she seemed a
+spectator, looking back in wonder at the disaster of another woman's
+life. A long flat road stretched out behind her; she had journeyed over
+it for years; and on the far horizon she saw, if she looked back, the
+smoke and flames of a burning city&mdash;miles and miles away.</p>
+
+<p>Amabel Freer was the daughter of a rural Dean, a scholarly, sceptical
+man. The forms of religion were his without its heart; its heart was her
+mother's, who was saintly and whose orthodoxy was the vaguest symbolic
+system. From her father Amabel had the scholar's love of beauty in
+thought, from her mother the love of beauty in life; but her loves had
+been dreamy: she had thought and lived little. Happy compliance, happy
+confidence, a dawn-like sense of sweetness and purity, had filled her
+girlhood.</p>
+
+<p>When she was sixteen her father had died, and her mother in the
+following year. Amabel and her brother Bertram were well dowered.
+Bertram was in the Foreign Office, neither saintly nor scholarly, like
+his parents, nor undeveloped like his young sister. He was a capable,
+conventional man of the world, sure of himself and rather suspicious of
+others. Amabel imagined him a model of all that was good and lovely. The
+sudden bereavement of her youth bewildered and overwhelmed her; her
+capacity for dependent, self-devoting love sought for an object and
+lavished itself upon her brother. She went to live with an aunt, her
+father's sister, and when she was eighteen her aunt brought her to
+London, a tall, heavy and rather clumsy country girl, arrested rather
+than developed by grief. Her aunt was a world-worn, harassed woman; she
+had married off her four daughters with difficulty and felt the need of
+a change of occupation; but she accepted as a matter of course the duty
+of marrying off Amabel. That task accomplished she would go to bed every
+night at half past ten and devote her days to collecting coins and
+enamels. Her respite came far more quickly than she could have imagined
+possible. Amabel had promise of great beauty, but two or three years
+were needed to fulfill it; Mrs. Compton could but be surprised when Sir
+Hugh Channice, an older colleague of Bertram's, a fashionable and
+charming man, asked for the hand of her unformed young charge. Sir Hugh
+was fourteen years Amabel's senior and her very guilelessness no doubt
+attracted him; then there was the money; he was not well off and he
+lived a life rather hazardously full. Still, Mrs. Compton could hardly
+believe in her good-fortune. Amabel accepted her own very simply; her
+compliance and confidence were even deeper than before. Sir Hugh was the
+most graceful of lovers. His quizzical tenderness reminded her of her
+father, his quasi-paternal courtship emphasized her instinctive trust in
+the beauty and goodness of life.</p>
+
+<p>So at eighteen she was married at St. George's Hanover Square and wore a
+wonderful long satin train and her mothers lace veil and her mother's
+pearls around her neck and hair. A bridesmaid had said that pearls were
+unlucky, but Mrs. Compton tersely answered:&mdash;"Not if they are such good
+ones as these." Amabel had bowed her head to the pearls, seeing them,
+with the train, and the veil, and her own snowy figure, vaguely, still
+in the dreamlike haze. Memories of her father and mother, and of the
+dear deanery among its meadows, floating fragments of the poetry her
+father had loved, of the prayers her mother had taught her in childhood,
+hovered in her mind. She seemed to see the primrose woods where she had
+wandered, and to hear the sound of brooks and birds in Spring. A vague
+smile was on her lips. She thought of Sir Hugh as of a radiance lighting
+all. She was the happiest of girls.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly after her marriage, all the radiance, all the haze was gone. It
+had been difficult then to know why. Now, as she looked back, she
+thought that she could understand.</p>
+
+<p>She had been curiously young, curiously inexperienced. She had expected
+life to go on as dawn for ever. Everyday light had filled her with
+bleakness and disillusion. She had had childish fancies; that her
+husband did not really love her; that she counted for nothing in his
+life. Yet Sir Hugh had never changed, except that he very seldom made
+love to her and that she saw less of him than during their engagement.
+Sir Hugh was still quizzically tender, still all grace, all deference,
+when he was there. And what wonder that he was little there; he had a
+wide life; he was a brilliant man; she was a stupid young girl; in
+looking back, no longer young, no longer stupid, Lady Channice thought
+that she could see it all quite clearly. She had seemed to him a sweet,
+good girl, and he cared for her and wanted a wife. He had hoped that by
+degrees she would grow into a wise and capable woman, fit to help and
+ornament his life. But she had not been wise or capable. She had been
+lonely and unhappy, and that wide life of his had wearied and confused
+her; the silence, the watching attitude of the girl were inadequate to
+her married state, and yet she had nothing else to meet it with. She had
+never before felt her youth and inexperience as oppressive, but they
+oppressed her now. She had nothing to ask of the world and nothing to
+give to it. What she did ask of life was not given to her, what she had
+to give was not wanted. She was very unhappy.</p>
+
+<p>Yet people were kind. In especial Lady Elliston was kind, the loveliest,
+most sheltering, most understanding of all her guests or hostesses. Lady
+Elliston and her cheerful, jocose husband, were Sir Hugh's nearest
+friends and they took her in and made much of her. And one day when, in
+a fit of silly wretchedness, Lady Elliston found her crying, she had put
+her arms around her and kissed her and begged to know her grief and to
+comfort it. Even thus taken by surprise, and even to one so kind, Amabel
+could not tell that grief: deep in her was a reticence, a sense of
+values austere and immaculate: she could not discuss her husband, even
+with the kindest of friends. And she had nothing to tell, really, but of
+herself, her own helplessness and deficiency. Yet, without her telling,
+for all her wish that no one should guess, Lady Elliston did guess. Her
+comfort had such wise meaning in it. She was ten years older than
+Amabel. She knew all about the world; she knew all about girls and their
+husbands. Amabel was only a girl, and that was the trouble, she seemed
+to say. When she grew older she would see that it would come right;
+husbands were always so; the wider life reached by marriage would atone
+in many ways. And Lady Elliston, all with sweetest discretion, had asked
+gentle questions. Some of them Amabel had not understood; some she had.
+She remembered now that her own silence or dull negation might have
+seemed very rude and ungrateful; yet Lady Elliston had taken no offence.
+All her memories of Lady Elliston were of this tact and sweetness, this
+penetrating, tentative tact and sweetness that sought to understand and
+help and that drew back, unflurried and unprotesting before rebuff,
+ready to emerge again at any hint of need,&mdash;of these, and of her great
+beauty, the light of her large clear eyes, the whiteness of her throat,
+the glitter of diamonds about and above: for it was always in her most
+festal aspect, at night, under chandeliers and in ball-rooms, that she
+best remembered her. Amabel knew, with the deep, instinctive sense of
+values which was part of her inheritance and hardly, at that time, part
+of her thought, that her mother would not have liked Lady Elliston,
+would have thought her worldly; yet, and this showed that Amabel was
+developing, she had already learned that worldliness was compatible with
+many things that her mother would have excluded from it; she could see
+Lady Elliston with her own and with her mother's eyes, and it was
+puzzling, part of the pain of growth, to feel that her own was already
+the wider vision.</p>
+
+<p>Soon after that the real story came. The city began to burn and smoke
+and flames to blind and scorch her.</p>
+
+<p>It was at Lady Elliston's country house that Amabel first met Paul
+Quentin. He was a daring young novelist who was being made much of
+during those years; for at that still somewhat guileless time to be
+daring had been to be original. His books had power and beauty, and he
+had power and beauty, fierce, dreaming eyes and an intuitive, sudden
+smile. Under his aspect of careless artist, his head was a little turned
+by his worldly success, by great country-houses and flattering great
+ladies; he did not take the world as indifferently as he seemed to.
+Success edged his self-confidence with a reckless assurance. He was an
+ardent student of Nietzsche, at a time when that, too, was to be
+original. Amabel met this young man constantly at the dances and country
+parties of a season. And, suddenly, the world changed. It was not dawn
+and it was not daylight; it was a wild and beautiful illumination like
+torches at night. She knew herself loved and her own being became
+precious and enchanting to her. The presence of the man who loved her
+filled her with rapture and fear. Their recognition was swift. He told
+her things about herself that she had never dreamed of and as he told
+them she felt them to be true.</p>
+
+<p>To other people Paul Quentin did not speak much of Lady Channice. He
+early saw that he would need to be discreet. One day at Lady Elliston's
+her beauty was in question and someone said that she was too pale and
+too impassive; and at that Quentin, smiling a little fiercely, remarked
+that she was as pale as a cowslip and as impassive as a young Madonna;
+the words pictured her; her fresh Spring-like quality, and the peace, as
+of some noble power not yet roused.</p>
+
+<p>In looking back, it was strange and terrible to Lady Channice to see how
+little she had really known this man. Their meetings, their talks
+together, were like the torchlight that flashed and wavered and only
+fitfully revealed. From the first she had listened, had assented, to
+everything he said, hanging upon his words and his looks and living
+afterward in the memory of them. And in memory their significance seemed
+so to grow that when they next met they found themselves far nearer than
+the words had left them.</p>
+
+<p>All her young reserves and dignities had been penetrated and dissolved.
+It was always themselves he talked of, but, from that centre, he waved
+the torch about a transformed earth and showed her a world of thought
+and of art that she had never seen before. No murmur of it had reached
+the deanery; to her husband and the people he lived among it was a mere
+spectacle; Quentin made that bright, ardent world real to her, and
+serious. He gave her books to read; he took her to hear music; he showed
+her the pictures, the statues, the gems and porcelains that she had
+before accepted as part of the background of life hardly seeing them.
+From being the background of life they became, in a sense, suddenly its
+object. But not their object&mdash;not his and hers,&mdash;though they talked of
+them, looked, listened and understood. To Quentin and Amabel this beauty
+was still background, and in the centre, at the core of things, were
+their two selves and the ecstasy of feeling that exalted and terrified.
+All else in life became shackles. It was hardly shock, it was more like
+some immense relief, when, in each other's arms, the words of love, so
+long implied, were spoken. He said that she must come with him; that she
+must leave it all and come. She fought against herself and against him
+in refusing, grasping at pale memories of duty, honour, self-sacrifice;
+he knew too well the inner treachery that denied her words. But, looking
+back, trying not to flinch before the scorching memory, she did not know
+how he had won her. The dreadful jostle of opportune circumstance; her
+husband's absence, her brother's;&mdash;the chance pause in the empty London
+house between country visits;&mdash;Paul Quentin following, finding her
+there; the hot, dusty, enervating July day, all seemed to have pushed
+her to the act of madness and made of it a willess yielding rather than
+a decision. For she had yielded; she had left her husband's house and
+gone with him.</p>
+
+<p>They went abroad at once, to France, to the forest of Fontainebleau. How
+she hated ever after the sound of the lovely syllables, hated the memory
+of the rocks and woods, the green shadows and the golden lights where
+she had walked with him and known horror and despair deepening in her
+heart with every day. She judged herself, not him, in looking back; even
+then it had been herself she had judged. Though unwilling, she had been
+as much tempted by herself as by him; he had had to break down barriers,
+but though they were the barriers of her very soul, her longing heart
+had pressed, had beaten against them, crying out for deliverance. She
+did not judge him, but, alone with him in the forest, alone with him in
+the bland, sunny hotel, alone with him through the long nights when she
+lay awake and wondered, in a stupor of despair, she saw that he was
+different. So different; there was the horror. She was the sinner; not
+he. He belonged to the bright, ardent life, the life without social bond
+or scruple, the life of sunny, tolerant hotels and pagan forests; but
+she did not belong to it. The things that had seemed external things,
+barriers and shackles, were the realest things, were in fact the inner
+things, were her very self. In yielding to her heart she had destroyed
+herself, there was no life to be lived henceforth with this man, for
+there was no self left to live it with. She saw that she had cut herself
+off from her future as well as from her past. The sacred past judged her
+and the future was dead. Years of experience concentrated themselves
+into that lawless week. She saw that laws were not outside things; that
+they were one's very self at its wisest. She saw that if laws were to be
+broken it could only be by a self wiser than the self that had made the
+law. And the self that had fled with Paul Quentin was only a passionate,
+blinded fragment, a heart without a brain, a fragment judged and
+rejected by the whole.</p>
+
+<p>To both lovers the week was one of bitter disillusion, though for
+Quentin no such despair was possible. For him it was an attempt at joy
+and beauty that had failed. This dulled, drugged looking girl was not
+the radiant woman he had hoped to find. Vain and sensitive as he was, he
+felt, almost immediately, that he had lost his charm for her; that she
+had ceased to love him. That was the ugly, the humiliating side of the
+truth, the side that so filled Amabel Channice's soul with sickness as
+she looked back at it. She had ceased to love him, almost at once.</p>
+
+<p>And it was not guilt only, and fear, that had risen between them and
+separated them; there were other, smaller, subtler reasons, little
+snakes that hissed in her memory. He was different from her in other
+ways.</p>
+
+<p>She hardly saw that one of the ways was that of breeding; but she felt
+that he jarred upon her constantly, in their intimacy, their helpless,
+dreadful intimacy. In contrast, the thought of her husband had been with
+her, burningly. She did not say to herself, for she did not know it, her
+experience of life was too narrow to give her the knowledge,&mdash;that her
+husband was a gentleman and her lover, a man of genius though he were,
+was not; but she compared them, incessantly, when Quentin's words and
+actions, his instinctive judgments of men and things, made her shrink
+and flush. He was so clever, cleverer far than Hugh; but he did not
+know, as Sir Hugh would have known, what the slight things were that
+would make her shrink. He took little liberties when he should have been
+reticent and he was humble when he should have been assured. For he was
+often humble; he was, oddly, pathetically&mdash;and the pity for him added to
+the sickness&mdash;afraid of her and then, because he was afraid, he grew
+angry with her.</p>
+
+<p>He was clever; but there are some things cleverness cannot reach. What
+he failed to feel by instinct, he tried to scorn. It was not the
+patrician scorn, stupid yet not ignoble, for something hardly seen,
+hardly judged, merely felt as dull and insignificant; it was the
+corroding plebeian scorn for a suspected superiority.</p>
+
+<p>He quarrelled with her, and she sat silent, knowing that her silence,
+her passivity, was an affront the more, but helpless, having no word to
+say. What could she say?&mdash;I do love you: I am wretched: utterly wretched
+and utterly destroyed.&mdash;That was all there was to say. So she sat, dully
+listening, as if drugged. And she only winced when he so far forgot
+himself as to cry out that it was her silly pride of blood, the
+aristocratic illusion, that had infected her; she belonged to the caste
+that could not think and that picked up the artist and thinker to amuse
+and fill its vacancy.&mdash;"We may be lovers, or we may be performing
+poodles, but we are never equals," he had cried. It was for him Amabel
+had winced, knowing, without raising her eyes to see it, how his face
+would burn with humiliation for having so betrayed his consciousness of
+difference. Nothing that he could say could hurt her for herself.</p>
+
+<p>But there was worse to bear: after the violence of his anger came the
+violence of his love. She had borne at first, dully, like the slave she
+felt herself; for she had sold herself to him, given herself over bound
+hand and foot. But now it became intolerable. She could not
+protest,&mdash;what was there to protest against, or to appeal to?&mdash;but she
+could fly. The thought of flight rose in her after the torpor of despair
+and, with its sense of wings, it felt almost like a joy. She could fly
+back, back, to be scourged and purified, and then&mdash;oh far away she saw
+it now&mdash;was something beyond despair; life once more; life hidden,
+crippled, but life. A prayer rose like a sob with the thought.</p>
+
+<p>So one night in London her brother Bertram, coming back late to his
+rooms, found her sitting there.</p>
+
+<p>Bertram was hard, but not unkind. The sight of her white, fixed face
+touched him. He did not upbraid her, though for the past week he had
+rehearsed the bitterest of upbraidings. He even spoke soothingly to her
+when, speechless, she broke into wild sobs. "There, Amabel, there.&mdash;Yes,
+it's a frightful mess you've made of things.&mdash;When I think of
+mother!&mdash;Well, I'll say nothing now. You have come back; that is
+something. You <i>have</i> left him, Amabel?"</p>
+
+<p>She nodded, her face hidden.</p>
+
+<p>"The brute, the scoundrel," said Bertram, at which she moaned a
+negation.&mdash;"You don't still care about him?&mdash;Well, I won't question you
+now.&mdash;Perhaps it's not so desperate. Hugh has been very good about it;
+he's helped me to keep the thing hushed up until we could make sure. I
+hope we've succeeded; I hope so indeed. Hugh will see you soon, I know;
+and it can be patched up, no doubt, after a fashion."</p>
+
+<p>But at this Amabel cried:&mdash;"I can't.&mdash;I can't.&mdash;Oh&mdash;take me away.&mdash;Let
+me hide until he divorces me. I can't see him."</p>
+
+<p>"Divorces you?" Bertram's voice was sharp. "Have you disgraced
+publicly&mdash;you and us? It's not you I'm thinking of so much as the family
+name, father and mother. Hugh won't divorce you; he can't; he shan't.
+After all you're a mere child and he didn't look after you." But this
+was said rather in threat to Hugh than in leniency to Amabel.</p>
+
+<p>She lay back in the chair, helpless, almost lifeless: let them do with
+her what they would.</p>
+
+<p>Bertram said that she should spend the night there and that he would see
+Hugh in the morning. And:&mdash;"No; you needn't see him yet, if you feel you
+can't. It may be arranged without that. Hugh will understand." And this
+was the first ray of the light that was to grow and grow. Hugh would
+understand.</p>
+
+<p>She did not see him for two years.</p>
+
+<p>All that had happened after her return to Bertram was a blur now. There
+were hasty talks, Bertram defining for her her future position, one of
+dignity it must be&mdash;he insisted on that; Hugh perfectly understood her
+wish for the present, quite fell in with it; but, eventually, she must
+take her place in her husband's home again. Even Bertram, intent as he
+was on the family honour, could not force the unwilling wife upon the
+merely magnanimous husband.</p>
+
+<p>Her husband's magnanimity was the radiance that grew for Amabel during
+these black days, the days of hasty talks and of her journey down to
+Charlock House.</p>
+
+<p>She had never seen Charlock House before; Sir Hugh had spoken of the
+family seat as "a dismal hole," but, on that hot July evening of her
+arrival, it looked peaceful to her, a dark haven of refuge, like the
+promise of sleep after nightmare.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bray stood in the door, a grim but not a hostile warder: Amabel
+felt anyone who was not hostile to be almost kind.</p>
+
+<p>The house had been hastily prepared for her, dining-room and
+drawing-room and the large bedroom upstairs, having the same outlook
+over the lawn, the sycamores, the flat meadows. She could see herself
+standing there now, looking about her at the bedroom where gaiety and
+gauntness were oddly mingled in the faded carnations and birds of
+paradise on the chintzes and in the vastness of the four-poster, the
+towering wardrobes, the capacious, creaking chairs and sofas. Everything
+was very clean and old; the dressing-table was stiffly skirted in darned
+muslins and near the pin-cushion stood a small, tight nosegay, Mrs.
+Bray's cautious welcome to this ambiguous mistress.</p>
+
+<p>"A comfortable old place, isn't it," Bertram had said, looking about,
+too; "You'll soon get well and strong here, Amabel." This, Amabel knew,
+was said for the benefit of Mrs. Bray who stood, non-committal and
+observant just inside the door. She knew, too, that Bertram was
+depressed by the gauntness and gaiety of the bedroom and even more
+depressed by the maroon leather furniture and the cases of stuffed birds
+below, and that he was at once glad to get away from Charlock House and
+sorry for her that she should have to be left there, alone with Mrs.
+Bray. But to Amabel it was a dream after a nightmare. A strange,
+desolate dream, all through those sultry summer days; but a dream shot
+through with radiance in the thought of the magnanimity that had spared
+and saved her.</p>
+
+<p>And with the coming of the final horror, came the final revelation of
+this radiance. She had been at Charlock House for many weeks, and it was
+mid-Autumn, when that horror came. She knew that she was to have a child
+and that it could not be her husband's child.</p>
+
+<p>With the knowledge her mind seemed unmoored at last; it wavered and
+swung in a nightmare blackness deeper than any she had known. In her
+physical prostration and mental disarray the thought of suicide was with
+her. How face Bertram now,&mdash;Bertram with his tenacious hopes? How face
+her husband&mdash;ever&mdash;ever&mdash;in the far future? Her disgrace lived and she
+was to see it. But, in the swinging chaos, it was that thought that kept
+her from frenzy; the thought that it did live; that its life claimed
+her; that to it she must atone. She did not love this child that was to
+come; she dreaded it; yet the dread was sacred, a burden that she must
+bear for its unhappy sake. What did she not owe to it&mdash;unfortunate
+one&mdash;of atonement and devotion?</p>
+
+<p>She gathered all her courage, armed her physical weakness, her wandering
+mind, to summon Bertram and to tell him.</p>
+
+<p>She told him in the long drawing-room on a sultry September day, leaning
+her arms on the table by which she sat and covering her face.</p>
+
+<p>Bertram said nothing for a long time. He was still boyish enough to feel
+any such announcement as embarrassing; and that it should be told him
+now, in such circumstances, by his sister, by Amabel, was nearly
+incredible. How associate such savage natural facts, lawless and
+unappeasable, with that young figure, dressed in its trousseau white
+muslin and with its crown of innocent gold. It made her suddenly seem
+older than himself and at once more piteous and more sinister. For a
+moment, after the sheer stupor, he was horribly angry with her; then
+came dismay at his own cruelty.</p>
+
+<p>"This does change things, Amabel," he said at last.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she answered from behind her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know how Hugh will take it," said Bertram.</p>
+
+<p>"He must divorce me now," she said. "It can be done very quietly, can't
+it. And I have money. I can go away, somewhere, out of England&mdash;I've
+thought of America&mdash;or New Zealand&mdash;some distant country where I shall
+never be heard of; I can bring up the child there."</p>
+
+<p>Bertram stared at her. She sat at the table, her hands before her face,
+in the light, girlish dress that hung loosely about her. She was fragile
+and wasted. Her voice seemed dead. And he wondered at the unhappy
+creature's courage.</p>
+
+<p>"Divorce!" he then said violently; "No; he can't do that;&mdash;and he had
+forgiven already; I don't know how the law stands; but of course you
+won't go away. What an idea; you might as well kill yourself outright.
+It's only&mdash;. I don't know how the law stands. I don't know what Hugh
+will say."</p>
+
+<p>Bertram walked up and down biting his nails. He stopped presently before
+a window, his back turned to his sister, and, flushing over the words,
+he said: "You are sure&mdash;you are quite sure, Amabel, that it isn't Hugh's
+child. You are such a girl. You can know nothing.&mdash;I mean&mdash;it may be a
+mistake."</p>
+
+<p>"I am quite sure," the unmoved voice answered him. "I do know."</p>
+
+<p>Bertram again stood silent. "Well," he said at last, turning to her
+though he did not look at her, "all I can do is to see how Hugh takes
+it. You know, Amabel, that you can count on me. I'll see after you, and
+after the child. Hugh may, of course, insist on your parting from it;
+that will probably be the condition he'll make;&mdash;naturally. In that case
+I'll take you abroad soon. It can be got through, I suppose, without
+anybody knowing; assumed names; some Swiss or Italian village&mdash;" Bertram
+muttered, rather to himself than to her. "Good God, what an odious
+business!&mdash;But, as you say, we have money; that simplifies everything.
+You mustn't worry about the child. I will see that it is put into safe
+hands and I'll keep an eye on its future&mdash;." He stopped, for his
+sister's hands had fallen. She was gazing at him, still dully&mdash;for it
+seemed that nothing could strike any excitement from her&mdash;but with a
+curious look, a look that again made him feel as if she were much older
+than he.</p>
+
+<p>"Never," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Never what?" Bertram asked. "You mean you won't part from the child?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never; never," she repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"But Amabel," with cold patience he urged; "if Hugh insists.&mdash;My poor
+girl, you have made your bed and you must lie on it. You can't expect
+your husband to give this child&mdash;this illegitimate child&mdash;his name. You
+can't expect him to accept it as his child."</p>
+
+<p>"No; I don't expect it," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, what then? What's your alternative?"</p>
+
+<p>"I must go away with the child."</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you, Amabel, it's impossible," Bertram in his painful anxiety
+spoke with irritation. "You've got to consider our name&mdash;my name, my
+position, and your husband's. Heaven knows I want to be kind to you&mdash;do
+all I can for you; I've not once reproached you, have I? But you must be
+reasonable. Some things you must accept as your punishment. Unless Hugh
+is the most fantastically generous of men you'll have to part from the
+child."</p>
+
+<p>She sat silent.</p>
+
+<p>"You do consent to that?" Bertram insisted.</p>
+
+<p>She looked before her with that dull, that stupid look. "No," she
+replied.</p>
+
+<p>Bertram's patience gave way, "You are mad," he said. "Have you no
+consideration for me&mdash;for us? You behave like this&mdash;incredibly, in my
+mother's daughter&mdash;never a girl better brought up; you go off with
+that&mdash;that bounder;&mdash;you stay with him for a week&mdash;good
+heavens!&mdash;there'd have been more dignity if you'd stuck to him;&mdash;you
+chuck him, in one week, and then you come back and expect us to do as
+you think fit, to let you disappear and everyone know that you've
+betrayed your husband and had a child by another man. It's mad, I tell
+you, and it's impossible, and you've got to submit. Do you hear? Will
+you answer me, I say? Will you promise that if Hugh won't consent to
+fathering the child&mdash;won't consent to giving it his name&mdash;won't consent
+to having it, as his heir, disinherit the lawful children he may have by
+you&mdash;good heavens, I wonder if you realize what you are asking!&mdash;will
+you promise, I say, if he doesn't consent, to part from the child?"</p>
+
+<p>She did look rather mad, her brother thought, and he remembered, with
+discomfort, that women, at such times, did sometimes lose their reason.
+Her eyes with their dead gaze nearly frightened him, when, after all his
+violence, his entreaty, his abuse of her, she only, in an unchanged
+voice, said "No."</p>
+
+<p>He felt then the uselessness of protestation or threat; she must be
+treated as if she were mad; humored, cajoled. He was silent for a little
+while, walking up and down. "Well, I'll say no more, then. Forgive me
+for my harshness," he said. "You give me a great deal to bear, Amabel;
+but I'll say nothing now. I have your word, at all events," he looked
+sharply at her as the sudden suspicion crossed him, "I have your word
+that you'll stay quietly here&mdash;until you hear from me what Hugh says?
+You promise me that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," his sister answered. He gave a sigh for the sorry relief.</p>
+
+<p>That night Amabel's mind wandered wildly. She heard herself, in the
+lonely room where she lay, calling out meaningless things. She tried to
+control the horror of fear that rose in her and peopled the room with
+phantoms; but the fear ran curdling in her veins and flowed about her,
+shaping itself in forms of misery and disaster. "No&mdash;no&mdash;poor
+child.&mdash;Oh&mdash;don't&mdash;don't.&mdash;I will come to you. I am your mother.&mdash;They
+can't take you from me."&mdash;this was the most frequent cry.</p>
+
+<p>The poor child hovered, wailing, delivered over to vague, unseen sorrow,
+and, though a tiny infant, it seemed to be Paul Quentin, too, in some
+dreadful plight, appealing to her in the name of their dead love to save
+him. She did not love him; she did not love the child; but her heart
+seemed broken with impotent pity.</p>
+
+<p>In the intervals of nightmare she could look, furtively, fixedly, about
+the room. The moon was bright outside, and through the curtains a pallid
+light showed the menacing forms of the two great wardrobes. The four
+posts of her bed seemed like the pillars of some vast, alien temple, and
+the canopy, far above her, floated like a threatening cloud. Opposite
+her bed, above the chimney-piece, was a deeply glimmering mirror: if she
+were to raise herself she would see her own white reflection, rising,
+ghastly.&mdash;She hid her face on her pillows and sank again into the abyss.</p>
+
+<p>Next morning she could not get up. Her pulses were beating at fever
+speed; but, with the daylight, her mind was clearer. She could summon
+her quiet look when Mrs. Bray came in to ask her mournfully how she was.
+And a little later a telegram came, from Bertram.</p>
+
+<p>Her trembling hands could hardly open it. She read the words. "All is
+well." Mrs. Bray stood beside her bed. She meant to keep that quiet look
+for Mrs. Bray; but she fainted. Mrs. Bray, while she lay tumbled among
+the pillows, and before lifting her, read the message hastily.</p>
+
+<p>From the night of torment and the shock of joy, Amabel brought an
+extreme susceptibility to emotion that showed itself through all her
+life in a trembling of her hands and frame when any stress of feeling
+was laid upon her.</p>
+
+<p>After that torment and that shock she saw Bertram once, and only once,
+again;&mdash;ah, strange and sad in her memory that final meeting of their
+lives, though this miraculous news was the theme of it. She was still in
+bed when he came, the bed she did not leave for months, and, though so
+weak and dizzy, she understood all that he told her, knew the one
+supreme fact of her husband's goodness. He sent her word that she was to
+be troubled about nothing; she was to take everything easily and
+naturally. She should always have her child with her and it should bear
+his name. He would see after it like a father; it should never know that
+he was not its father. And, as soon as she would let him, he would come
+and see her&mdash;and it. Amabel, lying on her pillows, gazed and gazed: her
+eyes, in their shadowy hollows, were two dark wells of sacred wonder.
+Even Bertram felt something of the wonder of them. In his new gladness
+and relief, he was very kind to her. He came and kissed her. She seemed,
+once more, a person whom one could kiss. "Poor dear," he said, "you have
+had a lot to bear. You do look dreadfully ill. You must get well and
+strong, now, Amabel, and not worry any more, about anything. Everything
+is all right. We will call the child Augustine, if it's a boy, after
+mother's father you know, and Katherine, if it's a girl, after her
+mother: I feel, don't you, that we have no right to use their own names.
+But the further away ones seem right, now. Hugh is a trump, isn't he?
+And, I'm sure of it, Amabel, when time has passed a little, and you feel
+you can, he'll have you back; I do really believe it may be managed.
+This can all be explained. I'm saying that you are ill, a nervous
+breakdown, and are having a complete rest."</p>
+
+<p>She heard him dimly, feeling these words irrelevant. She knew that Hugh
+must never have her back; that she could never go back to Hugh; that her
+life henceforth was dedicated. And yet Bertram was kind, she felt that,
+though dimly feeling, too, that her old image of him had grown
+tarnished. But her mind was far from Bertram and the mitigations he
+offered. She was fixed on that radiant figure, her husband, her knight,
+who had stooped to her in her abasement, her agony, and had lifted her
+from dust and darkness to the air where she could breathe,&mdash;and bless
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell him&mdash;I bless him,"&mdash;she said to Bertram. She could say nothing
+more. There were other memories of that day, too, but even more dim,
+more irrelevant. Bertram had brought papers for her to sign, saying: "I
+know you'll want to be very generous with Hugh now," and she had raised
+herself on her elbow to trace with the fingers that trembled the words
+he dictated to her.</p>
+
+<p>There was sorrow, indeed, to look back on after that. Poor Bertram died
+only a month later, struck down by an infectious illness. He was not to
+see or supervise the rebuilding of his sister's shattered life, and the
+anguish in her sorrow was the thought of all the pain that she had
+brought to his last months of life: but this sorrow, after the phantoms,
+the nightmares, was like the weeping of tears after a dreadful weeping
+of blood. Her tears fell as she lay there, propped on her pillows&mdash;for
+she was very ill&mdash;and looking out over the Autumn fields; she wept for
+poor Bertram and all the pain; life was sad. But life was good and
+beautiful. After the flames, the suffocation, it had brought her here,
+and it showed her that radiant figure, that goodness and beauty embodied
+in human form. And she had more to help her, for he wrote to her, a few
+delicately chosen words, hardly touching on their own case, his and
+hers, but about her brother's death and of how he felt for her in her
+bereavement, and of what a friend dear Bertram had been to himself.
+"Some day, dear Amabel, you must let me come and see you" it ended; and
+"Your affectionate husband."</p>
+
+<p>It was almost too wonderful to be borne. She had to close her eyes in
+thinking of it and to lie very still, holding the blessed letter in her
+hand and smiling faintly while she drew long soft breaths. He was always
+in her thoughts, her husband; more, far more, than her coming child. It
+was her husband who had made that coming a thing possible to look
+forward to with resignation; it was no longer the nightmare of desolate
+flights and hidings.</p>
+
+<p>And even after the child was born, after she had seen its strange little
+face, even then, though it was all her life, all her future, it held the
+second place in her heart. It was her life, but it was from her husband
+that the gift of life had come to her.</p>
+
+<p>She was a gentle, a solicitous, a devoted mother. She never looked at
+her baby without a sense of tears. Unfortunate one, was her thought, and
+the pulse of her life was the yearning to atone.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>It was in the long dark drawing-room that she had seen him for the first
+time since her flight into the wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, what for?&mdash;There, don't cry.&mdash;You have stopped crying? There,
+poor child. I've been awfully sorry for you."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;"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."</p>
+
+<p>She flushed all over at the idea, even said in jest:&mdash;"All that I have
+is yours."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, well, not all," said Sir Hugh. "You must remember&mdash;other claims."
