Mother and son dined alone together, and then, rather early, Mrs.
Tropenell went upstairs.
For a while, perhaps as long as an hour, she sat up in bed, reading. At
last, however, she turned off the switch of her electric reading lamp,
and, lying back in her old-fashioned four-post bed, she shut her eyes
for a few moments. Then she opened them, widely, on to her moonlit room.
Opposite to where she lay the crescent-shaped bow-window was still open
to the night air and the star-powdered sky. On that side of Freshley
Manor the wide lawn sloped down to a belt of water meadows, and beyond
the meadows there rose steeply a high, flat-topped ridge.
Along this ridge Oliver Tropenell was now walking up and down smoking.
Now and again his mother saw the shadow-like figure move across the line
of her vision.
At one moment, last winter, she had feared that he would not be able to
come back this year, as troubles had arisen among his cattle-men. But,
as was Oliver's way, he had kept his promise. That he had been able to
so do was in no small measure owing to his partner, Gilbert Baynton.
Gilbert Baynton--_Laura Pavely's brother_? Of that ne'er-do-weel Oliver
had made from a failure a success; from a waster--his brother-in-law,
Godfrey Pavely, would have called him by a harsher name--an acute and a
singularly successful man of business.
Lying there, her brain working quickly in the darkness, Oliver's mother
told herself that the Pavelys, both Godfrey and Laura, had indeed reason
to be grateful, not only to Oliver, but to her, Oliver's mother! It was
to please her, not them, that Oliver, long years ago, had accepted the
dubious gift of Gilbert Baynton, and the small sum Gilbert's
brother-in-law had reluctantly provided to rid himself of an intolerable
incubus and a potential source of disgrace. Godfrey Pavely was certainly
grateful, and never backward in expressing it. And Laura? Laura was one
of your silent, inarticulate women, but without doubt Laura must be
grateful too.
* * * * *
At last Oliver left the ridge, and Mrs. Tropenell went on gazing at the
vast expanse of luminous sky which merged into the uplands stretching
away for miles beyond the boundaries of her garden.
She lay, listening intently, and very soon she heard the cadence of his
firm footfalls on the stone path below the window. Then came the quiet
unlatching of the garden door. Now he was coming upstairs.
Her whole heart leapt out to him--and perchance it was this strong shaft
of wordless longing that caused Oliver Tropenell's feet to linger as he
was going past his mother's door.
Following a sudden impulse, she, who had trained herself to do so few
things on impulse, called out, "Is that you, my darling?"
The door opened. "Yes, mother. Here I am. May I come in?"
He turned and shut out the bright electric light on the landing, and
walked, a little slowly and uncertainly in the darkness, towards where
he knew the bed to be. For a moment she wondered whether she should turn
on the lamp which was at her elbow, then some sure, secret instinct made
her refrain.
She put out her hand, and pulled him down to her, and he, so chary of
caress, put his left arm round her.
"Mother?" he said softly. "This dear old room! It's years since I've
been in this room--and yet from what I can see, it's exactly the same as
it always was!"
And, as if answering an unspoken question, she spoke in very low tones,
"Hardly altered at all since the day you were born here, my dearest, on
the happiest day of my life."
His strong arm tightened about her a little, and, still looking straight
before her, but leaning perhaps a little closer into the shelter of his
arm, she said tremulously, inconsequently it might have seemed: "Oliver?
Are you going to accept Lord St. Amant's invitation?"
With a sharp shoot of hidden pain she felt his movement of recoil, but
all he said was, very quietly, "I've not quite made up my mind, mother."
"It would give me pleasure if you were to do so. He has been a very good
and loyal friend to me for a long, long time, my dear."
"I know that."
She waited a moment, then forced herself to go on: "You were never quite
fair to St. Amant, Oliver."
"I--I feared him, mother."
And then, as she uttered an inarticulate murmur of pain and of protest,
he went on quickly, "The fear didn't last very long--perhaps for two or
three years. You see I was so horribly afraid that you were going to
marry him." In the darkness he was saying something he had never meant,
never thought to say.
And she answered, "It was a baseless fear."
"Was it? I wonder if it was! Oh, of course I know you are telling me the
truth as you see it now--but, but surely, mother?"
"Surely no, Oliver. It is true that St. Amant wished, after his wife's
death, that I should marry him, but he soon saw that I did not wish it,
that nothing was further from my wish--then."
"_Then?_" he cried. "What do you mean, mother? Lady St. Amant only died
when I was fifteen!"
"I would like to tell you what I mean. And after I have told you, I wish
never to speak of this subject to you again. But I owe it to myself as
well as to you, to tell you the truth, Oliver. Where is your hand?" she
said, "let me hold it while I tell you."
And then slowly and with difficulty she began speaking, with a
hesitation, a choosing of her words, which were in sharp contrast to her
usual swift decision.
