The Reflections of Ambrosine: Chapter 1

Chapter 1

The ship sailed a week ago and Augustus has gone to the war. Oh, I
hate to look back and think of those dreadful three weeks before he
started!

A nightmare of hideous scenes. Alternate drunkenness and inordinate
affection for me, or sullen silence and cringing fear. Oh, of all
the frightful moments there are in life, there can be none so dark as
those that some women have to suffer from the drunken passions and
ways of men!

Augustus would have deserted at the last moment if an opportunity had
offered. His mother made matters worse, as, instead of remembering
her country as so many mothers have, and sending her son on his way
with brave and glorious words, she wept and lamented from morning
till night.

"I told you so, Gussie," she said, when she first met us in London. "I
was always against your joining that Yeomanry. I told you it wasn't
only the uniform, and it might get you into trouble some day. Oh, to
think that an extra glass of champagne could have made you volunteer.
And now you've got to go to the war and you have broken my heart."

Augustus's own terror was pitiable to see if it had not roused all my
contempt.

Oh, that I should bear the name of a craven!

Lady Grenellen was also in London. When he was sober enough and not
engaged with his military duties, Augustus went to see her, and if she
happened to be unkind to him he vented his annoyance upon me on his
return.

Had it not been that he was going to the war, I could not, for my
own self-respect, have put up with the position any longer. But that
thought, and the sight of his weeping mother, made me bear all things
in silence. I could not add to her griefs.

She quite broke down one day.

"I always knew Gussie took too much. It began at Cambridge, long ago,"
she wept. "But after he first saw you and fell in love, he gave it
up, I hoped, and now it has broken out again. I thought marrying you
would have cured him. Oh, deary me! I feared some one would tell your
grandma, and she would break off the match. I was glad when your
wedding was over." And she sobbed and rocked herself to and fro. "I'm
grateful to you, my dear, for what you have done for him. It's been
ugly for you lately. But there--there, he's going to the war and I
shall never see him again!"

"Do not take that gloomy view. The war is nearly over. There is no
danger now," I said, to comfort her. "Augustus will only have riding
about and a healthy out-door life, and it will probably cure him."

"I've lived in fear ever since the war began, and now it's come," she
wailed, refusing to be comforted.

I said everything else I could, and eventually she cheered up for a
few days after this, but at the end broke down again, and now, Amelia
writes, lies prostrate in a darkened room. Amelia is having her time
of trial. They left for Bournemouth yesterday.

Am I a cold and heartless woman because now that Augustus has gone I
can only feel relief?

One of his last speeches was not calculated to leave an agreeable
impression.

"You'd better look out how you behave while I am away," he said. "I'd
kick up a row in a minute, only you're such a lump of ice no man would
bother with you." Then, in a passion: "I wish to God they would, and
take you off, so I could get some one of more use to me!" He was
surprised that I did not wish him to kiss me ten minutes after this.

And now he has gone, and for six months, at any rate, I shall be free
from his companionship.

When he returns things shall be started on a different footing.

I came down to Ledstone by myself yesterday. I have no plans. Perhaps
I shall stay here until Christmas, when I am to go to Bournemouth to
my mother-in-law.

The house seems more than ever big and hideously oppressive. I must
find some interest. The old numbness has returned with double force. I
take up a book and put it down again. I roam from one room to another.
I am restless and rebellious--rebellious with fate.

I know grandmamma would be angry with me could she come back to me
now. She would say I was behaving with the want of self-control of a
common person, and not as one of our race. Well, perhaps she is right.
I shall go to the cottage and see Hephzibah and give myself a shock.
That may do me good.

I never willingly let myself think of Antony, but unconsciously my
thoughts are always turning to the evening in the fog. I do not know
where he is. He may be at Dane Mount, only these few miles off, and
yet we must not meet.

I wonder if Ambrosine Eustasie de Calincourt had ever a lover.
Probably--and she would have listened to him, being of her time.

Oh, what is this quality in me that makes me as I am--a flabby thing,
with strength enough to push away all I desire in life, to keep
untarnished my idea of honor, and yet too weak to tear the matter from
my mind once I have done so?

How grandmamma would despise me!

I think of the Princess's answer to the riddle of the nineteenth day
in _A Digit of the Moon_. I am this middle thing, and it is only the
very bad and very good that achieve peace and perfect happiness.

"Come, Roy, away with us! Let us run, as we used to do last year when
we were young. Let us shake ourselves and laugh. No more of this
unworthy repining! There are some in the world that have but one eye,
and some but one leg, and they cannot see or run, and are worse off
than we are, my friend. So think of that, and don't lift your lip at
me, and tell me it is cold, and you want to stay by the fire."

All the blinds were down in the front of the cottage as I unlatched
the garden gate--the gate I had passed through last following
grandmamma's coffin to her grave. I ran round to the back door and
soon found Hephzibah.

Her joy was great to see me there, her only regret being she had not
known I was coming that she might have had the fires lit. They were
all laid, and she soon put a match to them.

With what pride she showed me how she had kept everything! Then she
left me alone, standing in the little drawing-room. It seemed so
wonderfully small to me now. The pieces of brocade still hid the
magenta "suite," but arranged with a prim stiffness they lacked in
our day. Dear Hephzibah! She had been dusting them, and would not
fold them up and put them away in case that I should ever come.

The china all stood as it used, and grandmamma's chair with her
footstool, and the little table near it with her magnifying-glass and
spectacle-case. There were her books, the old French classics, and the
modern yellow backs, her paper-knife still in one, half-cut. I never
realized how happy I had been here, in this little room, a year ago.
How happy, and, oh, how ridiculously young! My work-box stood in its
usual place, a bit of fine embroidery protruding from its lid.

For the first time in my life I sat down in grandmamma's chair. Oh, if
something of her spirit could descend upon me! I tried to think of her
maxims, her wonderful courage, her cheerfulness in all adversities,
her wit, her gayety. I seemed a paltry, feeble creature daring to sit
there, in her _berg�re_, and sigh at fate. No, I would grumble no
more. I, too, would be of the race.

How long I mused there I do not know. The fire was burning low.

I went up to my own old room, I must see everything, now I was here.
It struck me with a freezing chill as I opened the door. The fire had
not drawn here, and lay a mass of smouldering sticks and paper in the
narrow grate.

There was my little white bed, cold and narrow. The dressing-table,
with its muslin flounces and cheap, white-bordered mirror. Even the
china tray was there, where, I remember, my jewels lay the night
before my wedding, and close beside it, the red-morroco case Antony's
present had come in--left behind, by mistake, I suppose, when the
other gifts were packed away. The note he had written me with it was
still in its lid.

The paper felt icy to touch. I pulled it out and read it to the end.
Then I threw it in the fire. The sullen, charred sticks had not life
enough to burn it. I lit a match and watched the bright flames curl up
the chimney until all was destroyed. Then I fled. Here at least in the
cottage I will never come again. The room is full of ghosts.

On the whole, however, my visit did me good. I returned to Ledstone
with a firm determination to be more like grandmamma.

A telegram was awaiting me from Augustus, sent from his first
stopping-place. He had caught the measles, it appeared. The measles!
I thought only children got the measles.

Poor Augustus! He would make a bad patient. I was truly sorry, and
sent the most affectionate and sympathetic answer I could think of
to meet him at St. Helena.

I wrote to the war office, asking them please to send me any further
news when they received it. But the measles! It almost made me laugh.

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