+And he, too, flushed a little now in saying, gently, tentatively;&mdash;"May
+I see the little boy?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will bring him," said Amabel.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"A year and two months. Yes, he is very big."</p>
+
+<p>"He looks like you, doesn't he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Does he?" she said faintly.</p>
+
+<p>"Just your colour," Sir Hugh assured her. "As grave as a little king,
+isn't he. How firmly he looks at me."</p>
+
+<p>"He is grave, but he never cries; he is very cheerful, too, and well and
+strong."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Hugh laughed at the decisive rejection. "Friendship's on one side,
+till later," he said.</p>
+
+<hr style= "width: 45%" />
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr style = "width: 45%" />
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2>
+
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="dropcap"><img src="images/ill-005.png"
+width="100" height="94" alt="L" title="L" /></span>ady Channice woke on the morning after her long retrospect bringing
+from her dreams a heavy heart.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I should like it very much. I may miss my afternoon walk&mdash;your father
+may have business to talk over."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;the high hedge&mdash;for practice. She goes
+over like a bird."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, she is," said Augustine.</p>
+
+<p>"What did you talk about?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, the things we saw; birds and trees and clouds.&mdash;I pour information
+upon her."</p>
+
+<p>"She likes that, one can see it."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"It's delightful for both of you, such a comradeship."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; a comradeship after a fashion; Marjory is just like a nice little
+boy."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, well, she is growing up; she is seventeen, you know. She is more
+than a little boy."</p>
+
+<p>"Not much; she never will be much more."</p>
+
+<p>"She will make a very nice woman."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"She may grow more interesting: she is so young. I don't make plans,
+dear,&mdash;yet I think that it might be a happy thing for you."</p>
+
+<p>"She'll never interest me," said Augustine.</p>
+
+<p>"Must you have a very interesting wife?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course I must:&mdash;she must be as interesting as you are!" he turned
+his head to smile at her.</p>
+
+<p>"You are not exacting, dear!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I am, though. She must be as interesting as you&mdash;and as good; else
+why should I leave you and go and live with someone else.&mdash;Though for
+that matter, I shouldn't leave you. You'd have to live with us, you
+know, if I ever married."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"You have an old head on very young shoulders, Augustine."</p>
+
+<p>"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:&mdash;"I have
+strong passions, and I've already seen what happens to people who allow
+feeling to govern them."</p>
+
+<p>Amabel was suddenly afraid. "I know that you would always be&mdash;good
+Augustine; I can trust you for that." She spoke faintly.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't always the animal, exactly, is it?&mdash;or emotion only? It is
+romance and blind love for a person that leads people astray."</p>
+
+<p>"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;&mdash;romance and blind love: because what is that, really,
+but the animal at its craftiest and most dangerous? what is romance&mdash;I
+mean romance of the kind that jeopardizes 'goodness'&mdash;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:&mdash;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&mdash;I'm not a monk or even a
+puritan&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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;&mdash;"You love a woman enough and respect her enough to wish her to be
+the mother of your children&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Do I shock you?" he asked. "You know I always feel that you <i>are</i> a
+saint, who can hear and understand everything."</p>
+
+<p>She blushed deeply, painfully, now. "No, you don't shock me;&mdash;I am only
+a little startled."</p>
+
+<p>"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;&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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?&mdash;Ab&#233;lard and H&#233;loise?&mdash;Paolo and Francesca?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course they were sinners," said Augustine cheerfully. "What did they
+want?&mdash;a present joy: purely and simply that: they sacrificed everything
+to it&mdash;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;&mdash;fidelity, and real love may make such a part of it, that people
+get confused about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Fidelity and real love?" Lady Channice repeated: "you think that they
+atone&mdash;if they make part of an illicit passion?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think that they atone; but they may redeem it, mayn't they? Why
+do you ask me?" Augustine smiled;&mdash;"You know far more about these things
+than I do."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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;&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>She poured herself out water and said in a voice that surprised
+herself:&mdash;"Very delightful, I am sure; but come and have your lunch. I
+am hungry."</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;or a doctor's. That jarred upon her racked
+nerves, too.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I am cold," she said.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<hr style = "width: 45%" />
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"We will have tea at half past four instead of five today, then," said
+Amabel.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'll not interfere with business," said Augustine, not lifting his
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>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:&mdash;"Not with business, but with
+talk you will interfere. I'm afraid I must ask you.&mdash;I don't often have
+a chance to talk with your mother.&mdash;I'll see you later, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>Augustine made no reply. He rose and walked out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"He didn't realize that you wanted to talk to me alone." Amabel felt
+herself offering the excuse from a heart turned to stone.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"No. I never saw him like that, before," said Amabel, looking down as
+she sat in her chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that's all that matters," said Sir Hugh, as if satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>His boots were quite hot now and he went to the writing-desk drawing a
+case of papers from his breast-pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;gladly&mdash;" 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."</p>
+
+<p>His speaking of "the child," made her heart stop beating, it brought the
+past so near.&mdash;And was Charlock House to be her very own? "Oh," she
+murmured, "that is too good of you.&mdash;You mustn't do that.&mdash;Apart from
+Augustine's share, all that I have is yours; I want no return."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I love it."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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:&mdash;"You
+are not displeased with me?&mdash;Nothing is the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her, startled, a little confused. "Why my dear
+girl,&mdash;displeased with you?&mdash;How could I be?&mdash;No. It's only these
+confounded affairs of mine that are in a bit of a mess just now."</p>
+
+<p>"And can't I be of even more help&mdash;without any returns? I can be so
+economical for myself, here. I need almost nothing in my quiet life."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Hugh flushed. "Oh, you've not much more to give, my dear. I've taken
+you at your word."</p>
+
+<p>"Take me completely at my word. Take everything."</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Don't!"&mdash;said Sir Hugh. He drew his hand sharply away. There was
+confusion, irritation, in his little laugh.</p>
+
+<p>Amabel's tears stood on scarlet cheeks. Did he not understand?&mdash;Did he
+think?&mdash;And was he right in thinking?&mdash;Shame flooded her. What girlish
+impulse had mingled incredibly with her gratitude, her devotion?</p>
+
+<p>Sir Hugh had turned away, and as she sat there, amazed with her sudden
+suspicion, the door opened and Augustine came in saying:&mdash;"Here is Lady
+Elliston, Mother."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h2>
+
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="dropcap"><img src="images/ill-005.png"
+width="100" height="94" alt="L" title="L" /></span>ady 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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.&mdash;And how lovely you are."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"The Greys? How in the dickens did you run across them?" Sir Hugh asked
+with a slight laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"I met them at Jack's cousin's&mdash;the nice old bishop, you know. They are
+tiresome people; but kind. And there is a Grey <i>fils</i>&mdash;the oldest&mdash;whom
+Peggy took rather a fancy to last winter,&mdash;they were hunting together in
+Yorkshire;&mdash;and I wanted to look at him&mdash;and at the place!&mdash;"&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"And I've been making friends with your boy," she went on, looking up at
+Augustine:&mdash;"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?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll bring him someday," said Sir Hugh. "He is only just grown up, you
+see."</p>
+
+<p>"I see: do bring him soon. He is charming," said Lady Elliston, smiling
+at Augustine.</p>
+
+<p>Amabel remembered her pretty, assured manner of saying any
+pleasantness&mdash;or unpleasantness for that matter&mdash;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&mdash;really it matched Lady
+Elliston's&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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:&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>His wife saw him go with a sense of closing mists. Augustine, now more
+considerate, followed him. She was left facing her guest.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"What a sad room this is," said Lady Elliston, looking about it. "Is it
+just as you found it, Amabel?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, almost. I have taken away some things."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose so." Amabel's eyes followed Lady Elliston's. "I never thought
+of changing anything."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Elliston's eyes turned on hers again. "No: I suppose not," she
+said.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it strange?"</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"How well I remember that voice," Lady Elliston smiled a little sadly:
+"It's the girl's voice of twenty years ago&mdash;holding me away. Can't we be
+frank together, now, Amabel, when we are both middle-aged women?&mdash;at
+least I am middle-aged.&mdash;How it has kept you young, this strange life
+you've led."</p>
+
+<p>"But, really, I do not understand," Amabel murmured, confused; "I didn't
+understand you then, sometimes."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I may be frank?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; be frank, of course."</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Amabel, you speak as if you had deserved this imprisonment."</p>
+
+<p>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?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do not be angry with me, dear Amabel. I do not mean to offend."</p>
+
+<p>"You spoke as though you were sorry for me, as though I had been
+injured.&mdash;It touches him."</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>"I was not a mere child," said Amabel. "I was a sinful woman."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;you must not speak of him like that to me."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Elliston had gathered herself together though still, it was
+evident, bewildered. "I don't mean to blame Hugh so much. It was your
+fault, too, I suppose. You asked for the cloister, I know."</p>
+
+<p>"No; I didn't ask for it. I asked to be allowed to go away and hide
+myself. The cloister, too, was a gift,&mdash;like my name, my undishonoured
+child."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear, dear Amabel," said Lady Elliston, gazing at her, "how beautiful
+of you to be able to feel like that."</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't I who am beautiful"; Amabel's lips trembled a little now and
+her eyes filled suddenly with tears. Tears and trembling seemed to bring
+hardness rather than softening to her face; they were like a chill
+breeze, like an icy veil, and the face, with its sorrow, was like a
+winter's landscape.</p>
+
+<p>"He is so beautiful that he would never let anyone know or understand
+what I owe him: he would never know it himself: there is something
+simple and innocent about such men: they do beautiful things
+unconsciously. You know him well: you are far nearer him than I am: but
+you can't know what the beauty is, for you have never been helpless and
+disgraced and desperate nor needed anyone to lift you up. No one can
+know as I do the angel in my husband."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Elliston sat silent. She received Amabel's statements steadily yet
+with a little wincing, as though they had been bullets whistling past
+her head; they would not pierce, if one did not move; yet an involuntary
+compression of the lips and flutter of the eyelids revealed a rather
+rigid self-mastery. Only after the silence had grown long did she
+slightly stir, move her hand, turn her head with a deep, careful breath,
+and then say, almost timidly; "Then, he has lifted you up, Amabel?&mdash;You
+are happy, really happy, in your strange life?"</p>
+
+<p>Amabel looked down. The force of her vindicating ardour had passed from
+her. With the question the hunted, haunted present flooded in. Happy?
+Yesterday she might have answered "yes," so far away had the past
+seemed, so forgotten the fear in which she had learned to breathe. Today
+the past was with her and the fear pressed heavily upon her heart. She
+answered in a sombre voice: "With my past what woman could be happy. It
+blights everything."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;but Amabel&mdash;" Lady Elliston breathed forth. She leaned forward,
+then moved back, withdrawing the hand impulsively put
+out.&mdash;"Why?&mdash;Why?&mdash;" she gently urged. "It is all over: all passed: all
+forgotten. Don't&mdash;ah don't let it blight anything."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no," said Amabel, shaking her head. "It isn't over; it isn't
+forgotten; it never will be. Hugh cannot forget&mdash;though he has
+forgiven. And someday, I feel it, Augustine will know. Then I shall
+drink the cup of shame to the last drop."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!&mdash;" said Lady Elliston, as if with impatience. She checked herself.
+"What can I say?&mdash;if you will think of yourself in this preposterous
+way.&mdash;As for Augustine, he does not know and how should he ever know?
+How could he, when no one in the world knows but you and I and Hugh."</p>
+
+<p>She paused at that, looking at Amabel's downcast face. "You notice what
+I say, Amabel?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; that isn't it. He will guess."</p>
+
+<p>"You are morbid, my poor child.&mdash;But do you notice nothing when I say
+that only we three know?"</p>
+
+<p>Amabel looked up. Lady Elliston met her eyes. "I came today to tell you,
+Amabel. I felt sure you did not know. There is no reason at all, now,
+why you should dread coming out into the world&mdash;with Augustine. You need
+fear no meetings. You did not know that he was dead."</p>
+
+<p>"He?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. He. Paul Quentin."</p>
+
+<p>Amabel, gazing at her, said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"He died in Italy, last week. He was married, you know, quite happily;
+an ordinary sort of person; she had money; he rather let his work go.
+But they were happy; a large family; a villa on a hill somewhere;
+pictures, bric-&#224;-brac and bohemian intellectualism. You knew of his
+marriage?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I knew."</p>
+
+<p>The tears had risen to Lady Elliston's eyes before that stricken, ashen
+face; she looked away, murmuring: "I wanted to tell you, when we were
+alone. It might have come as such an ugly shock, if you were unprepared.
+But, now, there is no danger anymore. And you will come out, Amabel?"</p>
+
+<p>"No;&mdash;never.&mdash;It was never that."</p>
+
+<p>"But what was it then?"</p>
+
+<p>Amabel had risen and was looking around her blindly.</p>
+
+<p>"It was.&mdash;I have no place but here.&mdash;Forgive me&mdash;I must go. I can't talk
+any more."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; go; do go and lie down." Lady Elliston, rising too, put an arm
+around her shoulders and took her hand. "I'll come again and see you. I
+am going up to town for a night or so on Tuesday, but I bring Peggy down
+here for the next week-end. I'll see you then.&mdash;Ah, here is Augustine,
+and tea. He will give me my tea and you must sleep off your headache.
+Your poor mother has a very bad headache, Augustine. I have tried her.
+Goodbye, dear, go and rest."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h2>
+
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="dropcap"><img src="images/ill-132.png"
+width="100" height="99" alt="A" title="A" /></span>n hour ago Augustine had found his mother in tears; now he found her
+beyond them. He gave her his arm, and, outside in the hall, prepared to
+mount the stairs with her; but, shaking her head, trying, with miserable
+unsuccess, to smile, she pointed him back to the drawing-room and to his
+duties of host.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, she is very tired. She does not look well," said Lady Elliston. "I
+am glad to see that you take good care of her."</p>
+
+<p>"She is usually very well," said Augustine, standing over the tea-tray
+that had been put on the table between him and Lady Elliston. "Let's
+see: what do you have? Sugar? milk?"</p>
+
+<p>"No sugar; milk, please. It's such a great pleasure to me to meet your
+mother again."</p>
+
+<p>Augustine made no reply to this, handing her her cup and the plate of
+bread and butter.</p>
+
+<p>"She was one of the loveliest girls I have ever seen," Lady Elliston
+went on, helping herself. "She looked like a Madonna&mdash;and a
+cowslip.&mdash;And she looks like that more than ever." She had paused for a
+moment as an uncomfortable recollection came to her. It was Paul Quentin
+who had said that: at her house.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Augustine assented, pleased, "she does look like a cowslip; she
+is so pale and golden and tranquil. It's funny you should say so," he
+went on, "for I've often thought it; but with me it's an association of
+ideas, too. Those meadows over there, beyond our lawn, are full of
+cowslips in Spring and ever since I can remember we have picked them
+there together."</p>
+
+<p>"How sweet"; Lady Elliston was still a little confused, by her blunder,
+and by his words. "What a happy life you and your mother must have had,
+cloistered here. I've been telling your mother that it's like a
+cloister. I've been scolding her a little for shutting herself up in it.
+And now that I have this chance of talking to you I do very much want to
+say that I hope you will bring her out a little more."</p>
+
+<p>"Bring her out? Where?" Augustine inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"Into the world&mdash;the world she is so fitted to adorn. It's ridiculous
+this&mdash;this fad of hers," said Lady Elliston.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it a fad?" Augustine asked, but with at once a lightness and
+distance of manner.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. And it is bad for anyone to be immured."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think it has been bad for her. Perhaps this is more the world
+than you think."</p>
+
+<p>"I only mean bad in the sense of sad."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't the world sad?"</p>
+
+<p>"What a strange young man you are. Do you really mean to say that you
+like to see your mother&mdash;your beautiful, lovely mother&mdash;imprisoned in
+this gloomy place and meeting nobody from one year's end to the other?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have said nothing at all about my likes," said Augustine, smiling.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Elliston gazed at him. He startled her almost as much as his mother
+had done. What a strange young man, indeed; what strange echoes of his
+father and mother in him. But she had to grope for the resemblances to
+Paul Quentin; they were there; she felt them; but they were difficult to
+see; while it was easy to see the resemblances to Amabel. His father was
+like a force, a fierceness in him, controlled and guided by an influence
+that was his mother. And where had he found, at nineteen, that
+assurance, an assurance without his father's vanity or his mother's
+selflessness? Paul Quentin had been assured because he was so absolutely
+sure of his own value; Amabel was assured because, in her own eyes, she
+was valueless; this young man seemed to be without self-reference or
+self-effacement; but he was quite self-assured. Had he some mental
+talisman by which he accurately gauged all values, his own included? He
+seemed at once so oddly above yet of the world. She pulled herself
+together to remember that he was, only, nineteen, and that she had had
+motives in coming, and that if these motives had been good they were now
+better.</p>
+
+<p>"You have said nothing; but I am going to ask you to say something"; she
+smiled back at him. "I am going to ask you to say that you will take me
+on trust. I am your friend and your mother's friend."</p>
+
+<p>"Since when, my mother's?" Augustine asked. His amiability of aspect
+remained constant.</p>
+
+<p>"Since twenty years."</p>
+
+<p>"Twenty years in which you have not seen your friend."</p>
+
+<p>"I know that that looks strange. But when one shuts oneself away into a
+cloister one shuts out friends."</p>
+
+<p>"Does one?"</p>
+
+<p>"You won't trust me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know anything about you, except that you have made my mother
+ill and that you want something of me."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear young man I, at all events, know one thing about you very
+clearly, and that is that I trust you."</p>
+
+<p>"I want nothing of you," said Augustine, but he still smiled, so that
+his words did not seem discourteous.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing? Really nothing? I am your mother's friend, and you want
+nothing of me? I have sought her out; I came today to see and
+understand; I have not made her ill; she was nearly crying when we came
+into the room, you and I, a little while ago. What I see and understand
+makes me sad and angry. And I believe that you, too, see and understand;
+I believe that you, too, are sad and angry. And I want to help you. I
+want you, when you come into the world, as you must, to bring your
+mother. I'll be waiting there for you both. I am a sort of
+fairy-godmother. I want to see justice done."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you mean that you are angry with my father and want to see
+justice done on him," said Augustine after a pause.</p>
+
+<p>Again Lady Elliston sat suddenly still, as if another, an unexpected
+bullet, had whizzed past her. "What makes you say that?" she asked after
+a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"What you have said and what you have seen. He had been making her cry,"
+said Augustine. He was still calm, but now, under the calm, she heard,
+like the thunder of the sea in caverns deep beneath a placid headland,
+the muffled sound of a hidden, a dark indignation.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said, looking into his eyes; "that made me angry; and that he
+should take all her money from her, as I am sure he does, and leave her
+to live like this."</p>
+
+<p>Augustine's colour rose. He turned away his eyes and seemed to ponder.</p>
+
+<p>"I do want something of you, after all; the answer to one question," he
+said at last. "Is it because of him that she is cloistered here?"</p>
+
+<p>In a flash Lady Elliston had risen to her emergency, her opportunity.
+She was grave, she was ready, and she was very careful.</p>
+
+<p>"It was her own choice," she said.</p>
+
+<p>Augustine pondered again. He, too, was grave and careful She saw how,
+making use of her proffered help, he yet held her at a distance. "That
+does not answer my question," he said. "I will put it in another way. Is
+it because of some evil in his life that she is cloistered?"</p>
+
+<p>Lady Elliston sat before him in one of the high-backed chairs; the light
+was behind her: the delicate oval of her face maintained its steady
+attitude: in the twilit room Augustine could see her eyes fixed very
+strangely upon him. She, too, was perhaps pondering. When at last she
+spoke, she rose in speaking, as if her answer must put an end to their
+encounter, as if he must feel, as well as she, that after her answer
+there could be no further question.</p>
+
+<p>"Not altogether, for that," she said; "but, yes, in part it is because
+of what you would call an evil in his life that she is cloistered."</p>
+
+<p>Augustine walked with her to the door and down the stone passage
+outside, where a strip of faded carpet hardly kept one's feet from the
+cold. He was nearer to her in this curious moment of their parting than
+he had been at all. He liked Lady Elliston in her last response; it was
+not the wish to see justice wreaked that had made it; it was mere truth.</p>
+
+<p>When they had reached the hall door, he opened it for her and in the
+fading light he saw that she was very pale. The Grey's dog-cart was
+going slowly round and round the gravel drive. Lady Elliston did not
+look at him. She stood waiting for the groom to see her.</p>
+
+<p>"What you asked me was asked in confidence," she said; "and what I have
+told you is told in confidence."</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't new to me; I had guessed it," said Augustine. "But your
+confirmation of what I guessed is in confidence."</p>
+
+<p>"I have been your father's life-long friend," said Lady Elliston; "He is
+not an evil man."</p>
+
+<p>"I understand. I don't misjudge him."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to see justice done on him," said Lady Elliston. The groom
+had seen her and the dog-cart, with a brisk rattle of wheels, drew up to
+the door. "It isn't a question of that; I only want to see justice done
+<i>for</i> her."</p>
+
+<p>All through she had been steady; now she was sweet again. "I want to
+free her. I want you to free her. And&mdash;whenever you do&mdash;I shall be
+waiting to give her to the world again."</p>
+
+<p>They looked at each other now and Augustine could answer, with another
+smile; "You are the world, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I am the world," she accepted. "The actual fairy-godmother, with a
+magic wand that can turn pumpkins into coaches and put Cinderellas into
+their proper places."</p>
+
+<p>Augustine had handed her up to her seat beside the groom. He tucked her
+rug about her. If he had laid aside anything to meet her on her own
+ground, he, too, had regained it now.</p>
+
+<p>"But does the world always know what <i>is</i> the proper place?" was his
+final remark as she drove off.</p>
+
+<p>She did not know that she could have found an answer to it.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VII" id="VII"></a>VII</h2>
+
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="dropcap"><img src="images/ill-132.png"
+width="100" height="99" alt="A" title="A" /></span>mabel was sitting beside her window when her son came in and the face
+she turned on him was white and rigid.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear mother," said Augustine, coming up to her, "how pale you are."</p>
+
+<p>She had been sitting there for all that time, tearless, in a stupor of
+misery. Yes, she answered him, she was very tired.</p>
+
+<p>Augustine stood over her looking out of the window. "A little walk
+wouldn't do you good?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>No, she answered, her head ached too badly.</p>
+
+<p>She could find nothing to say to him: the truth that lay so icily upon
+her heart was all that she could have said: "I am your guilty mother. I
+robbed you of your father. And your father is dead, unmourned, unloved,
+almost forgotten by me." For that was the poison in her misery, to know
+that for Paul Quentin she felt almost nothing. To hear that he had died
+was to hear that a ghost had died.</p>
+
+<p>What would Augustine say to her if the truth were spoken? It was now a
+looming horror between them. It shut her from him and it shut him away.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, do come out," said Augustine after a moment: "the evening's so
+fine: it will do you good; and there's still a bit of sunset to be
+seen."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head, looking away from him.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it really so bad as that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; very bad."</p>
+
+<p>"Can't I do anything? Get you anything?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so sorry," said Augustine, and, suddenly, but gravely,
+deliberately, he stooped and kissed her.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;don't!&mdash;don't!" she gasped. She thrust him away, turning her face
+against the chair. "Don't: you must leave me.&mdash;I am so unhappy."</p>
+
+<p>The words sprang forth: she could not repress them, nor the gush of
+miserable tears.</p>
+
+<p>If Augustine was horrified he was silent. He stood leaning over her for
+a moment and then went out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>She lay fallen in her chair, weeping convulsively. The past was with
+her; it had seized her and, in her panic-stricken words, it had thrust
+her child away. What would happen now? What would Augustine say? What
+would he ask? If he said nothing and asked nothing, what would he think?</p>
+
+<p>She tried to gather her thoughts together, to pray for light and
+guidance; but, like a mob of blind men locked out from sanctuary, the
+poor, wild thoughts only fled about outside the church and fumbled at
+the church door. Her very soul seemed shut against her.</p>
+
+<p>She roused herself at last, mechanically telling herself that she must
+go through with it; she must dress and go down to dinner and she must
+find something to say to Augustine, something that would make what had
+happened to them less sinister and inexplicable.</p>
+
+<p>&mdash;Unless&mdash;it seemed like a mad cry raised by one of the blind men in the
+dark,&mdash;unless she told him all, confessed all; her guilt, her shame, the
+truths of her blighted life. She shuddered; she cowered as the cry came
+to her, covering her ears and shutting it out. It was mad, mad. She had
+not strength for such a task, and if that were weakness&mdash;oh, with a long
+breath she drew in the mitigation&mdash;if it were weakness, would it not be
+a cruel, a heartless strength that could blight her child's life too, in
+the name of truth. She must not listen to the cry. Yet strangely it had
+echoed in her, almost as if from within, not from without, the dark,
+deserted church; almost as if her soul, shut in there in the darkness,
+were crying out to her. She turned her mind from the sick fancy.</p>
+
+<p>Augustine met her at dinner. He was pale but he seemed composed. They
+spoke little. He said, in answer to her questioning, that he had quite
+liked Lady Elliston; yes, they had had a nice talk; she seemed very
+friendly; he should go and see her when he next went up to London.</p>
+
+<p>Amabel felt the crispness in his voice but, centered as she was in her
+own self-mastery, she could not guess at the degree of his.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner they went into the drawing-room, where the old, ugly lamp
+added its light to the candles on the mantel-piece.</p>
+
+<p>Augustine took his book and sat down at one side of the table. Amabel
+sat at the other. She, too, took a book and tried to read; a little time
+passed and then she found that her hands were trembling so much that she
+could not. She slid the book softly back upon the table, reaching out
+for her work-bag. She hoped Augustine had not seen, but, glancing up at
+him, she saw his eyes upon her.</p>
+
+<p>Augustine's eyes looked strange tonight. The dark rims around the iris
+seemed to have expanded. Suddenly she felt horribly afraid of him.</p>
+
+<p>They gazed at each other, and she forced herself to a trembling,
+meaningless smile. And when she smiled at him he sprang up and came to
+her. He leaned over her, and she shrank back into her chair, shutting
+her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You must tell me the truth," said Augustine. "I can't bear this. <i>He</i>
+has made you unhappy.&mdash;<i>He</i> comes between us."</p>
+
+<p>She lay back in the darkness, hearing the incredible words.</p>
+
+<p>"He?&mdash;What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is a bad man. And he makes you miserable. And you love him."</p>
+
+<p>She heard the nightmare: she could not look at it.</p>
+
+<p>"My husband bad? He is good, more good than you can guess. What do you
+mean by speaking so?"</p>
+
+<p>With closed eyes, shutting him out, she spoke, anger and terror in her
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>Augustine lifted himself and stood with his hands clenched looking at
+her.</p>
+
+<p>"You say that because you love him. You love him more than anything or
+anyone in the world."</p>
+
+<p>"I do. I love him more than anyone or anything in the world. How have
+you dared&mdash;in silence&mdash;in secret&mdash;to nourish these thoughts against the
+man who has given you all you have."</p>
+
+<p>"He hasn't given me all I have. You are everything in my life and he is
+nothing. He is selfish. He is sensual. He is stupid. He doesn't know
+what beauty or goodness is. I hate him," said Augustine.</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes at last opened on him. She grasped her chair and raised
+herself. Whose hands were these, desecrating her holy of holies. Her
+son's? Was it her son who spoke these words? An enemy stood before her.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you do not love me. If you hate him you do not love me,"&mdash;her
+anger had blotted out her fear, but she could find no other than these
+childish words and the tears ran down her face.</p>
+
+<p>"And if you love him you cannot love me," Augustine answered. His
+self-mastery was gone. It was a fierce, wild anger that stared back at
+her. His young face was convulsed and livid.</p>
+
+<p>"It is you who are bad to have such false, base thoughts!" his mother
+cried, and her eyes in their indignation, their horror, struck at him,
+accused him, thrust him forth. "You are cruel&mdash;and hard&mdash;and
+self-righteous.&mdash;You do not love me.&mdash;There is no tenderness in your
+heart!"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Augustine burst into tears. "There is no room in your heart for me!&mdash;"
+he gasped. He turned from her and rushed out of the room.</p>
+
+<hr style = "width: 45%" />
+
+<p>A long time passed before she leaned forward in the chair where she had
+sat rigidly, rested her elbows on her knees, buried her face in her
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>Her heart ached and her mind was empty: that was all she knew. It had
+been too much. This torpor of sudden weakness was merciful. Now she
+would go to bed and sleep.</p>
+
+<p>It took her a long time to go upstairs; her head whirled, and if she had
+not clung to the baluster she would have fallen.</p>
+
+<p>In the passage above she paused outside Augustine's door and listened.
+She heard him move inside, walking to his window, to lean out into the
+night, probably, as was his wont. That was well. He, too, would sleep
+presently.</p>
+
+<p>In her room she said to her maid that she did not need her. It took her
+but a few minutes tonight to prepare for bed. She could not even braid
+her uncoiled hair. She tossed it, all loosened, above her head as she
+fell upon the pillow.</p>
+
+<p>She heard, for a little while, the dull thumping of her heart. Her
+breath was warm in a mesh of hair beneath her cheek; she was too sleepy
+to put it away. She was wakened next morning by the maid. Her curtains
+were drawn and a dull light from a rain-blotted world was in the room.</p>
+
+<p>The maid brought a note to her bedside. From Mr. Augustine, she said.</p>
+
+<p>Amabel raised herself to hold the sheet to the light and read:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Dear mother," it said. "I think that I shall go and stay with Wallace
+for a week or so. I shall see you before I go up to Oxford. Try to
+forgive me for my violence last night. I am sorry to have added to your
+unhappiness. Your affectionate son&mdash;Augustine."</p>
+
+<p>Her mind was still empty. "Has Mr. Augustine gone?" she asked the maid.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'am; he left quite early, to catch the eight-forty train."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, yes," said Amabel. She sank back on her pillow. "I will have my
+breakfast in bed. Tea, please, only, and toast."&mdash;Then, the long habit
+of self-discipline asserting itself, the necessity for keeping strength,
+if it were only to be spent in suffering:&mdash;"No, coffee, and an egg,
+too."</p>
+
+<p>She found, indeed, that she was very hungry; she had eaten nothing
+yesterday. After her bath and the brushing and braiding of her hair, it
+was pleasant to lie propped high on her pillows and to drink her hot
+coffee. The morning papers, too, were nice to look at, folded on her
+tray. She did not wish to read them; but they spoke of a firmly
+established order, sustaining her life and assuring her of ample pillows
+to lie on and hot coffee to drink, assuring her that bodily comforts
+were pleasant whatever else was painful. It was a childish, a still
+stupefied mood, she knew, but it supported her; an oasis of the
+familiar, the safe, in the midst of whirling, engulfing storms.</p>
+
+<p>It supported her through the hours when she lay, with closed eyes,
+listening to the pour and drip of the rain, when, finally deciding to
+get up, she rose and dressed very carefully, taking all her time.</p>
+
+<p>Below, in the drawing-room, when she entered, it was very dark. The fire
+was unlit, the bowls of roses were faded; and sudden, childish tears
+filled her eyes at the desolateness. On such a day as this Augustine
+would have seen that the fire was burning, awaiting her. She found
+matches and lighted it herself and the reluctantly creeping brightness
+made the day feel the drearier; it took a long time even to warm her
+foot as she stood before it, leaning her arm on the mantel-piece.</p>
+
+<p>It was Saturday; she should not see her girls today; there was relief in
+that, for she did not think that she could have found anything to say to
+them this morning.</p>
+
+<p>Looking at the roses again, she felt vexed with the maid for having left
+them there in their melancholy. She rang and spoke to her almost sharply
+telling her to take them away, and when she had gone felt the tears rise
+with surprise and compunction for the sharpness.</p>
+
+<p>There would be no fresh flowers in the room today, it was raining too
+hard. If Augustine had been here he would have gone out and found her
+some wet branches of beech or sycamore to put in the vases: he knew how
+she disliked a flowerless, leafless room, a dislike he shared.</p>
+
+<p>How the rain beat down. She stood looking out of the window at the
+sodden earth, the blotted shapes of the trees. Beyond the nearest
+meadows it was like a grey sheet drawn down, confusing earth and sky and
+shutting vision into an islet.</p>
+
+<p>She hoped that Augustine had taken his mackintosh. He was very forgetful
+about such things. She went out to look into the bleak, stone hall hung
+with old hunting prints that were dimmed and spotted with age and damp.
+Yes, it was gone from its place, and his ulster, too. It had been a
+considered, not a hasty departure. A tweed cloak that he often wore on
+their walks hung there still and, vaguely, as though she sought
+something, she turned it, looked at it, put her hands into the worn,
+capacious pockets. All were empty except one where she found some
+withered gorse flowers. Augustine was fond of stripping off the golden
+blossoms as they passed a bush, of putting his nose into the handful of
+fragrance, and then holding it out for her to smell it, too:&mdash;"Is it
+apricots, or is it peaches?" she could hear him say.</p>
+
+<p>She went back into the drawing-room holding the withered flowers. Their
+fragrance was all gone, but she did not like to burn them. She held them
+and bent her face to them as she stood again looking out. He would by
+now have reached his destination. Wallace was an Eton friend, a nice
+boy, who had sometimes stayed at Charlock House. He and Augustine were
+perhaps already arguing about Nietzsche.</p>
+
+<p>Strange that her numbed thoughts should creep along this path of custom,
+of maternal associations and solicitudes, forgetful of fear and sorrow.
+The recognition came with a sinking pang. Reluctantly, unwillingly, her
+mind was forced back to contemplate the catastrophe that had befallen
+her. He was her judge, her enemy: yet, on this dismal day, how she
+missed him. She leaned her head against the window-frame and the tears
+fell and fell.</p>
+
+<p>If he were there, could she not go to him and take his hand and say
+that, whatever the deep wounds they had dealt each other, they needed
+each other too much to be apart. Could she not ask him to take her back,
+to forgive her, to love her? Ah&mdash;there full memory rushed in. Her heart
+seemed to pant and gasp in the sudden coil. Take him back? When it was
+her steady fear as well as her sudden anger that had banished him, he
+thought he loved her, but that was because he did not know and it was
+the anger rather than the love of Augustine's last words that came to
+her. He loved her because he believed her good, and that imaginary
+goodness cast a shadow on her husband. To believe her good Augustine had
+been forced to believe evil of the man she loved and to whom they both
+owed everything.</p>
+
+<p>He had said that he was shut out from her heart, and it was true, and
+her heart broke in seeing it. But it was by more than the sacred love
+for her husband that her child was shut out. Her past, her guilt, was
+with her and stood as a barrier between them. She was separated from him
+for ever. And, looking round the room, suddenly terrified, it seemed to
+her that Augustine was dead and that she was utterly alone.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII</h2>
+
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="dropcap"><img src="images/ill-159.png"
+width="100" height="101" alt="S" title="S" /></span>he did not write to Augustine for some days. There seemed nothing that
+she could say. To say that she forgave him might seem to put aside too
+easily the deep wrong he had done her and her husband; to say that she
+longed to see him and that, in spite of all, her heart was his, seemed
+to make deeper the chasm of falseness between them.</p>
+
+<p>The rain fell during all these days. Sometimes a pale evening sunset
+would light the western horizon under lifted clouds and she could walk
+out and up and down the paths, among her sodden rose-trees, or down into
+the wet, dark woods. Sometimes at night she saw a melancholy star
+shining here and there in the vaporous sky. But in the morning the grey
+sheet dropped once more between her and the outer world, and the sound
+of the steady drip and beat was like an outer echo to her inner
+wretchedness.</p>
+
+<p>It was on the fourth day that wretchedness turned to bitter
+restlessness, and that to a sudden resolve. Not to write, not even to
+say she forgave, might make him think that her heart was still hardened
+against him. Her fear had blunted her imagination. Clearly now she saw,
+and with an anguish in the vision, that Augustine must be suffering too.
+Clearly she heard the love in his parting words. And she longed so to
+see, to hear that love again, that the longing, as if with sudden
+impatience of the hampering sense of sin, rushed into words that might
+bring him.</p>
+
+<p>She wrote:&mdash;"My dear Augustine. I miss you very much. Isn't this dismal
+weather. I am feeling better. I need not tell you that I do forgive you
+for the mistake that hurts us both." Then she paused, for her heart
+cried out "Oh&mdash;come back soon"; but she did not dare yield to that cry.
