When Godfrey Pavely arrived at the Bank next morning it seemed to him
that days, instead of hours, had gone by, since that hateful and
degrading scene had taken place between himself and his wife's brother.
Laura had not spoken to him again, except to utter the few sentences
which were necessary to keep up the pretence that they two were on their
usual terms, before the servants, and, what had been more difficult,
before their little daughter.
After Alice had gone to bed, they had eaten their dinner in silence,
and, in silence also, they had spent the evening reading up to eleven
o'clock. At last Godfrey, getting up, had said in a nervous,
conciliatory tone, "Well, good-night, Laura." But she had not answered
him, for by that time the servants were gone to bed, and there was no
longer any reason for hypocrisy.
Laura had always been an exceptionally silent woman, but this was the
first time, in the long armed neutrality of their married life, that she
had actually refused to answer when he spoke to her. Feeling acutely
uncomfortable, because curiously helpless, Godfrey Pavely now wondered
how long this state of things was to endure.
He asked himself whether he had said anything yesterday which could
really justify Laura in this extraordinary attitude. Now and again there
seemed to sound in his ears the voice in which she had uttered the last
words which she had spoken to him of her own free will. "Don't speak to
me," she had exclaimed passionately. "I shall never, never forgive you
for this!"
Women were so unreasonable--ridiculously, absurdly unreasonable. Laura
knew exactly what Gillie was like, for he, Godfrey, had gone to special
pains to make Laura fully understand the mean, despicable and
_dangerous_ way in which her brother had behaved over the forged
cheque--for forgery it was, though it had been difficult to persuade
Laura of the fact. He remembered now, how, at last, after he had forced
his wife to understand, she had abased herself, imploring him to save
her brother from the consequences of his wicked action.
Godfrey also remembered sorely how grateful Laura had seemed to be after
everything had been arranged, and Gillie had finally gone off to Mexico,
a ruined and discredited man. He felt a glow of virtuous satisfaction
when he recalled how she had thanked him--her kind, generous
husband--for what he had done! True, the loan then advanced had been
paid back, and Gillie--to use the stupid expression which seems to be
creeping into the British language--had "made good." But that was no
reason why he should come back and thrust himself into his, Godfrey's,
home, and make friends with Godfrey's only child--after he had actually
given an undertaking, in his own, melodramatic words, "never to darken
Godfrey's door again."
Yet in his innermost heart Godfrey Pavely was sorry now that he had
behaved as he had done yesterday. He had allowed his temper to get the
better of him, always a silly thing for a sensible man to do. By
behaving as he had done he had put a weapon into Laura's hands....
At one moment he considered the advisability of going into Freshley
Manor on his way home to-day, to consult Mrs. Tropenell. And then he had
suddenly remembered that his brother-in-law was actually her guest! That
fact alone made a most disagreeable complication.
As he looked over his letters, and dictated some of the answers to them,
he tried without success to put the matter out of his mind. It had taken
there the place occupied by the unpleasantness connected with those
absurd anonymous letters. For the first time, this morning he forgot
them.
There came a knock at the door. "A letter, sir, has just been brought by
Mrs. Tropenell's man. He said there was an answer, so he's waiting."
With quickened pulse, Godfrey Pavely opened the letter. He had long been
familiar with Mrs. Tropenell's clear, flowing handwriting, and he
wondered what she could have to say to him which she preferred to write,
rather than telephone.
The banker was attached to Mrs. Tropenell. Always she had acted towards
him in a high-minded, straightforward way, and on two occasions he had
had reason to be specially grateful to her, for on each of these
occasions she had intervened, successfully, between Laura and himself,
and made Laura see reason. But she never alluded to the past, even in
the remotest way, and he had come of late years to think and hope she
had forgotten those now distant, painful, active misunderstandings.
If Mrs. Tropenell was now pleading with him for a reconciliation with
Gilbert Baynton, then he knew that it would be very difficult for him to
say "no" to a woman to whom he owed so much. It would also be a graceful
way of getting out of the difficulty in which he had involved
himself....
