“And Mr. Langhope too, I suppose?”
“Yes. He came from Newport about ten days ago.”
Amherst checked himself, conscious that his questions betrayed the fact that he and his wife no longer wrote to each other. The same thought appeared to strike Justine, and they walked across the lawn in silence, hastening their steps involuntarily, as though to escape the oppressive weight of the words which had passed between them. But Justine was unwilling that this fruitless sense of oppression should be the final outcome of their talk; and when they reached the upper terrace she paused and turned impulsively to Amherst. As she did so, the light from an uncurtained window fell on her face, which glowed with the inner brightness kindled in it by moments of strong feeling.
“I am sure of one thing—Bessy will be very, very glad that you have come,” she exclaimed.
“Thank you,” he answered.
Their hands met mechanically, and she turned away and entered the house.
XVII
BESSY had not seen her little girl that day, and filled with compunction by Justine’s reminder, she hastened directly to the school-room.
Of late, in certain moods, her maternal tenderness had been clouded by a sense of uneasiness in the child’s presence, for Cicely was the argument most effectually used by Mr. Langhope and Mr. Tredegar in their efforts to check the triumph of Amherst’s ideas. Bessy, still unable to form an independent opinion on the harassing question of the mills, continued to oscillate between the views of the contending parties, now regarding Cicely as an innocent victim and herself as an unnatural mother, sacrificing her child’s prospects to further Amherst’s enterprise, and now conscious of a vague animosity against the little girl, as the chief cause of the dissensions which had so soon clouded the skies of her second marriage. Then again, there were moments when Cicely’s rosy bloom reminded her bitterly of the child she had lost—the son on whom her ambitions had been fixed. It seemed to her now that if their boy had lived she might have kept Amherst’s love and have played a more important part in his life; and brooding on the tragedy of the child’s sickly existence she resented the contrast of Cicely’s brightness and vigour. The result was that in her treatment of her daughter she alternated between moments of exaggerated devotion and days of neglect, never long happy away from the little girl, yet restless and self-tormenting in her presence.
After her talk with Justine she felt more than usually disturbed, as she always did when her unprofitable impulses of self-exposure had subsided. Bessy’s mind was not made for introspection, and chance had burdened it with unintelligible problems. She felt herself the victim of circumstances to which her imagination attributed the deliberate malice that children ascribe to the furniture they run against in playing. This helped her to cultivate a sense of helpless injury and to disdain in advance the advice she was perpetually seeking. How absurd it was, for instance, to suppose that a girl could understand the feelings of a married woman! Justine’s suggestion that she should humble herself still farther to Amherst merely left in Bessy’s mind a rankling sense of being misunderstood and undervalued by those to whom she turned in her extremity, and she said to herself, in a phrase that sounded well in her own ears, that sooner or later every woman must learn to fight her battles alone.
In this mood she entered the room where Cicely was at supper with her governess, and enveloped the child in a whirl of passionate caresses. But Cicely had inherited the soberer Westmore temper, and her mother’s spasmodic endearments always had a repressive effect on her. She dutifully returned a small fraction of Bessy’s kisses, and then, with an air of relief, addressed herself once more to her bread and marmalade.
“You don’t seem a bit glad to see me!” Bessy exclaimed, while the little governess made a nervous pretence of being greatly amused at this prodigious paradox, and Cicely, setting down her silver mug, asked judicially: “Why should I be gladder than other days? It isn’t a birthday.”
This Cordelia-like answer cut Bessy to the quick. “You horrid child to say such a cruel thing when you know I love you better and better every minute! But you don’t care for me any longer because Justine has taken you away from me!”
This last charge had sprung into her mind in the act of uttering it, but now that it was spoken it instantly assumed the proportions of a fact, and seemed to furnish another justification for her wretchedness. Bessy was not naturally jealous, but her imagination was thrall to the spoken word, and it gave her a sudden incomprehensible relief to associate Justine with the obscure causes of her suffering.
“I know she’s cleverer than I am, and more amusing, and can tell you about plants and animals and things…and I daresay she tells you how tiresome and stupid I am….”
She sprang up suddenly, abashed by Cicely’s astonished gaze, and by the governess’s tremulous attempt to continue to treat the scene as one of “Mamma’s” most successful pleasantries.
“Don’t mind me—my head aches horribly. I think I’ll rush off for a gallop on Impulse before dinner. Miss Dill, Cicely’s nails are a sight—I suppose that comes of grubbing up wild-flowers.”
And with this parting shot at Justine’s pursuits she swept out of the school-room, leaving pupil and teacher plunged in a stricken silence from which Cicely at length emerged to say, with the candour that Miss Dill dreaded more than any punishable offense: “Mother’s prettiest—but I do like Justine the best.”