+She hardly knew that, with uncertain fingers, she only repeated
+again:&mdash;"I miss you very much. Your affectionate mother."</p>
+
+<p>This was on the fourth day.</p>
+
+<p>On the afternoon of the fifth she stood, as she so often stood, looking
+out at the drawing-room window. She was looking and listening, detached
+from what she saw, yet absorbed, too, for, as with her son, this
+watchfulness of natural things was habitual to her.</p>
+
+<p>It was still raining, but more fitfully: a wind had risen and against a
+scudding sky the sycamores tossed their foliage, dark or pale by turns
+as the wind passed over them. A broad pool of water, dappling
+incessantly with raindrops, had formed along the farther edge of the
+walk where it slanted to the lawn: it was this pool that Amabel was
+watching and the bobbin-like dance of drops that looked like little
+glass thimbles. The old leaden pipes, curiously moulded, that ran down
+the house beside the windows, splashed and gurgled loudly. The noise of
+the rushing, falling water shut out other sounds. Gazing at the dancing
+thimbles she was unaware that someone had entered the room behind her.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly two hands were laid upon her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>The shock, going through her, was like a violent electric discharge. She
+tingled from head to foot, and almost with terror. "Augustine!" she
+gasped. But the shock was to change, yet grow, as if some alien force
+had penetrated her and were disintegrating every atom of her blood.</p>
+
+<p>"No, not Augustine," said her husband's voice: "But you can be glad to
+see me, can't you, Amabel?"</p>
+
+<p>He had taken off his hands now and she could turn to him, could see his
+bright, smiling face looking at her, could feel him as something
+wonderful and radiant filling the dismal day, filling her dismal heart,
+with its presence. But the shock still so trembled in her that she did
+not move from her place or speak, leaning back upon the window as she
+looked at him,&mdash;for he was very near,&mdash;and putting her hands upon the
+window-sill on either side. "You didn't expect to see me, did you," Sir
+Hugh said.</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head. Never, never, in all these years, had he come again,
+so soon. Months, always, sometimes years, had elapsed between his
+visits.</p>
+
+<p>"The last time didn't count, did it," he went on, in speech vague and
+desultory yet, at the same time, intent and bright in look. "I was so
+bothered; I behaved like a selfish brute; I'm sure you felt it. And you
+were so particularly kind and good&mdash;and dear to me, Amabel."</p>
+
+<p>She felt herself flushing. He stood so near that she could not move
+forward and he must read the face, amazed, perplexed, incredulous of its
+joy, yet all lighted from his presence, that she kept fixed on him. For
+ah, what joy to see him, to feel that here, here alone of all the world,
+was she safe, consoled, known yet cared for. He who understood all as no
+one else in the world understood, could stand and smile at her like
+that.</p>
+
+<p>"You look thin, and pale, and tired," were his next words. "What have
+you been doing to yourself? Isn't Augustine here? You're not alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I am alone. Augustine is staying with the Wallace boy."</p>
+
+<p>With the mention of Augustine the dark memory came, but it was now of
+something dangerous and hostile shut away, yes, safely shut away, by
+this encompassing brightness, this sweetness of intent solicitude. She
+no longer yearned to see Augustine.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Hugh looked at her for some moments, when, she said that she was
+alone, without speaking. "That is nice for me," he then said. "But how
+miserable,&mdash;for you,&mdash;it must have been. What a shame that you should
+have been left alone in this dull place,&mdash;and this wretched weather,
+too!&mdash;Did you ever see such weather." He looked past her at the rain.</p>
+
+<p>"It has been wretched," said Amabel; but she spoke, as she felt, in the
+past: nothing seemed wretched now.</p>
+
+<p>"And you were staring out so hard, that you never heard me," He came
+beside her now, as if to look out, too, and, making room for him, she
+also turned and they looked out at the rain together.</p>
+
+<p>"A filthy day," said Sir Hugh, "I can't bear to think that this is what
+you have been doing, all alone."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mind it, I have the girls, on three mornings, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean that you don't mind it because you are so used to it?"</p>
+
+<p>She had regained some of her composure:&mdash;for one thing he was beside
+her, no longer blocking her way back into the room. "I like solitude,
+you know," she was able to smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Really like it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes."</p>
+
+<p>"Better than the company of some people, you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"But not better than mine," he smiled back. "Come, do encourage me, and
+say that you are glad to see me."</p>
+
+<p>In her joy the bewilderment was growing, but she said that, of course,
+she was glad to see him.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been so bored, so badgered," said Sir Hugh, stretching himself a
+little as though to throw off the incubus of tiresome memories; "and
+this morning when I left a dull country house, I said to myself: Why not
+go down and see Amabel?&mdash;I don't believe she will mind.&mdash;I believe that,
+perhaps, she'll be pleased.&mdash;I know that I want to go very much.&mdash;So
+here I am:&mdash;very glad to be here&mdash;with dear Amabel."</p>
+
+<p>She looked out, silent, blissful, and perplexed.</p>
+
+<p>He was not hard; he was not irritated; all trace of vexed preoccupation
+was gone; but he was not the Sir Hugh that she had seen for all these
+twenty years. He was new, and yet he reminded her of something, and the
+memory moved towards her through a thick mist of years, moved like a
+light through mist. Far, sweet, early things came to her as its heralds;
+the sound of brooks running; the primrose woods where she had wandered
+as a girl; the singing of prophetic birds in Spring. The past had never
+come so near as now when Sir Hugh&mdash;yes, there it was, the fair, far
+light&mdash;was making her remember their long past courtship. And a shudder
+of sweetness went through her as she remembered, of sweetness yet of
+unutterable sadness, as though something beautiful and dead had been
+shown to her. She seemed to lean, trembling, to kiss the lips of a
+beautiful dead face, before drawing over it the shroud that must cover
+it for ever.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Hugh was silent also. Her silence, perhaps, made him conscious of
+memories. Presently, looking behind them, he said:&mdash;"I'm keeping you
+standing. Shall we go to the fire?"</p>
+
+<p>She followed him, bending a little to the fire, her arm on the
+mantel-shelf, a hand held out to the blaze. Sir Hugh stood on the other
+side. She was not thinking of herself, hardly of him. Suddenly he took
+the dreaming hand, stooped to it, and kissed it. He had released it
+before she had time to know her own astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>"You did kiss mine, you know," he smiled, leaning his arm, too, on the
+mantel-shelf and looking at her with gaily supplicating eyes. "Don't be
+angry."</p>
+
+<p>The shroud had dropped: the past was gone: she was once more in the
+present of oppressive, of painful joy.</p>
+
+<p>She would have liked to move away and take her chair at some distance;
+but that would have looked like flight; foolish indeed. She summoned her
+common-sense, her maturity, her sorrow, to smile back, to say in a voice
+she strove to make merely light: "Unusual circumstances excused me."</p>
+
+<p>"Unusual circumstances?"</p>
+
+<p>"You had been very kind. I was very grateful."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Hugh for a moment was silent, looking at her with his intent,
+interrogatory gaze. "You are always kind to me," he then said. "I am
+always grateful. So may I always kiss your hand?"</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes fell before his. "If you wish to," she answered gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"You frighten me a little, do you know," said Sir Hugh. "Please don't
+frighten me.&mdash;Are you really angry?&mdash;<i>I</i> don't frighten you?"</p>
+
+<p>"You bewilder me a little," Amabel murmured. She looked into the fire,
+near tears, indeed, in her bewilderment; and Sir Hugh looked at her,
+looked hard and carefully, at her noble figure, her white hands, the
+gold and white of her leaning head. He looked, as if measuring the
+degree of his own good fortune.</p>
+
+<p>"You are so lovely," he then said quietly.</p>
+
+<p>She blushed like a girl.</p>
+
+<p>"You are the most beautiful woman I know," said Sir Hugh. "There is no
+one like you," He put his hand out to hers, and, helplessly, she yielded
+it. "Amabel, do you know, I have fallen in love with you."</p>
+
+<p>She stood looking at him, stupefied; her eyes ecstatic and appalled.</p>
+
+<p>"Do I displease you?" asked Sir Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>She did not answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Do I please you?" Still she gazed at him, speechless.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you care at all for me?" he asked, and, though grave, he smiled a
+little at her in asking the question. How could he not know that, for
+years, she had cared for him more than for anything, anyone?</p>
+
+<p>And when he asked her this last question, the oppression was too great.
+She drew her hand from his, and laid her arms upon the mantel-shelf and
+hid her face upon them. It was a helpless confession. It was a helpless
+appeal.</p>
+
+<p>But the appeal was not understood, or was disregarded. In a moment her
+husband's arms were about her.</p>
+
+<p>This was new. This was not like their courtship.&mdash;Yet, it reminded
+her,&mdash;of what did it remind her as he murmured words of victory, clasped
+her and kissed her? It reminded her of Paul Quentin. In the midst of the
+amazing joy she knew that the horror was as great.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah don't!&mdash;how can you!&mdash;how can you!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>She drew away from him but he would not let her go.</p>
+
+<p>"How can I? How can I do anything else?" he laughed, in easy yet excited
+triumph. "You do love me&mdash;you darling nun!"</p>
+
+<p>She had freed her hands and covered her face: "I beg of you," she
+prayed.</p>
+
+<p>The agony of her sincerity was too apparent. Sir Hugh unclasped his
+arms. She went to her chair, sat down, leaned on the table, still
+covering her eyes. So she had leaned, years ago, with hidden face, in
+telling Bertram of the coming of the child. It seemed to her now that
+her shame was more complete, more overwhelming. And, though it
+overwhelmed her, her bliss was there; the golden and the black streams
+ran together.</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest,&mdash;should I have been less sudden?" Sir Hugh was beside her,
+leaning over her, reasoning, questioning, only just not caressing her.
+"It's not as if we didn't know each other, Amabel: we have been
+strangers, in a sense;&mdash;yet, through it all&mdash;all these years&mdash;haven't we
+felt near?&mdash;Ah darling, you can't deny it;&mdash;you can't deny you love me."
+His arm was pressing her.</p>
+
+<p>"Please&mdash;" she prayed again, and he moved his hand further away, beyond
+her crouching shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"You are such a little nun that you can't bear to be loved?&mdash;Is that it?
+But you'll have to learn again. You are more than a nun: you are a
+beautiful woman: young; wonderfully young. It's astonishing how like a
+girl you are."&mdash;Sir Hugh seemed to muse over a fact that allured. "And
+however like a nun you've lived&mdash;you can't deny that you love me."</p>
+
+<p>"You haven't loved me," Amabel at last could say.</p>
+
+<p>He paused, but only for a moment. "Perhaps not: but," his voice had now
+the delicate aptness that she remembered, "how could I believe that
+there was a chance for me? How could I think you could ever come to
+care, like this, when you had left me&mdash;you know&mdash;Amabel."</p>
+
+<p>She was silent, her mind whirling. And his nearness, as he leaned over
+her, was less ecstasy than terror. It was as if she only knew her love,
+her sacred love again, when he was not near.</p>
+
+<p>"It's quite of late that I've begun to wonder," said Sir Hugh. "Stupid
+ass of course, not to have seen the jewel I held in my hand. But you've
+only showed me the nun, you darling. I knew you cared, but I never knew
+how much.&mdash;I ought to have had more self-conceit, oughtn't I?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have cared. You have been all that is beautiful.&mdash;I have cared more
+than for anything.&mdash;But&mdash;oh, it could not have been this.&mdash;This would
+have killed me with shame," said Amabel.</p>
+
+<p>"With shame? Why, you strange angel?"</p>
+
+<p>"Can you ask?" she said in a trembling voice.</p>
+
+<p>His hand caressed her hair, slipped around her neck. "You nun; you
+saint.&mdash;Does that girlish peccadillo still haunt you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't&mdash;oh don't&mdash;call it that&mdash;call me that!&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Call you a saint? But what else are you?&mdash;a beautiful saint. What other
+woman could have lived the life you've lived? It's wonderful."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't. I cannot bear it."</p>
+
+<p>"Can't bear to be called a saint? Ah, but, you see, that's just why you
+are one."</p>
+
+<p>She could not speak. She could not even say the only answering word: a
+sinner. Her hands were like leaden weights upon her brows. In the
+darkness she heard her heart beating heavily, and tried and tried to
+catch some fragment of meaning from her whirling thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>And as if her self-condemnation were a further enchantment, her husband
+murmured: "It makes you all the lovelier that you should feel like that.
+It makes me more in love with you than ever: but forget it now. Let me
+make you forget it. I can.&mdash;Darling, your beautiful hair. I remember
+it;&mdash;it is as beautiful as ever.&mdash;I remember it;&mdash;it fell to your
+knees.&mdash;Let me see your face, Amabel."</p>
+
+<p>She was shuddering, shrinking from him.&mdash;"Oh&mdash;no&mdash;no.&mdash;Do you not
+see&mdash;not feel&mdash;that it is impossible&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Impossible! Why?&mdash;My darling, you are my wife;&mdash;and if you love me?&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>They were whirling impossibilities; she could see none clearly but one
+that flashed out for her now in her extremity of need, bright, ominous,
+accusing. She seized it:&mdash;"Augustine."</p>
+
+<p>"Augustine? What of him?" Sir Hugh's voice had an edge to it.</p>
+
+<p>"He could not bear it. It would break his heart."</p>
+
+<p>"What has he to do with it? He isn't all your life:&mdash;you've given him
+most of it already."</p>
+
+<p>"He is, he must be, all my life, except that beautiful part that you
+were:&mdash;that you are:&mdash;oh you will stay my friend!"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I'll stay your lover, your determined lover and husband, Amabel.
+Darling, you are ridiculous, enchanting&mdash;with your barriers, your
+scruples." The fear, the austerity, he felt in her fanned his ardour to
+flame. His arms once more went round her; he murmured words of
+lover-like pleading, rapturous, wild and foolish. And, though her love,
+her sacred love for him was there, his love for her was a nightmare to
+her now. She had lost herself, and it was as though she lost him, while
+he pleaded thus. And again and again she answered, resolute and
+tormented:&mdash;"No: no: never&mdash;never. Do not speak so to me.&mdash;Do not&mdash;I beg
+of you."</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he released her. He straightened himself, and moved away from
+her a little. Someone had entered.</p>
+
+<p>Amabel dropped her hands and raised her eyes at last. Augustine stood
+before them.</p>
+
+<p>Augustine had on still his long travelling coat; his cap, beaded with
+raindrops, was in his hand; his yellow hair was ruffled. He had entered
+hastily. He stood there looking at them, transfixed, yet not astonished.
+He was very pale.</p>
+
+<p>For some moments no one of them spoke. Sir Hugh did not move further
+from his wife's side: he was neither anxious nor confused; but his face
+wore an involuntary scowl.</p>
+
+<p>The deep confusion was Amabel's. But her husband had released her; no
+longer pleaded; and with the lifting of that dire oppression the
+realities of her life flooded her almost with relief. It was impossible,
+this gay, this facile, this unseemly love, but, as she rejected and put
+it from her, the old love was the stronger, cherished the more closely,
+in atonement and solicitude, the man shrunk from and repulsed. And in
+all the deep confusion, before her son,&mdash;that he should find her so,
+almost in her husband's arms,&mdash;a flash of clarity went through her mind
+as she saw them thus confronted. Deeper than ever between her and
+Augustine was the challenge of her love and his hatred; but it was that
+sacred love that now needed safeguards; she could not feel it when her
+husband was near and pleading; Augustine was her refuge from oppression.</p>
+
+<p>She rose and went to him and timidly clasped his arm. "Dear Augustine, I
+am so glad you have come back. I have missed you so."</p>
+
+<p>He stood still, not responding to her touch: but, as she held him, he
+looked across the room at Sir Hugh. "You wrote you missed me. That's why
+I came."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Hugh now strolled to the fire and stood before it, turning to face
+Augustine's gaze; unperturbed; quite at ease.</p>
+
+<p>"How wet you are dear," said Amabel. "Take off this coat."</p>
+
+<p>Augustine stripped it off and flung it on a chair. She could hear his
+quick breathing: he did not look at her. And still it seemed to her that
+it was his anger rather than his love that protected her.</p>
+
+<p>"He will want to change, dearest," said Sir Hugh from before the fire.
+"And,&mdash;I want to finish my talk with you."</p>
+
+<p>Augustine now looked at his mother, at the blush that overwhelmed her as
+that possessive word was spoken. "Do you want me to go?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, dear, no.&mdash;It is only the coat that is wet, isn't it. Don't go: I
+want to see you, of course, after your absence.&mdash;Hugh, you will excuse
+us; it seems such a long time since I saw him. You and I will finish our
+talk on another day.&mdash;Or I will write to you."</p>
+
+<p>She knew what it must look like to her husband, this weak recourse to
+the protection of Augustine's presence; it looked like bashfulness, a
+further feminine wile, made up of self-deception and allurement, a
+putting off of final surrender for the greater sweetness of delay. And
+as the reading of him flashed through her it brought a strange pang of
+shame, for him; of regret, for something spoiled.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Hugh took out his watch and looked at it. "Five o'clock. I told the
+station fly to come back for me at five fifteen. You'll give me some
+tea, dearest?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course;&mdash;it is time now.&mdash;Augustine, will you ring?"</p>
+
+<p>The miserable blush covered her again.</p>
+
+<p>The tea came and they were silent while the maid set it out. Augustine
+had thrown himself into a chair and stared before him. Sir Hugh, very
+much in possession, kept his place before the fire. Catching Amabel's
+eye he smiled at her. He was completely assured. How should he not be?
+What, for his seeing, could stand between them now?</p>
+
+<p>When the maid was gone and Amabel was making tea, he came and stood over
+her, his hands in his pockets, his handsome head bent to her, talking
+lightly, slightly jesting, his voice pitched intimately for her ear, yet
+not so intimately that any unkindness of exclusion should appear.
+Augustine could hear all he said and gauge how deep was an intimacy that
+could wear such lightness, such slightness, as its mask.</p>
+
+<p>Augustine, meanwhile, looked at neither his mother nor Sir Hugh. Turned
+from them in his chair he put out his hand for his tea and stared before
+him, as if unseeing and unhearing, while he drank it.</p>
+
+<p>It was for her sake, Amabel knew, that Sir Hugh, raising his voice
+presently, as though aware of the sullen presence, made a little effort
+to lift the gloom. "What sort of a time have you had, Augustine?" he
+asked. "Was the weather at Haversham as bad as everywhere else?"</p>
+
+<p>Augustine did not turn his head in replying:&mdash;"Quite as bad, I fancy."</p>
+
+<p>"You and young Wallace hammered at metaphysics, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"We did."</p>
+
+<p>"Nice lad."</p>
+
+<p>To this Augustine said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"They're such a solemn lot, the youths of this generation," said Sir
+Hugh, addressing Amabel as well as Augustine: "In my day we never
+bothered ourselves much about things: at least the ones I knew didn't.
+Awfully empty and frivolous. Augustine and his friends would have
+thought us. Where we used to talk about race horses they talk about the
+Absolute,&mdash;eh, Augustine? We used to go and hear comic-operas and they
+go and hear Brahms. I suppose you do go and hear Brahms, Augustine?"</p>
+
+<p>Augustine maintained his silence as though not conceiving that the
+sportive question required an answer and Amabel said for him that he was
+very fond of Brahms.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I must be off," said Sir Hugh. "I hope your heart will ache ever
+so little for me, Amabel, when you think of the night you've turned me
+out into."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;but&mdash;I don't turn, you out,"&mdash;she stammered, rising, as, in a gay
+farewell, he looked at her.</p>
+
+<p>"No? Well, I'm only teasing. I could hardly have managed to stay this
+time&mdash;though,&mdash;I might have managed, Amabel&mdash;. I'll come again soon,
+very soon," said Sir Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>"No," her hand was in his and she knew that Augustine had turned his
+head and was looking at them:&mdash;"No, dear Hugh. Not soon, please. I will
+write." Sir Hugh looked at her smiling. He glanced at Augustine; then
+back at her, rallying her, affectionately, threateningly, determinedly,
+for her foolish feints. He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it.
+"Write, if you want to; but I'm coming," he said. He nodded to Augustine
+and left the room.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX</h2>
+
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="dropcap"><img src="images/ill-184.png"
+width="100" height="99" alt="I" title="I" /></span>t was, curiously enough, a crippling awkwardness and embarrassment that
+Amabel felt rather than fear or antagonism, during that evening and the
+morning that followed. Augustine had left the room directly after Sir
+Hugh's departure. When she saw him again he showed her a face resolutely
+mute. It was impossible to speak to him; to explain. The main facts he
+must see; that her husband was making love to her and that, however deep
+her love for him, she rejected him.</p>
+
+<p>Augustine might believe that rejection to be for his own sake, might
+believe that she renounced love and sacrificed herself from a maternal
+sense of duty; and, indeed, the impossibility of bringing that love into
+her life with Augustine had been the clear impossibility that had
+flashed for her in her need; she had seized upon it and it had armed her
+in her reiterated refusal. But how tell Augustine that there had been
+more than the clear impossibility; how tell him that deeper than
+renouncement was recoil? To tell that would be a disloyalty to her
+husband; it would be almost to accuse him; it would be to show Augustine
+that something in her life was spoiled and that her husband had spoiled
+it. So perplexed, so jaded, was she, so tossed by the conflicting
+currents of her lesser plight, that the deeper fears were forgotten: she
+was not conscious of being afraid of Augustine.</p>
+
+<p>The rain had ceased next morning. The sky was crystalline; the wet earth
+glittered in Autumnal sunshine.</p>
+
+<p>Augustine went out for his ride and Amabel had her girls to read with.
+There was a sense of peace for her in finding these threads of her life
+unknotted, smooth and simple, lying ready to her hand.</p>
+
+<p>When she saw Augustine at lunch he said that he had met Lady Elliston.</p>
+
+<p>"She was riding with Marjory and her girl."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she is back, then." Amabel was grateful to him for his everyday
+tone.</p>
+
+<p>"What is Lady Elliston's girl like?"</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty; very; foolish manners I thought; Marjory looked bewildered by
+her."</p>
+
+<p>"The manners of girls have changed, I fancy, since my day; and she isn't
+a boy-girl, like our nice Marjory, either?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; she is a girl-girl; a pretty, forward, conceited girl-girl," said
+the ruthless Augustine. "Lady Elliston is coming to see you this
+afternoon; she asked me to tell you; she says she wants a long talk."</p>
+
+<p>Amabel's weary heart sank at the news.</p>
+
+<p>"She is coming soon after lunch," said Augustine.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;dear&mdash;"&mdash;. She could not conceal her dismay.</p>
+
+<p>"But you knew that you were to see her again;&mdash;do you mind so much?"
+said Augustine.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't mind.&mdash;It is only;&mdash;I have got so out of the way of seeing
+people that it is something of a strain."</p>
+
+<p>"Would you like me to come in and interrupt your talk?" asked Augustine
+after a moment.</p>
+
+<p>She looked across the table at him. Still, in her memory, preoccupied
+with the cruelty of his accusation, it was the anger rather than the
+love of his parting words the other day that was the more real. He had
+been hard in kindness, relentless in judgment, only not accusing her,
+not condemning her, because his condemnation had fixed on the innocent
+and not on the guilty&mdash;the horror of that, as well as the other horror,
+was between them now, and her guilt was deepened by it. But, as she
+looked, his eyes reminded her of something; was it of that fancied cry
+within the church, imprisoned and supplicating? They were like that cry
+of pain, those eyes, the dark rims of the iris strangely expanding, and
+her heart answered them, ignorant of what they said.</p>
+
+<p>"You are thoughtful for me, dear; but no," she replied, "it isn't
+necessary for you to interrupt."</p>
+
+<p>He looked away from her: "I don't know that it's not necessary," he
+said. After lunch they went into the garden and walked for a little in
+the sunlight, in almost perfect silence. Once or twice, as though from
+the very pressure of his absorption in her he created some intention of
+speech and fancied that her lips had parted with the words, Augustine
+turned his head quickly towards her, and at this, their eyes meeting, as
+it were over emptiness, both he and she would flush and look away again.
+The stress between them was painful. She was glad when he said that he
+had work to do and left her alone.</p>
+
+<p>Amabel went to the drawing-room and took her chair near the table. A
+sense of solitude deeper than she had known for years pressed upon her.
+She closed her eyes and leaned back her head, thinking, dimly, that now,
+in such solitude as this, she must find her way to prayer again. But
+still the door was closed. It was as if she could not enter without a
+human hand in hers. Augustine's hand had never led her in; and she could
+not take her husband's now.</p>
+
+<p>But her longing itself became almost a prayer as she sat with closed
+eyes. This would pass, this cloud of her husband's lesser love. When he
+knew her so unalterably firm, when he saw how inflexibly the old love
+shut out the new, he would, once more, be her friend. Then, feeling him
+near again, she might find peace. The thought of it was almost peace.
+Even in the midst of yesterday's bewildered pain she had caught glimpses
+of the old beauty; his kindly speech to Augustine, his making of ease
+for her; gratitude welled up in her and she sighed with the relief of
+her deep hope. To feel this gratitude was to see still further beyond
+the cloud. It was even beautiful for him to be able to "fall in love"
+with her&mdash;as he had put it: that the manifestations of his love should
+have made her shrink was not his fault but hers; she was a nun; because
+she had been a sinner. She almost smiled now, in seeing so clearly that
+it was on her the shadow rested. She could not be at peace, she could
+not pray, she could not live, it seemed to her, if he were really
+shadowed. And after the smile it was almost with the sense of dew
+falling upon her soul that she remembered the kindness, the chivalrous
+protection that had encompassed her through the long years. He was her
+friend, her knight; she would forget, and he, too, would forget that he
+had thought himself her lover.</p>
+
+<p>She did not know how tired she was, but her exhaustion must have been
+great, for the thoughts faded into a vague sweetness, then were gone,
+and, suddenly opening her eyes, she knew that she had fallen asleep,
+sitting straightly in her chair, and that Lady Elliston was looking at
+her.</p>
+
+<p>She started up, smiling and confused. "How absurd of me:&mdash;I have been
+sleeping.&mdash;Have you just come?"</p>
+
+<p>Lady Elliston did not smile and was silent. She took Amabel's hand and
+looked at her; she had to recover herself from something; it may have
+been the sleeping face, wasted and innocent, that had touched her too
+deeply. And her gravity, as of repressed tears, frightened Amabel. She
+had never seen Lady Elliston look so grave. "Is anything the matter?"
+she asked. For a moment longer Lady Elliston was silent, as though
+reflecting. Then releasing Amabel's hand, she said: "Yes: I think
+something is the matter."</p>
+
+<p>"You have come to tell me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't come for that. Sit down, Amabel. You are very tired, more
+tired than the other day. I have been looking at you for a long time.&mdash;I
+didn't come to tell you anything; but now, perhaps, I shall have
+something to tell. I must think."</p>
+
+<p>She took a chair beside the table and leaned her head on her hand
+shading her eyes. Amabel had obeyed her and sat looking at her guest.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me," Lady Elliston said abruptly, and Amabel today, more than of
+sweetness and softness, was conscious of her strength, "have you been
+having a bad time since I saw you? Has anything happened? Has anything
+come between you and Augustine? I saw him this morning, and he's been
+suffering, too: I guessed it. You must be frank with me, Amabel; you
+must trust me: perhaps I am going to be franker with you, to trust you
+more, than you can dream."</p>
+
+<p>She inspired the confidence her words laid claim to; for the first time
+in their lives Amabel trusted her unreservedly.</p>
+
+<p>"I have had a very bad time," she said: "And Augustine has had a bad
+time. Yes; something has come between Augustine and me,&mdash;many things."</p>
+
+<p>"He hates Hugh," said Lady Elliston.</p>
+
+<p>"How can you know that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I guessed it. He is a clever boy: he sees you absorbed; he sees your
+devotion robbing him; perhaps he sees even more, Amabel; I heard this
+morning, from Mrs. Grey, that Hugh had been with you, again, yesterday.
+Amabel, is it possible; has Hugh been making love to you?"</p>
+
+<p>Amabel had become very pale. Looking down, she said in a hardly audible
+voice; "It is a mistake.&mdash;He will see that it is impossible."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Elliston for a moment was silent: the confirming of her own
+suspicion seemed to have stupefied her. "Is it impossible?" she then
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite, quite impossible."</p>
+
+<p>"Does Hugh know that it is impossible?"</p>
+
+<p>"He will.&mdash;Yesterday, Augustine came in while he was here;&mdash;I could not
+say any more."</p>
+
+<p>"I see: I see"; said Lady Elliston. Her hand fell to the table now and
+she slightly tapped her finger-tips upon it. There was an ominous rhythm
+in the little raps. "And this adds to Augustine's hatred," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid it is true. I am afraid he does hate him, and how terrible
+that is," said Amabel, "for he believes him to be his father."</p>
+
+<p>"By instinct he must feel the tie unreal."</p>
+
+<p>"Yet he has had a father's kindness, almost, from Hugh."</p>
+
+<p>"Almost. It isn't enough you know. He suspects nothing, you think?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is that that is so terrible. He doesn't suspect me: he suspects him.
+He couldn't suspect evil of me. It is my guilt, and his ignorant hatred
+that is parting us." Amabel was trembling; she leaned forward and
+covered her face with her hands.</p>
+
+<p>The very air about her seemed to tremble; so strange, so incredibly
+strange was it to hear her own words of helpless avowal; so strange to
+feel that she must tell Lady Elliston all she wished to know.</p>
+
+<p>"Parting you? What do you mean? What folly!&mdash;what impossible folly! A
+mother and a son, loving each other as you and Augustine love, parted
+for that. Oh, no," said Lady Elliston, and her own voice shook a little:
+"that can't be. I won't have that."</p>
+
+<p>"He would not love me, if he knew."</p>
+
+<p>"Knew? What is there for him to know? And how should he know? You won't
+be so mad as to tell him?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's my punishment not to dare to tell him&mdash;and to see my cowardice
+cast a shadow on Hugh."</p>
+
+<p>"Punishment? haven't you been punished enough, good heavens! Cowardice?
+it is reason, maturity; the child has no right to your secret&mdash;it is
+yours and only yours, Amabel. And if he did know all, he could not judge
+you as you judge yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, you don't understand," Amabel murmured: "I had forgotten to judge
+myself; I had forgotten my sin; it was Augustine who made me remember; I
+know now what he feels about people like me."</p>
+
+<p>Again Lady Elliston controlled herself to a momentary silence and again
+her fingers sharply beat out her uncontrollable impatience. "I live in a
+world, Amabel," she said at last, "where people when they use the word
+'sin,' in that connection, know that it's obsolete, a mere decorative
+symbol for unconventionality. In my world we don't have your cloistered
+black and white view of life nor see sin where only youth and trust and
+impulse were. If one takes risks, one may have to pay for them, of
+course; one plays the game, if one is in the ring, and, of course, you
+may be put out of the ring if you break the rules; but the rules are
+those of wisdom, not of morality, and the rule that heads the list is:
+Don't be found out. To imagine that the rules are anything more than
+matters of social convenience is to dignify the foolish game. It is a
+foolish game, Amabel, this of life: but one or two things in it are
+worth having; power to direct the game; freedom to break its rules; and
+love, passionate love, between a man and woman: and if one is strong
+enough one can have them all."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Elliston had again put her hand to her brow, shielding her eyes and
+leaning her elbow on the table, and Amabel had raised her head and sat
+still, gazing at her.</p>
+
+<p>"You weren't strong enough," Lady Elliston went on after a little pause:
+"You made frightful mistakes: the greatest, of course, was in running
+away with Paul Quentin: that was foolish, and it was, if you like to
+call foolishness by its obsolete name, a sin. You shouldn't have gone:
+you should have stayed: you should have kept your lover&mdash;as long as you
+wanted to."</p>
+
+<p>Again she paused. "Do I horrify you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No: you don't horrify me," Amabel replied. Her voice was gentle, almost
+musing; she was absorbed in her contemplation.</p>
+
+<p>"You see," said Lady Elliston, "you didn't play the game: you made a
+mess of things and put the other players out. If you had stayed, and
+kept your lover, you would have been, in my eyes, a less loveable but a
+wiser woman. I believe in the game being kept up; I believe in the
+social structure: I am one of its accredited upholders"; in the shadow
+of her hand, Lady Elliston slightly smiled. "I believe in the family,
+the group of shared interests, shared responsibilities, shared
+opportunities it means: I don't care how many lovers a woman has if she
+doesn't break up the family, if she plays the game. Marriage is a social
+compact and it's the woman's part to keep the home together. If she
+seeks love outside marriage she must play fair, she mustn't be an
+embezzling partner; she mustn't give her husband another man's children
+to support and so take away from his own children;&mdash;that's thieving. The
+social structure, the family, are unharmed, if one is brave and wise.
+Love and marriage can rarely be combined and to renounce love is to
+cripple one's life, to miss the best thing it has to give. You, at all
+events, Amabel, may be glad that you haven't missed it. What, after all,
+does our life mean but just that,&mdash;the power and feeling that one gets
+into it. Be glad that you've had something."</p>
+
+<p>Amabel, answering nothing, contemplated her guest.</p>
+
+<p>"So, as these are my views, imagine what I feel when I find you here,
+like this"; Lady Elliston dropped her hand at last and looked about her,
+not at Amabel: "when I find you, in prison, locked up for life, by
+yourself, because you were lovably unwise. It's abominable, it's
+shameful, your position, isolated here, and tolerated, looked askance at
+by these nobodies.&mdash;Ah&mdash;I don't say that other women haven't paid even
+more heavily than you've done; I own that, to a certain extent, you've
+escaped the rigours that the game exacts from its victims. But there was
+no reason why you should pay anything: it wasn't known, never really
+known&mdash;your brother and Hugh saw to that;&mdash;you could have escaped
+scot-free."</p>
+
+<p>Amabel spoke at last: "How, scot-free?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Elliston looked hard at her: "Your husband would have taken you
+back, had you insisted.&mdash;You shouldn't have fallen in with his plans."</p>
+
+<p>"His plans? They were mine; my brother's."</p>
+
+<p>"And his. Hugh was glad to be rid of the young wife he didn't love."</p>
+
+<p>Again Amabel was trembling. "He might have been rid of her, altogether
+rid of her, if he had cared more for power and freedom than for pity."</p>
+
+<p>"Power? With not nearly enough money? He was glad to keep her money and
+be rid of her. If you had pulled the purse-strings tight you might have
+made your own conditions."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not believe you," said Amabel; "What you say is not true. My
+husband is noble."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Elliston looked at her steadily and unflinchingly. "He is not
+noble," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"What have you meant by coming here today? You have meant something! I
+will not listen to you! You are my husband's enemy;"&mdash;Amabel half
+started from her chair, but Lady Elliston laid her hand on her arm,
+looking at her so fixedly that she sank down again, panic-stricken.</p>
+
+<p>"He is not noble," Lady Elliston repeated. "I will not have you waste
+your love as you have wasted your life. I will not have this illusion of
+his nobility come between you and your son. I will not have him come
+near you with his love. He is not noble, he is not generous, he is not
+beautiful. He could not have got rid of you. And he came to you with his
+love yesterday because his last mistress has thrown him over&mdash;and he
+must have a mistress. I know him: I know all about him: and you don't
+know him at all. Your husband was my lover for over twenty years."</p>
+
+<p>A long silence followed her words. It was again a strange picture of
+arrested life in the dark room. The light fell quietly upon the two
+faces, their stillness, their contemplation&mdash;it seemed hardly more
+intent than contemplation, that drinking gaze of Amabel's; the draught
+of wonder was too deep for pain or passion, and Lady Elliston's eyes
+yielded, offered, held firm the cup the other drank. And the silence
+grew so long that it was as if the twenty years flowed by while they
+gazed upon each other.</p>
+
+<p>It was Lady Elliston's face that first showed change. She might have
+been the cup-bearer tossing aside the emptied cup, seeing in the slow
+dilation of the victim's eyes, the constriction of lips and nostrils,
+that it had held poison. All&mdash;all had been drunk to the last drop. Death
+seemed to gaze from the dilated eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;my poor Amabel&mdash;" Lady Elliston murmured; her face was stricken
+with pity.</p>
+
+<p>Amabel spoke in the cramped voice of mortal anguish.&mdash;"Before he married
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Lady Elliston nodded, pitiful, but unflinching. "He married you
+for your money, and because you were a sweet, good, simple child who
+would not interfere."</p>
+
+<p>"And he could not have divorced me, because of you."</p>
+
+<p>"Because of me. You know the law; one guilty person can't divorce
+another. No one knew: no one has ever known: he and Jack have remained
+the best of friends:&mdash;but, of course, with all our care, it's been
+suspected, whispered. If I'd been less powerful the whispers might have
+blighted me: as it was, we thought that Bertram wasn't altogether
+unsuspecting. Hugh knew that it would be fatal to bring the matter into
+court;&mdash;I will say for Hugh that, in spite of the money, he wanted to.