"I want to begin by telling you," her voice was very low, "that
according to his lights--the lights of a man of the world and of, well
yes, of an English gentleman--St. Amant behaved very well as far as I
was concerned. I want you to understand that, Oliver, to understand it
thoroughly, because it's the whole point of my story. If St. Amant had
behaved less well, I should have nothing to tell--you."
She divined the quiver of half-shamed relief which went through her son.
It made what she wished to say at once easier and more difficult.
"As I think you know, I first met St. Amant when I was very young, in
fact before I was 'out,' and he was the first really clever, really
attractive, and, in a sense, really noted man I had ever met. And
then"--she hesitated painfully.
"And then, mother?" Oliver's voice was hard and matter-of-fact. He was
not making it easy for her.
"Well, my dear, very very soon, he made of me his friend, and I was of
course greatly flattered, but at that time, in the ordinary sense of the
word, St. Amant never made love to me." She went on more firmly. "Of
course I soon came to know that he cared for me in a way he did not care
for the other women with whom his name was associated. I knew very soon
too, deep in my heart, that if his wife--his frivolous, mean-natured,
tiresome wife--died, he certainly would wish to marry me, and for years,
Oliver, for something like six years, I daily committed murder in my
heart."
And then something happened which troubled and greatly startled the
woman who was making this painful confession. Her son gave a kind of
cry--a stifled cry which was almost a groan. "God! How well I understand
that!" he said.
"Do you, Oliver--do you? And yet I, looking back, cannot understand it!
All that was best, indeed the only good that was in St. Amant to give I
had then, and later, after I became a widow, I had it again."
"I suppose he was much the same then as later, or--or was he different
then, mother?"
She knew what he meant. "He was the same then," she said quietly, "but
somehow I didn't care! Girls were kept so ignorant in those days. But of
course the whole world knew he was a man of pleasure, and in time I
grew to know it too. But still it wasn't that which made me unhappy, for
I did not realise what the phrase meant, still less what was implied by
it. But even so, as time went on I was very unhappy. Mine was a false
position--a position which hurt my pride, and, looking back, I suppose
that there must have soon been a certain amount of muffled talk. If I
was not jealous, other women were certainly jealous of me."
She waited for a few moments; the stirring of these long-dead embers was
hurting her more than she would have thought possible.
At last she went on: "Sometimes months would pass by without our
meeting, but he wrote to me constantly, and on his letters--such
amusing, clever, and yes, tender letters--I lived. My aunt, my father,
both singularly blind to the state of things, were surprised and annoyed
that I didn't marry, and, as for me, I grew more and more unhappy."
"Poor mother!" muttered Oliver. And she sighed a sigh of rather piteous
relief. She had not thought he would understand.
"I don't know what I should have done but for two people, your father,
who of course was living here then, our nearest neighbour, and, what
meant very much more to me just then, Laura's mother, Alice Tropenell.
Though she was only a very distant relation, she was like a daughter in
this house. Alice was my one friend. She knew everything about me. She
was--well, Oliver, I could never tell you what she was to me then!"
"I suppose," he said slowly, "that Laura is like her?"
"Laura?" Mrs. Tropenell could not keep the surprise out of her low
voice. "Oh no, my dear, Laura is not in the least like her mother. But
Laura's child is very like Alice--even now."
"Laura's child?" Oliver Tropenell visioned the bright, high-spirited,
merry little girl, who somehow, he could not have told her why, seemed
often to be a barrier between himself and Laura.
"Alice--my friend Alice--was full of buoyancy, of sympathy for every
living thing. She possessed what I so much lacked in those days, and
still alas! lack--sound common-sense. And yet she, too, had her ideals,
ideals which did not lead her into a very happy path, for Robert
Baynton, high-minded though he may have been, was absorbed in
himself--there was no room for any one else." Had she been telling her
story to any one but her son, Mrs. Tropenell would have added, "Laura is
very like him."
Instead, she continued, "No one but Alice would have made Robert Baynton
happy, or have made as good a thing of the marriage as she did--for
happy they were. I think it was the sight of their happiness that made
me at last long for something different, for something more normal in my
life than that strange, unreal tie with St. Amant. So at last, when I
was four-and-twenty, I married your father." Oliver remained silent, and
she said a little tremulously, "He was very, very good to me. He made me
a happy woman. He gave me _you_."
There was a long, long pause. Mrs. Tropenell had now come to what was
the really difficult part of the task she had set herself.
"You are thinking, my boy, of _afterwards_." And as she felt him move
restlessly, she went on pleadingly, "As to that, I ask you to remember
that I was very lonely after your father died. Still, if you wish to
know the real truth"--she would be very honest now--"that friendship
which you so much disliked stood more in the way of your having a
stepfather than anything else could have done."
"I see that now," he said sombrely, "but I did not see it then, mother."
