Part 39 (1/2)

And now you've got to go to the war and you have broken my heart.”

Augustus's own terror was pitiable to see if it had not roused all my contempt.

Oh, that I should bear the name of a craven!

Lady Grenellen was also in London. When he was sober enough and not engaged with his military duties, Augustus went to see her, and if she happened to be unkind to him he vented his annoyance upon me on his return.

Had it not been that he was going to the war, I could not, for my own self-respect, have put up with the position any longer. But that thought, and the sight of his weeping mother, made me bear all things in silence. I could not add to her griefs.

She quite broke down one day.

”I always knew Gussie took too much. It began at Cambridge, long ago,”

she wept. ”But after he first saw you and fell in love, he gave it up, I hoped, and now it has broken out again. I thought marrying you would have cured him. Oh, deary me! I feared some one would tell your grandma, and she would break off the match. I was glad when your wedding was over.” And she sobbed and rocked herself to and fro. ”I'm grateful to you, my dear, for what you have done for him. It's been ugly for you lately. But there--there, he's going to the war and I shall never see him again!”

”Do not take that gloomy view. The war is nearly over. There is no danger now,” I said, to comfort her. ”Augustus will only have riding about and a healthy out-door life, and it will probably cure him.”

”I've lived in fear ever since the war began, and now it's come,” she wailed, refusing to be comforted.

I said everything else I could, and eventually she cheered up for a few days after this, but at the end broke down again, and now, Amelia writes, lies prostrate in a darkened room. Amelia is having her time of trial. They left for Bournemouth yesterday.

Am I a cold and heartless woman because now that Augustus has gone I can only feel relief?

One of his last speeches was not calculated to leave an agreeable impression.

”You'd better look out how you behave while I am away,” he said. ”I'd kick up a row in a minute, only you're such a lump of ice no man would bother with you.” Then, in a pa.s.sion: ”I wish to G.o.d they would, and take you off, so I could get some one of more use to me!” He was surprised that I did not wish him to kiss me ten minutes after this.

And now he has gone, and for six months, at any rate, I shall be free from his companions.h.i.+p.

When he returns things shall be started on a different footing.

I came down to Ledstone by myself yesterday. I have no plans. Perhaps I shall stay here until Christmas, when I am to go to Bournemouth to my mother-in-law.

The house seems more than ever big and hideously oppressive. I must find some interest. The old numbness has returned with double force. I take up a book and put it down again. I roam from one room to another.

I am restless and rebellious--rebellious with fate.

I know grandmamma would be angry with me could she come back to me now. She would say I was behaving with the want of self-control of a common person, and not as one of our race. Well, perhaps she is right.

I shall go to the cottage and see Hephzibah and give myself a shock.

That may do me good.

I never willingly let myself think of Antony, but unconsciously my thoughts are always turning to the evening in the fog. I do not know where he is. He may be at Dane Mount, only these few miles off, and yet we must not meet.

I wonder if Ambrosine Eustasie de Calincourt had ever a lover.

Probably--and she would have listened to him, being of her time.

Oh, what is this quality in me that makes me as I am--a flabby thing, with strength enough to push away all I desire in life, to keep untarnished my idea of honor, and yet too weak to tear the matter from my mind once I have done so?

How grandmamma would despise me!