The Reflections of Ambrosine Part 38

I felt bitterly annoyed with myself that this news did not cause me any grief. I have been this man's wife for five months, and his going into danger in a far country leaves me cold. But I did, indeed, grieve for his mother. Her many good qualities came back to me. This will be a terrible blow to her.

I looked up at the little pastel by La Tour. The sprightly French Marquise smiled back at me.

"Good-bye," I said. "You, pretty Marquise, would call me a fool because to-day Antony is not my lover. But I--oh, I am glad!"

He did not even kiss my finger-tips last night. We parted sadly after a storm of words neither he nor I had ever meant to speak.

"_Il s'en faut bien que nous commissions tout ce que nos pa.s.sions nous font faire!_"

Once more La Rochefoucauld has spoken truth.

Why the situation is as it is I cannot tell. In my bringing up, the idea of taking a lover after marriage seemed a more or less natural thing, and not altogether a deadly sin, provided the affair was conducted _sans fanfaronnade_, without scandal. It was not that grandmamma and the Marquis actually discussed such matters in my hearing, but the general tone of their conversation gave that impression.

Marriage, as the Marquis said to me, was not a pleasure--it is a means to an end, a tax of society. The _agrements_ of life came afterwards.

I had always understood he had been grandmamma's lover.

Once I heard him express this sentiment when I was supposed to be reading my book: The marriage vows, he said, were the only ones a gentleman might break without great blemish to his honor. This was the atmosphere I had always lived in, and since my wedding the people of my own cla.s.s that I have met do not seem to hold different views. Lord Tilchester is Babykins's lover. The Duke has pa.s.sed on from several women, and, to come nearer home, there are my husband and Lady Grenellen. Only Lady Tilchester seems n.o.ble and above all these earthly things.

Why did I hesitate? I do not know. There is a something in my spirit which cried out against the meanness of it, the degradation, the sacrilege. I could not break my word to Augustus. Oh! I could not stoop to desecrate myself, and to act for all the future--hours of deceit.

And now after to-day I will never see Antony alone again. That we shall casually meet I cannot guard against. But never again shall I stay in his house. Never again awake in this beautiful room. Never again--

"The brougham is at the door, ma'am," said McGreggor, interrupting my thoughts, and I descended the stairs. The fog was still gray and raw, but had considerably lifted.

In the uncompromising daylight Antony's face looked haggard and drawn.

"Comtesse," he said, as we drove along, "I cannot forgive myself for causing you pain last night. Nothing was further from my thoughts than to hara.s.s and disturb you--here, in my own house--that I wanted you to look upon as your haven of rest. But I am not made of stone. The situation was exceptional--and I love you."

In spite of our imminent parting, joy rushed through me at his words.

Oh! could I ever get tired of hearing Antony say "I love you"?

"You did not cause me pain," I said. "We had drifted, neither knowing where. It was fate."

"Darling, do you remember our talk in your sitting-room, and of the _coup de foudre_? Well, it has struck us both. Oh! I could curse myself! Your dear little white face looks up at me pathetically without a reproach, and I have been a selfish brute to even tell you I love you. I meant to be your friend and comrade that you might feel you had at least some one that would stand by you forever. I wanted to make your life pleasanter, and now my mad folly has spoiled it all, and you decree that we must part. Oh! my little Comtesse, my loving you has only been to hurt you!"

"Oh no. It makes me glad to know it--only--only I cannot see you any more."

"I would promise never to say another word that could disturb you. Oh!

Why must we say good-bye?"

"Because I could not promise not to wish you to say things. You must surely know if we went on meeting it could only have one end."

"Well, I will do as you wish, my darling white rose. In my eyes you are above the angels."

Antony's voice when it is moved could wile a bird from off a tree.

Then I told him of my telegram, and I know he, too, felt glad that last night we had parted as we had.

"Ambrosine, listen to me," he said, "I will not try to see you, but if you want anything in the world done for you, promise to let me do it."

I promised.

"There is just one thing I want to know," I said. "That day before my wedding, when you sent me the knife and the note saying it was not too late to cut the Gordian knot, what did you mean? Did you care for me, then?"

"I do not know exactly what I meant. I was greatly attracted by you.

That day we came over I very nearly said to you then, 'Come along away with me,' and then we never met again until your wedding. When I sent the knife I half wondered what you would say. I wrote the note half in joke, half in earnest. My princ.i.p.al feeling was that I could not bear you to marry Augustus. If we had chanced to meet then, really, I should have taken you off to Gretna Green."

"Alas!" I said.

The footman opened the door. We had arrived at the station.

We did not travel in the same carriage going to London. We had agreed it would be better not. And I do not think any one, seeing Antony calmly handing me into the hired brougham Augustus had sent to me, would have guessed that we were parting forever, and that, to me at least, all joy in the world had fled.

It is stupid to go on talking about one's feelings. Having cut off one's hand, I am sure grandmamma would say it would be drivelling and mawkish to meditate over each drop of blood.

I tried hard to think of other things. I counted the stupid pattern on the braid that ornamented the inside of the brougham. I counted the lamp-posts, with their murky lights, showing through the fog. I looked at McGreggor sitting stolidly opposite me. Could any emotions happen to that wooden mask? "Have you a lover that you have said good-bye to forever, I wonder? And is that why your face is carved out of stone?"

I said to myself.

In spite of all grandmamma's stoical bringing-up, it was physical pain I was suffering.

In Queen Victoria Street a hansom pa.s.sed us and I caught a misty glimpse of Antony. He smiled mechanically as he raised his hat.

And so this is the end.

The fog is falling thickly again. Everything is damp and cold and black as night.

And I--Oh! I wish--

"Hallo, little woman! Glad to see you!" said Augustus, in a thick and tipsy voice, as I got out of the carriage. And he kissed me in front of all the people at the hotel door.

BOOK III

I

The ship sailed a week ago and Augustus has gone to the war. Oh, I hate to look back and think of those dreadful three weeks before he started!

A nightmare of hideous scenes. Alternate drunkenness and inordinate affection for me, or sullen silence and cringing fear. Oh, of all the frightful moments there are in life, there can be none so dark as those that some women have to suffer from the drunken pa.s.sions and ways of men!

Augustus would have deserted at the last moment if an opportunity had offered. His mother made matters worse, as, instead of remembering her country as so many mothers have, and sending her son on his way with brave and glorious words, she wept and lamented from morning till night.

"I told you so, Gussie," she said, when she first met us in London. "I was always against your joining that Yeomanry. I told you it wasn't only the uniform, and it might get you into trouble some day. Oh, to think that an extra gla.s.s of champagne could have made you volunteer.