"Even if Lady St. Amant had not lived on, as she did, all those years, I
should not have married St. Amant--I think I can say that in all
sincerity. So you see, Oliver, you need not have been afraid, when at
last he became free."
She sighed a long, unconscious sigh of relief.
"I gather you still see him very often when he's at Knowlton Abbey?"
"Yes, it's become a very comfortable friendship, Oliver. But for St.
Amant I should often feel very lonely, my dear."
She longed to go on--to tell Oliver how hard it had been for her to
build up her life afresh--after he had finally decided to stay on in
Mexico. But she doubted if he would understand....
Suddenly he turned and kissed her.
"Good-night," he said. "I'm grateful to you for having told me all--all
that you have told me, mother."
* * * * *
Oliver Tropenell hurried up the silent house. By his own wish the large
garret to which he had removed all his own treasures and boyish
belongings after a delicate childhood spent in a room close to his
mother's, was still in his room, and it had been very little altered.
It was reached by a queer, narrow, turning staircase across which at a
certain point a beam jutted out too low. Tropenell never forgot to duck
his head at that point--indeed he generally remembered as he did so how
proud he had been the first time he had found himself to be too tall to
pass under it straightly! But, strange to say, to-night he did
forget--and for a moment he saw stars.... Fool! Fool that he was to
allow his wits to go wool-gathering in this fashion!
With eyes still smarting, he leapt up the last few steps to the little
landing which he shared with no one else. Opening the door he turned the
switch of the lamp on the writing-table which stood at a right angle to
the deep-eaved window.
Then he shut the door and locked it, and, after a moment of indecision,
walked across to the book-case which filled up the space between the
fireplace and the inner wall of the long, rafted room.
He did not feel in the mood to go to bed, and idly he let his eyes run
over the long rows of books which he had read, in the long ago, again
and again, for like most lonely boys he had been a great reader. They
were a good selection, partly his mother's, partly his own, partly Lord
St. Amant's. He knew well enough--he had always known, albeit the
knowledge gave him no pleasure, that he had owed a great deal, as boy
and man, to his mother's old friend. Lord St. Amant had really fine
taste. It was he who had made Oliver read Keats, Blake, Byron, Poe,
among poets; he who had actually given him _Wuthering Heights_, _Vanity
Fair_, _The Three Musketeers_, _Ali Baba of Ispahan_. There they were
all together.
He had not taken his books with him when he had first gone to Mexico,
for he had not meant to stay there. But at last he had written home to a
great London bookseller and ordered fresh copies of all his old books at
home. The bookseller had naturally chosen good editions, in some cases
rare first editions. But those volumes had never been read, as some of
these had been read, over and over and over again.
But now, to-night, he did not feel as if he could commune with any
comfort even with one of these comfortable, unexacting friends. He felt
too restless, too vividly alive. So suddenly he turned away from the
bookcase, and looked about him. A large French box-bed had taken the
place of the narrow, old-fashioned bedstead of his youth; and his mother
had had moved up to this room a narrow writing-table from the study on
the ground floor which no one ever used.
He walked over to that writing-table now, and sat down. On it, close to
his left hand, stood a large despatch-box. He opened and took out of it
a square sheet of paper on which was embossed his Mexican address.
Drawing two lines across that address, and putting in the present date,
September 19th, he waited, his pen poised in his hand for a full minute.
Then he began writing rather quickly, and this is what he wrote:--
"MY DEAR LAURA,--Godfrey suggests that I should act as your
trustee, in succession to Mr. Blackmore. Am I to understand
that this suggestion has your approval? If yes, I will of
course consent to act. But please do not think I shall be
offended if you decide otherwise. You may prefer some woman
of your acquaintance. Women, whatever Godfrey may tell you,
make excellent men of business. They are, if anything,
over-prudent, over-cautious where money is concerned; but
that is a very good fault in a trustee."
His handwriting was small and clear, but he had left large spaces
between the lines, and now he was at the end of the sheet of paper.
There was just room for another sentence and his signature. He waited,
hesitating and of two minds, till the ink was dry, and then he began
again, close to the bottom of the sheet:--
"Before we meet again I wish to say one further thing."
He put this first sheet aside, and took another of the same size from
the box by his side:--
"You said something to-day which affected me painfully. You
spoke as if what I have done for your brother caused you to
carry a weight of almost intolerable gratitude. So far as
any such feeling should exist between us, the gratitude
should be on my side. In sober truth Gillie has been
invaluable to me.
"I remain,
"Yours sincerely,"
Then very rapidly Oliver Tropenell made an "O" and a "T," putting the T
across the O so that any one not familiar with his signature would be
hard put to it to know what the two initials were.
He read over the words he had just written. They seemed poor,
inadequate, and he felt strongly tempted to write the letter again, and
word it differently. Then he shook his head--no, let it stand!
