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 pa.s.s, 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; grat.i.tude welled up in her and she sighed with the relief of her deep hope. To feel this grat.i.tude 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 encompa.s.sed 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, pa.s.sionate 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 n.o.bodies.--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."