CHAPTER VI

Then, a week later, Harry died.  That might have meant grief, wrecking and inexpressible, for she discovered that she was still his.  Love lay in her, indestructible as an element.  It was true that passion was gone from her for ever, but that had been merely an alloy added to it by nature when she desired to use it as currency to buy continuance, and love itself had survived.  She might have lacerated herself with mourning for the fracture of their marriage and the separation of their later years had it not been for the beautiful thing that had happened the afternoon before he died.  It was so beautiful that she hardly ever rehearsed its details to herself, preferring to guard it in her heart as one guards sacred things, preserving it immaculate even from her own thoughts.  It had lifted the shame from her destiny.  She perceived that the next day, when Richard came in and stood stumbling with the handle of the door, instead of running to the table, though she had arranged it specially, as if this were a birthday, with four candles instead of two, and had baked him a milk loaf for a treat, and had cut the last Michaelmas daisies from the garden and set them in blanched mauve clouds about the dark edges of the room.

“Mother, the squire’s dead,” he said at length.  That she knew already.  She had divined it early in the afternoon, when the village people began to go past the house in twos and threes, walking slowly and turning their faces towards her windows.  “Yes, dear,” she answered evenly.  “Mother, is it true that the squire was my father?  All the other boys say so.”  She had anticipated this moment for years with terror, because always before it had seemed to her that when it came she must break down and tell him how she had been shamed and abandoned and cast away to infamy, and she had dreaded that this might make him frightened of life.  But because of what had happened the day before she was able to smile, as if they were talking of happy things, and say slowly and delightedly, “Yes, you are his son.”  He walked slowly across the room, knitting his brows and staring at her with eyes that were at once crafty and awed, as children’s are when they perceive that grown-ups are concealing some important fact from them, and harbour at once a quick, indignant resolution to find out what it is as soon as possible, and a slow, acquiescent sense that the truth must be a very sacred thing if it has to be veiled.  At her knee he halted, and shot sharp glances up at her.  But the peace in her face made him feel foolish, and he said in an off-hand manner:  “Mummie, Miss Lawrence says my map of the Severn is the best,” and then turned to look at the tea-table.  “Ooh, mums, milk-loaf!” She could see as he continued that all was well with him.  The squire had been his father:  but it evidently was not anything to make a fuss about; it seemed funny that he and mother hadn’t lived together, but grown-ups were always doing funny things; anyway, it seemed to be all right....