Abington Abbey: A Novel

by Archibald Marshall

He felt, as he said this, how entirely devoid of comfort such words must be to her. The love of those nearest to her, which had been all-sufficing, would count as nothing in the balance against the new love that she wanted. She had told him the night before that the new love heightened and increased the old; and so it would, as long as he, who had hitherto come first with her, stepped willingly down from that eminence, and added his tribute to hers. Opposition instead of tribute would wipe out, for the time at least, all that she had felt for him during all the years of her life. The current of all her love was pouring into the new channel that had been opened up. There would be none to water the old channels, unless they led into the new one.

She turned to him again. There was a look in her face that he had never seen there before, and it struck through to his heart. It was the dawning of hostility, which put her apart from him as nothing else could have done; for it meant that there were tracts in her as yet unexplored, and perhaps unsuspected, and there was no knowing what arid spaces he would have to traverse in them. "I can't understand it at all," she said quietly. "Why did you send him away, and why did he go? I know he loves me; and he knows I love him, and forgive him anything that was wrong. What is wrong? You ought to tell me that."

He stirred uneasily in his seat. How could he tell her what was wrong? She was so innocent of evil. If he felt, as he did, that Lassigny's desire for her touched her with it, he had diverted that from her. He couldn't plunge her into it again by explanations that would only justify himself.

"Darling child," he said. "It's all wrong. You must trust me to know. I've made no mistake. If he had been what the man who marries you must be he wouldn't have gone away from me as he did, in offence. He'd have justified himself, or tried to. And I'd have listened to him too. As it was, I don't think we were together for ten minutes. He gave you up, B. He was offended, and he gave you up—before I had asked him to. Yes, certainly before I had said anything final."

She looked out of the window again. "I wish I knew what had happened," she said as quietly as before. "I can't understand his giving me up—of his own free will. I wish I knew what you had said to him."

This hardened him a little. He did not want to make too much of Lassigny's having so easily given up his claims. He was not yet sure that he had entirely given them up. But, at any rate, the offence to his pride had been enough to have caused him to do so unconditionally for the time being. Beatrix had been given up for it without a struggle to retain her, and it was not Beatrix's father who had made any conditions as to his seeing her or writing to her again, or had needed to do so. Yet she would not accept it, that the renunciation could have been on the part of the man whom she hardly knew. It must have been some injustice or harshness on his part, from whom she had had nothing but love all her life.

"It doesn't matter what I said to him, or what he said to me," he answered her. "If he had been the right sort of man for you nothing that I said to him would have caused him offence. He took offence, and withdrew. You must accept that, B darling. I didn't, actually, send him away. I shouldn't have sent him away, if he had justified himself to me in any degree. You know how much I love you, don't you? Surely you can trust me a little?"

He put his hand out to take hers, in a way that she had never yet failed to respond to. But she did not take it. It wasn't, apparently, of the least interest to her to be told how much he loved her. There was no comfort at all in that, to her who had so often shown herself hungry for the caresses that showed his love.

She sat still, looking out of the window, and saying nothing for a long time. He said nothing either, but took up one of the papers he had bought. He made himself read it with attention, and succeeded in taking in what he read after a few attempts. His heart was heavy enough; there would be a great deal more to go through yet before there could be any return to the old conditions of affection and contentment between him and this dear hurt child of his. But all had been said that could profitably be said. It would be much better to put it aside now, and act as if it were not there, as far as it was possible, and encourage her to do so.

She was strangely quiet, sitting there half-turned away from him with her eyes always fixed upon the summer landscape now flowing steadily past them; and yet she was, by temperament, more emotional than any of his children. None of them had ever cried much—they had had very little in their lives to cry about—but Beatrix had been more easily moved to tears than the others. She might have been expected to cry over what she was feeling now. Perhaps she wouldn't begin to get over the blow that had been dealt her until she did cry.