But the contents of the letter disagreeably surprised him, for they were
quite other than what he had expected them to be--
"DEAR GODFREY:--Oliver and Gilbert Baynton have to go to
the Continent on business. I think they will be away for
some time, and Gilbert speaks of going straight back to
Mexico from France.
"I write to know if you will allow Laura to come up to town
with me for a few days? It would enable her to see something
of her brother, before a separation which may last, as did
their past separation, for years.
"I hope, dear Godfrey, you will see your way to granting
this request of mine. It is in very truth my request--not
Laura's.
"Your affectionate old friend,
"LETTICE TROPENELL."
The unfortunate man--for he was in the full meaning of the words an
unfortunate man--stared down at the letter.
He felt moved and perplexed by the way it was worded. "Your affectionate
old friend"--what a strange way to sign herself! Mrs. Tropenell had
never signed herself so before. And what exactly did she mean by saying
that it was her request, not Laura's? In spite of those words, he felt
convinced that Laura, too proud to ask this favour of him after the
shameful way she had behaved yesterday, had persuaded Mrs. Tropenell to
ask it for her.
He sat down and drew a piece of notepaper towards him. He was glad of
the opportunity of showing them all how magnanimous he was--how much of
a _man_. Laura should go to London with his full permission. Of course
he knew quite well, at the back of his mind, that if he refused it she
would probably go just the same. But in all the circumstances it would
be just as well to heap coals of fire on her head. She should go--but
not taking their child with her. His little Alice must not be
contaminated.
When his daughter was old enough, he, Godfrey, would tell her the truth
about her mother's brother. He did not hold with concealing this sort of
thing from young people. In _his_ family, thank God, there had never
been anything to hide. All had always been honest and above-board.
Besides, if anything happened to him, Alice would be a very wealthy
woman, and Gillie would almost certainly try and get hold of her and of
her money. He, Godfrey, knew that well enough.
"MY DEAR MRS. TROPENELL:--Certainly it shall be as you
ask----" He could not help adding, "though Laura knows that
in doing this she is disregarding my formal wishes. Still,
I admit that, Gillie being her brother, it is, I suppose,
natural that she should wish to see him again before he
leaves England."
Then he hesitated--indeed, he kept the messenger for whom he had already
rung waiting for quite a long time. But at last he signed himself: "Your
affectionate, and always grateful, Godfrey Pavely."
When the banker reached home rather early that afternoon--for he felt
too much upset to go in and spend his usual pleasant hour with Katty at
Rosedean--little Alice met him with the news that "Mummy" had gone to
London, and that she, Alice, was going to be allowed to sit up to dinner
to bear him company.
It was characteristic of the man that, if relieved, he was also sharply
annoyed. He had hoped to extract from his wife some word of reluctant
thanks for his magnanimity. But no, she had not even left a note telling
him what day she would return!
Things had not fallen out at The Chase that morning as Godfrey Pavely
had supposed. After breakfast Laura, still in a kind of stupor of pain
and indignation, had gone into the garden. She had not been there a
quarter of an hour when Mrs. Tropenell, who so seldom came to The Chase,
had suddenly appeared, walking with stately, leisurely steps over the
grass, to tell her of Oliver's and Gillie's coming departure for the
Continent.
It was Mrs. Tropenell who had proposed sending that note to Godfrey, but
Godfrey, who so little understood his wife, either for good or evil, was
right in his belief that she would not have allowed her plans to be
affected by his answer. At once Laura had determined to go to London,
whether Godfrey gave his consent or no. Yet she was relieved when there
came to her from Freshley the news that her husband's answer to Mrs.
Tropenell's request was in the affirmative.
The message was given to her over the telephone by Oliver Tropenell, and
in giving it he used the allusive form of words which come naturally
when a man knows that what he says may be overheard: "Mother has just
had a note saying that it is quite all right. So we propose to call for
you in time to get the five minutes to one from Langford Junction. Does
that give you enough time?" And she had exclaimed, "Oh, yes, yes! I'm
quite ready now."
To that he had made no answer, and she had felt a little chill at the
heart. Oliver's voice had sounded curiously cold--but then the telephone
does sometimes alter voices strangely.
Those eight days in London! Laura was often to live through each of
those long days during the dull weeks which followed her return home.
