"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 n.o.ble."
Lady Elliston looked at her steadily and unflinchingly. "He is not n.o.ble," 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 n.o.ble," 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 n.o.bility come between you and your son. I will not have him come near you with his love. He is not n.o.ble, 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 pa.s.sion, 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 pa.s.sion 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, pa.s.sion: 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 embarra.s.sed, 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 n.o.ble; 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 b.u.t.ter 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."