Amabel Channice Part 3

Bertram said that she should spend the night there and that he would see Hugh in the morning. And:--"No; you needn't see him yet, if you feel you can't. It may be arranged without that. Hugh will understand." And this was the first ray of the light that was to grow and grow. Hugh would understand.

She did not see him for two years.

All that had happened after her return to Bertram was a blur now. There were hasty talks, Bertram defining for her her future position, one of dignity it must be--he insisted on that; Hugh perfectly understood her wish for the present, quite fell in with it; but, eventually, she must take her place in her husband's home again. Even Bertram, intent as he was on the family honour, could not force the unwilling wife upon the merely magnanimous husband.

Her husband's magnanimity was the radiance that grew for Amabel during these black days, the days of hasty talks and of her journey down to Charlock House.

She had never seen Charlock House before; Sir Hugh had spoken of the family seat as "a dismal hole," but, on that hot July evening of her arrival, it looked peaceful to her, a dark haven of refuge, like the promise of sleep after nightmare.

Mrs. Bray stood in the door, a grim but not a hostile warder: Amabel felt anyone who was not hostile to be almost kind.

The house had been hastily prepared for her, dining-room and drawing-room and the large bedroom upstairs, having the same outlook over the lawn, the sycamores, the flat meadows. She could see herself standing there now, looking about her at the bedroom where gaiety and gauntness were oddly mingled in the faded carnations and birds of paradise on the chintzes and in the vastness of the four-poster, the towering wardrobes, the capacious, creaking chairs and sofas. Everything was very clean and old; the dressing-table was stiffly skirted in darned muslins and near the pin-cus.h.i.+on stood a small, tight nosegay, Mrs.

Bray's cautious welcome to this ambiguous mistress.

"A comfortable old place, isn't it," Bertram had said, looking about, too; "You'll soon get well and strong here, Amabel." This, Amabel knew, was said for the benefit of Mrs. Bray who stood, non-committal and observant just inside the door. She knew, too, that Bertram was depressed by the gauntness and gaiety of the bedroom and even more depressed by the maroon leather furniture and the cases of stuffed birds below, and that he was at once glad to get away from Charlock House and sorry for her that she should have to be left there, alone with Mrs.

Bray. But to Amabel it was a dream after a nightmare. A strange, desolate dream, all through those sultry summer days; but a dream shot through with radiance in the thought of the magnanimity that had spared and saved her.

And with the coming of the final horror, came the final revelation of this radiance. She had been at Charlock House for many weeks, and it was mid-Autumn, when that horror came. She knew that she was to have a child and that it could not be her husband's child.

With the knowledge her mind seemed unmoored at last; it wavered and swung in a nightmare blackness deeper than any she had known. In her physical prostration and mental disarray the thought of suicide was with her. How face Bertram now,--Bertram with his tenacious hopes? How face her husband--ever--ever--in the far future? Her disgrace lived and she was to see it. But, in the swinging chaos, it was that thought that kept her from frenzy; the thought that it did live; that its life claimed her; that to it she must atone. She did not love this child that was to come; she dreaded it; yet the dread was sacred, a burden that she must bear for its unhappy sake. What did she not owe to it--unfortunate one--of atonement and devotion?

She gathered all her courage, armed her physical weakness, her wandering mind, to summon Bertram and to tell him.

She told him in the long drawing-room on a sultry September day, leaning her arms on the table by which she sat and covering her face.

Bertram said nothing for a long time. He was still boyish enough to feel any such announcement as embarra.s.sing; and that it should be told him now, in such circ.u.mstances, by his sister, by Amabel, was nearly incredible. How a.s.sociate such savage natural facts, lawless and unappeasable, with that young figure, dressed in its trousseau white muslin and with its crown of innocent gold. It made her suddenly seem older than himself and at once more piteous and more sinister. For a moment, after the sheer stupor, he was horribly angry with her; then came dismay at his own cruelty.

"This does change things, Amabel," he said at last.

"Yes," she answered from behind her hands.

"I don't know how Hugh will take it," said Bertram.

"He must divorce me now," she said. "It can be done very quietly, can't it. And I have money. I can go away, somewhere, out of England--I've thought of America--or New Zealand--some distant country where I shall never be heard of; I can bring up the child there."

Bertram stared at her. She sat at the table, her hands before her face, in the light, girlish dress that hung loosely about her. She was fragile and wasted. Her voice seemed dead. And he wondered at the unhappy creature's courage.

"Divorce!" he then said violently; "No; he can't do that;--and he had forgiven already; I don't know how the law stands; but of course you won't go away. What an idea; you might as well kill yourself outright.

It's only--. I don't know how the law stands. I don't know what Hugh will say."

Bertram walked up and down biting his nails. He stopped presently before a window, his back turned to his sister, and, flus.h.i.+ng over the words, he said: "You are sure--you are quite sure, Amabel, that it isn't Hugh's child. You are such a girl. You can know nothing.--I mean--it may be a mistake."

"I am quite sure," the unmoved voice answered him. "I do know."

Bertram again stood silent. "Well," he said at last, turning to her though he did not look at her, "all I can do is to see how Hugh takes it. You know, Amabel, that you can count on me. I'll see after you, and after the child. Hugh may, of course, insist on your parting from it; that will probably be the condition he'll make;--naturally. In that case I'll take you abroad soon. It can be got through, I suppose, without anybody knowing; a.s.sumed names; some Swiss or Italian village--" Bertram muttered, rather to himself than to her. "Good G.o.d, what an odious business!--But, as you say, we have money; that simplifies everything.

You mustn't worry about the child. I will see that it is put into safe hands and I'll keep an eye on its future--." He stopped, for his sister's hands had fallen. She was gazing at him, still dully--for it seemed that nothing could strike any excitement from her--but with a curious look, a look that again made him feel as if she were much older than he.

