  It was late when I reached home and, from the darkness in all the windows, I concluded that my mother and the one country domestic who comprised our little household had already retired. My hand was raised to rap at the closed door, when it occurred to me that I might just as well effect an entrance without disturbing anyone. Our sitting-room window opened on to the front garden in which I stood and was seldom fastened, so I stole softly over the sodden grass and pressed the sash upwards. It yielded easily to my touch and, gently raising myself on to the low stone window-sill, I vaulted into the room. At first I thought it was, as I had expected to find it, empty. But it was not so. Through the open window by which I had just entered the moonlight was streaming in, casting long, fantastic rays upon the well-worn carpet and across the quaint, old-fashioned furniture and on the white tablecloth, on which my homely evening meal had been left prepared. But my eyes never rested for a moment on any of these familiar objects, scarcely even noticed them, for another and a stranger sight held me spellbound. At the farther end of the room, where the shadows hung darkest and the moonbeams but feebly penetrated, was the kneeling figure of a woman. Her perfectly black dress threw the ghastly hue of her strained, wild face into startling prominence, and her slender arms were stretched passionately upwards in a gesture full of intense dramatic pathos. Her eyes were fixed upon a small ebony crucifix which hung against the wall, and the words were bursting from her white, trembling lips, but whether of prayer or confession, I could not, or, rather, would not, hear, for I closed my eyes and the sound of her voice reached me only in an indistinct moan. It was a sight which has lived in my memory and will never fade. Since that awful night in Rothland Wood, my mother’s behaviour towards me had been a source of constant and painful wonder. She had become an enigma, and an enigma which I somehow felt that it would be well for me not to attempt to solve. But even at the times when my loveless surroundings and her coldness had plunged me into the lowest depths of depression, it had never been an altogether hopeless state, for somehow I had always felt that her coldness was not the coldness of indifference, but rather an effort of will, and that a time would come when she would cast it off and be to me again the mother of my earlier recollections. But the change was long in coming. She was a devout Roman Catholic—a religion in which I had not been brought up—and in all weathers and at all times of the year, she paid long and frequent visits to the monastery chapel over the hills. But to see her as she was now was a revelation to me. I had seen her pray before, but never like this. She had always seemed to me more of a martyr than a sinner and her prayers more the prayers of reverent devotion than of passionate supplication. But her attitude at this moment, her wild, haggard face, and imploring eyes, were full of revelation to me. Another possible explanation of her lonely, joyless life and deep religious devotion flashed in upon me. Might it not be the dreary expiation, the hard penance of her church meted out for sin? Half fearing to disturb her, I remained for a brief while silent, but, as the minutes went on, the sight of her agony was too much for me and I cried out to her: “Mother, I am here. I did not know that you were up! I came in through the window!” At the first sound of my appealing tones her face changed, as though frozen suddenly from passionate expressiveness to cold marble. Slowly she rose to her feet and confronted me. “Mother, are you in trouble?” I said softly, moving nearer to her; “cannot I share your sorrow? Cannot I comfort you? Why am I shut out of your life so? Tell me this great trouble of yours and let me share it.” For many years I had longed to say these words to her, but the cold impressiveness of her manner had checked them often upon my lips and thrust them back to my aching heart. Now, when a great sorrow filled her face with a softer light and loosened for a moment its hard, rigid lines, I dared to yield to the impulse which I had so often felt—and, alas! in vain—in vain! Keener agony, deeper disappointment, I have never felt. Coldness and indifference had been hard to bear, but what came now was worse. She shrank back from me—shrank back, with her hands outstretched towards me and her head averted. “Philip, I did not know that you were here. I cannot talk to you now. Go to your room. To-morrow—to-morrow!” Her voice died away, but her sudden weakness inspired me with no hope, for it was a physical weakness only. There were no signs of softening in her face, no answering tenderness in her tones. So what could I do but go? |
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