+He could have married money again. He has always been extremely
+captivating. When he found that he would have to keep you, the money, of
+course, did atone. I suppose he has had most of your money by now," said
+Lady Elliston.</p>
+
+<p>Amabel shut her eyes. "Wasn't he even sorry for me?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Elliston reflected and a glitter was in her eye; vengeance as well
+as justice armed her. "He is not unkind," she conceded: "and he was
+sorry after a fashion: 'Poor little girl,' I remember he said. Yes, he
+was very tolerant. But he didn't think of you at all, unless he wanted
+money. He is always graceful in his direct relations with people; he is
+tactful and sympathetic and likes things to be pleasant. But he doesn't
+mind breaking your heart if he doesn't have to see you while he is doing
+it. He is kind, but he is as hard as steel," said Lady Elliston.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you do not love him any longer," said Amabel. It was not a
+question, only a farther acceptance.</p>
+
+<p>And now, after only the slightest pause, Lady Elliston proved how deep,
+how unflinching was her courage. She had guarded her illicit passion all
+her life; she revealed it now. "I do love him," she said. "I have never
+loved another man. It is he who doesn't love me."</p>
+
+<p>From the black depths where she seemed to swoon and float, like a
+drowsy, drowning thing, the hard note of misery struck on Amabel's ear.
+She opened her eyes and looked at Lady Elliston. Power, freedom,
+passion: it was not these that looked back at her from the bereft and
+haggard eyes. "After twenty years he has grown tired," Lady Elliston
+said; and her candour seemed as inevitable as Amabel's had been: each
+must tell the other everything; a common bond of suffering was between
+them and a common bond of love, though love so differing. "I knew, of
+course, that he was often unfaithful to me; he is a libertine; but I was
+the centre; he always came back to me.&mdash;I saw the end approaching about
+five years ago. I fought&mdash;oh how warily&mdash;so that he shouldn't dream I
+was afraid;&mdash;it is fatal for a woman to let a man know she is
+afraid,&mdash;the brutes, the cruel brutes,"&mdash;said Lady Elliston;&mdash;"how we
+love them for their fear and pleading; how our fear and pleading hardens
+them against us." Her lips trembled and the tears ran down her cheeks.
+"I never pleaded; I never showed that I saw the change. I kept him, for
+years, by my skill. But the odds were too great at last. It was a year
+ago that he told me he didn't care any more. He was troubled, a little
+embarrassed, but quite determined that I shouldn't bother him. Since
+then it has been another woman. I know her; I meet her everywhere; very
+beautiful; very young; only married for three years; a heartless,
+rapacious creature. Hugh has nearly ruined himself in paying her
+jeweller's bills and her debts at bridge. And already she has thrown him
+over. It happened only the other day. I knew it was happening when I saw
+him here. I was glad, Amabel; I longed for him to suffer; and he will.
+He is a libertine of most fastidious tastes and he will not find many
+more young and beautiful women, of his world, to run risks for him. He,
+too, is getting old. And he has gone through nearly all his own
+money&mdash;and yours. Things will soon be over for him.&mdash;Oh&mdash;but&mdash;I love
+him&mdash;I love him&mdash;and everything is over for me.&mdash;How can I bear it!"</p>
+
+<p>She bent forward on her knees and convulsive sobs shook her.</p>
+
+<p>Her words seemed to Amabel to come to her from a far distance; they
+echoed in her, yet they were not the words she could have used. How dim
+was her own love-dream beside this torment of dispossession.
+What&mdash;who&mdash;had she loved for all these years? She could not touch or see
+her own grief; but Lady Elliston's grief pierced through her. She leaned
+towards her and softly touched her shoulder, her arm, her hand; she held
+the hand in hers. The sight of this loss of strength and dignity was an
+actual pain; her own pain was something elusive and unsubstantial; it
+wandered like a ghost vainly seeking an embodiment.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you angel&mdash;you poor angel!" moaned Lady Elliston. "There: that's
+enough of crying; it can't bring back my youth.&mdash;What a fool I am. If
+only I could learn to think of myself as free instead of maimed and left
+by the wayside. It is hard to live without love if one has always had
+it.&mdash;But I have freed you, Amabel. I am glad of that. It has been a
+cruel, but a right thing to do. He shall not come to you with his
+shameless love; he shall not come between you and your boy. You shan't
+misplace your worship so. It is Augustine who is beautiful and noble; it
+is Augustine who loves you. You aren't maimed and forsaken; thank heaven
+for that, dear."</p>
+
+<p>Lady Elliston had risen. Strong again, she faced her life, took up the
+reins, not a trace of scruple or of shame about her. It did not enter
+her mind to ask Amabel for forgiveness, to ask if she were despised or
+shrunk from: it did not enter Amabel's mind to wonder at the omission.
+She looked up at her guest and her lifted face seemed that of the
+drowned creature floating to the surface of the water.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me, Amabel," Lady Elliston suddenly pleaded, "this is not going to
+blacken things for you; you won't let it blacken things. You will live;
+you will leave your prison and come out into the world, with your
+splendid boy, and live."</p>
+
+<p>Amabel slightly shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, why do you say that? Has it hurt so horribly?"</p>
+
+<p>Amabel seemed to make the effort to think what it had done. She did not
+know. The ghost wailed; but she could not see its form.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you care&mdash;so tremendously&mdash;about him?"&mdash;Lady Elliston asked, and
+her voice trembled. And, for answer, the drowned eyes looked up at her
+through strange, cold tears.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my dear, my dear," Lady Elliston murmured. Her hand was still in
+Amabel's and she stood there beside her, her hand so held, for a long,
+silent moment. They had looked away from each other.</p>
+
+<p>And in the silence each knew that it was the end and that they would see
+each other no more. They lived in different planets, under different
+laws; they could understand, they could trust; but a deep, transparent
+chasm, like that of the ether flowing between two divided worlds, made
+them immeasurably apart.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, when she at last gently released Amabel's hand, drawing her own
+away. Lady Elliston said: "But,&mdash;won't you come out now?"</p>
+
+<p>"Out? Where?" Amabel asked, in the voice of that far distance.</p>
+
+<p>"Into the world, the great, splendid world."</p>
+
+<p>"Splendid?"</p>
+
+<p>"Splendid, if you choose to seize it and take what it has to give."</p>
+
+<p>After a moment Amabel asked: "Has it given you so much?"</p>
+
+<p>Lady Elliston looked at her from across the chasm; it was not dark, it
+held no precipices; it was made up only of distance. Lady Elliston saw;
+but she was loyal to her own world. "Yes, it has," she said. "I've
+lived; you have dreamed your life away. You haven't even a reality to
+mourn the loss of."</p>
+
+<p>"No," Amabel said; she closed her eyes and turned her head away against
+the chair; "No; I have lived too. Don't pity me."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X</h2>
+
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="dropcap"><img src="images/ill-184.png"
+width="100" height="99" alt="I" title="I" /></span>t was past five when Augustine came into the empty drawing-room. Tea
+was standing waiting, and had been there, he saw, for some time. He rang
+and asked the maid to tell Lady Channice. Lady Channice, he heard, was
+lying down and wanted no tea. Lady Elliston had gone half an hour
+before. After a moment or two of deliberation, Augustine sat down and
+made tea for himself. That was soon over. He ate nothing, looking with a
+vague gaze of repudiation at the plate of bread and butter and the
+cooling scones.</p>
+
+<p>When tea had been taken away he walked up and down the room quickly,
+pausing now and then for further deliberation. But he decided that he
+would not go up to his mother. He went on walking for a long time. Then
+he took a book and read until the dressing-bell for dinner rang.</p>
+
+<p>When he went upstairs to dress he paused outside his mother's door, as
+she had paused outside his, and listened. He heard no sound. He stood
+still there for some moments before lightly rapping on the door. "Who is
+it?" came his mother's voice. "I; Augustine. How are you? You are coming
+down?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not tonight," she answered; "I have a very bad headache."</p>
+
+<p>"But let me have something sent up." After a moment his mother's voice
+said very sweetly; "Of course, dear." And she added "I shall be all
+right tomorrow."</p>
+
+<p>The voice sounded natural&mdash;yet not quite natural; too natural, perhaps,
+Augustine reflected. Its tone remained with him as something disturbing
+and prolonged itself in memory like a familiar note strung to a queer,
+forced pitch, that vibrated on and on until it hurt.</p>
+
+<p>After his solitary meal he took up his book again in the drawing-room.
+He read with effort and concentration, his brows knotted; his young
+face, thus controlled to stern attention, was at once vigilant for outer
+impressions and absorbed in the inner interest. Once or twice he looked
+up, as a coal fell with a soft crash from the fire, as a thin creeper
+tapped sharply on the window pane. His mother's room was above the
+drawing-room and while he read he was listening; but he heard no
+footsteps.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, dim, yet clear, came another sound, a sound familiar, though
+so rare; wheels grinding on the gravel drive at the other side of the
+house. Then, loud and startling at that unaccustomed hour, the old hall
+bell clanged through the house.</p>
+
+<p>Augustine found himself leaning forward, breathing quickly, his book
+half-closed. At first he did not know what he was listening for or why
+his body should be tingling with excitement and anger. He knew a moment
+later. There was a step in the hall, a voice. All his life Augustine had
+known them, had waited for them, had hated them. Sir Hugh was back
+again.</p>
+
+<p>Of course he was back again, soon,&mdash;as he had promised in the tone of
+mastery. But his mother had told him not to come; she had told him not
+to come, and in a tone that meant more than his. Did he not know?&mdash;Did
+he not understand?</p>
+
+<p>"No, dear Hugh, not soon.&mdash;I will write."&mdash;Augustine sprang to his feet
+as he entered the room.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Hugh had been told that he would not find his wife. His face wore
+its usual look of good-temper, but it wore more than its usual look of
+indifference for his wife's son. "Ah, tell Lady Channice, will you," he
+said over his shoulder to the maid. "How d'ye do, Augustine:" and, as
+usual, he strolled up to the fire.</p>
+
+<p>Augustine watched him as he crossed the room and said nothing. The maid
+had closed the door. From his wonted place Sir Hugh surveyed the young
+man and Augustine surveyed him.</p>
+
+<p>"You know, my dear fellow," said Sir Hugh presently, lifting the sole of
+his boot to the fire, "you've got devilish bad manners. You are
+devilishly impertinent, I may tell you."</p>
+
+<p>Augustine received the reproof without comment.</p>
+
+<p>"You seem to imagine," Sir Hugh went on, "that you have some particular
+right to bad manners and impertinence here, in this house; but you're
+mistaken; I belong here as well as you do; and you'll have to accept the
+fact."</p>
+
+<p>A convulsive trembling, like his mother's, passed over the young man's
+face; but whereas only Amabel's hands and body trembled, it was the
+muscles of Augustine's lips, nostrils and brows that were affected, and
+to see the strength of his face so shaken was disconcerting, painful.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't belong here while I'm here," he said, jerking the words out
+suddenly. "This is my mother's home&mdash;and mine;&mdash;but as soon as you make
+it insufferable for us we can leave it."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>You</i> can; that's quite true," Sir Hugh nodded.</p>
+
+<p>Augustine stood clenching his hands on his book. Now, unconscious of
+what he did, he grasped the leaves and wrenched them back and forth as
+he stood silent, helpless, desperate, before the other's intimation. Sir
+Hugh watched the unconscious violence with interest.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he went on presently, and still with good temper; "if you make
+yourself insufferable&mdash;to your mother and me&mdash;you can go. Not that I
+want to turn you out. It rests with you. Only, you must see that you
+behave. I won't have you making her wretched."</p>
+
+<p>Augustine glanced dangerously at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Your mother and I have come to an understanding&mdash;after a great many
+years of misunderstanding," said Sir Hugh, putting up the other sole.
+"I'm&mdash;very fond of your mother,&mdash;and she is,&mdash;very fond of me."</p>
+
+<p>"She doesn't know you," said Augustine, who had become livid while the
+other made his gracefully hesitant statement.</p>
+
+<p>"Doesn't know me?" Sir Hugh lifted his brows in amused inquiry; "My dear
+boy, what do you know about that, pray? You are not in all your mother's
+secrets."</p>
+
+<p>Augustine was again silent for a moment, and he strove for self-mastery.
+"If I am not in my mother's secrets," he said, "she is not in yours. She
+does not know you. She doesn't know what sort of a man you are. You have
+deceived her. You have made her think that you are reformed and that the
+things in your life that made her leave you won't come again. But
+whether you are reformed or not a man like you has no right to come near
+a woman like my mother. I know that you are an evil man," said
+Augustine, his face trembling more and more uncontrollably; "And my
+mother is a saint."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Hugh stared at him. Then he burst into a shout of laughter. "You
+young fool!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>Augustine's eyes were lightnings in a storm-swept sky.</p>
+
+<p>"You young fool," Sir Hugh repeated, not laughing, a heavier stress
+weighting each repeated word.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you deny," said Augustine, "that you have always led a dissolute
+life? If you do deny it it won't help you. I know it: and I've not
+needed the echoes to tell me. I've always felt it in you. I've always
+known you were evil."</p>
+
+<p>"What if I don't deny it?" Sir Hugh inquired.</p>
+
+<p>Augustine was silent, biting his quivering lips.</p>
+
+<p>"What if I don't deny it?" Sir Hugh repeated. His assumption of
+good-humour was gone. He, too, was scowling now. "What have you to say
+then?"</p>
+
+<p>"By heaven,&mdash;I say that you shall not come near my mother."</p>
+
+<p>"And what if it was not because of my dissolute life she left me? What
+if you've built up a cock-and-bull romance that has no relation to
+reality in your empty young head? What then? Ask your mother if she left
+me because of my dissolute life," said Sir Hugh.</p>
+
+<p>The book in Augustine's wrenching hands had come apart with a crack and
+crash. He looked down at it stupidly.</p>
+
+<p>"You really should learn to control yourself&mdash;in every direction, my
+dear boy," Sir Hugh remarked. "Now, unless you would like to wreak your
+temper on the furniture, I think you had better sit down and be still. I
+should advise you to think over the fact that saints have been known
+before now to forgive sinners. And sinners may not be so bad as your
+innocence imagines. Goodbye. I am going up to see your mother. I am
+going to spend the night here."</p>
+
+<p>Augustine stood holding the shattered book. He gazed as stupidly at Sir
+Hugh as he had gazed at it. He gazed while Sir Hugh, who kept a rather
+wary eye fixed on him, left the fire and proceeded with a leisurely pace
+to cross the room: the door was reached and the handle turned, before
+the stupor broke. Sir Hugh, his eyes still fixed on his antagonist, saw
+the blanched fury, the start, as if the dazed body were awakening to
+some insufferable torture, saw the gathering together, the leap:&mdash;"You
+fool&mdash;you young fool!" he ground between his teeth as, with a clash of
+the half-opened door, Augustine pinned him upon it. "Let me go. Do you
+hear. Let me go." His voice was the voice of the lion-tamer, hushed
+before danger to a quelling depth of quiet.</p>
+
+<p>And like the young lion, drawing long breaths through dilated-nostrils,
+Augustine growled back:&mdash;"I will not&mdash;I will not.&mdash;You shall not go to
+her. I would rather kill you."</p>
+
+<p>"Kill me?" Sir Hugh smiled. "It would be a fight first, you know."</p>
+
+<p>"Then let it be a fight. You shall not go to her."</p>
+
+<p>"And what if she wants me to go to her.&mdash;Will you kill her first,
+too&mdash;"&mdash;The words broke. Augustine's hand was on his throat. Sir Hugh
+seized him. They writhed together against the door. "You mad-man!&mdash;You
+damned mad-man!&mdash;Your mother is in love with me.&mdash;I'll put you out of
+her life&mdash;"&mdash;Sir Hugh grated forth from the strangling clutch.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, as they writhed, panting, glaring their hatred at each other,
+the door they leaned on pushed against them. Someone outside was turning
+the handle, was forcing it open. And, as if through the shocks and
+flashes of a blinding, deafening tempest, Augustine heard his mother's
+voice, very still, saying: "Let me come in."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI</h2>
+
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="dropcap"><img src="images/ill-223.png"
+width="" height="" alt="" title="" /></span>hey fell apart and moved back into the room. Amabel entered. She wore a
+long white dressing-gown that, to her son's eyes, made her more than
+ever look her sainted self; she had dressed hastily, and, on hearing the
+crash below, she had wrapped a white scarf about her head and shoulders,
+covering her unbound hair. So framed and narrowed her face was that of a
+shrouded corpse: the same strange patience stamped it; her eyes, only,
+seemed to live, and they, too, were patient and ready for any doom.</p>
+
+<p>Quietly she had closed the door, and standing near it now she looked at
+them; her eyes fell for a moment upon Sir Hugh; then they rested on
+Augustine and did not leave him.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Hugh spoke first. He laughed a little, adjusting his collar and tie.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear,&mdash;you've saved my life. Augustine was going to batter my brains
+out on the door, I fancy."</p>
+
+<p>She did not look at him, but at Augustine.</p>
+
+<p>"He's really dangerous, your son, you know. Please don't leave me alone
+with him again," Sir Hugh smiled and pleaded; it was with almost his own
+lightness, but his face still twitched with anger.</p>
+
+<p>"What have you said to him?" Amabel asked.</p>
+
+<p>Augustine's eyes were drawing her down into their torment.&mdash;Unfortunate
+one.&mdash;That presage of her maternity echoed in her now. His stern young
+face seemed to have been framed, destined from the first for this
+foreseen misery.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Hugh had pulled himself together. He looked at the mother and son.
+And he understood her fear.</p>
+
+<p>He went to her, leaned over her, a hand above her shoulder on the door.
+He reassured and protected her; and, truly, in all their story, it had
+never been with such sincerity and grace.</p>
+
+<p>"Dearest, it's nothing. I've merely had to defend my rights. Will you
+assure this young firebrand that my misdemeanours didn't force you to
+leave me. That there were misdemeanours I don't deny; and of course you
+are too good for the likes of me; but your coming away wasn't my fault,
+was it.&mdash;That's what I've said.&mdash;And that saints forgive sinners,
+sometimes.&mdash;That's all I want you to tell him."</p>
+
+<p>Amabel still gazed into her son's eyes. It seemed to her, now that she
+must shut herself out from it for ever, that for the first time in all
+her life she saw his love.</p>
+
+<p>It broke over her; it threatened and commanded her; it implored and
+supplicated&mdash;ah the supplication beyond words or tears!&mdash;Selflessness
+made it stern. It was for her it threatened; for her it prayed.</p>
+
+<p>All these years the true treasure had been there beside her, while she
+worshipped at the spurious shrine. Only her sorrow, her solicitude had
+gone out to her son; the answering love that should have cherished and
+encompassed him flowed towards its true goal only when it was too late.
+He could not love her when he knew.</p>
+
+<p>And he was to know. That had come to her clearly and unalterably while
+she had leaned, half fallen, half kneeling, against her bed, dying, it
+seemed to her, to all that she had known of life or hope.</p>
+
+<p>But all was not death within her. In the long, the deadly stupor, her
+power to love still lived. It had been thrown back from its deep channel
+and, wave upon wave, it seemed heaped upon itself in some narrow abyss,
+tormented and shuddering; and at last by its own strength, rather than
+by thought or prayer of hers, it had forced an outlet.</p>
+
+<p>It was then as if she found herself once more within the church.
+Darkness, utter darkness was about her; but she was prostrated before
+the unseen altar. She knew herself once more, and with herself she knew
+her power to love.</p>
+
+<p>Her life and all its illusions passed before her; by the truth that
+irradiated the illusions, she judged them and herself and saw what must
+be the atonement. All that she had believed to be the treasure of her
+life had been taken from her; but there was one thing left to her that
+she could give:&mdash;her truth to her son. When that price was paid, he
+would be hers to love; he was no longer hers to live for. He should
+found his life on no illusions, as she had founded hers. She must set
+him free to turn away from her; but when he turned away it would not be
+to leave her in the loneliness and the terror of heart that she had
+known; it would be to leave her in the church where she could pray for
+him.</p>
+
+<p>She answered her husband after her long silence, looking at her son.</p>
+
+<p>"It is true, Augustine," she said. "You have been mistaken. I did not
+leave him for that."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Hugh drew a breath of satisfaction. He glanced round at Augustine.
+It was not a venomous glance, but, with its dart of steely intention, it
+paid a debt of vengeance. "So,&mdash;we needn't say anything more about it,"
+he said. "And&mdash;dearest&mdash;perhaps now you'll tell Augustine that he may go
+and leave us together."</p>
+
+<p>Amabel left her husband's side and went to her chair near the table. A
+strange calmness breathed from her. She sat with folded hands and
+downcast eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Augustine, come here," she said.</p>
+
+<p>The young man came and stood before her.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me your hand."</p>
+
+<p>He gave it to her. She did not look at him but kept her eyes fixed on
+the ground while she clasped it.</p>
+
+<p>"Augustine," she said, "I want you to leave me with my husband. I must
+talk with him. He is going away soon. Tomorrow&mdash;tomorrow morning early,
+I will see you, here. I will have a great deal to say to you, my dear
+son."</p>
+
+<p>But Augustine, clutching her hand and trembling, looked down at her so
+that she raised her eyes to his.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't go, till you say something, now, Mother;"&mdash;his voice shook as
+it had shaken on that day of their parting, his face was livid and
+convulsed, as then;&mdash;"I will go away tonight&mdash;I don't know that I can
+ever return&mdash;unless you tell me that you are not going to take him
+back." He gazed down into his mother's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>She did not answer him; she did not speak. But, as he looked into them,
+he, too, for the first time, saw in them what she had seen in his.</p>
+
+<p>They dwelt on him; they widened; they almost smiled; they deeply
+promised him all&mdash;all&mdash;that he most longed for. She was his, her son's;
+she was not her husband's. What he had feared had never threatened him
+or her. This was a gift she had won the right to give. The depth of her
+repudiation yesterday gave her her warrant.</p>
+
+<p>And to Amabel, while they looked into each other's eyes, it was as if,
+in the darkness, some arching loveliness of dawn vaguely shaped itself
+above the altar.</p>
+
+<p>"Kiss me, dear Augustine," she said. She held up her forehead, closing
+her eyes, for the kiss that was her own.</p>
+
+<p>Augustine was gone. And now, before her, was the ugly breaking. But must
+it be so ugly? Opening her eyes, she looked at her husband as he stood
+before the fire, his wondering eyes upon her. Must it be ugly? Why could
+it not be quiet and even kind?</p>
+
+<p>Strangely there had gathered in her, during the long hours, the garnered
+strength of her life of discipline and submission. It had sustained her
+through the shudder that glanced back at yesterday&mdash;at the corruption
+that had come so near; it had given sanity to see with eyes of
+compassion the forsaken woman who had come with her courageous,
+revengeful story; it gave sanity now, as she looked over at her husband,
+to see him also, with those eyes of compassionate understanding; he was
+not blackened, to her vision, by the shadowing corruption, but, in his
+way, pitiful, too; all the worth of life lost to him.</p>
+
+<p>And it seemed swiftest, simplest, and kindest, as she looked over at
+him, to say:&mdash;"You see&mdash;Lady Elliston came this afternoon, and told me
+everything."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Hugh kept his face remarkably unmoved. He continued to gaze at his
+wife with an unabashed, unstartled steadiness. "I might have guessed
+that," he said after a short silence. "Confound her."</p>
+
+<p>Amabel made no reply.</p>
+
+<p>"So I suppose," Sir Hugh went on, "you feel you can't forgive me."</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated, not quite understanding. "You mean&mdash;for having married
+me&mdash;when you loved her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, yes; but more for not having, long ago, in all these years, found
+out that you were the woman that any man with eyes to see, any man not
+blinded and fatuous, ought to have been in love with from the
+beginning."</p>
+
+<p>Amabel flushed. Her vision was untroubled; but the shadow hovered. She
+was ashamed for him.</p>
+
+<p>"No"; she said, "I did not think of that. I don't know that I have
+anything to forgive you. It is Lady Elliston, I think, who must try and
+forgive you, if she can."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Hugh was again silent for a moment; then he laughed. "You dear
+innocent!&mdash;Well&mdash;I won't defend myself at her expense."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't," said Amabel, looking now away from him.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Hugh eyed her and seemed to weigh the meaning of her voice.</p>
+
+<p>He crossed the room suddenly and leaned over her:&mdash;"Amabel
+darling,&mdash;what must I do to atone? I'll be patient. Don't be cruel and
+punish me for too long a time."</p>
+
+<p>"Sit there&mdash;will you please." She pointed to the chair at the other side
+of the table.</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated, still leaning above her; then obeyed; folding his arms;
+frowning.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't understand," said Amabel. "I loved you for what you never
+were. I do not love you now. And I would never have loved you as you
+asked me to do yesterday."</p>
+
+<p>He gazed at her, trying to read the difficult riddle of a woman's
+perversity. "You were in love with me yesterday," he said at last.</p>
+
+<p>She answered nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll make you love me again."</p>
+
+<p>"No: never," she answered, looking quietly at him. "What is there in you
+to love?"</p>
+
+<p>Sir Hugh flushed. "I say! You are hard on me!"</p>
+
+<p>"I see nothing loveable in you," said Amabel with her inflexible
+gentleness. "I loved you because I thought you noble and magnanimous;
+but you were neither. You only did not cast me off, as I deserved,
+because you could not; and you were kind partly because you are kind by
+nature, but partly because my money was convenient to you. I do not say
+that you were ignoble; you were in a very false position. And I had
+wronged you; I had committed the greater social crime; but there was
+nothing noble; you must see that; and it was for that I loved you."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Hugh now got up and paced up and down near her.</p>
+
+<p>"So you are going to cast me off because I had no opportunity for
+showing nobility. How do you know I couldn't have behaved as you
+believed I did behave, if only I'd had the chance? You know&mdash;you are
+hard on me."</p>
+
+<p>"I see no sign of nobility&mdash;towards anyone&mdash;in your life," Amabel
+answered as dispassionately as before.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Hugh walked up and down.</p>
+
+<p>"I did feel like a brute about the money sometimes," he
+remarked;&mdash;"especially that last time; I wanted you to have the house as
+a sort of salve to my conscience; I've taken almost all your money, you
+know; it's quite true. As to the rest&mdash;what Augustine calls my
+dissoluteness&mdash;I can't pretend to take your view; a nun's view." He
+looked at her. "How beautiful you are with that white round your face,"
+he said. "You are like a woman of snow."</p>
+
+<p>She looked back at him as though, from the unhesitating steadiness of
+her gaze, to lend him some of her own clearness.</p>
+
+<p>"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?"</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;you must see that my love
+for you is an entirely different sort of thing from what my love for her
+ever was."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;to see how you
+idealise me.&mdash;The other day, you know,&mdash;when you kissed my hand&mdash;I was
+horribly ashamed.&mdash;But, upon my honour Amabel, I'm not a bad fellow at
+bottom,&mdash;not the devil incarnate your son seems to think me. Something
+could be made of me, you know;&mdash;and, if you'll forgive me, and let me
+try to win your love again;&mdash;ah Amabel&mdash;"&mdash;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."</p>
+
+<p>Amabel sat looking down upon him. Her face was unchanged, but in her
+heart was a trembling of astonished sadness.</p>
+
+<p>It was too late. It had been too late&mdash;from the very first;&mdash;yet, if
+they could have met before each was spoiled for each;&mdash;before life had
+set them unalterably apart&mdash;? The great love of her life was perhaps not
+all illusion.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Then Sir Hugh, stumbling a little, got upon his feet and stood, half
+turned from her, looking away into the room.</p>
+
+<p>When he spoke it was in quite a different voice, it was almost the old,
+usual voice, the familiar voice of their friendly encounters.</p>
+
+<p>"And what are you going to do with yourself, now, Amabel?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to tell Augustine," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell him!" Sir Hugh looked round at her. "Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"I must."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"It will change everything very much, I think," said Amabel.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean&mdash;that he will blame you?&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think that he can love me any longer."</p>
+
+<p>There was no hint of self-pity in her calm tones and Sir Hugh could only
+formulate his resentment and his protest&mdash;and they were bitter,&mdash;by a
+muttered&mdash;"Oh&mdash;I say!&mdash;I say!&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He went on presently; "And will you go on living here, perhaps alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Alone, I think; yes, I shall live here; I do not find it dismal, you
+know."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Hugh felt himself again looking reluctantly into darkness. "But&mdash;how
+will you manage it, Amabel?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>And her voice seemed to come, in all serenity, from the darkness; "I
+shall manage it."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>A painful analogy came to increase his sadness;&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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&mdash;an ugly
+blunder&mdash;this has been on my part. But perhaps you'll let me be your
+friend&mdash;more really your friend than I have ever been."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII</h2>
+
+
+<p class="nind"><span class="dropcap"><img src="images/ill-244.png"
+width="100" height="98" alt="W" title="W" /></span>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;nothing being left to hope for and the only strength demanded
+being the passive strength to endure&mdash;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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Darlings," she found herself saying.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she knew that someone was near her.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it time?" she said. "Am I late?"</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"I have had such a long walk," she said. "Isn't it a beautiful morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I suppose so," said Augustine. As they walked he did not take his
+eyes off his mother's face.</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you tired?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all. I slept well."</p>
+
+<p>"Your shoes are quite wet," said Augustine, looking down at them.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; the meadows were thick with dew."</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't keep to the path?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes;&mdash;no, I remember."&mdash;she looked down at her shoes, trying,
+obediently, to satisfy him, "I turned aside to look at the cows."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you please change your shoes at once?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go up now and change them. And will you wait for me in the
+drawing-room, Augustine."</p>
+
+<p>"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:&mdash;"I am
+well, dear, don't be troubled," she said.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>She murmured that she liked it. But the agitation that she saw
+controlled in him affected her so that she, too, began to tremble.</p>
+
+<p>She went to her chair at one side of the large round table. "Will you
+sit there, Augustine," she said.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"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."</p>
+
+<p>His silence promised what she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Before the story," she said, "I will tell you the central thing, the
+thing you must be brave to hear.&mdash;You are an illegitimate child,
+Augustine." At that she stopped. She listened and heard nothing. Then
+came long breaths.</p>
+
+<p>She opened her eyes to see that his head had fallen forward and was
+buried in his arms. "I can't bear it.&mdash;I can't bear it&mdash;" came in gasps.</p>
+
+<p>She could say nothing. She had no word of alleviation for his agony.
+Only she felt it turning like a sword in her heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Say something to me"&mdash;Augustine gasped on.&mdash;"You did that for him,
+too.&mdash;I am his child.&mdash;You are not my mother.&mdash;" He could not sob.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>"Augustine," she said.</p>
+
+<p>He lifted a blind face, hearing her voice. He opened his eyes. They
+looked at each other.</p>
+
+<p>"I am your mother," said Amabel.</p>
+
+<p>He gazed at her. He gazed and gazed; and she offered herself to the
+crucifixion of his transfixing eyes.</p>
+
+<p>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."</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;his father&mdash;of her flight
+with him, her flight from him, here, to this house, Augustine sat
+motionless. His eyes considered her, fixed in their contemplation.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>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&mdash;"only&mdash;I will always be here&mdash;loving you, Augustine;
+loving you and perhaps,&mdash;forgive me if I have no right to that,
+even&mdash;hoping;&mdash;hoping that some day, in some degree, you may care for me
+again."</p>
+
+<p>She stopped. She could say no more. And she could only hear her own
+shuddering breaths.</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>But he was standing still.</p>
+
+<p>Then he came near to her. And now she waited for the words that would be
+worse than silence.</p>
+
+<p>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:&mdash;"Mother&mdash;Mother&mdash;Mother."</p>
+
+<p>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.</p>
+
+<p>But, incredulous, she parted her hands and looked down at him; and still
+she did not dare enfold him.</p>
+
+<p>"Augustine&mdash;do you understand?&mdash;Do you still love me?&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh Mother," he gasped,&mdash;"what have I been to you that you can ask me!"</p>
+
+<p>"You can forgive me?" Amabel said, weeping, and hiding her face against
+his hair.</p>
+
+<p>They were locked in each other's arms.</p>
+
+<p>And, his head upon her breast, as if it were her own heart that spoke to
+her, he said:&mdash;"I will atone to you.&mdash;I will make up to you&mdash;for
+everything.&mdash;You shall be glad that I was born."</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Amabel Channice, by Anne Douglas Sedgwick
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@@ -0,0 +1,5028 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Amabel Channice, by Anne Douglas Sedgwick
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Amabel Channice
+
+Author: Anne Douglas Sedgwick
+
+Release Date: April 28, 2009 [EBook #28631]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMABEL CHANNICE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Jennie Gottschalk and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+(This file was produced from images generously made
+available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+Amabel Channice
+
+
+BY
+
+Anne Douglas Sedgwick
+
+AUTHOR OF "THE RESCUE," "PATHS OF JUDGEMENT," "A FOUNTAIN
+SEALED," ETC.
+
+
+
+
+NEW YORK The Century Co. 1908
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1908, by THE CENTURY CO.
+
+_Published October, 1908_
+
+
+THE DE VINNE PRESS
+
+
+
+
+AMABEL CHANNICE
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+Lady Channice was waiting for her son to come in from the garden. The
+afternoon was growing late, but she had not sat down to the table,
+though tea was ready and the kettle sent out a narrow banner of steam.
+Walking up and down the long room she paused now and then to look at the
+bowls and vases of roses placed about it, now and then to look out of
+the windows, and finally at the last window she stopped to watch
+Augustine advancing over the lawn towards the house. It was a grey stone
+house, low and solid, its bareness unalleviated by any grace of ornament
+or structure, and its two long rows of windows gazed out resignedly at a
+tame prospect. The stretch of lawn sloped to a sunken stone wall; beyond
+the wall a stream ran sluggishly in a ditch-like channel; on the left
+the grounds were shut in by a sycamore wood, and beyond were flat
+meadows crossed in the distance by lines of tree-bordered roads. It was
+a peaceful, if not a cheering prospect. Lady Channice was fond of it.
+Cheerfulness was not a thing she looked for; but she looked for peace,
+and it was peace she found in the flat green distance, the far, reticent
+ripple of hill on the horizon, the dark forms of the sycamores. Her only
+regret for the view was that it should miss the sunrise and sunset; in
+the evenings, beyond the silhouetted woods, one saw the golden sky; but
+the house faced north, and it was for this that the green of the lawn
+was so dank, and the grey of the walls so cold, and the light in the
+drawing-room where Lady Channice stood so white and so monotonous.
+
+She was fond of the drawing-room, also, unbeautiful and grave to sadness
+though it was. The walls were wainscotted to the ceiling with ancient
+oak, so that though the north light entered at four high windows the
+room seemed dark. The furniture was ugly, miscellaneous and
+inappropriate. The room had been dismantled, and in place of the former
+drawing-room suite were gathered together incongruous waifs and strays
+from dining- and smoking-room and boudoir. A number of heavy chairs
+predominated covered in a maroon leather which had cracked in places;
+and there were three lugubrious sofas to match.
