"Oh--but Amabel--" Lady Elliston breathed forth. She leaned forward, then moved back, withdrawing the hand impulsively put out.--"Why?--Why?--"
she gently urged. "It is all over: all pa.s.sed: all forgotten. Don"t--ah don"t let it blight anything."
"Oh no," said Amabel, shaking her head. "It isn"t over; it isn"t forgotten; it never will be. Hugh cannot forget--though he has forgiven. And someday, I feel it, Augustine will know. Then I shall drink the cup of shame to the last drop."
"Oh!--" said Lady Elliston, as if with impatience. She checked herself.
"What can I say?--if you will think of yourself in this preposterous way.--As for Augustine, he does not know and how should he ever know?
How could he, when no one in the world knows but you and I and Hugh."
She paused at that, looking at Amabel"s downcast face. "You notice what I say, Amabel?"
"Yes; that isn"t it. He will guess."
"You are morbid, my poor child.--But do you notice nothing when I say that only we three know?"
Amabel looked up. Lady Elliston met her eyes. "I came today to tell you, Amabel. I felt sure you did not know. There is no reason at all, now, why you should dread coming out into the world--with Augustine. You need fear no meetings. You did not know that he was dead."
"He?"
"Yes. He. Paul Quentin."
Amabel, gazing at her, said nothing.
"He died in Italy, last week. He was married, you know, quite happily; an ordinary sort of person; she had money; he rather let his work go.
But they were happy; a large family; a villa on a hill somewhere; pictures, bric-a-brac and bohemian intellectualism. You knew of his marriage?"
"Yes; I knew."
The tears had risen to Lady Elliston"s eyes before that stricken, ashen face; she looked away, murmuring: "I wanted to tell you, when we were alone. It might have come as such an ugly shock, if you were unprepared.
But, now, there is no danger anymore. And you will come out, Amabel?"
"No;--never.--It was never that."
"But what was it then?"
Amabel had risen and was looking around her blindly.
"It was.--I have no place but here.--Forgive me--I must go. I can"t talk any more."
"Yes; go; do go and lie down." Lady Elliston, rising too, put an arm around her shoulders and took her hand. "I"ll come again and see you. I am going up to town for a night or so on Tuesday, but I bring Peggy down here for the next week-end. I"ll see you then.--Ah, here is Augustine, and tea. He will give me my tea and you must sleep off your headache.
Your poor mother has a very bad headache, Augustine. I have tried her.
Goodbye, dear, go and rest."
VI
An hour ago Augustine had found his mother in tears; now he found her beyond them. He gave her his arm, and, outside in the hall, prepared to mount the stairs with her; but, shaking her head, trying, with miserable unsuccess, to smile, she pointed him back to the drawing-room and to his duties of host.
"Ah, she is very tired. She does not look well," said Lady Elliston. "I am glad to see that you take good care of her."
"She is usually very well," said Augustine, standing over the tea-tray that had been put on the table between him and Lady Elliston. "Let"s see: what do you have? Sugar? milk?"
"No sugar; milk, please. It"s such a great pleasure to me to meet your mother again."
Augustine made no reply to this, handing her her cup and the plate of bread and b.u.t.ter.
"She was one of the loveliest girls I have ever seen," Lady Elliston went on, helping herself. "She looked like a Madonna--and a cowslip.--And she looks like that more than ever." She had paused for a moment as an uncomfortable recollection came to her. It was Paul Quentin who had said that: at her house.
"Yes," Augustine a.s.sented, pleased, "she does look like a cowslip; she is so pale and golden and tranquil. It"s funny you should say so," he went on, "for I"ve often thought it; but with me it"s an a.s.sociation of ideas, too. Those meadows over there, beyond our lawn, are full of cowslips in Spring and ever since I can remember we have picked them there together."
"How sweet"; Lady Elliston was still a little confused, by her blunder, and by his words. "What a happy life you and your mother must have had, cloistered here. I"ve been telling your mother that it"s like a cloister. I"ve been scolding her a little for shutting herself up in it.
And now that I have this chance of talking to you I do very much want to say that I hope you will bring her out a little more."
"Bring her out? Where?" Augustine inquired.
"Into the world--the world she is so fitted to adorn. It"s ridiculous this--this fad of hers," said Lady Elliston.
"Is it a fad?" Augustine asked, but with at once a lightness and distance of manner.
"Of course. And it is bad for anyone to be immured."
"I don"t think it has been bad for her. Perhaps this is more the world than you think."
"I only mean bad in the sense of sad."
"Isn"t the world sad?"
"What a strange young man you are. Do you really mean to say that you like to see your mother--your beautiful, lovely mother--imprisoned in this gloomy place and meeting n.o.body from one year"s end to the other?"
"I have said nothing at all about my likes," said Augustine, smiling.
Lady Elliston gazed at him. He startled her almost as much as his mother had done. What a strange young man, indeed; what strange echoes of his father and mother in him. But she had to grope for the resemblances to Paul Quentin; they were there; she felt them; but they were difficult to see; while it was easy to see the resemblances to Amabel. His father was like a force, a fierceness in him, controlled and guided by an influence that was his mother. And where had he found, at nineteen, that a.s.surance, an a.s.surance without his father"s vanity or his mother"s selflessness? Paul Quentin had been a.s.sured because he was so absolutely sure of his own value; Amabel was a.s.sured because, in her own eyes, she was valueless; this young man seemed to be without self-reference or self-effacement; but he was quite self-a.s.sured. Had he some mental talisman by which he accurately gauged all values, his own included? He seemed at once so oddly above yet of the world. She pulled herself together to remember that he was, only, nineteen, and that she had had motives in coming, and that if these motives had been good they were now better.
"You have said nothing; but I am going to ask you to say something"; she smiled back at him. "I am going to ask you to say that you will take me on trust. I am your friend and your mother"s friend."
"Since when, my mother"s?" Augustine asked. His amiability of aspect remained constant.
"Since twenty years."
"Twenty years in which you have not seen your friend."
"I know that that looks strange. But when one shuts oneself away into a cloister one shuts out friends."
"Does one?"
"You won"t trust me?"