“Your mother is a wicked woman. You do not know what you are saying; but I know that it is true. Your mother took my lover from me. She is a wicked woman and you are a miserable child.”
Alix felt herself trembling now in every limb; but it was even more before Maman that she trembled than before Toppie. “Is it wicked to be loved? Is it wicked to be preferred?”
“Yes. It is wicked,” said Toppie in the crushed and straining voice. “There is no greater sin for a woman than such stolen love. Your mother is an abandoned woman. She has lovers. No one is safe from her. I knew that already!—Oh, God, I knew it!” Was Toppie speaking on to her, or, in her agony, to herself? Alix, standing outside the torture-chamber, heard the cries of the victim. But she, too, was bound upon a wheel.
“You are not wicked. You had a lover. Captain Owen was your lover.” She forced her trembling lips to speak. “Giles knows her. He knows that she is not wicked. It is false what you say. You must not say such false things of my mother.”
“You do not understand,” Toppie moaned. She had fallen down upon a chair, her face still hidden in her hands. “It is terrible to be so ignorant as you are. You are too old to be so ignorant.—Yes, it is true—all true. She took him from me. Oh, I know now—I know what Giles was hiding from me!—Go away, Alix.—You drive me mad!—Go away, poor unhappy child!”
Alix had risen to her feet, but still she could not go. To fly, to escape; to hide herself for ever; this was the cry of all her nature; but there was something else. It was not only upon herself, upon Maman, that she had brought this disaster. What had she done to Giles?
“I will not stay.—Do not think that I will stay.—You say things of my mother that are not to be forgiven.—It is only for Giles.—You will not blame him? He has done nothing wrong. You will see him? He will explain all that I have not understood.—It is for Giles.—Oh, Toppie—all is not so lost when Giles, who loves you, is still there.”
“Yes. It is lost. All, all lost,” Toppie murmured. Her voice had sunken to ashes now. Her head hung forward upon her hands. Looking at her, for the last time, Alix seemed, dizzily, to see her as a figure in a long-past epoch, a black figure, with bent fair head, sitting in the pale room with the doves about it. It was as if Toppie would sit on there for ever. “Oh, Owen!” Alix heard her moan, as she went, unsteadily, to the door.
CHAPTER IX
“Oh, Maman!—What have I done to you!” It was her own voice now that Alix heard. She was out again upon the common and she had been running. But suddenly she was walking very slowly among the gorse bushes in the bright sunlight, and she could hardly drag herself along. Her head ached as if it would break in two; her limbs were of lead; and now that she went so slowly she could no longer escape Maman. She saw her there, moving beside her, with the intent look; silent; without a word of blame.