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, pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sing from it she pa.s.sed 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 c.h.i.n.ks 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 gla.s.s. 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.