"Never," she said.

"Never what?" Bertram asked. "You mean you won't part from the child?"

"Never; never," she repeated.

"But Amabel," with cold patience he urged; "if Hugh insists.--My poor girl, you have made your bed and you must lie on it. You can't expect your husband to give this child--this illegitimate child--his name. You can't expect him to accept it as his child."

"No; I don't expect it," she said.

"Well, what then? What's your alternative?"

"I must go away with the child."

"I tell you, Amabel, it's impossible," Bertram in his painful anxiety spoke with irritation. "You've got to consider our name--my name, my position, and your husband's. Heaven knows I want to be kind to you--do all I can for you; I've not once reproached you, have I? But you must be reasonable. Some things you must accept as your punishment. Unless Hugh is the most fantastically generous of men you'll have to part from the child."

She sat silent.

"You do consent to that?" Bertram insisted.

She looked before her with that dull, that stupid look. "No," she replied.

Bertram's patience gave way, "You are mad," he said. "Have you no consideration for me--for us? You behave like this--incredibly, in my mother's daughter--never a girl better brought up; you go off with that--that bounder;--you stay with him for a week--good heavens!--there'd have been more dignity if you'd stuck to him;--you chuck him, in one week, and then you come back and expect us to do as you think fit, to let you disappear and everyone know that you've betrayed your husband and had a child by another man. It's mad, I tell you, and it's impossible, and you've got to submit. Do you hear? Will you answer me, I say? Will you promise that if Hugh won't consent to fathering the child--won't consent to giving it his name--won't consent to having it, as his heir, disinherit the lawful children he may have by you--good heavens, I wonder if you realize what you are asking!--will you promise, I say, if he doesn't consent, to part from the child?"

She did look rather mad, her brother thought, and he remembered, with discomfort, that women, at such times, did sometimes lose their reason.

Her eyes with their dead gaze nearly frightened him, when, after all his violence, his entreaty, his abuse of her, she only, in an unchanged voice, said "No."

He felt then the uselessness of protestation or threat; she must be treated as if she were mad; humored, cajoled. He was silent for a little while, walking up and down. "Well, I'll say no more, then. Forgive me for my harshness," he said. "You give me a great deal to bear, Amabel; but I'll say nothing now. I have your word, at all events," he looked sharply at her as the sudden suspicion crossed him, "I have your word that you'll stay quietly here--until you hear from me what Hugh says?

You promise me that?"

"Yes," his sister answered. He gave a sigh for the sorry relief.

That night Amabel's mind wandered wildly. She heard herself, in the lonely room where she lay, calling out meaningless things. She tried to control the horror of fear that rose in her and peopled the room with phantoms; but the fear ran curdling in her veins and flowed about her, shaping itself in forms of misery and disaster. "No--no--poor child.--Oh--don't--don't.--I will come to you. I am your mother.--They can't take you from me."--this was the most frequent cry.

The poor child hovered, wailing, delivered over to vague, unseen sorrow, and, though a tiny infant, it seemed to be Paul Quentin, too, in some dreadful plight, appealing to her in the name of their dead love to save him. She did not love him; she did not love the child; but her heart seemed broken with impotent pity.

In the intervals of nightmare she could look, furtively, fixedly, about the room. The moon was bright outside, and through the curtains a pallid light showed the menacing forms of the two great wardrobes. The four posts of her bed seemed like the pillars of some vast, alien temple, and the canopy, far above her, floated like a threatening cloud. Opposite her bed, above the chimney-piece, was a deeply glimmering mirror: if she were to raise herself she would see her own white reflection, rising, ghastly.--She hid her face on her pillows and sank again into the abyss.

Next morning she could not get up. Her pulses were beating at fever speed; but, with the daylight, her mind was clearer. She could summon her quiet look when Mrs. Bray came in to ask her mournfully how she was.

And a little later a telegram came, from Bertram.

Her trembling hands could hardly open it. She read the words. "All is well." Mrs. Bray stood beside her bed. She meant to keep that quiet look for Mrs. Bray; but she fainted. Mrs. Bray, while she lay tumbled among the pillows, and before lifting her, read the message hastily.

From the night of torment and the shock of joy, Amabel brought an extreme susceptibility to emotion that showed itself through all her life in a trembling of her hands and frame when any stress of feeling was laid upon her.

After that torment and that shock she saw Bertram once, and only once, again;--ah, strange and sad in her memory that final meeting of their lives, though this miraculous news was the theme of it. She was still in bed when he came, the bed she did not leave for months, and, though so weak and dizzy, she understood all that he told her, knew the one supreme fact of her husband's goodness. He sent her word that she was to be troubled about nothing; she was to take everything easily and naturally. She should always have her child with her and it should bear his name. He would see after it like a father; it should never know that he was not its father. And, as soon as she would let him, he would come and see her--and it. Amabel, lying on her pillows, gazed and gazed: her eyes, in their shadowy hollows, were two dark wells of sacred wonder.

Even Bertram felt something of the wonder of them. In his new gladness and relief, he was very kind to her. He came and kissed her. She seemed, once more, a person whom one could kiss. "Poor dear," he said, "you have had a lot to bear. You do look dreadfully ill. You must get well and strong, now, Amabel, and not worry any more, about anything. Everything is all right. We will call the child Augustine, if it's a boy, after mother's father you know, and Katherine, if it's a girl, after her mother: I feel, don't you, that we have no right to use their own names.

But the further away ones seem right, now. Hugh is a trump, isn't he?

And, I'm sure of it, Amabel, when time has pa.s.sed a little, and you feel you can, he'll have you back; I do really believe it may be managed.

This can all be explained. I'm saying that you are ill, a nervous breakdown, and are having a complete rest."