+
+By degrees, during her long and lonely years at Charlock House, Lady
+Channice had, at first tentatively, then with a growing assurance in her
+limited sphere of action, moved away all the ugliest, most trivial
+things: tattered brocade and gilt footstools, faded antimacassars,
+dismal groups of birds and butterflies under glass cases. When she sat
+alone in the evening, after Augustine, as child or boy, had gone to bed,
+the ghostly glimmer of the birds, the furtive glitter of a glass eye
+here and there, had seemed to her quite dreadful. The removal of the
+cases (they were large and heavy, and Mrs. Bray, the housekeeper, had
+looked grimly disapproving)--was her crowning act of courage, and ever
+since their departure she had breathed more freely. It had been easier
+to dispose of all the little colonies of faded photographs that stood on
+cabinets and tables; they were photographs of her husband's family and
+of his family's friends, people most of whom were quite unknown to her,
+and their continued presence in the abandoned house was due to
+indifference, not affection: no one had cared enough about them to put
+them away, far less to look at them. After looking at them for some
+years,--these girls in court dress of a bygone fashion, huntsmen holding
+crops, sashed babies and matrons in caps or tiaras,--Lady Channice had
+cared enough to put them away. She had not, either, to ask for Mrs.
+Bray's assistance or advice for this, a fact which was a relief, for
+Mrs. Bray was a rather dismal being and reminded her, indeed, of the
+stuffed birds in the removed glass cases. With her own hands she
+incarcerated the photographs in the drawers of a heavily carved bureau
+and turned the keys upon them.
+
+The only ornaments now, were the pale roses, the books, and, above her
+writing-desk, a little picture that she had brought with her, a
+water-colour sketch of her old home painted by her mother many years
+ago.
+
+So the room looked very bare. It almost looked like the parlour of a
+convent; with a little more austerity, whitened walls and a few thick
+velvet and gilt lives of the saints on the tables, the likeness would
+have been complete. The house itself was conventual in aspect, and Lady
+Channice, as she stood there in the quiet light at the window, looked
+not unlike a nun, were it not for her crown of pale gold hair that shone
+in the dark room and seemed, like the roses, to bring into it the
+brightness of an outer, happier world.
+
+She was a tall woman of forty, her ample form, her wide bosom, the
+falling folds of her black dress, her loosely girdled waist, suggesting,
+with the cloistral analogies, the mournful benignity of a bereaved
+Madonna. Seen as she stood there, leaning her head to watch her son's
+approach, she was an almost intimidating presence, black, still, and
+stately. But when the door opened and the young man came in, when, not
+moving to meet him, she turned her head with a slight smile of welcome,
+all intimidating impressions passed away. Her face, rather, as it
+turned, under its crown of gold, was the intimidated face. It was
+curiously young, pure, flawless, as though its youth and innocence had
+been preserved in some crystal medium of prayer and silence; and if the
+nun-like analogies failed in their awe-inspiring associations, they
+remained in the associations of unconscious pathos and unconscious
+appeal. Amabel Channice's face, like her form, was long and delicately
+ample; its pallor that of a flower grown in shadow; the mask a little
+over-large for the features. Her eyes were small, beautifully shaped,
+slightly slanting upwards, their light grey darkened under golden
+lashes, the brows definitely though palely marked. Her mouth was pale
+coral-colour, and the small upper lip, lifting when she smiled as she
+was smiling now, showed teeth of an infantile, milky whiteness. The
+smile was charming, timid, tentative, ingratiating, like a young girl's,
+and her eyes were timid, too, and a little wild.
+
+"Have you had a good read?" she asked her son. He had a book in his
+hand.
+
+"Very, thanks. But it is getting chilly, down there in the meadow. And
+what a lot of frogs there are in the ditch," said Augustine smiling,
+"they were jumping all over the place."
+
+"Oh, as long as they weren't toads!" said Lady Channice, her smile
+lighting in response. "When I came here first to live there were so many
+toads, in the stone areas, you know, under the gratings in front of the
+cellar windows. You can't imagine how many! It used quite to terrify me
+to look at them and I went to the front of the house as seldom as
+possible. I had them all taken away, finally, in baskets,--not killed,
+you know, poor things,--but just taken and put down in a field a mile
+off. I hope they didn't starve;--but toads are very intelligent, aren't
+they; one always associates them with fairy-tales and princes."
+
+She had gone to the tea-table while she spoke and was pouring the
+boiling water into the teapot. Her voice had pretty, flute-like ups and
+downs in it and a questioning, upward cadence at the end of sentences.
+Her upper lip, her smile, the run of her speech, all would have made one
+think her humorous, were it not for the strain of nervousness that one
+felt in her very volubility.
+
+Her son lent her a kindly but rather vague attention while she talked to
+him about the toads, and his eye as he stood watching her make the tea
+was also vague. He sat down presently, as if suddenly remembering why he
+had come in, and it was only after a little interval of silence, in
+which he took his cup from his mother's hands, that something else
+seemed to occur to him as suddenly, a late arriving suggestion from her
+speech.
+
+"What a horribly gloomy place you must have found it."
+
+Her eyes, turning on him quickly, lost, in an instant, their uncertain
+gaiety.
+
+"Gloomy? Is it gloomy? Do you feel it gloomy here, Augustine?"
+
+"Oh, well, no, not exactly," he answered easily. "You see I've always
+been used to it. You weren't."
+
+As she said nothing to this, seeming at a loss for any reply, he went on
+presently to talk of other things, of the book he had been reading, a
+heavy metaphysical tome; of books that he intended to read; of a letter
+that he had received that morning from the Eton friend with whom he was
+going up to Oxford for his first term. His mother listened, showing a
+careful interest usual with her, but after another little silence she
+said suddenly:
+
+"I think it's a very nice place, Charlock House, Augustine. Your father
+wouldn't have wanted me to live here if he'd imagined that I could find
+it gloomy, you know."
+
+"Oh, of course not," said the young man, in an impassive, pleasant
+voice.
+
+"He has always, in everything, been so thoughtful for my comfort and
+happiness," said Lady Channice.
+
+Augustine did not look at her: his eyes were fixed on the sky outside
+and he seemed to be reflecting--though not over her words.
+
+"So that I couldn't bear him ever to hear anything of that sort," Lady
+Channice went on, "that either of us could find it gloomy, I mean. You
+wouldn't ever say it to him, would you, Augustine." There was a note at
+once of urgency and appeal in her voice.
+
+"Of course not, since you don't wish it," her son replied.
+
+"I ask you just because it happens that your father is coming," Lady
+Channice said, "tomorrow;--and, you see, if you had this in your mind,
+you might have said something. He is coming to spend the afternoon."
+
+He looked at her now, steadily, still pleasantly; but his colour rose.
+
+"Really," he said.
+
+"Isn't it nice. I do hope that it will be fine; these Autumn days are so
+uncertain; if only the weather holds up we can have a walk perhaps."
+
+"Oh, I think it will hold up. Will there be time for a walk?"
+
+"He will be here soon after lunch, and, I think, stay on to tea."
+
+"He didn't stay on to tea the last time, did he."
+
+"No, not last time; he is so very busy; it's quite three years since we
+have had that nice walk over the meadows, and he likes that so much."
+
+She was trying to speak lightly and easily. "And it must be quite a year
+since you have seen him."
+
+"Quite," said Augustine. "I never see him, hardly, but here, you know."
+
+He was still making his attempt at pleasantness, but something hard and
+strained had come into his voice, and as, with a sort of helplessness,
+her resources exhausted, his mother sat silent, he went on, glancing at
+her, as if with the sudden resolution, he also wanted to make very sure
+of his way;--
+
+"You like seeing him more than anything, don't you; though you are
+separated."
+
+Augustine Channice talked a great deal to his mother about outside
+things, such as philosophy; but of personal things, of their relation to
+the world, to each other, to his father, he never spoke. So that his
+speaking now was arresting.
+
+His mother gazed at him. "Separated? We have always been the best of
+friends."
+
+"Of course. I mean--that you've never cared to live
+together.--Incompatibility, I suppose. Only," Augustine did not smile,
+he looked steadily at his mother, "I should think that since you are so
+fond of him you'd like seeing him oftener. I should think that since he
+is the best of friends he would want to come oftener, you know."
+
+When he had said these words he flushed violently. It was an echo of his
+mother's flush. And she sat silent, finding no words.
+
+"Mother," said Augustine, "forgive me. That was impertinent of me. It's
+no affair of mine."
+
+She thought so, too, apparently, for she found no words in which to tell
+him that it was his affair. Her hands clasped tightly in her lap, her
+eyes downcast, she seemed shrunken together, overcome by his tactless
+intrusion.
+
+"Forgive me," Augustine repeated.
+
+The supplication brought her the resource of words again. "Of course,
+dear. It is only--I can't explain it to you. It is very complicated.
+But, though it seems so strange to you,--to everybody, I know--it is
+just that: though we don't live together, and though I see so little of
+your father, I do care for him very, very much. More than for anybody in
+the world,--except you, of course, dear Augustine."
+
+"Oh, don't be polite to me," he said, and smiled. "More than for anybody
+in the world; stick to it."
+
+She could but accept the amendment, so kindly and, apparently, so
+lightly pressed upon her, and she answered him with a faint, a grateful
+smile, saying, in a low voice:--"You see, dear, he is the noblest person
+I have ever known." Tears were in her eyes. Augustine turned away his
+own.
+
+They sat then for a little while in silence, the mother and son.
+
+Her eyes downcast, her hands folded in an attitude that suggested some
+inner dedication, Amabel Channice seemed to stay her thoughts on the
+vision of that nobility. And though her son was near her, the thoughts
+were far from him.
+
+It was characteristic of Augustine Channice, when he mused, to gaze
+straight before him, whatever the object might be that met his unseeing
+eyes. The object now was the high Autumnal sky outside, crossed only
+here and there by a drifting fleet of clouds.
+
+The light fell calmly upon the mother and son and, in their stillness,
+their contemplation, the two faces were like those on an old canvas,
+preserved from time and change in the trance-like immutability of art.
+In colour, the two heads chimed, though Augustine's hair was vehemently
+gold and there were under-tones of brown and amber in his skin. But the
+oval of Lady Channice's face grew angular in her son's, broader and more
+defiant; so that, palely, darkly white and gold, on their deep
+background, the two heads emphasized each other's character by contrast.
+Augustine's lips were square and scornful; his nose ruggedly bridged;
+his eyes, under broad eyebrows, ringed round the iris with a line of
+vivid hazel; and as his lips, though mild in expression, were scornful
+in form, so these eyes, even in their contemplation, seemed fierce.
+Calm, controlled face as it was, its meaning for the spectator was of
+something passionate and implacable. In mother and son alike one felt a
+capacity for endurance almost tragic; but while Augustine's would be the
+endurance of the rock, to be moved only by shattering, his mother's was
+the endurance of the flower, that bends before the tempest, unresisting,
+beaten down into the earth, but lying, even there, unbroken.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+The noise and movement of an outer world seemed to break in upon the
+recorded vision of arrested life.
+
+The door opened, a quick, decisive step approached down the hall, and,
+closely following the announcing maid, Mrs. Grey, the local squiress,
+entered the room. In the normal run of rural conventions, Lady Channice
+should have held the place; but Charlock House no longer stood for what
+it had used to stand in the days of Sir Hugh Channice's forbears. Mrs.
+Grey, of Pangley Hall, had never held any but the first place and a
+consciousness of this fact seemed to radiate from her competent
+personality. She was a vast middle-aged woman clad in tweed and leather,
+but her abundance of firm, hard flesh could lend itself to the roughest
+exigences of a sporting outdoor life. Her broad face shone like a ripe
+apple, and her sharp eyes, her tight lips, the cheerful creases of her
+face, expressed an observant and rather tyrannous good-temper.
+
+"Tea? No, thanks; no tea for me," she almost shouted; "I've just had tea
+with Mrs. Grier. How are you, Lady Channice? and you, Augustine? What a
+man you are getting to be; a good inch taller than my Tom. Reading as
+usual, I see. I can't get my boys to look at a book in vacation time.
+What's the book? Ah, fuddling your brains with that stuff, still, are
+you? Still determined to be a philosopher? Do you really want him to be
+a philosopher, my dear?"
+
+"Indeed I think it would be very nice if he could be a philosopher,"
+said Lady Channice, smiling, for though she had often to evade Mrs.
+Grey's tyranny she liked her good temper. She seemed in her reply to
+float, lightly and almost gaily above Mrs. Grey, and away from her. Mrs.
+Grey was accustomed to these tactics and it was characteristic of her
+not to let people float away if she could possibly help it. This matter
+of Augustine's future was frequently in dispute between them. Her feet
+planted firmly, her rifle at her shoulder, she seemed now to take aim at
+a bird that flew from her.
+
+"And of course you encourage him! You read with him and study with him!
+And you won't see that you let him drift more and more out of practical
+life and into moonshine. What does it do for him, that's what I ask?
+Where does it lead him? What's the good of it? Why he'll finish as a
+fusty old don. Does it make you a better man, Augustine, or a happier
+one, to spend all your time reading philosophy?"
+
+"Very much better, very much happier, I find:--but I don't give it all
+my time, you know," Augustine answered, with much his mother's manner of
+light evasion. He let Mrs. Grey see that he found her funny; perhaps he
+wished to let her see that philosophy helped him to. Mrs. Grey gave up
+the fantastic bird and turned on her heel.
+
+"Well, I've not come to dispute, as usual, with you, Augustine. I've
+come to ask you, Lady Channice, if you won't, for once, break through
+your rules and come to tea on Sunday. I've a surprise for you. An old
+friend of yours is to be of our party for this week-end. Lady Elliston;
+she comes tomorrow, and she writes that she hopes to see something of
+you."
+
+Mrs. Grey had her eye rather sharply on Lady Channice; she expected to
+see her colour rise, and it did rise.
+
+"Lady Elliston?" she repeated, vaguely, or, perhaps, faintly.
+
+"Yes; you did know her; well, she told me."
+
+"It was years ago," said Lady Channice, looking down; "Yes, I knew her
+quite well. It would be very nice to see her again. But I don't think I
+will break my rule; thank you so much."
+
+Mrs. Grey looked a little disconcerted and a little displeased. "Now
+that you are growing up, Augustine," she said, "you must shake your
+mother out of her way of life. It's bad for her. She lives here, quite
+alone, and, when you are away--as you will have to be more and more, for
+some time now,--she sees nobody but her village girls, Mrs. Grier and me
+from one month's end to the other. I can't think what she's made of. I
+should go mad. And so many of us would be delighted if she would drop in
+to tea with us now and then."
+
+"Oh, well, you can drop in to tea with her instead," said Augustine. His
+mother sat silent, with her faint smile.
+
+"Well, I do. But I'm not enough, though I flatter myself that I'm a good
+deal. It's unwholesome, such a life, downright morbid and unwholesome.
+One should mingle with one's kind. I shall wonder at you, Augustine, if
+you allow it, just as, for years, I've wondered at your father."
+
+It may have been her own slight confusion, or it may have been something
+exasperating in Lady Channice's silence, that had precipitated Mrs. Grey
+upon this speech, but, when she had made it, she became very red and
+wondered whether she had gone too far. Mrs. Grey was prepared to go far.
+If people evaded her, and showed an unwillingness to let her be kind to
+them--on her own terms,--terms which, in regard to Lady Channice, were
+very strictly defined;--if people would behave in this unbecoming and
+ungrateful fashion, they only got, so Mrs. Grey would have put it, what
+they jolly well deserved if she gave them a "stinger." But Mrs. Grey did
+not like to give Lady Channice "stingers"; therefore she now became red
+and wondered at herself.
+
+Lady Channice had lifted her eyes and it was as if Mrs. Grey saw walls
+and moats and impenetrable thickets glooming in them. She answered for
+Augustine: "My husband and I have always been in perfect agreement on
+the matter."
+
+Mrs. Grey tried a cheerful laugh;--"You won him over, too, no doubt."
+
+"Entirely."
+
+"Well, Augustine," Mrs. Grey turned to the young man again, "I don't
+succeed with your mother, but I hope for better luck with you. You're a
+man, now, and not yet, at all events, a monk. Won't you dine with us on
+Saturday night?"
+
+Now Mrs. Grey was kind; but she had never asked Lady Channice to dinner.
+The line had been drawn, firmly drawn years ago--and by Mrs. Grey
+herself--at tea. And it was not until Lady Channice had lived for
+several years at Charlock House, when it became evident that, in spite
+of all that was suspicious, not to say sinister, in her situation, she
+was not exactly cast off and that her husband, so to speak, admitted her
+to tea if not to dinner,--it was not until then that Mrs. Grey voiced at
+once the tolerance and the discretion of the neighbourhood and said:
+"They are on friendly terms; he comes to see her twice a year. We can
+call; she need not be asked to anything but tea. There can be no harm in
+that."
+
+There was, indeed, no harm, for though, when they did call in Mrs.
+Grey's broad wake, they were received with gentle courtesy, they were
+made to feel that social contacts would go no further. Lady Channice had
+been either too much offended or too much frightened by the years of
+ostracism, or perhaps it was really by her own choice that she adopted
+the attitude of a person who saw people when they came to her but who
+never went to see them. This attitude, accepted by the few, was resented
+by the many, so that hardly anybody ever called upon Lady Channice. And
+so it was that Mrs. Grey satisfied at once benevolence and curiosity in
+her staunch visits to the recluse of Charlock House, and could feel
+herself as Lady Channice's one wholesome link with the world that she
+had rejected or--here lay all the ambiguity, all the mystery that, for
+years, had whetted Mrs. Grey's curiosity to fever-point--that had
+rejected her.
+
+As Augustine grew up the situation became more complicated. It was felt
+that as the future owner of Charlock House and inheritor of his mother's
+fortune Augustine was not to be tentatively taken up but decisively
+seized. People had resented Sir Hugh's indifference to Charlock House,
+the fact that he had never lived there and had tried, just before his
+marriage, to sell it. But Augustine was yet blameless, and Augustine
+would one day be a wealthy not an impecunious squire, and Mrs. Grey had
+said that she would see to it that Augustine had his chance. "Apparently
+there's no one to bring him out, unless I do," she said. "His father, it
+seems, won't, and his mother can't. One doesn't know what to think, or,
+at all events, one keeps what one thinks to oneself, for she is a good,
+sweet creature, whatever her faults may have been. But Augustine shall
+be asked to dinner one day."
+
+Augustine's "chance," in Mrs. Grey's eye, was her sixth daughter,
+Marjory.
+
+So now the first step up the ladder was being given to Augustine.
+
+He kept his vagueness, his lightness, his coolly pleasant smile, looking
+at Mrs. Grey and not at his mother as he answered: "Thanks so much, but
+I'm monastic, too, you know. I don't go to dinners. I'll ride over some
+afternoon and see you all."
+
+Mrs. Grey compressed her lips. She was hurt and she had, also, some
+difficulty in restraining her temper before this rebuff. "But you go to
+dinners in London. You stay with people."
+
+"Ah, yes; but I'm alone then. When I'm with my mother I share her life."
+He spoke so lightly, yet so decisively, with a tact and firmness beyond
+his years, that Mrs. Grey rose, accepting her defeat.
+
+"Then Lady Elliston and I will come over, some day," she said. "I wish
+we saw more of her. John and I met her while we were staying with the
+Bishop this Spring. The Bishop has the highest opinion of her. He said
+that she was a most unusual woman,--in the world, yet not of it. One
+feels that. Her eldest girl married young Lord Catesby, you know; a very
+brilliant match; she presents her second girl next Spring, when I do
+Marjory. You must come over for a ride with Marjory, soon, Augustine."
+
+"I will, very soon," said Augustine.
+
+When their visitor at last went, when the tramp of her heavy boots had
+receded down the hall, Lady Channice and her son again sat in silence;
+but it was now another silence from that into which Mrs. Grey's shots
+had broken. It was like the stillness of the copse or hedgerow when the
+sportsmen are gone and a vague stir and rustle in ditch or underbrush
+tells of broken wings or limbs, of a wounded thing hiding.
+
+Lady Channice spoke at last. "I wish you had accepted for the dinner,
+Augustine. I don't want you to identify yourself with my peculiarities."
+
+"I didn't want to dine with Mrs. Grey, mother."
+
+"You hurt her. She is a kind neighbour. You will see her more or less
+for all of your life, probably. You must take your place, here,
+Augustine."
+
+"My place is taken. I like it just as it is. I'll see the Greys as I
+always have seen them; I'll go over to tea now and then and I'll ride
+and hunt with the children."
+
+"But that was when you were a child. You are almost a man now; you are a
+man, Augustine; and your place isn't a child's place."
+
+"My place is by you." For the second time that day there was a new note
+in Augustine's voice. It was as if, clearly and definitely, for the
+first time, he was feeling something and seeing something and as if,
+though very resolutely keeping from her what he felt, he was, when
+pushed to it, as resolutely determined to let her see what he saw.
+
+"By me, dear," she said faintly. "What do you mean?"
+
+"She ought to have asked you to dinner, too."
+
+"But I would not have accepted; I don't go out. She knows that. She
+knows that I am a real recluse."
+
+"She ought to have asked knowing that you would not accept."
+
+"Augustine dear, you are foolish. You know nothing of these little
+feminine social compacts."
+
+"Are they only feminine?"
+
+"Only. Mere crystallised conveniences. It would be absurd for Mrs. Grey,
+after all these years, to ask me in order to be refused."
+
+There was a moment's silence and then Augustine said: "Did she ever ask
+you?"
+
+The candles had been lighted and the lamp brought in, making the corners
+of the room look darker. There was only a vague radiance about the
+chimney piece, the little candle-flames doubled in the mirror, and the
+bright circle where Lady Channice and her son sat on either side of the
+large, round table. The lamp had a green shade, and their faces were in
+shadow. Augustine had turned away his eyes.
+
+And now a strange and painful thing happened, stranger and more painful
+than he could have foreseen; for his mother did not answer him. The
+silence grew long and she did not speak. Augustine looked at her at last
+and saw that she was gazing at him, and, it seemed to him, with helpless
+fear. His own eyes did not echo it; anger, rather, rose in them, cold
+fierceness, against himself, it was apparent, as well as against the
+world that he suspected. He was not impulsive; he was not demonstrative;
+but he got up and put his hand on her shoulder. "I don't mean to torment
+you, like the rest of them," he said. "I don't mean to ask--and be
+refused. Forget what I said. It's only--only--that it infuriates me.--To
+see them all.--And you!--cut off, wasted, in prison here. I've been
+seeing it for a long time; I won't speak of it again. I know that there
+are sad things in your life. All I want to say, all I wanted to say
+was--that I'm with you, and against them."
+
+She sat, her face in shadow beneath him, her hands tightly clasped
+together and pressed down upon her lap. And, in a faltering voice that
+strove in vain for firmness, she said: "Dear Augustine--thank you. I
+know you wouldn't want to hurt me. You see, when I came here to live, I
+had parted--from your father, and I wanted to be quite alone; I wanted
+to see no one. And they felt that: they felt that I wouldn't lead the
+usual life. So it grew most naturally. Don't be angry with people, or
+with the world. That would warp you, from the beginning. It's a good
+world, Augustine. I've found it so. It is sad, but there is such
+beauty.--I'm not cut off, or wasted;--I'm not in prison.--How can you
+say it, dear, of me, who have you--and _him_."
+
+Augustine's hand rested on her shoulder for some moments more. Lifting
+it he stood looking before him. "I'm not going to quarrel with the
+world," he then said. "I know what I like in it."
+
+"Dear--thanks--" she murmured.
+
+Augustine picked up his book again. "I'll study for a bit, now, in my
+room," he said. "Will you rest before dinner? Do; I shall feel more easy
+in my conscience if I inflict Hegel on you afterwards."
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Lady Channice did not go and rest. She sat on in the shadowy room gazing
+before her, her hands still clasped, her face wearing still its look of
+fear. For twenty years she had not known what it was to be without fear.
+It had become as much a part of her life as the air she breathed and any
+peace or gladness had blossomed for her only in that air: sometimes she
+was almost unconscious of it. This afternoon she had become conscious.
+It was as if the air were heavy and oppressive and as if she breathed
+with difficulty. And sitting there she asked herself if the time was
+coming when she must tell Augustine.
+
+What she might have to tell was a story that seemed strangely
+disproportionate: it was the story of her life; but all of it that
+mattered, all of it that made the story, was pressed into one year long
+ago. Before that year was sunny, uneventful girlhood, after it grey,
+uneventful womanhood; the incident, the drama, was all knotted into one
+year, and it seemed to belong to herself no longer; she seemed a
+spectator, looking back in wonder at the disaster of another woman's
+life. A long flat road stretched out behind her; she had journeyed over
+it for years; and on the far horizon she saw, if she looked back, the
+smoke and flames of a burning city--miles and miles away.
+
+Amabel Freer was the daughter of a rural Dean, a scholarly, sceptical
+man. The forms of religion were his without its heart; its heart was her
+mother's, who was saintly and whose orthodoxy was the vaguest symbolic
+system. From her father Amabel had the scholar's love of beauty in
+thought, from her mother the love of beauty in life; but her loves had
+been dreamy: she had thought and lived little. Happy compliance, happy
+confidence, a dawn-like sense of sweetness and purity, had filled her
+girlhood.
+
+When she was sixteen her father had died, and her mother in the
+following year. Amabel and her brother Bertram were well dowered.
+Bertram was in the Foreign Office, neither saintly nor scholarly, like
+his parents, nor undeveloped like his young sister. He was a capable,
+conventional man of the world, sure of himself and rather suspicious of
+others. Amabel imagined him a model of all that was good and lovely. The
+sudden bereavement of her youth bewildered and overwhelmed her; her
+capacity for dependent, self-devoting love sought for an object and
+lavished itself upon her brother. She went to live with an aunt, her
+father's sister, and when she was eighteen her aunt brought her to
+London, a tall, heavy and rather clumsy country girl, arrested rather
+than developed by grief. Her aunt was a world-worn, harassed woman; she
+had married off her four daughters with difficulty and felt the need of
+a change of occupation; but she accepted as a matter of course the duty
+of marrying off Amabel. That task accomplished she would go to bed every
+night at half past ten and devote her days to collecting coins and
+enamels. Her respite came far more quickly than she could have imagined
+possible. Amabel had promise of great beauty, but two or three years
+were needed to fulfill it; Mrs. Compton could but be surprised when Sir
+Hugh Channice, an older colleague of Bertram's, a fashionable and
+charming man, asked for the hand of her unformed young charge. Sir Hugh
+was fourteen years Amabel's senior and her very guilelessness no doubt
+attracted him; then there was the money; he was not well off and he
+lived a life rather hazardously full. Still, Mrs. Compton could hardly
+believe in her good-fortune. Amabel accepted her own very simply; her
+compliance and confidence were even deeper than before. Sir Hugh was the
+most graceful of lovers. His quizzical tenderness reminded her of her
+father, his quasi-paternal courtship emphasized her instinctive trust in
+the beauty and goodness of life.
+
+So at eighteen she was married at St. George's Hanover Square and wore a
+wonderful long satin train and her mothers lace veil and her mother's
+pearls around her neck and hair. A bridesmaid had said that pearls were
+unlucky, but Mrs. Compton tersely answered:--"Not if they are such good
+ones as these." Amabel had bowed her head to the pearls, seeing them,
+with the train, and the veil, and her own snowy figure, vaguely, still
+in the dreamlike haze. Memories of her father and mother, and of the
+dear deanery among its meadows, floating fragments of the poetry her
+father had loved, of the prayers her mother had taught her in childhood,
+hovered in her mind. She seemed to see the primrose woods where she had
+wandered, and to hear the sound of brooks and birds in Spring. A vague
+smile was on her lips. She thought of Sir Hugh as of a radiance lighting
+all. She was the happiest of girls.
+
+Shortly after her marriage, all the radiance, all the haze was gone. It
+had been difficult then to know why. Now, as she looked back, she
+thought that she could understand.
+
+She had been curiously young, curiously inexperienced. She had expected
+life to go on as dawn for ever. Everyday light had filled her with
+bleakness and disillusion. She had had childish fancies; that her
+husband did not really love her; that she counted for nothing in his
+life. Yet Sir Hugh had never changed, except that he very seldom made
+love to her and that she saw less of him than during their engagement.
+Sir Hugh was still quizzically tender, still all grace, all deference,
+when he was there. And what wonder that he was little there; he had a
+wide life; he was a brilliant man; she was a stupid young girl; in
+looking back, no longer young, no longer stupid, Lady Channice thought
+that she could see it all quite clearly. She had seemed to him a sweet,
+good girl, and he cared for her and wanted a wife. He had hoped that by
+degrees she would grow into a wise and capable woman, fit to help and
+ornament his life. But she had not been wise or capable. She had been
+lonely and unhappy, and that wide life of his had wearied and confused
+her; the silence, the watching attitude of the girl were inadequate to
+her married state, and yet she had nothing else to meet it with. She had
+never before felt her youth and inexperience as oppressive, but they
+oppressed her now. She had nothing to ask of the world and nothing to
+give to it. What she did ask of life was not given to her, what she had
+to give was not wanted. She was very unhappy.
+
+Yet people were kind. In especial Lady Elliston was kind, the loveliest,
+most sheltering, most understanding of all her guests or hostesses. Lady
+Elliston and her cheerful, jocose husband, were Sir Hugh's nearest
+friends and they took her in and made much of her. And one day when, in
+a fit of silly wretchedness, Lady Elliston found her crying, she had put
+her arms around her and kissed her and begged to know her grief and to
+comfort it. Even thus taken by surprise, and even to one so kind, Amabel
+could not tell that grief: deep in her was a reticence, a sense of
+values austere and immaculate: she could not discuss her husband, even
+with the kindest of friends. And she had nothing to tell, really, but of
+herself, her own helplessness and deficiency. Yet, without her telling,
+for all her wish that no one should guess, Lady Elliston did guess. Her
+comfort had such wise meaning in it. She was ten years older than
+Amabel. She knew all about the world; she knew all about girls and their
+husbands. Amabel was only a girl, and that was the trouble, she seemed
+to say. When she grew older she would see that it would come right;
+husbands were always so; the wider life reached by marriage would atone
+in many ways. And Lady Elliston, all with sweetest discretion, had asked
+gentle questions. Some of them Amabel had not understood; some she had.
+She remembered now that her own silence or dull negation might have
+seemed very rude and ungrateful; yet Lady Elliston had taken no offence.
+All her memories of Lady Elliston were of this tact and sweetness, this
+penetrating, tentative tact and sweetness that sought to understand and
+help and that drew back, unflurried and unprotesting before rebuff,
+ready to emerge again at any hint of need,--of these, and of her great
+beauty, the light of her large clear eyes, the whiteness of her throat,
+the glitter of diamonds about and above: for it was always in her most
+festal aspect, at night, under chandeliers and in ball-rooms, that she
+best remembered her. Amabel knew, with the deep, instinctive sense of
+values which was part of her inheritance and hardly, at that time, part
+of her thought, that her mother would not have liked Lady Elliston,
+would have thought her worldly; yet, and this showed that Amabel was
+developing, she had already learned that worldliness was compatible with
+many things that her mother would have excluded from it; she could see
+Lady Elliston with her own and with her mother's eyes, and it was
+puzzling, part of the pain of growth, to feel that her own was already
+the wider vision.
+
+Soon after that the real story came. The city began to burn and smoke
+and flames to blind and scorch her.
+
+It was at Lady Elliston's country house that Amabel first met Paul
+Quentin. He was a daring young novelist who was being made much of
+during those years; for at that still somewhat guileless time to be
+daring had been to be original. His books had power and beauty, and he
+had power and beauty, fierce, dreaming eyes and an intuitive, sudden
+smile. Under his aspect of careless artist, his head was a little turned
+by his worldly success, by great country-houses and flattering great
+ladies; he did not take the world as indifferently as he seemed to.
+Success edged his self-confidence with a reckless assurance. He was an
+ardent student of Nietzsche, at a time when that, too, was to be
+original. Amabel met this young man constantly at the dances and country
+parties of a season. And, suddenly, the world changed. It was not dawn
+and it was not daylight; it was a wild and beautiful illumination like
+torches at night. She knew herself loved and her own being became
+precious and enchanting to her. The presence of the man who loved her
+filled her with rapture and fear. Their recognition was swift. He told
+her things about herself that she had never dreamed of and as he told
+them she felt them to be true.
+
+To other people Paul Quentin did not speak much of Lady Channice. He
+early saw that he would need to be discreet. One day at Lady Elliston's
+her beauty was in question and someone said that she was too pale and
+too impassive; and at that Quentin, smiling a little fiercely, remarked
+that she was as pale as a cowslip and as impassive as a young Madonna;
+the words pictured her; her fresh Spring-like quality, and the peace, as
+of some noble power not yet roused.
+
+In looking back, it was strange and terrible to Lady Channice to see how
+little she had really known this man. Their meetings, their talks
+together, were like the torchlight that flashed and wavered and only
+fitfully revealed. From the first she had listened, had assented, to
+everything he said, hanging upon his words and his looks and living
+afterward in the memory of them. And in memory their significance seemed
+so to grow that when they next met they found themselves far nearer than
+the words had left them.
+
+All her young reserves and dignities had been penetrated and dissolved.
+It was always themselves he talked of, but, from that centre, he waved
+the torch about a transformed earth and showed her a world of thought
+and of art that she had never seen before. No murmur of it had reached
+the deanery; to her husband and the people he lived among it was a mere
+spectacle; Quentin made that bright, ardent world real to her, and
+serious. He gave her books to read; he took her to hear music; he showed
+her the pictures, the statues, the gems and porcelains that she had
+before accepted as part of the background of life hardly seeing them.
+From being the background of life they became, in a sense, suddenly its
+object. But not their object--not his and hers,--though they talked of
+them, looked, listened and understood. To Quentin and Amabel this beauty
+was still background, and in the centre, at the core of things, were
+their two selves and the ecstasy of feeling that exalted and terrified.
+All else in life became shackles. It was hardly shock, it was more like
+some immense relief, when, in each other's arms, the words of love, so
+long implied, were spoken. He said that she must come with him; that she
+must leave it all and come. She fought against herself and against him
+in refusing, grasping at pale memories of duty, honour, self-sacrifice;
+he knew too well the inner treachery that denied her words. But, looking
+back, trying not to flinch before the scorching memory, she did not know
+how he had won her. The dreadful jostle of opportune circumstance; her
+husband's absence, her brother's;--the chance pause in the empty London
+house between country visits;--Paul Quentin following, finding her
+there; the hot, dusty, enervating July day, all seemed to have pushed
+her to the act of madness and made of it a willess yielding rather than
+a decision. For she had yielded; she had left her husband's house and
+gone with him.
