Chapter 7

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?"