Amabel Channice.
by Anne Douglas Sedgwick.
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 a.s.surance in her limited sphere of action, moved away all the ugliest, most trivial things: tattered brocade and gilt footstools, faded antimaca.s.sars, dismal groups of birds and b.u.t.terflies under gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 a.s.sistance 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 gla.s.s 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 a.n.a.logies, 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.n.a.logies failed in their awe-inspiring a.s.sociations, they remained in the a.s.sociations 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 a.s.sociates 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 impa.s.sive, 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 n.o.blest person I have ever known." Tears were in her eyes. Augustine turned away his own.