+
+They went abroad at once, to France, to the forest of Fontainebleau. How
+she hated ever after the sound of the lovely syllables, hated the memory
+of the rocks and woods, the green shadows and the golden lights where
+she had walked with him and known horror and despair deepening in her
+heart with every day. She judged herself, not him, in looking back; even
+then it had been herself she had judged. Though unwilling, she had been
+as much tempted by herself as by him; he had had to break down barriers,
+but though they were the barriers of her very soul, her longing heart
+had pressed, had beaten against them, crying out for deliverance. She
+did not judge him, but, alone with him in the forest, alone with him in
+the bland, sunny hotel, alone with him through the long nights when she
+lay awake and wondered, in a stupor of despair, she saw that he was
+different. So different; there was the horror. She was the sinner; not
+he. He belonged to the bright, ardent life, the life without social bond
+or scruple, the life of sunny, tolerant hotels and pagan forests; but
+she did not belong to it. The things that had seemed external things,
+barriers and shackles, were the realest things, were in fact the inner
+things, were her very self. In yielding to her heart she had destroyed
+herself, there was no life to be lived henceforth with this man, for
+there was no self left to live it with. She saw that she had cut herself
+off from her future as well as from her past. The sacred past judged her
+and the future was dead. Years of experience concentrated themselves
+into that lawless week. She saw that laws were not outside things; that
+they were one's very self at its wisest. She saw that if laws were to be
+broken it could only be by a self wiser than the self that had made the
+law. And the self that had fled with Paul Quentin was only a passionate,
+blinded fragment, a heart without a brain, a fragment judged and
+rejected by the whole.
+
+To both lovers the week was one of bitter disillusion, though for
+Quentin no such despair was possible. For him it was an attempt at joy
+and beauty that had failed. This dulled, drugged looking girl was not
+the radiant woman he had hoped to find. Vain and sensitive as he was, he
+felt, almost immediately, that he had lost his charm for her; that she
+had ceased to love him. That was the ugly, the humiliating side of the
+truth, the side that so filled Amabel Channice's soul with sickness as
+she looked back at it. She had ceased to love him, almost at once.
+
+And it was not guilt only, and fear, that had risen between them and
+separated them; there were other, smaller, subtler reasons, little
+snakes that hissed in her memory. He was different from her in other
+ways.
+
+She hardly saw that one of the ways was that of breeding; but she felt
+that he jarred upon her constantly, in their intimacy, their helpless,
+dreadful intimacy. In contrast, the thought of her husband had been with
+her, burningly. She did not say to herself, for she did not know it, her
+experience of life was too narrow to give her the knowledge,--that her
+husband was a gentleman and her lover, a man of genius though he were,
+was not; but she compared them, incessantly, when Quentin's words and
+actions, his instinctive judgments of men and things, made her shrink
+and flush. He was so clever, cleverer far than Hugh; but he did not
+know, as Sir Hugh would have known, what the slight things were that
+would make her shrink. He took little liberties when he should have been
+reticent and he was humble when he should have been assured. For he was
+often humble; he was, oddly, pathetically--and the pity for him added to
+the sickness--afraid of her and then, because he was afraid, he grew
+angry with her.
+
+He was clever; but there are some things cleverness cannot reach. What
+he failed to feel by instinct, he tried to scorn. It was not the
+patrician scorn, stupid yet not ignoble, for something hardly seen,
+hardly judged, merely felt as dull and insignificant; it was the
+corroding plebeian scorn for a suspected superiority.
+
+He quarrelled with her, and she sat silent, knowing that her silence,
+her passivity, was an affront the more, but helpless, having no word to
+say. What could she say?--I do love you: I am wretched: utterly wretched
+and utterly destroyed.--That was all there was to say. So she sat, dully
+listening, as if drugged. And she only winced when he so far forgot
+himself as to cry out that it was her silly pride of blood, the
+aristocratic illusion, that had infected her; she belonged to the caste
+that could not think and that picked up the artist and thinker to amuse
+and fill its vacancy.--"We may be lovers, or we may be performing
+poodles, but we are never equals," he had cried. It was for him Amabel
+had winced, knowing, without raising her eyes to see it, how his face
+would burn with humiliation for having so betrayed his consciousness of
+difference. Nothing that he could say could hurt her for herself.
+
+But there was worse to bear: after the violence of his anger came the
+violence of his love. She had borne at first, dully, like the slave she
+felt herself; for she had sold herself to him, given herself over bound
+hand and foot. But now it became intolerable. She could not
+protest,--what was there to protest against, or to appeal to?--but she
+could fly. The thought of flight rose in her after the torpor of despair
+and, with its sense of wings, it felt almost like a joy. She could fly
+back, back, to be scourged and purified, and then--oh far away she saw
+it now--was something beyond despair; life once more; life hidden,
+crippled, but life. A prayer rose like a sob with the thought.
+
+So one night in London her brother Bertram, coming back late to his
+rooms, found her sitting there.
+
+Bertram was hard, but not unkind. The sight of her white, fixed face
+touched him. He did not upbraid her, though for the past week he had
+rehearsed the bitterest of upbraidings. He even spoke soothingly to her
+when, speechless, she broke into wild sobs. "There, Amabel, there.--Yes,
+it's a frightful mess you've made of things.--When I think of
+mother!--Well, I'll say nothing now. You have come back; that is
+something. You _have_ left him, Amabel?"
+
+She nodded, her face hidden.
+
+"The brute, the scoundrel," said Bertram, at which she moaned a
+negation.--"You don't still care about him?--Well, I won't question you
+now.--Perhaps it's not so desperate. Hugh has been very good about it;
+he's helped me to keep the thing hushed up until we could make sure. I
+hope we've succeeded; I hope so indeed. Hugh will see you soon, I know;
+and it can be patched up, no doubt, after a fashion."
+
+But at this Amabel cried:--"I can't.--I can't.--Oh--take me away.--Let
+me hide until he divorces me. I can't see him."
+
+"Divorces you?" Bertram's voice was sharp. "Have you disgraced
+publicly--you and us? It's not you I'm thinking of so much as the family
+name, father and mother. Hugh won't divorce you; he can't; he shan't.
+After all you're a mere child and he didn't look after you." But this
+was said rather in threat to Hugh than in leniency to Amabel.
+
+She lay back in the chair, helpless, almost lifeless: let them do with
+her what they would.
+
+Bertram said that she should spend the night there and that he would see
+Hugh in the morning. And:--"No; you needn't see him yet, if you feel you
+can't. It may be arranged without that. Hugh will understand." And this
+was the first ray of the light that was to grow and grow. Hugh would
+understand.
+
+She did not see him for two years.
+
+All that had happened after her return to Bertram was a blur now. There
+were hasty talks, Bertram defining for her her future position, one of
+dignity it must be--he insisted on that; Hugh perfectly understood her
+wish for the present, quite fell in with it; but, eventually, she must
+take her place in her husband's home again. Even Bertram, intent as he
+was on the family honour, could not force the unwilling wife upon the
+merely magnanimous husband.
+
+Her husband's magnanimity was the radiance that grew for Amabel during
+these black days, the days of hasty talks and of her journey down to
+Charlock House.
+
+She had never seen Charlock House before; Sir Hugh had spoken of the
+family seat as "a dismal hole," but, on that hot July evening of her
+arrival, it looked peaceful to her, a dark haven of refuge, like the
+promise of sleep after nightmare.
+
+Mrs. Bray stood in the door, a grim but not a hostile warder: Amabel
+felt anyone who was not hostile to be almost kind.
+
+The house had been hastily prepared for her, dining-room and
+drawing-room and the large bedroom upstairs, having the same outlook
+over the lawn, the sycamores, the flat meadows. She could see herself
+standing there now, looking about her at the bedroom where gaiety and
+gauntness were oddly mingled in the faded carnations and birds of
+paradise on the chintzes and in the vastness of the four-poster, the
+towering wardrobes, the capacious, creaking chairs and sofas. Everything
+was very clean and old; the dressing-table was stiffly skirted in darned
+muslins and near the pin-cushion stood a small, tight nosegay, Mrs.
+Bray's cautious welcome to this ambiguous mistress.
+
+"A comfortable old place, isn't it," Bertram had said, looking about,
+too; "You'll soon get well and strong here, Amabel." This, Amabel knew,
+was said for the benefit of Mrs. Bray who stood, non-committal and
+observant just inside the door. She knew, too, that Bertram was
+depressed by the gauntness and gaiety of the bedroom and even more
+depressed by the maroon leather furniture and the cases of stuffed birds
+below, and that he was at once glad to get away from Charlock House and
+sorry for her that she should have to be left there, alone with Mrs.
+Bray. But to Amabel it was a dream after a nightmare. A strange,
+desolate dream, all through those sultry summer days; but a dream shot
+through with radiance in the thought of the magnanimity that had spared
+and saved her.
+
+And with the coming of the final horror, came the final revelation of
+this radiance. She had been at Charlock House for many weeks, and it was
+mid-Autumn, when that horror came. She knew that she was to have a child
+and that it could not be her husband's child.
+
+With the knowledge her mind seemed unmoored at last; it wavered and
+swung in a nightmare blackness deeper than any she had known. In her
+physical prostration and mental disarray the thought of suicide was with
+her. How face Bertram now,--Bertram with his tenacious hopes? How face
+her husband--ever--ever--in the far future? Her disgrace lived and she
+was to see it. But, in the swinging chaos, it was that thought that kept
+her from frenzy; the thought that it did live; that its life claimed
+her; that to it she must atone. She did not love this child that was to
+come; she dreaded it; yet the dread was sacred, a burden that she must
+bear for its unhappy sake. What did she not owe to it--unfortunate
+one--of atonement and devotion?
+
+She gathered all her courage, armed her physical weakness, her wandering
+mind, to summon Bertram and to tell him.
+
+She told him in the long drawing-room on a sultry September day, leaning
+her arms on the table by which she sat and covering her face.
+
+Bertram said nothing for a long time. He was still boyish enough to feel
+any such announcement as embarrassing; and that it should be told him
+now, in such circumstances, by his sister, by Amabel, was nearly
+incredible. How associate such savage natural facts, lawless and
+unappeasable, with that young figure, dressed in its trousseau white
+muslin and with its crown of innocent gold. It made her suddenly seem
+older than himself and at once more piteous and more sinister. For a
+moment, after the sheer stupor, he was horribly angry with her; then
+came dismay at his own cruelty.
+
+"This does change things, Amabel," he said at last.
+
+"Yes," she answered from behind her hands.
+
+"I don't know how Hugh will take it," said Bertram.
+
+"He must divorce me now," she said. "It can be done very quietly, can't
+it. And I have money. I can go away, somewhere, out of England--I've
+thought of America--or New Zealand--some distant country where I shall
+never be heard of; I can bring up the child there."
+
+Bertram stared at her. She sat at the table, her hands before her face,
+in the light, girlish dress that hung loosely about her. She was fragile
+and wasted. Her voice seemed dead. And he wondered at the unhappy
+creature's courage.
+
+"Divorce!" he then said violently; "No; he can't do that;--and he had
+forgiven already; I don't know how the law stands; but of course you
+won't go away. What an idea; you might as well kill yourself outright.
+It's only--. I don't know how the law stands. I don't know what Hugh
+will say."
+
+Bertram walked up and down biting his nails. He stopped presently before
+a window, his back turned to his sister, and, flushing over the words,
+he said: "You are sure--you are quite sure, Amabel, that it isn't Hugh's
+child. You are such a girl. You can know nothing.--I mean--it may be a
+mistake."
+
+"I am quite sure," the unmoved voice answered him. "I do know."
+
+Bertram again stood silent. "Well," he said at last, turning to her
+though he did not look at her, "all I can do is to see how Hugh takes
+it. You know, Amabel, that you can count on me. I'll see after you, and
+after the child. Hugh may, of course, insist on your parting from it;
+that will probably be the condition he'll make;--naturally. In that case
+I'll take you abroad soon. It can be got through, I suppose, without
+anybody knowing; assumed names; some Swiss or Italian village--" Bertram
+muttered, rather to himself than to her. "Good God, what an odious
+business!--But, as you say, we have money; that simplifies everything.
+You mustn't worry about the child. I will see that it is put into safe
+hands and I'll keep an eye on its future--." He stopped, for his
+sister's hands had fallen. She was gazing at him, still dully--for it
+seemed that nothing could strike any excitement from her--but with a
+curious look, a look that again made him feel as if she were much older
+than he.
+
+"Never," she said.
+
+"Never what?" Bertram asked. "You mean you won't part from the child?"
+
+"Never; never," she repeated.
+
+"But Amabel," with cold patience he urged; "if Hugh insists.--My poor
+girl, you have made your bed and you must lie on it. You can't expect
+your husband to give this child--this illegitimate child--his name. You
+can't expect him to accept it as his child."
+
+"No; I don't expect it," she said.
+
+"Well, what then? What's your alternative?"
+
+"I must go away with the child."
+
+"I tell you, Amabel, it's impossible," Bertram in his painful anxiety
+spoke with irritation. "You've got to consider our name--my name, my
+position, and your husband's. Heaven knows I want to be kind to you--do
+all I can for you; I've not once reproached you, have I? But you must be
+reasonable. Some things you must accept as your punishment. Unless Hugh
+is the most fantastically generous of men you'll have to part from the
+child."
+
+She sat silent.
+
+"You do consent to that?" Bertram insisted.
+
+She looked before her with that dull, that stupid look. "No," she
+replied.
+
+Bertram's patience gave way, "You are mad," he said. "Have you no
+consideration for me--for us? You behave like this--incredibly, in my
+mother's daughter--never a girl better brought up; you go off with
+that--that bounder;--you stay with him for a week--good
+heavens!--there'd have been more dignity if you'd stuck to him;--you
+chuck him, in one week, and then you come back and expect us to do as
+you think fit, to let you disappear and everyone know that you've
+betrayed your husband and had a child by another man. It's mad, I tell
+you, and it's impossible, and you've got to submit. Do you hear? Will
+you answer me, I say? Will you promise that if Hugh won't consent to
+fathering the child--won't consent to giving it his name--won't consent
+to having it, as his heir, disinherit the lawful children he may have by
+you--good heavens, I wonder if you realize what you are asking!--will
+you promise, I say, if he doesn't consent, to part from the child?"
+
+She did look rather mad, her brother thought, and he remembered, with
+discomfort, that women, at such times, did sometimes lose their reason.
+Her eyes with their dead gaze nearly frightened him, when, after all his
+violence, his entreaty, his abuse of her, she only, in an unchanged
+voice, said "No."
+
+He felt then the uselessness of protestation or threat; she must be
+treated as if she were mad; humored, cajoled. He was silent for a little
+while, walking up and down. "Well, I'll say no more, then. Forgive me
+for my harshness," he said. "You give me a great deal to bear, Amabel;
+but I'll say nothing now. I have your word, at all events," he looked
+sharply at her as the sudden suspicion crossed him, "I have your word
+that you'll stay quietly here--until you hear from me what Hugh says?
+You promise me that?"
+
+"Yes," his sister answered. He gave a sigh for the sorry relief.
+
+That night Amabel's mind wandered wildly. She heard herself, in the
+lonely room where she lay, calling out meaningless things. She tried to
+control the horror of fear that rose in her and peopled the room with
+phantoms; but the fear ran curdling in her veins and flowed about her,
+shaping itself in forms of misery and disaster. "No--no--poor
+child.--Oh--don't--don't.--I will come to you. I am your mother.--They
+can't take you from me."--this was the most frequent cry.
+
+The poor child hovered, wailing, delivered over to vague, unseen sorrow,
+and, though a tiny infant, it seemed to be Paul Quentin, too, in some
+dreadful plight, appealing to her in the name of their dead love to save
+him. She did not love him; she did not love the child; but her heart
+seemed broken with impotent pity.
+
+In the intervals of nightmare she could look, furtively, fixedly, about
+the room. The moon was bright outside, and through the curtains a pallid
+light showed the menacing forms of the two great wardrobes. The four
+posts of her bed seemed like the pillars of some vast, alien temple, and
+the canopy, far above her, floated like a threatening cloud. Opposite
+her bed, above the chimney-piece, was a deeply glimmering mirror: if she
+were to raise herself she would see her own white reflection, rising,
+ghastly.--She hid her face on her pillows and sank again into the abyss.
+
+Next morning she could not get up. Her pulses were beating at fever
+speed; but, with the daylight, her mind was clearer. She could summon
+her quiet look when Mrs. Bray came in to ask her mournfully how she was.
+And a little later a telegram came, from Bertram.
+
+Her trembling hands could hardly open it. She read the words. "All is
+well." Mrs. Bray stood beside her bed. She meant to keep that quiet look
+for Mrs. Bray; but she fainted. Mrs. Bray, while she lay tumbled among
+the pillows, and before lifting her, read the message hastily.
+
+From the night of torment and the shock of joy, Amabel brought an
+extreme susceptibility to emotion that showed itself through all her
+life in a trembling of her hands and frame when any stress of feeling
+was laid upon her.
+
+After that torment and that shock she saw Bertram once, and only once,
+again;--ah, strange and sad in her memory that final meeting of their
+lives, though this miraculous news was the theme of it. She was still in
+bed when he came, the bed she did not leave for months, and, though so
+weak and dizzy, she understood all that he told her, knew the one
+supreme fact of her husband's goodness. He sent her word that she was to
+be troubled about nothing; she was to take everything easily and
+naturally. She should always have her child with her and it should bear
+his name. He would see after it like a father; it should never know that
+he was not its father. And, as soon as she would let him, he would come
+and see her--and it. Amabel, lying on her pillows, gazed and gazed: her
+eyes, in their shadowy hollows, were two dark wells of sacred wonder.
+Even Bertram felt something of the wonder of them. In his new gladness
+and relief, he was very kind to her. He came and kissed her. She seemed,
+once more, a person whom one could kiss. "Poor dear," he said, "you have
+had a lot to bear. You do look dreadfully ill. You must get well and
+strong, now, Amabel, and not worry any more, about anything. Everything
+is all right. We will call the child Augustine, if it's a boy, after
+mother's father you know, and Katherine, if it's a girl, after her
+mother: I feel, don't you, that we have no right to use their own names.
+But the further away ones seem right, now. Hugh is a trump, isn't he?
+And, I'm sure of it, Amabel, when time has passed a little, and you feel
+you can, he'll have you back; I do really believe it may be managed.
+This can all be explained. I'm saying that you are ill, a nervous
+breakdown, and are having a complete rest."
+
+She heard him dimly, feeling these words irrelevant. She knew that Hugh
+must never have her back; that she could never go back to Hugh; that her
+life henceforth was dedicated. And yet Bertram was kind, she felt that,
+though dimly feeling, too, that her old image of him had grown
+tarnished. But her mind was far from Bertram and the mitigations he
+offered. She was fixed on that radiant figure, her husband, her knight,
+who had stooped to her in her abasement, her agony, and had lifted her
+from dust and darkness to the air where she could breathe,--and bless
+him.
+
+"Tell him--I bless him,"--she said to Bertram. She could say nothing
+more. There were other memories of that day, too, but even more dim,
+more irrelevant. Bertram had brought papers for her to sign, saying: "I
+know you'll want to be very generous with Hugh now," and she had raised
+herself on her elbow to trace with the fingers that trembled the words
+he dictated to her.
+
+There was sorrow, indeed, to look back on after that. Poor Bertram died
+only a month later, struck down by an infectious illness. He was not to
+see or supervise the rebuilding of his sister's shattered life, and the
+anguish in her sorrow was the thought of all the pain that she had
+brought to his last months of life: but this sorrow, after the phantoms,
+the nightmares, was like the weeping of tears after a dreadful weeping
+of blood. Her tears fell as she lay there, propped on her pillows--for
+she was very ill--and looking out over the Autumn fields; she wept for
+poor Bertram and all the pain; life was sad. But life was good and
+beautiful. After the flames, the suffocation, it had brought her here,
+and it showed her that radiant figure, that goodness and beauty embodied
+in human form. And she had more to help her, for he wrote to her, a few
+delicately chosen words, hardly touching on their own case, his and
+hers, but about her brother's death and of how he felt for her in her
+bereavement, and of what a friend dear Bertram had been to himself.
+"Some day, dear Amabel, you must let me come and see you" it ended; and
+"Your affectionate husband."
+
+It was almost too wonderful to be borne. She had to close her eyes in
+thinking of it and to lie very still, holding the blessed letter in her
+hand and smiling faintly while she drew long soft breaths. He was always
+in her thoughts, her husband; more, far more, than her coming child. It
+was her husband who had made that coming a thing possible to look
+forward to with resignation; it was no longer the nightmare of desolate
+flights and hidings.
+
+And even after the child was born, after she had seen its strange little
+face, even then, though it was all her life, all her future, it held the
+second place in her heart. It was her life, but it was from her husband
+that the gift of life had come to her.
+
+She was a gentle, a solicitous, a devoted mother. She never looked at
+her baby without a sense of tears. Unfortunate one, was her thought, and
+the pulse of her life was the yearning to atone.
+
+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."
+
+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."
+
+Lady Elliston had gathered herself together though still, it was
+evident, bewildered. "I don't mean to blame Hugh so much. It was your
+fault, too, I suppose. You asked for the cloister, I know."
+
+"No; I didn't ask for it. I asked to be allowed to go away and hide
+myself. The cloister, too, was a gift,--like my name, my undishonoured
+child."
+
+"Dear, dear Amabel," said Lady Elliston, gazing at her, "how beautiful
+of you to be able to feel like that."
+
+"It isn't I who am beautiful"; Amabel's lips trembled a little now and
+her eyes filled suddenly with tears. Tears and trembling seemed to bring
+hardness rather than softening to her face; they were like a chill
+breeze, like an icy veil, and the face, with its sorrow, was like a
+winter's landscape.
+
+"He is so beautiful that he would never let anyone know or understand
+what I owe him: he would never know it himself: there is something
+simple and innocent about such men: they do beautiful things
+unconsciously. You know him well: you are far nearer him than I am: but
+you can't know what the beauty is, for you have never been helpless and
+disgraced and desperate nor needed anyone to lift you up. No one can
+know as I do the angel in my husband."
+
+Lady Elliston sat silent. She received Amabel's statements steadily yet
+with a little wincing, as though they had been bullets whistling past
+her head; they would not pierce, if one did not move; yet an involuntary
+compression of the lips and flutter of the eyelids revealed a rather
+rigid self-mastery. Only after the silence had grown long did she
+slightly stir, move her hand, turn her head with a deep, careful breath,
+and then say, almost timidly; "Then, he has lifted you up, Amabel?--You
+are happy, really happy, in your strange life?"
+
+Amabel looked down. The force of her vindicating ardour had passed from
+her. With the question the hunted, haunted present flooded in. Happy?
+Yesterday she might have answered "yes," so far away had the past
+seemed, so forgotten the fear in which she had learned to breathe. Today
+the past was with her and the fear pressed heavily upon her heart. She
+answered in a sombre voice: "With my past what woman could be happy. It
+blights everything."
+
+"Oh--but Amabel--" Lady Elliston breathed forth. She leaned forward,
+then moved back, withdrawing the hand impulsively put out.--"Why?--Why?--"
+she gently urged. "It is all over: all passed: all forgotten. Don't--ah
+don't let it blight anything."
+
+"Oh no," said Amabel, shaking her head. "It isn't over; it isn't
+forgotten; it never will be. Hugh cannot forget--though he has
+forgiven. And someday, I feel it, Augustine will know. Then I shall
+drink the cup of shame to the last drop."
+
+"Oh!--" said Lady Elliston, as if with impatience. She checked herself.
+"What can I say?--if you will think of yourself in this preposterous
+way.--As for Augustine, he does not know and how should he ever know?
+How could he, when no one in the world knows but you and I and Hugh."
+
+She paused at that, looking at Amabel's downcast face. "You notice what
+I say, Amabel?"
+
+"Yes; that isn't it. He will guess."
+
+"You are morbid, my poor child.--But do you notice nothing when I say
+that only we three know?"
+
+Amabel looked up. Lady Elliston met her eyes. "I came today to tell you,
+Amabel. I felt sure you did not know. There is no reason at all, now,
+why you should dread coming out into the world--with Augustine. You need
+fear no meetings. You did not know that he was dead."
+
+"He?"
+
+"Yes. He. Paul Quentin."
+
+Amabel, gazing at her, said nothing.
+
+"He died in Italy, last week. He was married, you know, quite happily;
+an ordinary sort of person; she had money; he rather let his work go.
+But they were happy; a large family; a villa on a hill somewhere;
+pictures, bric-a-brac and bohemian intellectualism. You knew of his
+marriage?"
+
+"Yes; I knew."
+
+The tears had risen to Lady Elliston's eyes before that stricken, ashen
+face; she looked away, murmuring: "I wanted to tell you, when we were
+alone. It might have come as such an ugly shock, if you were unprepared.
+But, now, there is no danger anymore. And you will come out, Amabel?"
+
+"No;--never.--It was never that."
+
+"But what was it then?"
+
+Amabel had risen and was looking around her blindly.
+
+"It was.--I have no place but here.--Forgive me--I must go. I can't talk
+any more."
+
+"Yes; go; do go and lie down." Lady Elliston, rising too, put an arm
+around her shoulders and took her hand. "I'll come again and see you. I
+am going up to town for a night or so on Tuesday, but I bring Peggy down
+here for the next week-end. I'll see you then.--Ah, here is Augustine,
+and tea. He will give me my tea and you must sleep off your headache.
+Your poor mother has a very bad headache, Augustine. I have tried her.
+Goodbye, dear, go and rest."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+An hour ago Augustine had found his mother in tears; now he found her
+beyond them. He gave her his arm, and, outside in the hall, prepared to
+mount the stairs with her; but, shaking her head, trying, with miserable
+unsuccess, to smile, she pointed him back to the drawing-room and to his
+duties of host.
+
+"Ah, she is very tired. She does not look well," said Lady Elliston. "I
+am glad to see that you take good care of her."
+
+"She is usually very well," said Augustine, standing over the tea-tray
+that had been put on the table between him and Lady Elliston. "Let's
+see: what do you have? Sugar? milk?"
+
+"No sugar; milk, please. It's such a great pleasure to me to meet your
+mother again."
+
+Augustine made no reply to this, handing her her cup and the plate of
+bread and butter.
+
+"She was one of the loveliest girls I have ever seen," Lady Elliston
+went on, helping herself. "She looked like a Madonna--and a
+cowslip.--And she looks like that more than ever." She had paused for a
+moment as an uncomfortable recollection came to her. It was Paul Quentin
+who had said that: at her house.
+
+"Yes," Augustine assented, pleased, "she does look like a cowslip; she
+is so pale and golden and tranquil. It's funny you should say so," he
+went on, "for I've often thought it; but with me it's an association of
+ideas, too. Those meadows over there, beyond our lawn, are full of
+cowslips in Spring and ever since I can remember we have picked them
+there together."
+
+"How sweet"; Lady Elliston was still a little confused, by her blunder,
+and by his words. "What a happy life you and your mother must have had,
+cloistered here. I've been telling your mother that it's like a
+cloister. I've been scolding her a little for shutting herself up in it.
+And now that I have this chance of talking to you I do very much want to
+say that I hope you will bring her out a little more."
+
+"Bring her out? Where?" Augustine inquired.
+
+"Into the world--the world she is so fitted to adorn. It's ridiculous
+this--this fad of hers," said Lady Elliston.
+
+"Is it a fad?" Augustine asked, but with at once a lightness and
+distance of manner.
+
+"Of course. And it is bad for anyone to be immured."
+
+"I don't think it has been bad for her. Perhaps this is more the world
+than you think."
+
+"I only mean bad in the sense of sad."
+
+"Isn't the world sad?"
+
+"What a strange young man you are. Do you really mean to say that you
+like to see your mother--your beautiful, lovely mother--imprisoned in
+this gloomy place and meeting nobody from one year's end to the other?"
+
+"I have said nothing at all about my likes," said Augustine, smiling.
+
+Lady Elliston gazed at him. He startled her almost as much as his mother
+had done. What a strange young man, indeed; what strange echoes of his
+father and mother in him. But she had to grope for the resemblances to
+Paul Quentin; they were there; she felt them; but they were difficult to
+see; while it was easy to see the resemblances to Amabel. His father was
+like a force, a fierceness in him, controlled and guided by an influence
+that was his mother. And where had he found, at nineteen, that
+assurance, an assurance without his father's vanity or his mother's
+selflessness? Paul Quentin had been assured because he was so absolutely
+sure of his own value; Amabel was assured because, in her own eyes, she
+was valueless; this young man seemed to be without self-reference or
+self-effacement; but he was quite self-assured. Had he some mental
+talisman by which he accurately gauged all values, his own included? He
+seemed at once so oddly above yet of the world. She pulled herself
+together to remember that he was, only, nineteen, and that she had had
+motives in coming, and that if these motives had been good they were now
+better.
+
+"You have said nothing; but I am going to ask you to say something"; she
+smiled back at him. "I am going to ask you to say that you will take me
+on trust. I am your friend and your mother's friend."
+
+"Since when, my mother's?" Augustine asked. His amiability of aspect
+remained constant.
+
+"Since twenty years."
+
+"Twenty years in which you have not seen your friend."
+
+"I know that that looks strange. But when one shuts oneself away into a
+cloister one shuts out friends."
+
+"Does one?"
+
+"You won't trust me?"
+
+"I don't know anything about you, except that you have made my mother
+ill and that you want something of me."
+
+"My dear young man I, at all events, know one thing about you very
+clearly, and that is that I trust you."
+
+"I want nothing of you," said Augustine, but he still smiled, so that
+his words did not seem discourteous.
+
+"Nothing? Really nothing? I am your mother's friend, and you want
+nothing of me? I have sought her out; I came today to see and
+understand; I have not made her ill; she was nearly crying when we came
+into the room, you and I, a little while ago. What I see and understand
+makes me sad and angry. And I believe that you, too, see and understand;
+I believe that you, too, are sad and angry. And I want to help you. I
+want you, when you come into the world, as you must, to bring your
+mother. I'll be waiting there for you both. I am a sort of
+fairy-godmother. I want to see justice done."
+
+"I suppose you mean that you are angry with my father and want to see
+justice done on him," said Augustine after a pause.
+
+Again Lady Elliston sat suddenly still, as if another, an unexpected
+bullet, had whizzed past her. "What makes you say that?" she asked after
+a moment.
+
+"What you have said and what you have seen. He had been making her cry,"
+said Augustine. He was still calm, but now, under the calm, she heard,
+like the thunder of the sea in caverns deep beneath a placid headland,
+the muffled sound of a hidden, a dark indignation.
+
+"Yes," she said, looking into his eyes; "that made me angry; and that he
+should take all her money from her, as I am sure he does, and leave her
+to live like this."
+
+Augustine's colour rose. He turned away his eyes and seemed to ponder.
+
+"I do want something of you, after all; the answer to one question," he
+said at last. "Is it because of him that she is cloistered here?"
+
+In a flash Lady Elliston had risen to her emergency, her opportunity.
+She was grave, she was ready, and she was very careful.
+
+"It was her own choice," she said.
+
+Augustine pondered again. He, too, was grave and careful She saw how,
+making use of her proffered help, he yet held her at a distance. "That
+does not answer my question," he said. "I will put it in another way. Is
+it because of some evil in his life that she is cloistered?"
+
+Lady Elliston sat before him in one of the high-backed chairs; the light
+was behind her: the delicate oval of her face maintained its steady
+attitude: in the twilit room Augustine could see her eyes fixed very
+strangely upon him. She, too, was perhaps pondering. When at last she
+spoke, she rose in speaking, as if her answer must put an end to their
+encounter, as if he must feel, as well as she, that after her answer
+there could be no further question.
+
+"Not altogether, for that," she said; "but, yes, in part it is because
+of what you would call an evil in his life that she is cloistered."
+
+Augustine walked with her to the door and down the stone passage
+outside, where a strip of faded carpet hardly kept one's feet from the
+cold. He was nearer to her in this curious moment of their parting than
+he had been at all. He liked Lady Elliston in her last response; it was
+not the wish to see justice wreaked that had made it; it was mere truth.
+
+When they had reached the hall door, he opened it for her and in the
+fading light he saw that she was very pale. The Grey's dog-cart was
+going slowly round and round the gravel drive. Lady Elliston did not
+look at him. She stood waiting for the groom to see her.
+
+"What you asked me was asked in confidence," she said; "and what I have
+told you is told in confidence."
+
+"It wasn't new to me; I had guessed it," said Augustine. "But your
+confirmation of what I guessed is in confidence."
+
+"I have been your father's life-long friend," said Lady Elliston; "He is
+not an evil man."
+
+"I understand. I don't misjudge him."
+
+"I don't want to see justice done on him," said Lady Elliston. The groom
+had seen her and the dog-cart, with a brisk rattle of wheels, drew up to
+the door. "It isn't a question of that; I only want to see justice done
+_for_ her."
+
+All through she had been steady; now she was sweet again. "I want to
+free her. I want you to free her. And--whenever you do--I shall be
+waiting to give her to the world again."
+
+They looked at each other now and Augustine could answer, with another
+smile; "You are the world, I suppose."
+
+"Yes; I am the world," she accepted. "The actual fairy-godmother, with a
+magic wand that can turn pumpkins into coaches and put Cinderellas into
+their proper places."
+
+Augustine had handed her up to her seat beside the groom. He tucked her
+rug about her. If he had laid aside anything to meet her on her own
+ground, he, too, had regained it now.
+
+"But does the world always know what _is_ the proper place?" was his
+final remark as she drove off.
+
+She did not know that she could have found an answer to it.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Amabel was sitting beside her window when her son came in and the face
+she turned on him was white and rigid.
+
+"My dear mother," said Augustine, coming up to her, "how pale you are."
+
+She had been sitting there for all that time, tearless, in a stupor of
+misery. Yes, she answered him, she was very tired.
+
+Augustine stood over her looking out of the window. "A little walk
+wouldn't do you good?" he asked.
+
+No, she answered, her head ached too badly.
+
+She could find nothing to say to him: the truth that lay so icily upon
+her heart was all that she could have said: "I am your guilty mother. I
+robbed you of your father. And your father is dead, unmourned, unloved,
+almost forgotten by me." For that was the poison in her misery, to know
+that for Paul Quentin she felt almost nothing. To hear that he had died
+was to hear that a ghost had died.
+
+What would Augustine say to her if the truth were spoken? It was now a
+looming horror between them. It shut her from him and it shut him away.
+
+"Oh, do come out," said Augustine after a moment: "the evening's so
+fine: it will do you good; and there's still a bit of sunset to be
+seen."
+
+She shook her head, looking away from him.
+
+"Is it really so bad as that?"
+
+"Yes; very bad."
+
+"Can't I do anything? Get you anything?"
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+"I'm so sorry," said Augustine, and, suddenly, but gravely,
+deliberately, he stooped and kissed her.
+
+"Oh--don't!--don't!" she gasped. She thrust him away, turning her face
+against the chair. "Don't: you must leave me.--I am so unhappy."
+
+The words sprang forth: she could not repress them, nor the gush of
+miserable tears.
+
+If Augustine was horrified he was silent. He stood leaning over her for
+a moment and then went out of the room.
+
+She lay fallen in her chair, weeping convulsively. The past was with
+her; it had seized her and, in her panic-stricken words, it had thrust
+her child away. What would happen now? What would Augustine say? What
+would he ask? If he said nothing and asked nothing, what would he think?
+
+She tried to gather her thoughts together, to pray for light and
+guidance; but, like a mob of blind men locked out from sanctuary, the
+poor, wild thoughts only fled about outside the church and fumbled at
+the church door. Her very soul seemed shut against her.
+
+She roused herself at last, mechanically telling herself that she must
+go through with it; she must dress and go down to dinner and she must
+find something to say to Augustine, something that would make what had
+happened to them less sinister and inexplicable.
