"I don"t know anything about you, except that you have made my mother ill and that you want something of me."
"My dear young man I, at all events, know one thing about you very clearly, and that is that I trust you."
"I want nothing of you," said Augustine, but he still smiled, so that his words did not seem discourteous.
"Nothing? Really nothing? I am your mother"s friend, and you want nothing of me? I have sought her out; I came today to see and understand; I have not made her ill; she was nearly crying when we came into the room, you and I, a little while ago. What I see and understand makes me sad and angry. And I believe that you, too, see and understand; I believe that you, too, are sad and angry. And I want to help you. I want you, when you come into the world, as you must, to bring your mother. I"ll be waiting there for you both. I am a sort of fairy-G.o.dmother. I want to see justice done."
"I suppose you mean that you are angry with my father and want to see justice done on him," said Augustine after a pause.
Again Lady Elliston sat suddenly still, as if another, an unexpected bullet, had whizzed past her. "What makes you say that?" she asked after a moment.
"What you have said and what you have seen. He had been making her cry,"
said Augustine. He was still calm, but now, under the calm, she heard, like the thunder of the sea in caverns deep beneath a placid headland, the m.u.f.fled sound of a hidden, a dark indignation.
"Yes," she said, looking into his eyes; "that made me angry; and that he should take all her money from her, as I am sure he does, and leave her to live like this."
Augustine"s colour rose. He turned away his eyes and seemed to ponder.
"I do want something of you, after all; the answer to one question," he said at last. "Is it because of him that she is cloistered here?"
In a flash Lady Elliston had risen to her emergency, her opportunity.
She was grave, she was ready, and she was very careful.
"It was her own choice," she said.
Augustine pondered again. He, too, was grave and careful She saw how, making use of her proffered help, he yet held her at a distance. "That does not answer my question," he said. "I will put it in another way. Is it because of some evil in his life that she is cloistered?"
Lady Elliston sat before him in one of the high-backed chairs; the light was behind her: the delicate oval of her face maintained its steady att.i.tude: in the twilit room Augustine could see her eyes fixed very strangely upon him. She, too, was perhaps pondering. When at last she spoke, she rose in speaking, as if her answer must put an end to their encounter, as if he must feel, as well as she, that after her answer there could be no further question.
"Not altogether, for that," she said; "but, yes, in part it is because of what you would call an evil in his life that she is cloistered."
Augustine walked with her to the door and down the stone pa.s.sage outside, where a strip of faded carpet hardly kept one"s feet from the cold. He was nearer to her in this curious moment of their parting than he had been at all. He liked Lady Elliston in her last response; it was not the wish to see justice wreaked that had made it; it was mere truth.
When they had reached the hall door, he opened it for her and in the fading light he saw that she was very pale. The Grey"s dog-cart was going slowly round and round the gravel drive. Lady Elliston did not look at him. She stood waiting for the groom to see her.
"What you asked me was asked in confidence," she said; "and what I have told you is told in confidence."
"It wasn"t new to me; I had guessed it," said Augustine. "But your confirmation of what I guessed is in confidence."
"I have been your father"s life-long friend," said Lady Elliston; "He is not an evil man."
"I understand. I don"t misjudge him."
"I don"t want to see justice done on him," said Lady Elliston. The groom had seen her and the dog-cart, with a brisk rattle of wheels, drew up to the door. "It isn"t a question of that; I only want to see justice done _for_ her."
All through she had been steady; now she was sweet again. "I want to free her. I want you to free her. And--whenever you do--I shall be waiting to give her to the world again."
They looked at each other now and Augustine could answer, with another smile; "You are the world, I suppose."
"Yes; I am the world," she accepted. "The actual fairy-G.o.dmother, with a magic wand that can turn pumpkins into coaches and put Cinderellas into their proper places."
Augustine had handed her up to her seat beside the groom. He tucked her rug about her. If he had laid aside anything to meet her on her own ground, he, too, had regained it now.
"But does the world always know what _is_ the proper place?" was his final remark as she drove off.
She did not know that she could have found an answer to it.
VII
Amabel was sitting beside her window when her son came in and the face she turned on him was white and rigid.
"My dear mother," said Augustine, coming up to her, "how pale you are."
She had been sitting there for all that time, tearless, in a stupor of misery. Yes, she answered him, she was very tired.
Augustine stood over her looking out of the window. "A little walk wouldn"t do you good?" he asked.
No, she answered, her head ached too badly.
She could find nothing to say to him: the truth that lay so icily upon her heart was all that she could have said: "I am your guilty mother. I robbed you of your father. And your father is dead, unmourned, unloved, almost forgotten by me." For that was the poison in her misery, to know that for Paul Quentin she felt almost nothing. To hear that he had died was to hear that a ghost had died.
What would Augustine say to her if the truth were spoken? It was now a looming horror between them. It shut her from him and it shut him away.
"Oh, do come out," said Augustine after a moment: "the evening"s so fine: it will do you good; and there"s still a bit of sunset to be seen."
She shook her head, looking away from him.
"Is it really so bad as that?"
"Yes; very bad."
"Can"t I do anything? Get you anything?"
"No, thank you."
"I"m so sorry," said Augustine, and, suddenly, but gravely, deliberately, he stooped and kissed her.
"Oh--don"t!--don"t!" she gasped. She thrust him away, turning her face against the chair. "Don"t: you must leave me.--I am so unhappy."
The words sprang forth: she could not repress them, nor the gush of miserable tears.
If Augustine was horrified he was silent. He stood leaning over her for a moment and then went out of the room.
She lay fallen in her chair, weeping convulsively. The past was with her; it had seized her and, in her panic-stricken words, it had thrust her child away. What would happen now? What would Augustine say? What would he ask? If he said nothing and asked nothing, what would he think?