She finished with her hands locked on her knees, her figure bent forward, her staring gaze on the floor.
“She loved him,” Christian said gently. “She played a big stake, and she took a big risk. And he trusts her, now.”
“Then there was Stanley,” she went on, apparently without hearing him, “Stanley, who was the light of my eyes and my very soul. He was born at a time when I had begun to think I could not go on living, and his babyhood was the one bit of heaven I shall ever know. But as he grew up, day after day I saw where he was going. I watched him grow from a careless boy into a despicable, dissolute man. When once love sees, it has the terrible lightning-clearness of the gods. I watched him backing slowly into hell—the hell where I myself was already, with all mothers in like case. When the Tree took him, I was glad, for I thought everything was ended, and the long strain of deceit over. Then came the last scandal. I knew most of the others, and he knew that I knew. But this, the greatest thing in his life, the worst and yet perhaps the best thing he had ever done, he kept from me. He was false to me as to everybody else.”
“He is dead, Mother. Try to forget,” Christian put in, moved to a sudden passion of pity. “We are left, you and I. Let us help each other, if we can!”
She lifted wide, strange eyes to his pitying gaze.
“You help me? You? I would not owe you a paltry kindness, or a single kindly word!” She stood up abruptly, throwing back her head, and for a brief moment he looked, shuddering, behind the Lyndesay mask. “I have always hated you—you don’t need to be told that; but you need to be told why. There was another I loved—your father. And you are William Lyndesay’s son—William Lyndesay who was false to me from our very wedding-day, and with whom I lived twenty years, holding my peace! Ay, there is more than one curse on Crump. No wonder we are a by-word in the countryside for all that spells sorrow and hate and death! We are cursed down to the very soil we tread, and up to the roof of the shambles where we die. Judases! Judases all!” She sank back, putting her hands to her face. “Take your pity and your help elsewhere—you who look at me with William Lyndesay’s eyes!” The hall bell rang, and Christian stepped quickly between her and the approaching servant.
“Mother!” he pleaded earnestly, very low, bending over her. “I am myself as well as my father’s son. I am your child—no treachery in the world can alter that. Forget, if you can. In time you will forgive. We are so alone, Mother, you and I!”
His voice shook as he put out a hand and laid it on hers, a passionate need of sympathy strong upon him, and his heart drew to her when she showed no outward resentment at his touch. She turned her head to the window, where by the wild light from the hurrying sky they could see the tree lashing to and fro.
“The Tree calls,” she said quietly, as Callander came in behind them on the wind. “The Tree is hungry and calls. Now may the Tree take me before I either forget or forgive!”