+
+--Unless--it seemed like a mad cry raised by one of the blind men in the
+dark,--unless she told him all, confessed all; her guilt, her shame, the
+truths of her blighted life. She shuddered; she cowered as the cry came
+to her, covering her ears and shutting it out. It was mad, mad. She had
+not strength for such a task, and if that were weakness--oh, with a long
+breath she drew in the mitigation--if it were weakness, would it not be
+a cruel, a heartless strength that could blight her child's life too, in
+the name of truth. She must not listen to the cry. Yet strangely it had
+echoed in her, almost as if from within, not from without, the dark,
+deserted church; almost as if her soul, shut in there in the darkness,
+were crying out to her. She turned her mind from the sick fancy.
+
+Augustine met her at dinner. He was pale but he seemed composed. They
+spoke little. He said, in answer to her questioning, that he had quite
+liked Lady Elliston; yes, they had had a nice talk; she seemed very
+friendly; he should go and see her when he next went up to London.
+
+Amabel felt the crispness in his voice but, centered as she was in her
+own self-mastery, she could not guess at the degree of his.
+
+After dinner they went into the drawing-room, where the old, ugly lamp
+added its light to the candles on the mantel-piece.
+
+Augustine took his book and sat down at one side of the table. Amabel
+sat at the other. She, too, took a book and tried to read; a little time
+passed and then she found that her hands were trembling so much that she
+could not. She slid the book softly back upon the table, reaching out
+for her work-bag. She hoped Augustine had not seen, but, glancing up at
+him, she saw his eyes upon her.
+
+Augustine's eyes looked strange tonight. The dark rims around the iris
+seemed to have expanded. Suddenly she felt horribly afraid of him.
+
+They gazed at each other, and she forced herself to a trembling,
+meaningless smile. And when she smiled at him he sprang up and came to
+her. He leaned over her, and she shrank back into her chair, shutting
+her eyes.
+
+"You must tell me the truth," said Augustine. "I can't bear this. _He_
+has made you unhappy.--_He_ comes between us."
+
+She lay back in the darkness, hearing the incredible words.
+
+"He?--What do you mean?"
+
+"He is a bad man. And he makes you miserable. And you love him."
+
+She heard the nightmare: she could not look at it.
+
+"My husband bad? He is good, more good than you can guess. What do you
+mean by speaking so?"
+
+With closed eyes, shutting him out, she spoke, anger and terror in her
+voice.
+
+Augustine lifted himself and stood with his hands clenched looking at
+her.
+
+"You say that because you love him. You love him more than anything or
+anyone in the world."
+
+"I do. I love him more than anyone or anything in the world. How have
+you dared--in silence--in secret--to nourish these thoughts against the
+man who has given you all you have."
+
+"He hasn't given me all I have. You are everything in my life and he is
+nothing. He is selfish. He is sensual. He is stupid. He doesn't know
+what beauty or goodness is. I hate him," said Augustine.
+
+Her eyes at last opened on him. She grasped her chair and raised
+herself. Whose hands were these, desecrating her holy of holies. Her
+son's? Was it her son who spoke these words? An enemy stood before her.
+
+"Then you do not love me. If you hate him you do not love me,"--her
+anger had blotted out her fear, but she could find no other than these
+childish words and the tears ran down her face.
+
+"And if you love him you cannot love me," Augustine answered. His
+self-mastery was gone. It was a fierce, wild anger that stared back at
+her. His young face was convulsed and livid.
+
+"It is you who are bad to have such false, base thoughts!" his mother
+cried, and her eyes in their indignation, their horror, struck at him,
+accused him, thrust him forth. "You are cruel--and hard--and
+self-righteous.--You do not love me.--There is no tenderness in your
+heart!"--
+
+Augustine burst into tears. "There is no room in your heart for me!--"
+he gasped. He turned from her and rushed out of the room.
+
+       *     *     *     *     *
+
+A long time passed before she leaned forward in the chair where she had
+sat rigidly, rested her elbows on her knees, buried her face in her
+hands.
+
+Her heart ached and her mind was empty: that was all she knew. It had
+been too much. This torpor of sudden weakness was merciful. Now she
+would go to bed and sleep.
+
+It took her a long time to go upstairs; her head whirled, and if she had
+not clung to the baluster she would have fallen.
+
+In the passage above she paused outside Augustine's door and listened.
+She heard him move inside, walking to his window, to lean out into the
+night, probably, as was his wont. That was well. He, too, would sleep
+presently.
+
+In her room she said to her maid that she did not need her. It took her
+but a few minutes tonight to prepare for bed. She could not even braid
+her uncoiled hair. She tossed it, all loosened, above her head as she
+fell upon the pillow.
+
+She heard, for a little while, the dull thumping of her heart. Her
+breath was warm in a mesh of hair beneath her cheek; she was too sleepy
+to put it away. She was wakened next morning by the maid. Her curtains
+were drawn and a dull light from a rain-blotted world was in the room.
+
+The maid brought a note to her bedside. From Mr. Augustine, she said.
+
+Amabel raised herself to hold the sheet to the light and read:--
+
+"Dear mother," it said. "I think that I shall go and stay with Wallace
+for a week or so. I shall see you before I go up to Oxford. Try to
+forgive me for my violence last night. I am sorry to have added to your
+unhappiness. Your affectionate son--Augustine."
+
+Her mind was still empty. "Has Mr. Augustine gone?" she asked the maid.
+
+"Yes, ma'am; he left quite early, to catch the eight-forty train."
+
+"Ah, yes," said Amabel. She sank back on her pillow. "I will have my
+breakfast in bed. Tea, please, only, and toast."--Then, the long habit
+of self-discipline asserting itself, the necessity for keeping strength,
+if it were only to be spent in suffering:--"No, coffee, and an egg,
+too."
+
+She found, indeed, that she was very hungry; she had eaten nothing
+yesterday. After her bath and the brushing and braiding of her hair, it
+was pleasant to lie propped high on her pillows and to drink her hot
+coffee. The morning papers, too, were nice to look at, folded on her
+tray. She did not wish to read them; but they spoke of a firmly
+established order, sustaining her life and assuring her of ample pillows
+to lie on and hot coffee to drink, assuring her that bodily comforts
+were pleasant whatever else was painful. It was a childish, a still
+stupefied mood, she knew, but it supported her; an oasis of the
+familiar, the safe, in the midst of whirling, engulfing storms.
+
+It supported her through the hours when she lay, with closed eyes,
+listening to the pour and drip of the rain, when, finally deciding to
+get up, she rose and dressed very carefully, taking all her time.
+
+Below, in the drawing-room, when she entered, it was very dark. The fire
+was unlit, the bowls of roses were faded; and sudden, childish tears
+filled her eyes at the desolateness. On such a day as this Augustine
+would have seen that the fire was burning, awaiting her. She found
+matches and lighted it herself and the reluctantly creeping brightness
+made the day feel the drearier; it took a long time even to warm her
+foot as she stood before it, leaning her arm on the mantel-piece.
+
+It was Saturday; she should not see her girls today; there was relief in
+that, for she did not think that she could have found anything to say to
+them this morning.
+
+Looking at the roses again, she felt vexed with the maid for having left
+them there in their melancholy. She rang and spoke to her almost sharply
+telling her to take them away, and when she had gone felt the tears rise
+with surprise and compunction for the sharpness.
+
+There would be no fresh flowers in the room today, it was raining too
+hard. If Augustine had been here he would have gone out and found her
+some wet branches of beech or sycamore to put in the vases: he knew how
+she disliked a flowerless, leafless room, a dislike he shared.
+
+How the rain beat down. She stood looking out of the window at the
+sodden earth, the blotted shapes of the trees. Beyond the nearest
+meadows it was like a grey sheet drawn down, confusing earth and sky and
+shutting vision into an islet.
+
+She hoped that Augustine had taken his mackintosh. He was very forgetful
+about such things. She went out to look into the bleak, stone hall hung
+with old hunting prints that were dimmed and spotted with age and damp.
+Yes, it was gone from its place, and his ulster, too. It had been a
+considered, not a hasty departure. A tweed cloak that he often wore on
+their walks hung there still and, vaguely, as though she sought
+something, she turned it, looked at it, put her hands into the worn,
+capacious pockets. All were empty except one where she found some
+withered gorse flowers. Augustine was fond of stripping off the golden
+blossoms as they passed a bush, of putting his nose into the handful of
+fragrance, and then holding it out for her to smell it, too:--"Is it
+apricots, or is it peaches?" she could hear him say.
+
+She went back into the drawing-room holding the withered flowers. Their
+fragrance was all gone, but she did not like to burn them. She held them
+and bent her face to them as she stood again looking out. He would by
+now have reached his destination. Wallace was an Eton friend, a nice
+boy, who had sometimes stayed at Charlock House. He and Augustine were
+perhaps already arguing about Nietzsche.
+
+Strange that her numbed thoughts should creep along this path of custom,
+of maternal associations and solicitudes, forgetful of fear and sorrow.
+The recognition came with a sinking pang. Reluctantly, unwillingly, her
+mind was forced back to contemplate the catastrophe that had befallen
+her. He was her judge, her enemy: yet, on this dismal day, how she
+missed him. She leaned her head against the window-frame and the tears
+fell and fell.
+
+If he were there, could she not go to him and take his hand and say
+that, whatever the deep wounds they had dealt each other, they needed
+each other too much to be apart. Could she not ask him to take her back,
+to forgive her, to love her? Ah--there full memory rushed in. Her heart
+seemed to pant and gasp in the sudden coil. Take him back? When it was
+her steady fear as well as her sudden anger that had banished him, he
+thought he loved her, but that was because he did not know and it was
+the anger rather than the love of Augustine's last words that came to
+her. He loved her because he believed her good, and that imaginary
+goodness cast a shadow on her husband. To believe her good Augustine had
+been forced to believe evil of the man she loved and to whom they both
+owed everything.
+
+He had said that he was shut out from her heart, and it was true, and
+her heart broke in seeing it. But it was by more than the sacred love
+for her husband that her child was shut out. Her past, her guilt, was
+with her and stood as a barrier between them. She was separated from him
+for ever. And, looking round the room, suddenly terrified, it seemed to
+her that Augustine was dead and that she was utterly alone.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+She did not write to Augustine for some days. There seemed nothing that
+she could say. To say that she forgave him might seem to put aside too
+easily the deep wrong he had done her and her husband; to say that she
+longed to see him and that, in spite of all, her heart was his, seemed
+to make deeper the chasm of falseness between them.
+
+The rain fell during all these days. Sometimes a pale evening sunset
+would light the western horizon under lifted clouds and she could walk
+out and up and down the paths, among her sodden rose-trees, or down into
+the wet, dark woods. Sometimes at night she saw a melancholy star
+shining here and there in the vaporous sky. But in the morning the grey
+sheet dropped once more between her and the outer world, and the sound
+of the steady drip and beat was like an outer echo to her inner
+wretchedness.
+
+It was on the fourth day that wretchedness turned to bitter
+restlessness, and that to a sudden resolve. Not to write, not even to
+say she forgave, might make him think that her heart was still hardened
+against him. Her fear had blunted her imagination. Clearly now she saw,
+and with an anguish in the vision, that Augustine must be suffering too.
+Clearly she heard the love in his parting words. And she longed so to
+see, to hear that love again, that the longing, as if with sudden
+impatience of the hampering sense of sin, rushed into words that might
+bring him.
+
+She wrote:--"My dear Augustine. I miss you very much. Isn't this dismal
+weather. I am feeling better. I need not tell you that I do forgive you
+for the mistake that hurts us both." Then she paused, for her heart
+cried out "Oh--come back soon"; but she did not dare yield to that cry.
+She hardly knew that, with uncertain fingers, she only repeated
+again:--"I miss you very much. Your affectionate mother."
+
+This was on the fourth day.
+
+On the afternoon of the fifth she stood, as she so often stood, looking
+out at the drawing-room window. She was looking and listening, detached
+from what she saw, yet absorbed, too, for, as with her son, this
+watchfulness of natural things was habitual to her.
+
+It was still raining, but more fitfully: a wind had risen and against a
+scudding sky the sycamores tossed their foliage, dark or pale by turns
+as the wind passed over them. A broad pool of water, dappling
+incessantly with rain-drops, had formed along the farther edge of the
+walk where it slanted to the lawn: it was this pool that Amabel was
+watching and the bobbin-like dance of drops that looked like little
+glass thimbles. The old leaden pipes, curiously moulded, that ran down
+the house beside the windows, splashed and gurgled loudly. The noise of
+the rushing, falling water shut out other sounds. Gazing at the dancing
+thimbles she was unaware that someone had entered the room behind her.
+
+Suddenly two hands were laid upon her shoulders.
+
+The shock, going through her, was like a violent electric discharge. She
+tingled from head to foot, and almost with terror. "Augustine!" she
+gasped. But the shock was to change, yet grow, as if some alien force
+had penetrated her and were disintegrating every atom of her blood.
+
+"No, not Augustine," said her husband's voice: "But you can be glad to
+see me, can't you, Amabel?"
+
+He had taken off his hands now and she could turn to him, could see his
+bright, smiling face looking at her, could feel him as something
+wonderful and radiant filling the dismal day, filling her dismal heart,
+with its presence. But the shock still so trembled in her that she did
+not move from her place or speak, leaning back upon the window as she
+looked at him,--for he was very near,--and putting her hands upon the
+window-sill on either side. "You didn't expect to see me, did you," Sir
+Hugh said.
+
+She shook her head. Never, never, in all these years, had he come again,
+so soon. Months, always, sometimes years, had elapsed between his
+visits.
+
+"The last time didn't count, did it," he went on, in speech vague and
+desultory yet, at the same time, intent and bright in look. "I was so
+bothered; I behaved like a selfish brute; I'm sure you felt it. And you
+were so particularly kind and good--and dear to me, Amabel."
+
+She felt herself flushing. He stood so near that she could not move
+forward and he must read the face, amazed, perplexed, incredulous of its
+joy, yet all lighted from his presence, that she kept fixed on him. For
+ah, what joy to see him, to feel that here, here alone of all the world,
+was she safe, consoled, known yet cared for. He who understood all as no
+one else in the world understood, could stand and smile at her like
+that.
+
+"You look thin, and pale, and tired," were his next words. "What have
+you been doing to yourself? Isn't Augustine here? You're not alone?"
+
+"Yes; I am alone. Augustine is staying with the Wallace boy."
+
+With the mention of Augustine the dark memory came, but it was now of
+something dangerous and hostile shut away, yes, safely shut away, by
+this encompassing brightness, this sweetness of intent solicitude. She
+no longer yearned to see Augustine.
+
+Sir Hugh looked at her for some moments, when, she said that she was
+alone, without speaking. "That is nice for me," he then said. "But how
+miserable,--for you,--it must have been. What a shame that you should
+have been left alone in this dull place,--and this wretched weather,
+too!--Did you ever see such weather." He looked past her at the rain.
+
+"It has been wretched," said Amabel; but she spoke, as she felt, in the
+past: nothing seemed wretched now.
+
+"And you were staring out so hard, that you never heard me," He came
+beside her now, as if to look out, too, and, making room for him, she
+also turned and they looked out at the rain together.
+
+"A filthy day," said Sir Hugh, "I can't bear to think that this is what
+you have been doing, all alone."
+
+"I don't mind it, I have the girls, on three mornings, you know."
+
+"You mean that you don't mind it because you are so used to it?"
+
+She had regained some of her composure:--for one thing he was beside
+her, no longer blocking her way back into the room. "I like solitude,
+you know," she was able to smile.
+
+"Really like it?"
+
+"Sometimes."
+
+"Better than the company of some people, you mean?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But not better than mine," he smiled back. "Come, do encourage me, and
+say that you are glad to see me."
+
+In her joy the bewilderment was growing, but she said that, of course,
+she was glad to see him.
+
+"I've been so bored, so badgered," said Sir Hugh, stretching himself a
+little as though to throw off the incubus of tiresome memories; "and
+this morning when I left a dull country house, I said to myself: Why not
+go down and see Amabel?--I don't believe she will mind.--I believe that,
+perhaps, she'll be pleased.--I know that I want to go very much.--So
+here I am:--very glad to be here--with dear Amabel."
+
+She looked out, silent, blissful, and perplexed.
+
+He was not hard; he was not irritated; all trace of vexed preoccupation
+was gone; but he was not the Sir Hugh that she had seen for all these
+twenty years. He was new, and yet he reminded her of something, and the
+memory moved towards her through a thick mist of years, moved like a
+light through mist. Far, sweet, early things came to her as its heralds;
+the sound of brooks running; the primrose woods where she had wandered
+as a girl; the singing of prophetic birds in Spring. The past had never
+come so near as now when Sir Hugh--yes, there it was, the fair, far
+light--was making her remember their long past courtship. And a shudder
+of sweetness went through her as she remembered, of sweetness yet of
+unutterable sadness, as though something beautiful and dead had been
+shown to her. She seemed to lean, trembling, to kiss the lips of a
+beautiful dead face, before drawing over it the shroud that must cover
+it for ever.
+
+Sir Hugh was silent also. Her silence, perhaps, made him conscious of
+memories. Presently, looking behind them, he said:--"I'm keeping you
+standing. Shall we go to the fire?"
+
+She followed him, bending a little to the fire, her arm on the
+mantel-shelf, a hand held out to the blaze. Sir Hugh stood on the other
+side. She was not thinking of herself, hardly of him. Suddenly he took
+the dreaming hand, stooped to it, and kissed it. He had released it
+before she had time to know her own astonishment.
+
+"You did kiss mine, you know," he smiled, leaning his arm, too, on the
+mantel-shelf and looking at her with gaily supplicating eyes. "Don't be
+angry."
+
+The shroud had dropped: the past was gone: she was once more in the
+present of oppressive, of painful joy.
+
+She would have liked to move away and take her chair at some distance;
+but that would have looked like flight; foolish indeed. She summoned her
+common-sense, her maturity, her sorrow, to smile back, to say in a voice
+she strove to make merely light: "Unusual circumstances excused me."
+
+"Unusual circumstances?"
+
+"You had been very kind. I was very grateful."
+
+Sir Hugh for a moment was silent, looking at her with his intent,
+interrogatory gaze. "You are always kind to me," he then said. "I am
+always grateful. So may I always kiss your hand?"
+
+Her eyes fell before his. "If you wish to," she answered gravely.
+
+"You frighten me a little, do you know," said Sir Hugh. "Please don't
+frighten me.--Are you really angry?--_I_ don't frighten you?"
+
+"You bewilder me a little," Amabel murmured. She looked into the fire,
+near tears, indeed, in her bewilderment; and Sir Hugh looked at her,
+looked hard and carefully, at her noble figure, her white hands, the
+gold and white of her leaning head. He looked, as if measuring the
+degree of his own good fortune.
+
+"You are so lovely," he then said quietly.
+
+She blushed like a girl.
+
+"You are the most beautiful woman I know," said Sir Hugh. "There is no
+one like you," He put his hand out to hers, and, helplessly, she yielded
+it. "Amabel, do you know, I have fallen in love with you."
+
+She stood looking at him, stupefied; her eyes ecstatic and appalled.
+
+"Do I displease you?" asked Sir Hugh.
+
+She did not answer.
+
+"Do I please you?" Still she gazed at him, speechless.
+
+"Do you care at all for me?" he asked, and, though grave, he smiled a
+little at her in asking the question. How could he not know that, for
+years, she had cared for him more than for anything, anyone?
+
+And when he asked her this last question, the oppression was too great.
+She drew her hand from his, and laid her arms upon the mantel-shelf and
+hid her face upon them. It was a helpless confession. It was a helpless
+appeal.
+
+But the appeal was not understood, or was disregarded. In a moment her
+husband's arms were about her.
+
+This was new. This was not like their courtship.--Yet, it reminded
+her,--of what did it remind her as he murmured words of victory, clasped
+her and kissed her? It reminded her of Paul Quentin. In the midst of the
+amazing joy she knew that the horror was as great.
+
+"Ah don't!--how can you!--how can you!" she said.
+
+She drew away from him but he would not let her go.
+
+"How can I? How can I do anything else?" he laughed, in easy yet excited
+triumph. "You do love me--you darling nun!"
+
+She had freed her hands and covered her face: "I beg of you," she
+prayed.
+
+The agony of her sincerity was too apparent. Sir Hugh unclasped his
+arms. She went to her chair, sat down, leaned on the table, still
+covering her eyes. So she had leaned, years ago, with hidden face, in
+telling Bertram of the coming of the child. It seemed to her now that
+her shame was more complete, more overwhelming. And, though it
+overwhelmed her, her bliss was there; the golden and the black streams
+ran together.
+
+"Dearest,--should I have been less sudden?" Sir Hugh was beside her,
+leaning over her, reasoning, questioning, only just not caressing her.
+"It's not as if we didn't know each other, Amabel: we have been
+strangers, in a sense;--yet, through it all--all these years--haven't we
+felt near?--Ah darling, you can't deny it;--you can't deny you love me."
+His arm was pressing her.
+
+"Please--" she prayed again, and he moved his hand further away, beyond
+her crouching shoulder.
+
+"You are such a little nun that you can't bear to be loved?--Is that it?
+But you'll have to learn again. You are more than a nun: you are a
+beautiful woman: young; wonderfully young. It's astonishing how like a
+girl you are."--Sir Hugh seemed to muse over a fact that allured. "And
+however like a nun you've lived--you can't deny that you love me."
+
+"You haven't loved me," Amabel at last could say.
+
+He paused, but only for a moment. "Perhaps not: but," his voice had now
+the delicate aptness that she remembered, "how could I believe that
+there was a chance for me? How could I think you could ever come to
+care, like this, when you had left me--you know--Amabel."
+
+She was silent, her mind whirling. And his nearness, as he leaned over
+her, was less ecstasy than terror. It was as if she only knew her love,
+her sacred love again, when he was not near.
+
+"It's quite of late that I've begun to wonder," said Sir Hugh. "Stupid
+ass of course, not to have seen the jewel I held in my hand. But you've
+only showed me the nun, you darling. I knew you cared, but I never knew
+how much.--I ought to have had more self-conceit, oughtn't I?"
+
+"I have cared. You have been all that is beautiful.--I have cared more
+than for anything.--But--oh, it could not have been this.--This would
+have killed me with shame," said Amabel.
+
+"With shame? Why, you strange angel?"
+
+"Can you ask?" she said in a trembling voice.
+
+His hand caressed her hair, slipped around her neck. "You nun; you
+saint.--Does that girlish peccadillo still haunt you?"
+
+"Don't--oh don't--call it that--call me that!--"
+
+"Call you a saint? But what else are you?--a beautiful saint. What other
+woman could have lived the life you've lived? It's wonderful."
+
+"Don't. I cannot bear it."
+
+"Can't bear to be called a saint? Ah, but, you see, that's just why you
+are one."
+
+She could not speak. She could not even say the only answering word: a
+sinner. Her hands were like leaden weights upon her brows. In the
+darkness she heard her heart beating heavily, and tried and tried to
+catch some fragment of meaning from her whirling thoughts.
+
+And as if her self-condemnation were a further enchantment, her husband
+murmured: "It makes you all the lovelier that you should feel like that.
+It makes me more in love with you than ever: but forget it now. Let me
+make you forget it. I can.--Darling, your beautiful hair. I remember
+it;--it is as beautiful as ever.--I remember it;--it fell to your
+knees.--Let me see your face, Amabel."
+
+She was shuddering, shrinking from him.--"Oh--no--no.--Do you not
+see--not feel--that it is impossible--"
+
+"Impossible! Why?--My darling, you are my wife;--and if you love me?--"
+
+They were whirling impossibilities; she could see none clearly but one
+that flashed out for her now in her extremity of need, bright, ominous,
+accusing. She seized it:--"Augustine."
+
+"Augustine? What of him?" Sir Hugh's voice had an edge to it.
+
+"He could not bear it. It would break his heart."
+
+"What has he to do with it? He isn't all your life:--you've given him
+most of it already."
+
+"He is, he must be, all my life, except that beautiful part that you
+were:--that you are:--oh you will stay my friend!"--
+
+"I'll stay your lover, your determined lover and husband, Amabel.
+Darling, you are ridiculous, enchanting--with your barriers, your
+scruples." The fear, the austerity, he felt in her fanned his ardour to
+flame. His arms once more went round her; he murmured words of
+lover-like pleading, rapturous, wild and foolish. And, though her love,
+her sacred love for him was there, his love for her was a nightmare to
+her now. She had lost herself, and it was as though she lost him, while
+he pleaded thus. And again and again she answered, resolute and
+tormented:--"No: no: never--never. Do not speak so to me.--Do not--I beg
+of you."
+
+Suddenly he released her. He straightened himself, and moved away from
+her a little. Someone had entered.
+
+Amabel dropped her hands and raised her eyes at last. Augustine stood
+before them.
+
+Augustine had on still his long travelling coat; his cap, beaded with
+raindrops, was in his hand; his yellow hair was ruffled. He had entered
+hastily. He stood there looking at them, transfixed, yet not astonished.
+He was very pale.
+
+For some moments no one of them spoke. Sir Hugh did not move further
+from his wife's side: he was neither anxious nor confused; but his face
+wore an involuntary scowl.
+
+The deep confusion was Amabel's. But her husband had released her; no
+longer pleaded; and with the lifting of that dire oppression the
+realities of her life flooded her almost with relief. It was impossible,
+this gay, this facile, this unseemly love, but, as she rejected and put
+it from her, the old love was the stronger, cherished the more closely,
+in atonement and solicitude, the man shrunk from and repulsed. And in
+all the deep confusion, before her son,--that he should find her so,
+almost in her husband's arms,--a flash of clarity went through her mind
+as she saw them thus confronted. Deeper than ever between her and
+Augustine was the challenge of her love and his hatred; but it was that
+sacred love that now needed safeguards; she could not feel it when her
+husband was near and pleading; Augustine was her refuge from oppression.
+
+She rose and went to him and timidly clasped his arm. "Dear Augustine, I
+am so glad you have come back. I have missed you so."
+
+He stood still, not responding to her touch: but, as she held him, he
+looked across the room at Sir Hugh. "You wrote you missed me. That's why
+I came."
+
+Sir Hugh now strolled to the fire and stood before it, turning to face
+Augustine's gaze; unperturbed; quite at ease.
+
+"How wet you are dear," said Amabel. "Take off this coat."
+
+Augustine stripped it off and flung it on a chair. She could hear his
+quick breathing: he did not look at her. And still it seemed to her that
+it was his anger rather than his love that protected her.
+
+"He will want to change, dearest," said Sir Hugh from before the fire.
+"And,--I want to finish my talk with you."
+
+Augustine now looked at his mother, at the blush that overwhelmed her as
+that possessive word was spoken. "Do you want me to go?"
+
+"No, dear, no.--It is only the coat that is wet, isn't it. Don't go: I
+want to see you, of course, after your absence.--Hugh, you will excuse
+us; it seems such a long time since I saw him. You and I will finish our
+talk on another day.--Or I will write to you."
+
+She knew what it must look like to her husband, this weak recourse to
+the protection of Augustine's presence; it looked like bashfulness, a
+further feminine wile, made up of self-deception and allurement, a
+putting off of final surrender for the greater sweetness of delay. And
+as the reading of him flashed through her it brought a strange pang of
+shame, for him; of regret, for something spoiled.
+
+Sir Hugh took out his watch and looked at it. "Five o'clock. I told the
+station fly to come back for me at five fifteen. You'll give me some
+tea, dearest?"
+
+"Of course;--it is time now.--Augustine, will you ring?"
+
+The miserable blush covered her again.
+
+The tea came and they were silent while the maid set it out. Augustine
+had thrown himself into a chair and stared before him. Sir Hugh, very
+much in possession, kept his place before the fire. Catching Amabel's
+eye he smiled at her. He was completely assured. How should he not be?
+What, for his seeing, could stand between them now?
+
+When the maid was gone and Amabel was making tea, he came and stood over
+her, his hands in his pockets, his handsome head bent to her, talking
+lightly, slightly jesting, his voice pitched intimately for her ear, yet
+not so intimately that any unkindness of exclusion should appear.
+Augustine could hear all he said and gauge how deep was an intimacy that
+could wear such lightness, such slightness, as its mask.
+
+Augustine, meanwhile, looked at neither his mother nor Sir Hugh. Turned
+from them in his chair he put out his hand for his tea and stared before
+him, as if unseeing and unhearing, while he drank it.
+
+It was for her sake, Amabel knew, that Sir Hugh, raising his voice
+presently, as though aware of the sullen presence, made a little effort
+to lift the gloom. "What sort of a time have you had, Augustine?" he
+asked. "Was the weather at Haversham as bad as everywhere else?"
+
+Augustine did not turn his head in replying:--"Quite as bad, I fancy."
+
+"You and young Wallace hammered at metaphysics, I suppose."
+
+"We did."
+
+"Nice lad."
+
+To this Augustine said nothing.
+
+"They're such a solemn lot, the youths of this generation," said Sir
+Hugh, addressing Amabel as well as Augustine: "In my day we never
+bothered ourselves much about things: at least the ones I knew didn't.
+Awfully empty and frivolous. Augustine and his friends would have
+thought us. Where we used to talk about race horses they talk about the
+Absolute,--eh, Augustine? We used to go and hear comic-operas and they
+go and hear Brahms. I suppose you do go and hear Brahms, Augustine?"
+
+Augustine maintained his silence as though not conceiving that the
+sportive question required an answer and Amabel said for him that he was
+very fond of Brahms.
+
+"Well, I must be off," said Sir Hugh. "I hope your heart will ache ever
+so little for me, Amabel, when you think of the night you've turned me
+out into."
+
+"Oh--but--I don't turn, you out,"--she stammered, rising, as, in a gay
+farewell, he looked at her.
+
+"No? Well, I'm only teasing. I could hardly have managed to stay this
+time--though,--I might have managed, Amabel--. I'll come again soon,
+very soon," said Sir Hugh.
+
+"No," her hand was in his and she knew that Augustine had turned his
+head and was looking at them:--"No, dear Hugh. Not soon, please. I will
+write." Sir Hugh looked at her smiling. He glanced at Augustine; then
+back at her, rallying her, affectionately, threateningly, determinedly,
+for her foolish feints. He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it.
+"Write, if you want to; but I'm coming," he said. He nodded to Augustine
+and left the room.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+It was, curiously enough, a crippling awkwardness and embarrassment that
+Amabel felt rather than fear or antagonism, during that evening and the
+morning that followed. Augustine had left the room directly after Sir
+Hugh's departure. When she saw him again he showed her a face resolutely
+mute. It was impossible to speak to him; to explain. The main facts he
+must see; that her husband was making love to her and that, however deep
+her love for him, she rejected him.
+
+Augustine might believe that rejection to be for his own sake, might
+believe that she renounced love and sacrificed herself from a maternal
+sense of duty; and, indeed, the impossibility of bringing that love into
+her life with Augustine had been the clear impossibility that had
+flashed for her in her need; she had seized upon it and it had armed her
+in her reiterated refusal. But how tell Augustine that there had been
+more than the clear impossibility; how tell him that deeper than
+renouncement was recoil? To tell that would be a disloyalty to her
+husband; it would be almost to accuse him; it would be to show Augustine
+that something in her life was spoiled and that her husband had spoiled
+it. So perplexed, so jaded, was she, so tossed by the conflicting
+currents of her lesser plight, that the deeper fears were forgotten: she
+was not conscious of being afraid of Augustine.
+
+The rain had ceased next morning. The sky was crystalline; the wet earth
+glittered in Autumnal sunshine.
+
+Augustine went out for his ride and Amabel had her girls to read with.
+There was a sense of peace for her in finding these threads of her life
+unknotted, smooth and simple, lying ready to her hand.
+
+When she saw Augustine at lunch he said that he had met Lady Elliston.
+
+"She was riding with Marjory and her girl."
+
+"Oh, she is back, then." Amabel was grateful to him for his everyday
+tone.
+
+"What is Lady Elliston's girl like?"
+
+"Pretty; very; foolish manners I thought; Marjory looked bewildered by
+her."
+
+"The manners of girls have changed, I fancy, since my day; and she isn't
+a boy-girl, like our nice Marjory, either?"
+
+"No; she is a girl-girl; a pretty, forward, conceited girl-girl," said
+the ruthless Augustine. "Lady Elliston is coming to see you this
+afternoon; she asked me to tell you; she says she wants a long talk."
+
+Amabel's weary heart sank at the news.
+
+"She is coming soon after lunch," said Augustine.
+
+"Oh--dear--"--. She could not conceal her dismay.
+
+"But you knew that you were to see her again;--do you mind so much?"
+said Augustine.
+
+"I don't mind.--It is only;--I have got so out of the way of seeing
+people that it is something of a strain."
+
+"Would you like me to come in and interrupt your talk?" asked Augustine
+after a moment.
+
+She looked across the table at him. Still, in her memory, preoccupied
+with the cruelty of his accusation, it was the anger rather than the
+love of his parting words the other day that was the more real. He had
+been hard in kindness, relentless in judgment, only not accusing her,
+not condemning her, because his condemnation had fixed on the innocent
+and not on the guilty--the horror of that, as well as the other horror,
+was between them now, and her guilt was deepened by it. But, as she
+looked, his eyes reminded her of something; was it of that fancied cry
+within the church, imprisoned and supplicating? They were like that cry
+of pain, those eyes, the dark rims of the iris strangely expanding, and
+her heart answered them, ignorant of what they said.
+
+"You are thoughtful for me, dear; but no," she replied, "it isn't
+necessary for you to interrupt."
+
+He looked away from her: "I don't know that it's not necessary," he
+said. After lunch they went into the garden and walked for a little in
+the sunlight, in almost perfect silence. Once or twice, as though from
+the very pressure of his absorption in her he created some intention of
+speech and fancied that her lips had parted with the words, Augustine
+turned his head quickly towards her, and at this, their eyes meeting, as
+it were over emptiness, both he and she would flush and look away again.
+The stress between them was painful. She was glad when he said that he
+had work to do and left her alone.
+
+Amabel went to the drawing-room and took her chair near the table. A
+sense of solitude deeper than she had known for years pressed upon her.
+She closed her eyes and leaned back her head, thinking, dimly, that now,
+in such solitude as this, she must find her way to prayer again. But
+still the door was closed. It was as if she could not enter without a
+human hand in hers. Augustine's hand had never led her in; and she could
+not take her husband's now.
+
+But her longing itself became almost a prayer as she sat with closed
+eyes. This would pass, this cloud of her husband's lesser love. When he
+knew her so unalterably firm, when he saw how inflexibly the old love
+shut out the new, he would, once more, be her friend. Then, feeling him
+near again, she might find peace. The thought of it was almost peace.
+Even in the midst of yesterday's bewildered pain she had caught glimpses
+of the old beauty; his kindly speech to Augustine, his making of ease
+for her; gratitude welled up in her and she sighed with the relief of
+her deep hope. To feel this gratitude was to see still further beyond
+the cloud. It was even beautiful for him to be able to "fall in love"
+with her--as he had put it: that the manifestations of his love should
+have made her shrink was not his fault but hers; she was a nun; because
+she had been a sinner. She almost smiled now, in seeing so clearly that
+it was on her the shadow rested. She could not be at peace, she could
+not pray, she could not live, it seemed to her, if he were really
+shadowed. And after the smile it was almost with the sense of dew
+falling upon her soul that she remembered the kindness, the chivalrous
+protection that had encompassed her through the long years. He was her
+friend, her knight; she would forget, and he, too, would forget that he
+had thought himself her lover.