Slowly he put the second sheet of the letter aside, and placed the first
one, on which the ink was dry, before him. Then he looked round, with a
queer, furtive look, and, getting up, made sure the door was locked.
Coming back to the writing-table, he took out of the despatch-box lying
there a small, square, crystal-topped flagon of the kind that fits into
an old-fashioned dressing-case. The liquid in it was slightly, very
slightly, coloured, and looked like some delicate scent.
From the despatch-box also he now brought out a crystal penholder with a
gold nib. He dipped it in the flagon, and began to write in between the
lines of the letter he had just written. As the liquid dried, the slight
marks made by the pen on the paper vanished, for Oliver Tropenell was
writing in invisible ink.
"The decks are cleared between us, Laura, for you know now
that I love you. You said, 'Oh, but this is terrible!' Yes,
Laura, love is terrible. It is not only cleansing,
inspiring, and noble, it is terrible also. Why is it that
you so misunderstand, misjudge, the one priceless gift, the
only bit of Heaven which God or Nature--I care not
which--has given to man and woman? What you, judging by
your words to-day, take to be love is as little like that
passion as a deep draught of pure cold water to a man dying
of thirst, is like the last glass of drugged beer imbibed
by some poor sot already drunk."
Oliver Tropenell waited awhile. There were still two spaces, before the
bottom of the page of notepaper was reached, and again he dipped the pen
into the strange volatile liquid.
"God bless you, my dear love," he wrote, "and grant you the
peace which seems the only thing for which you crave."
He waited till the words had quite vanished, and then he took up the two
sheets of paper, folded them in half, and put them in a large envelope
which fitted the paper when so folded. He wrote on the outside, "Mrs.
Pavely, Lawford Chase."
And then, turning out the light with a quick, nervous gesture, he got up
and went over to the long, low, garret window.
For a few moments he saw nothing but darkness, then the familiar scene
unrolled below him and took dim shape in the starlit night.
Instinctively his sombre eyes sought the place where, far away to the
right, was a dark patch of wood. It was there, set amidst a grove of
high trees, that stood Lawford Chase, the noble old house which had been
his mother's early home, and which now contained Laura Pavely, the woman
to whom he had just written two such different letters, and who for
nearly three months had never been out of his waking thoughts.
As his eyes grew more and more accustomed to the luminous darkness, he
saw the group of elms under which this very day a word had unsealed the
depths of his heart, and where he had had the agony of seeing Laura
shrink, shudder, wilt as does a flower in a breath of hot, foetid air,
under his avowal of love.
Violently he put that memory from him, and staring out into the
splendour of this early autumn night, he tried to recapture the mixture
of feelings with which he had regarded Laura Pavely the first time they
had met since her marriage--the first time indeed since she had been a
shy, quiet little girl, and he an eager, highly vitalised youth, five
years older than herself.
Looking back now he realised that what had predominated in his mind on
that hot, languorous June afternoon was astonishment at her utter
unlikeness to her brother, his partner, Gillie Baynton. It was an
astonishment which warred with the beckoning, almost uncanny,
fascination which her gentle, abstracted, aloof manner effortlessly
exercised over him. And yet she had been (he knew it now, he had not
known it then) amazingly forthcoming--for her! As Mrs. Tropenell's son
he would have had a right to Laura Pavely's regard, but he knew now that
what had set ajar the portals of her at once desolate and burdened heart
had been his kindness to, even his business relationship with, her
brother.
Gillie Baynton? Yes, it was to that disconcerting and discordant human
chord that their two natures--his and Laura's--had perforce vibrated and
mingled. Remembering this, Oliver Tropenell reproved himself for his
past discontent with the partner who, whatever his failings, had always
shown him both gratitude and a measure of such real affection as a man
seldom shows another in a business relationship. In spite of Gillie's
faults--nay, vices--he, Tropenell, now often found himself favourably
comparing Laura's brother with Laura's husband.
Oliver Tropenell was acutely, intolerably, jealous of Godfrey
Pavely--jealous in the burning, scorching sense which is so often the
terrible concomitant of such a passion as that which now possessed him.
Godfrey Pavely's presence in his own house, his slightly tyrannical,
often possessive attitude to Laura, the perpetual reminder that he was,
after all, the father of the child Laura had borne, and who seemed to
fill her heart to the exclusion of all else--all this was for this man
who loved her an ever-recurring ordeal which might well have satisfied
the sternest moralist.
That night Oliver Tropenell dreamt of Laura. He thought that he was
pursuing her through a maze of flowering shrubs and trees. She was
fleeing from him, yet now and again she would turn, and beckon....
His first waking thought was that they would meet to-night--here, in his
mother's house. But before that happened a long day would have to be
lived through, for he had made up his mind not to go to The Chase till
Laura again asked him to do so.