+
+She did not know how tired she was, but her exhaustion must have been
+great, for the thoughts faded into a vague sweetness, then were gone,
+and, suddenly opening her eyes, she knew that she had fallen asleep,
+sitting straightly in her chair, and that Lady Elliston was looking at
+her.
+
+She started up, smiling and confused. "How absurd of me:--I have been
+sleeping.--Have you just come?"
+
+Lady Elliston did not smile and was silent. She took Amabel's hand and
+looked at her; she had to recover herself from something; it may have
+been the sleeping face, wasted and innocent, that had touched her too
+deeply. And her gravity, as of repressed tears, frightened Amabel. She
+had never seen Lady Elliston look so grave. "Is anything the matter?"
+she asked. For a moment longer Lady Elliston was silent, as though
+reflecting. Then releasing Amabel's hand, she said: "Yes: I think
+something is the matter."
+
+"You have come to tell me?"
+
+"I didn't come for that. Sit down, Amabel. You are very tired, more
+tired than the other day. I have been looking at you for a long time.--I
+didn't come to tell you anything; but now, perhaps, I shall have
+something to tell. I must think."
+
+She took a chair beside the table and leaned her head on her hand
+shading her eyes. Amabel had obeyed her and sat looking at her guest.
+
+"Tell me," Lady Elliston said abruptly, and Amabel today, more than of
+sweetness and softness, was conscious of her strength, "have you been
+having a bad time since I saw you? Has anything happened? Has anything
+come between you and Augustine? I saw him this morning, and he's been
+suffering, too: I guessed it. You must be frank with me, Amabel; you
+must trust me: perhaps I am going to be franker with you, to trust you
+more, than you can dream."
+
+She inspired the confidence her words laid claim to; for the first time
+in their lives Amabel trusted her unreservedly.
+
+"I have had a very bad time," she said: "And Augustine has had a bad
+time. Yes; something has come between Augustine and me,--many things."
+
+"He hates Hugh," said Lady Elliston.
+
+"How can you know that?"
+
+"I guessed it. He is a clever boy: he sees you absorbed; he sees your
+devotion robbing him; perhaps he sees even more, Amabel; I heard this
+morning, from Mrs. Grey, that Hugh had been with you, again, yesterday.
+Amabel, is it possible; has Hugh been making love to you?"
+
+Amabel had become very pale. Looking down, she said in a hardly audible
+voice; "It is a mistake.--He will see that it is impossible."
+
+Lady Elliston for a moment was silent: the confirming of her own
+suspicion seemed to have stupefied her. "Is it impossible?" she then
+asked.
+
+"Quite, quite impossible."
+
+"Does Hugh know that it is impossible?"
+
+"He will.--Yesterday, Augustine came in while he was here;--I could not
+say any more."
+
+"I see: I see"; said Lady Elliston. Her hand fell to the table now and
+she slightly tapped her finger-tips upon it. There was an ominous rhythm
+in the little raps. "And this adds to Augustine's hatred," she said.
+
+"I am afraid it is true. I am afraid he does hate him, and how terrible
+that is," said Amabel, "for he believes him to be his father."
+
+"By instinct he must feel the tie unreal."
+
+"Yet he has had a father's kindness, almost, from Hugh."
+
+"Almost. It isn't enough you know. He suspects nothing, you think?"
+
+"It is that that is so terrible. He doesn't suspect me: he suspects him.
+He couldn't suspect evil of me. It is my guilt, and his ignorant hatred
+that is parting us." Amabel was trembling; she leaned forward and
+covered her face with her hands.
+
+The very air about her seemed to tremble; so strange, so incredibly
+strange was it to hear her own words of helpless avowal; so strange to
+feel that she must tell Lady Elliston all she wished to know.
+
+"Parting you? What do you mean? What folly!--what impossible folly! A
+mother and a son, loving each other as you and Augustine love, parted
+for that. Oh, no," said Lady Elliston, and her own voice shook a little:
+"that can't be. I won't have that."
+
+"He would not love me, if he knew."
+
+"Knew? What is there for him to know? And how should he know? You won't
+be so mad as to tell him?"
+
+"It's my punishment not to dare to tell him--and to see my cowardice
+cast a shadow on Hugh."
+
+"Punishment? haven't you been punished enough, good heavens! Cowardice?
+it is reason, maturity; the child has no right to your secret--it is
+yours and only yours, Amabel. And if he did know all, he could not judge
+you as you judge yourself."
+
+"Ah, you don't understand," Amabel murmured: "I had forgotten to judge
+myself; I had forgotten my sin; it was Augustine who made me remember; I
+know now what he feels about people like me."
+
+Again Lady Elliston controlled herself to a momentary silence and again
+her fingers sharply beat out her uncontrollable impatience. "I live in a
+world, Amabel," she said at last, "where people when they use the word
+'sin,' in that connection, know that it's obsolete, a mere decorative
+symbol for unconventionality. In my world we don't have your cloistered
+black and white view of life nor see sin where only youth and trust and
+impulse were. If one takes risks, one may have to pay for them, of
+course; one plays the game, if one is in the ring, and, of course, you
+may be put out of the ring if you break the rules; but the rules are
+those of wisdom, not of morality, and the rule that heads the list is:
+Don't be found out. To imagine that the rules are anything more than
+matters of social convenience is to dignify the foolish game. It is a
+foolish game, Amabel, this of life: but one or two things in it are
+worth having; power to direct the game; freedom to break its rules; and
+love, passionate love, between a man and woman: and if one is strong
+enough one can have them all."
+
+Lady Elliston had again put her hand to her brow, shielding her eyes and
+leaning her elbow on the table, and Amabel had raised her head and sat
+still, gazing at her.
+
+"You weren't strong enough," Lady Elliston went on after a little pause:
+"You made frightful mistakes: the greatest, of course, was in running
+away with Paul Quentin: that was foolish, and it was, if you like to
+call foolishness by its obsolete name, a sin. You shouldn't have gone:
+you should have stayed: you should have kept your lover--as long as you
+wanted to."
+
+Again she paused. "Do I horrify you?"
+
+"No: you don't horrify me," Amabel replied. Her voice was gentle, almost
+musing; she was absorbed in her contemplation.
+
+"You see," said Lady Elliston, "you didn't play the game: you made a
+mess of things and put the other players out. If you had stayed, and
+kept your lover, you would have been, in my eyes, a less loveable but a
+wiser woman. I believe in the game being kept up; I believe in the
+social structure: I am one of its accredited upholders"; in the shadow
+of her hand, Lady Elliston slightly smiled. "I believe in the family,
+the group of shared interests, shared responsibilities, shared
+opportunities it means: I don't care how many lovers a woman has if she
+doesn't break up the family, if she plays the game. Marriage is a social
+compact and it's the woman's part to keep the home together. If she
+seeks love outside marriage she must play fair, she mustn't be an
+embezzling partner; she mustn't give her husband another man's children
+to support and so take away from his own children;--that's thieving. The
+social structure, the family, are unharmed, if one is brave and wise.
+Love and marriage can rarely be combined and to renounce love is to
+cripple one's life, to miss the best thing it has to give. You, at all
+events, Amabel, may be glad that you haven't missed it. What, after all,
+does our life mean but just that,--the power and feeling that one gets
+into it. Be glad that you've had something."
+
+Amabel, answering nothing, contemplated her guest.
+
+"So, as these are my views, imagine what I feel when I find you here,
+like this"; Lady Elliston dropped her hand at last and looked about her,
+not at Amabel: "when I find you, in prison, locked up for life, by
+yourself, because you were lovably unwise. It's abominable, it's
+shameful, your position, isolated here, and tolerated, looked askance at
+by these nobodies.--Ah--I don't say that other women haven't paid even
+more heavily than you've done; I own that, to a certain extent, you've
+escaped the rigours that the game exacts from its victims. But there was
+no reason why you should pay anything: it wasn't known, never really
+known--your brother and Hugh saw to that;--you could have escaped
+scot-free."
+
+Amabel spoke at last: "How, scot-free?" she asked.
+
+Lady Elliston looked hard at her: "Your husband would have taken you
+back, had you insisted.--You shouldn't have fallen in with his plans."
+
+"His plans? They were mine; my brother's."
+
+"And his. Hugh was glad to be rid of the young wife he didn't love."
+
+Again Amabel was trembling. "He might have been rid of her, altogether
+rid of her, if he had cared more for power and freedom than for pity."
+
+"Power? With not nearly enough money? He was glad to keep her money and
+be rid of her. If you had pulled the purse-strings tight you might have
+made your own conditions."
+
+"I do not believe you," said Amabel; "What you say is not true. My
+husband is noble."
+
+Lady Elliston looked at her steadily and unflinchingly. "He is not
+noble," she said.
+
+"What have you meant by coming here today? You have meant something! I
+will not listen to you! You are my husband's enemy;"--Amabel half
+started from her chair, but Lady Elliston laid her hand on her arm,
+looking at her so fixedly that she sank down again, panic-stricken.
+
+"He is not noble," Lady Elliston repeated. "I will not have you waste
+your love as you have wasted your life. I will not have this illusion of
+his nobility come between you and your son. I will not have him come
+near you with his love. He is not noble, he is not generous, he is not
+beautiful. He could not have got rid of you. And he came to you with his
+love yesterday because his last mistress has thrown him over--and he
+must have a mistress. I know him: I know all about him: and you don't
+know him at all. Your husband was my lover for over twenty years."
+
+A long silence followed her words. It was again a strange picture of
+arrested life in the dark room. The light fell quietly upon the two
+faces, their stillness, their contemplation--it seemed hardly more
+intent than contemplation, that drinking gaze of Amabel's; the draught
+of wonder was too deep for pain or passion, and Lady Elliston's eyes
+yielded, offered, held firm the cup the other drank. And the silence
+grew so long that it was as if the twenty years flowed by while they
+gazed upon each other.
+
+It was Lady Elliston's face that first showed change. She might have
+been the cup-bearer tossing aside the emptied cup, seeing in the slow
+dilation of the victim's eyes, the constriction of lips and nostrils,
+that it had held poison. All--all had been drunk to the last drop. Death
+seemed to gaze from the dilated eyes.
+
+"Oh--my poor Amabel--" Lady Elliston murmured; her face was stricken
+with pity.
+
+Amabel spoke in the cramped voice of mortal anguish.--"Before he married
+me."
+
+"Yes," Lady Elliston nodded, pitiful, but unflinching. "He married you
+for your money, and because you were a sweet, good, simple child who
+would not interfere."
+
+"And he could not have divorced me, because of you."
+
+"Because of me. You know the law; one guilty person can't divorce
+another. No one knew: no one has ever known: he and Jack have remained
+the best of friends:--but, of course, with all our care, it's been
+suspected, whispered. If I'd been less powerful the whispers might have
+blighted me: as it was, we thought that Bertram wasn't altogether
+unsuspecting. Hugh knew that it would be fatal to bring the matter into
+court;--I will say for Hugh that, in spite of the money, he wanted to.
+He could have married money again. He has always been extremely
+captivating. When he found that he would have to keep you, the money, of
+course, did atone. I suppose he has had most of your money by now," said
+Lady Elliston.
+
+Amabel shut her eyes. "Wasn't he even sorry for me?" she asked.
+
+Lady Elliston reflected and a glitter was in her eye; vengeance as well
+as justice armed her. "He is not unkind," she conceded: "and he was
+sorry after a fashion: 'Poor little girl,' I remember he said. Yes, he
+was very tolerant. But he didn't think of you at all, unless he wanted
+money. He is always graceful in his direct relations with people; he is
+tactful and sympathetic and likes things to be pleasant. But he doesn't
+mind breaking your heart if he doesn't have to see you while he is doing
+it. He is kind, but he is as hard as steel," said Lady Elliston.
+
+"Then you do not love him any longer," said Amabel. It was not a
+question, only a farther acceptance.
+
+And now, after only the slightest pause, Lady Elliston proved how deep,
+how unflinching was her courage. She had guarded her illicit passion all
+her life; she revealed it now. "I do love him," she said. "I have never
+loved another man. It is he who doesn't love me."
+
+From the black depths where she seemed to swoon and float, like a
+drowsy, drowning thing, the hard note of misery struck on Amabel's ear.
+She opened her eyes and looked at Lady Elliston. Power, freedom,
+passion: it was not these that looked back at her from the bereft and
+haggard eyes. "After twenty years he has grown tired," Lady Elliston
+said; and her candour seemed as inevitable as Amabel's had been: each
+must tell the other everything; a common bond of suffering was between
+them and a common bond of love, though love so differing. "I knew, of
+course, that he was often unfaithful to me; he is a libertine; but I was
+the centre; he always came back to me.--I saw the end approaching about
+five years ago. I fought--oh how warily--so that he shouldn't dream I
+was afraid;--it is fatal for a woman to let a man know she is
+afraid,--the brutes, the cruel brutes,"--said Lady Elliston;--"how we
+love them for their fear and pleading; how our fear and pleading hardens
+them against us." Her lips trembled and the tears ran down her cheeks.
+"I never pleaded; I never showed that I saw the change. I kept him, for
+years, by my skill. But the odds were too great at last. It was a year
+ago that he told me he didn't care any more. He was troubled, a little
+embarrassed, but quite determined that I shouldn't bother him. Since
+then it has been another woman. I know her; I meet her everywhere; very
+beautiful; very young; only married for three years; a heartless,
+rapacious creature. Hugh has nearly ruined himself in paying her
+jeweller's bills and her debts at bridge. And already she has thrown him
+over. It happened only the other day. I knew it was happening when I saw
+him here. I was glad, Amabel; I longed for him to suffer; and he will.
+He is a libertine of most fastidious tastes and he will not find many
+more young and beautiful women, of his world, to run risks for him. He,
+too, is getting old. And he has gone through nearly all his own
+money--and yours. Things will soon be over for him.--Oh--but--I love
+him--I love him--and everything is over for me.--How can I bear it!"
+
+She bent forward on her knees and convulsive sobs shook her.
+
+Her words seemed to Amabel to come to her from a far distance; they
+echoed in her, yet they were not the words she could have used. How dim
+was her own love-dream beside this torment of dispossession.
+What--who--had she loved for all these years? She could not touch or see
+her own grief; but Lady Elliston's grief pierced through her. She leaned
+towards her and softly touched her shoulder, her arm, her hand; she held
+the hand in hers. The sight of this loss of strength and dignity was an
+actual pain; her own pain was something elusive and unsubstantial; it
+wandered like a ghost vainly seeking an embodiment.
+
+"Oh, you angel--you poor angel!" moaned Lady Elliston. "There: that's
+enough of crying; it can't bring back my youth.--What a fool I am. If
+only I could learn to think of myself as free instead of maimed and left
+by the wayside. It is hard to live without love if one has always had
+it.--But I have freed you, Amabel. I am glad of that. It has been a
+cruel, but a right thing to do. He shall not come to you with his
+shameless love; he shall not come between you and your boy. You shan't
+misplace your worship so. It is Augustine who is beautiful and noble; it
+is Augustine who loves you. You aren't maimed and forsaken; thank heaven
+for that, dear."
+
+Lady Elliston had risen. Strong again, she faced her life, took up the
+reins, not a trace of scruple or of shame about her. It did not enter
+her mind to ask Amabel for forgiveness, to ask if she were despised or
+shrunk from: it did not enter Amabel's mind to wonder at the omission.
+She looked up at her guest and her lifted face seemed that of the
+drowned creature floating to the surface of the water.
+
+"Tell me, Amabel," Lady Elliston suddenly pleaded, "this is not going to
+blacken things for you; you won't let it blacken things. You will live;
+you will leave your prison and come out into the world, with your
+splendid boy, and live."
+
+Amabel slightly shook her head.
+
+"Oh, why do you say that? Has it hurt so horribly?"
+
+Amabel seemed to make the effort to think what it had done. She did not
+know. The ghost wailed; but she could not see its form.
+
+"Did you care--so tremendously--about him?"--Lady Elliston asked, and
+her voice trembled. And, for answer, the drowned eyes looked up at her
+through strange, cold tears.
+
+"Oh, my dear, my dear," Lady Elliston murmured. Her hand was still in
+Amabel's and she stood there beside her, her hand so held, for a long,
+silent moment. They had looked away from each other.
+
+And in the silence each knew that it was the end and that they would see
+each other no more. They lived in different planets, under different
+laws; they could understand, they could trust; but a deep, transparent
+chasm, like that of the ether flowing between two divided worlds, made
+them immeasurably apart.
+
+Yet, when she at last gently released Amabel's hand, drawing her own
+away. Lady Elliston said: "But,--won't you come out now?"
+
+"Out? Where?" Amabel asked, in the voice of that far distance.
+
+"Into the world, the great, splendid world."
+
+"Splendid?"
+
+"Splendid, if you choose to seize it and take what it has to give."
+
+After a moment Amabel asked: "Has it given you so much?"
+
+Lady Elliston looked at her from across the chasm; it was not dark, it
+held no precipices; it was made up only of distance. Lady Elliston saw;
+but she was loyal to her own world. "Yes, it has," she said. "I've
+lived; you have dreamed your life away. You haven't even a reality to
+mourn the loss of."
+
+"No," Amabel said; she closed her eyes and turned her head away against
+the chair; "No; I have lived too. Don't pity me."
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+It was past five when Augustine came into the empty drawing-room. Tea
+was standing waiting, and had been there, he saw, for some time. He rang
+and asked the maid to tell Lady Channice. Lady Channice, he heard, was
+lying down and wanted no tea. Lady Elliston had gone half an hour
+before. After a moment or two of deliberation, Augustine sat down and
+made tea for himself. That was soon over. He ate nothing, looking with a
+vague gaze of repudiation at the plate of bread and butter and the
+cooling scones.
+
+When tea had been taken away he walked up and down the room quickly,
+pausing now and then for further deliberation. But he decided that he
+would not go up to his mother. He went on walking for a long time. Then
+he took a book and read until the dressing-bell for dinner rang.
+
+When he went upstairs to dress he paused outside his mother's door, as
+she had paused outside his, and listened. He heard no sound. He stood
+still there for some moments before lightly rapping on the door. "Who is
+it?" came his mother's voice. "I; Augustine. How are you? You are coming
+down?"
+
+"Not tonight," she answered; "I have a very bad headache."
+
+"But let me have something sent up." After a moment his mother's voice
+said very sweetly; "Of course, dear." And she added "I shall be all
+right tomorrow."
+
+The voice sounded natural--yet not quite natural; too natural, perhaps,
+Augustine reflected. Its tone remained with him as something disturbing
+and prolonged itself in memory like a familiar note strung to a queer,
+forced pitch, that vibrated on and on until it hurt.
+
+After his solitary meal he took up his book again in the drawing-room.
+He read with effort and concentration, his brows knotted; his young
+face, thus controlled to stern attention, was at once vigilant for outer
+impressions and absorbed in the inner interest. Once or twice he looked
+up, as a coal fell with a soft crash from the fire, as a thin creeper
+tapped sharply on the window pane. His mother's room was above the
+drawing-room and while he read he was listening; but he heard no
+footsteps.
+
+Suddenly, dim, yet clear, came another sound, a sound familiar, though
+so rare; wheels grinding on the gravel drive at the other side of the
+house. Then, loud and startling at that unaccustomed hour, the old hall
+bell clanged through the house.
+
+Augustine found himself leaning forward, breathing quickly, his book
+half-closed. At first he did not know what he was listening for or why
+his body should be tingling with excitement and anger. He knew a moment
+later. There was a step in the hall, a voice. All his life Augustine had
+known them, had waited for them, had hated them. Sir Hugh was back
+again.
+
+Of course he was back again, soon,--as he had promised in the tone of
+mastery. But his mother had told him not to come; she had told him not
+to come, and in a tone that meant more than his. Did he not know?--Did
+he not understand?
+
+"No, dear Hugh, not soon.--I will write."--Augustine sprang to his feet
+as he entered the room.
+
+Sir Hugh had been told that he would not find his wife. His face wore
+its usual look of good-temper, but it wore more than its usual look of
+indifference for his wife's son. "Ah, tell Lady Channice, will you," he
+said over his shoulder to the maid. "How d'ye do, Augustine:" and, as
+usual, he strolled up to the fire.
+
+Augustine watched him as he crossed the room and said nothing. The maid
+had closed the door. From his wonted place Sir Hugh surveyed the young
+man and Augustine surveyed him.
+
+"You know, my dear fellow," said Sir Hugh presently, lifting the sole of
+his boot to the fire, "you've got devilish bad manners. You are
+devilishly impertinent, I may tell you."
+
+Augustine received the reproof without comment.
+
+"You seem to imagine," Sir Hugh went on, "that you have some particular
+right to bad manners and impertinence here, in this house; but you're
+mistaken; I belong here as well as you do; and you'll have to accept the
+fact."
+
+A convulsive trembling, like his mother's, passed over the young man's
+face; but whereas only Amabel's hands and body trembled, it was the
+muscles of Augustine's lips, nostrils and brows that were affected, and
+to see the strength of his face so shaken was disconcerting, painful.
+
+"You don't belong here while I'm here," he said, jerking the words out
+suddenly. "This is my mother's home--and mine;--but as soon as you make
+it insufferable for us we can leave it."
+
+"_You_ can; that's quite true," Sir Hugh nodded.
+
+Augustine stood clenching his hands on his book. Now, unconscious of
+what he did, he grasped the leaves and wrenched them back and forth as
+he stood silent, helpless, desperate, before the other's intimation. Sir
+Hugh watched the unconscious violence with interest.
+
+"Yes," he went on presently, and still with good temper; "if you make
+yourself insufferable--to your mother and me--you can go. Not that I
+want to turn you out. It rests with you. Only, you must see that you
+behave. I won't have you making her wretched."
+
+Augustine glanced dangerously at him.
+
+"Your mother and I have come to an understanding--after a great many
+years of misunderstanding," said Sir Hugh, putting up the other sole.
+"I'm--very fond of your mother,--and she is,--very fond of me."
+
+"She doesn't know you," said Augustine, who had become livid while the
+other made his gracefully hesitant statement.
+
+"Doesn't know me?" Sir Hugh lifted his brows in amused inquiry; "My dear
+boy, what do you know about that, pray? You are not in all your mother's
+secrets."
+
+Augustine was again silent for a moment, and he strove for self-mastery.
+"If I am not in my mother's secrets," he said, "she is not in yours. She
+does not know you. She doesn't know what sort of a man you are. You have
+deceived her. You have made her think that you are reformed and that the
+things in your life that made her leave you won't come again. But
+whether you are reformed or not a man like you has no right to come near
+a woman like my mother. I know that you are an evil man," said
+Augustine, his face trembling more and more uncontrollably; "And my
+mother is a saint."
+
+Sir Hugh stared at him. Then he burst into a shout of laughter. "You
+young fool!" he said.
+
+Augustine's eyes were lightnings in a storm-swept sky.
+
+"You young fool," Sir Hugh repeated, not laughing, a heavier stress
+weighting each repeated word.
+
+"Can you deny," said Augustine, "that you have always led a dissolute
+life? If you do deny it it won't help you. I know it: and I've not
+needed the echoes to tell me. I've always felt it in you. I've always
+known you were evil."
+
+"What if I don't deny it?" Sir Hugh inquired.
+
+Augustine was silent, biting his quivering lips.
+
+"What if I don't deny it?" Sir Hugh repeated. His assumption of
+good-humour was gone. He, too, was scowling now. "What have you to say
+then?"
+
+"By heaven,--I say that you shall not come near my mother."
+
+"And what if it was not because of my dissolute life she left me? What
+if you've built up a cock-and-bull romance that has no relation to
+reality in your empty young head? What then? Ask your mother if she left
+me because of my dissolute life," said Sir Hugh.
+
+The book in Augustine's wrenching hands had come apart with a crack and
+crash. He looked down at it stupidly.
+
+"You really should learn to control yourself--in every direction, my
+dear boy," Sir Hugh remarked. "Now, unless you would like to wreak your
+temper on the furniture, I think you had better sit down and be still. I
+should advise you to think over the fact that saints have been known
+before now to forgive sinners. And sinners may not be so bad as your
+innocence imagines. Goodbye. I am going up to see your mother. I am
+going to spend the night here."
+
+Augustine stood holding the shattered book. He gazed as stupidly at Sir
+Hugh as he had gazed at it. He gazed while Sir Hugh, who kept a rather
+wary eye fixed on him, left the fire and proceeded with a leisurely pace
+to cross the room: the door was reached and the handle turned, before
+the stupor broke. Sir Hugh, his eyes still fixed on his antagonist, saw
+the blanched fury, the start, as if the dazed body were awakening to
+some insufferable torture, saw the gathering together, the leap:--"You
+fool--you young fool!" he ground between his teeth as, with a clash of
+the half-opened door, Augustine pinned him upon it. "Let me go. Do you
+hear. Let me go." His voice was the voice of the lion-tamer, hushed
+before danger to a quelling depth of quiet.
+
+And like the young lion, drawing long breaths through dilated-nostrils,
+Augustine growled back:--"I will not--I will not.--You shall not go to
+her. I would rather kill you."
+
+"Kill me?" Sir Hugh smiled. "It would be a fight first, you know."
+
+"Then let it be a fight. You shall not go to her."
+
+"And what if she wants me to go to her.--Will you kill her first,
+too--"--The words broke. Augustine's hand was on his throat. Sir Hugh
+seized him. They writhed together against the door. "You mad-man!--You
+damned mad-man!--Your mother is in love with me.--I'll put you out of
+her life--"--Sir Hugh grated forth from the strangling clutch.
+
+Suddenly, as they writhed, panting, glaring their hatred at each other,
+the door they leaned on pushed against them. Someone outside was turning
+the handle, was forcing it open. And, as if through the shocks and
+flashes of a blinding, deafening tempest, Augustine heard his mother's
+voice, very still, saying: "Let me come in."
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+They fell apart and moved back into the room. Amabel entered. She wore a
+long white dressing-gown that, to her son's eyes, made her more than
+ever look her sainted self; she had dressed hastily, and, on hearing the
+crash below, she had wrapped a white scarf about her head and shoulders,
+covering her unbound hair. So framed and narrowed her face was that of a
+shrouded corpse: the same strange patience stamped it; her eyes, only,
+seemed to live, and they, too, were patient and ready for any doom.
+
+Quietly she had closed the door, and standing near it now she looked at
+them; her eyes fell for a moment upon Sir Hugh; then they rested on
+Augustine and did not leave him.
+
+Sir Hugh spoke first. He laughed a little, adjusting his collar and tie.
+
+"My dear,--you've saved my life. Augustine was going to batter my brains
+out on the door, I fancy."
+
+She did not look at him, but at Augustine.
+
+"He's really dangerous, your son, you know. Please don't leave me alone
+with him again," Sir Hugh smiled and pleaded; it was with almost his own
+lightness, but his face still twitched with anger.
+
+"What have you said to him?" Amabel asked.
+
+Augustine's eyes were drawing her down into their torment.--Unfortunate
+one.--That presage of her maternity echoed in her now. His stern young
+face seemed to have been framed, destined from the first for this
+foreseen misery.
+
+Sir Hugh had pulled himself together. He looked at the mother and son.
+And he understood her fear.
+
+He went to her, leaned over her, a hand above her shoulder on the door.
+He reassured and protected her; and, truly, in all their story, it had
+never been with such sincerity and grace.
+
+"Dearest, it's nothing. I've merely had to defend my rights. Will you
+assure this young firebrand that my misdemeanours didn't force you to
+leave me. That there were misdemeanours I don't deny; and of course you
+are too good for the likes of me; but your coming away wasn't my fault,
+was it.--That's what I've said.--And that saints forgive sinners,
+sometimes.--That's all I want you to tell him."
+
+Amabel still gazed into her son's eyes. It seemed to her, now that she
+must shut herself out from it for ever, that for the first time in all
+her life she saw his love.
+
+It broke over her; it threatened and commanded her; it implored and
+supplicated--ah the supplication beyond words or tears!--Selflessness
+made it stern. It was for her it threatened; for her it prayed.
+
+All these years the true treasure had been there beside her, while she
+worshipped at the spurious shrine. Only her sorrow, her solicitude had
+gone out to her son; the answering love that should have cherished and
+encompassed him flowed towards its true goal only when it was too late.
+He could not love her when he knew.
+
+And he was to know. That had come to her clearly and unalterably while
+she had leaned, half fallen, half kneeling, against her bed, dying, it
+seemed to her, to all that she had known of life or hope.
+
+But all was not death within her. In the long, the deadly stupor, her
+power to love still lived. It had been thrown back from its deep channel
+and, wave upon wave, it seemed heaped upon itself in some narrow abyss,
+tormented and shuddering; and at last by its own strength, rather than
+by thought or prayer of hers, it had forced an outlet.
+
+It was then as if she found herself once more within the church.
+Darkness, utter darkness was about her; but she was prostrated before
+the unseen altar. She knew herself once more, and with herself she knew
+her power to love.
+
+Her life and all its illusions passed before her; by the truth that
+irradiated the illusions, she judged them and herself and saw what must
+be the atonement. All that she had believed to be the treasure of her
+life had been taken from her; but there was one thing left to her that
+she could give:--her truth to her son. When that price was paid, he
+would be hers to love; he was no longer hers to live for. He should
+found his life on no illusions, as she had founded hers. She must set
+him free to turn away from her; but when he turned away it would not be
+to leave her in the loneliness and the terror of heart that she had
+known; it would be to leave her in the church where she could pray for
+him.
+
+She answered her husband after her long silence, looking at her son.
+
+"It is true, Augustine," she said. "You have been mistaken. I did not
+leave him for that."
+
+Sir Hugh drew a breath of satisfaction. He glanced round at Augustine.
+It was not a venomous glance, but, with its dart of steely intention, it
+paid a debt of vengeance. "So,--we needn't say anything more about it,"
+he said. "And--dearest--perhaps now you'll tell Augustine that he may go
+and leave us together."
+
+Amabel left her husband's side and went to her chair near the table. A
+strange calmness breathed from her. She sat with folded hands and
+downcast eyes.
+
+"Augustine, come here," she said.
+
+The young man came and stood before her.
+
+"Give me your hand."
+
+He gave it to her. She did not look at him but kept her eyes fixed on
+the ground while she clasped it.
+
+"Augustine," she said, "I want you to leave me with my husband. I must
+talk with him. He is going away soon. Tomorrow--tomorrow morning early,
+I will see you, here. I will have a great deal to say to you, my dear
+son."
+
+But Augustine, clutching her hand and trembling, looked down at her so
+that she raised her eyes to his.
+
+"I can't go, till you say something, now, Mother;"--his voice shook as
+it had shaken on that day of their parting, his face was livid and
+convulsed, as then;--"I will go away tonight--I don't know that I can
+ever return--unless you tell me that you are not going to take him
+back." He gazed down into his mother's eyes.
+
+She did not answer him; she did not speak. But, as he looked into them,
+he, too, for the first time, saw in them what she had seen in his.
+
+They dwelt on him; they widened; they almost smiled; they deeply
+promised him all--all--that he most longed for. She was his, her son's;
+she was not her husband's. What he had feared had never threatened him
+or her. This was a gift she had won the right to give. The depth of her
+repudiation yesterday gave her her warrant.
+
+And to Amabel, while they looked into each other's eyes, it was as if,
+in the darkness, some arching loveliness of dawn vaguely shaped itself
+above the altar.
+
+"Kiss me, dear Augustine," she said. She held up her forehead, closing
+her eyes, for the kiss that was her own.
+
+Augustine was gone. And now, before her, was the ugly breaking. But must
+it be so ugly? Opening her eyes, she looked at her husband as he stood
+before the fire, his wondering eyes upon her. Must it be ugly? Why could
+it not be quiet and even kind?
+
+Strangely there had gathered in her, during the long hours, the garnered
+strength of her life of discipline and submission. It had sustained her
+through the shudder that glanced back at yesterday--at the corruption
+that had come so near; it had given sanity to see with eyes of
+compassion the forsaken woman who had come with her courageous,
+revengeful story; it gave sanity now, as she looked over at her husband,
+to see him also, with those eyes of compassionate understanding; he was
+not blackened, to her vision, by the shadowing corruption, but, in his
+way, pitiful, too; all the worth of life lost to him.
+
+And it seemed swiftest, simplest, and kindest, as she looked over at
+him, to say:--"You see--Lady Elliston came this afternoon, and told me
+everything."
+
+Sir Hugh kept his face remarkably unmoved. He continued to gaze at his
+wife with an unabashed, unstartled steadiness. "I might have guessed
+that," he said after a short silence. "Confound her."
+
+Amabel made no reply.
+
+"So I suppose," Sir Hugh went on, "you feel you can't forgive me."
+
+She hesitated, not quite understanding. "You mean--for having married
+me--when you loved her?"
+
+"Well, yes; but more for not having, long ago, in all these years, found
+out that you were the woman that any man with eyes to see, any man not
+blinded and fatuous, ought to have been in love with from the
+beginning."
+
+Amabel flushed. Her vision was untroubled; but the shadow hovered. She
+was ashamed for him.
+
+"No"; she said, "I did not think of that. I don't know that I have
+anything to forgive you. It is Lady Elliston, I think, who must try and
+forgive you, if she can."
+
+Sir Hugh was again silent for a moment; then he laughed. "You dear
+innocent!--Well--I won't defend myself at her expense."
+
+"Don't," said Amabel, looking now away from him.
+
+Sir Hugh eyed her and seemed to weigh the meaning of her voice.
+
+He crossed the room suddenly and leaned over her:--"Amabel darling,--what
+must I do to atone? I'll be patient. Don't be cruel and punish me for too
+long a time."
+
+"Sit there--will you please." She pointed to the chair at the other side
+of the table.
+
+He hesitated, still leaning above her; then obeyed; folding his arms;
+frowning.
+
+"You don't understand," said Amabel. "I loved you for what you never
+were. I do not love you now. And I would never have loved you as you
+asked me to do yesterday."
+
+He gazed at her, trying to read the difficult riddle of a woman's
+perversity. "You were in love with me yesterday," he said at last.
+
+She answered nothing.
+
+"I'll make you love me again."
+
+"No: never," she answered, looking quietly at him. "What is there in you
+to love?"
+
+Sir Hugh flushed. "I say! You are hard on me!"
+
+"I see nothing loveable in you," said Amabel with her inflexible
+gentleness. "I loved you because I thought you noble and magnanimous;
+but you were neither. You only did not cast me off, as I deserved,
+because you could not; and you were kind partly because you are kind by
+nature, but partly because my money was convenient to you. I do not say
+that you were ignoble; you were in a very false position. And I had
+wronged you; I had committed the greater social crime; but there was
+nothing noble; you must see that; and it was for that I loved you."
+
+Sir Hugh now got up and paced up and down near her.
+
+"So you are going to cast me off because I had no opportunity for
+showing nobility. How do you know I couldn't have behaved as you
+believed I did behave, if only I'd had the chance? You know--you are
+hard on me."
+
+"I see no sign of nobility--towards anyone--in your life," Amabel
+answered as dispassionately as before.
+
+Sir Hugh walked up and down.
+
+"I did feel like a brute about the money sometimes," he
+remarked;--"especially that last time; I wanted you to have the house as
+a sort of salve to my conscience; I've taken almost all your money, you
+know; it's quite true. As to the rest--what Augustine calls my
+dissoluteness--I can't pretend to take your view; a nun's view." He
+looked at her. "How beautiful you are with that white round your face,"
+he said. "You are like a woman of snow."
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+When 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."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Amabel Channice, by Anne Douglas Sedgwick
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