Yet, when she did look back on that time, she had to admit that she had
not been really happy, though the first hours had been filled with a
sort of excited triumph and sense of victory. It was such a relief, too,
to be away from Godfrey, and spared, even if only for a few days, the
constant, painful irritation of his presence.
But her brother, for whose sake, after all, she was in London, jarred on
her perpetually. For one thing, Gillie was in extravagant, almost
unnaturally high spirits, set on what he called "having a good time,"
and his idea of a good time was, as Oliver once grimly remarked,
slightly monotonous.
Gillie's good time consisted in an eager round of business interviews,
culminating each evening in a rich dinner at one of the smart
grill-rooms which were then the fashion, followed by three hours of a
musical comedy, and finally supper at some restaurant, the more
expensive the better.
To his sister, each evening so spent seemed a dreary waste of precious
time. For in the daytime the two ladies, who had taken rooms in an
old-fashioned hotel in a small street off Piccadilly, saw very little of
Gillie and Oliver. Gillie had insisted that Oliver and he should go and
stay at what he considered the smartest and most modern hotel in London,
and though the strangely assorted quartette always lunched together, the
two partners had a good deal to do each morning and most afternoons.
To Mrs. Tropenell's surprise Oliver apparently had no wish to be with
Laura alone. Was it because he was afraid of giving himself away to his
coarse-minded, jovial partner? Oliver looked stern, abstracted, and,
when at the play, bored.
She admitted another possible reason for his almost scrupulous avoidance
of Laura. With regard to the bitter feud between the brothers-in-law,
Oliver had spoken to his mother with curious apathy. Perhaps he was
honestly desirous of not taking sides. But on the whole Mrs. Tropenell
swung more often to her first theory, and this view was curiously
confirmed on the one Sunday spent by them in town.
Gillie, grumbling, a good deal at the dulness of the English Sunday, had
motored off early to the country to spend the day with some people whom
he had known in Mexico. And late that morning Oliver suddenly suggested
that Laura and he should go out for a turn in the Green Park--only a
stone's-throw from the rooms the two ladies were sharing.
And that hour, which was perhaps fraught with bigger circumstance than
any one, save Oliver himself, was ever to know, did remain in Laura
Pavely's memory as a strange and, in a sense, a delicious oasis, in her
long, arid stay in London. For, as the two walked and talked intimately
together in a solitude all the greater because peopled by the
indifferent and unknown, they seemed to come nearer to one another--and
to meet, for the first time, in an atmosphere of clarity and truth.
Laura, perhaps because she had felt, during these last few days, so
desperately lonely in a spiritual sense, talked more freely, albeit in a
more detached way, to her devoted, considerate, and selfless friend,
than she had ever been able to bring herself to do to any other human
being.
* * * * *
For a while, after they had turned and begun pacing together under the
now yellowing plane trees, neither of them spoke. Then Oliver said
abruptly, "So all our schemes have vanished into air--I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry too," she said. "I always knew that Godfrey would never allow
me to go away with Gillie, but I never, never thought that even he could
behave as he did to my brother the other day----"
There was a sound of suppressed passion and revolt in her voice that he
had never heard there before. It touched a chord in his own heart, but
all he said, slowly, was, "I suppose Gillie irritated him."
"No, I don't think so. There wasn't time for Gillie to do anything, for
Godfrey at once refused to shake hands with him. That's how it began."
"Gillie ought to have written first. My mother begged him not to take
Godfrey by surprise----"
"Your mother is always right," she said in a low voice. "I've never
known her wrong yet, though her advice isn't always easy to follow,
Oliver."
"I'm afraid she was right this time, anyhow."
"I know she was."
There fell between them a long, pregnant silence. And then Oliver said,
in a low, moved voice, "I'm afraid that this last business has made you
very unhappy, Laura?"
She answered, "Yes--foolishly so. I ought not to have been surprised,
for by this time I know Godfrey so well." And she believed herself to be
speaking the truth.
"It's not his fault," she went on painfully, "that he has nothing in
common with me and with my brother, different as we, too, are the one
from the other. Gillie and I might have been born on different planets
from Godfrey."
Laura had not meant to speak of Godfrey to Oliver. Indeed, she had
formed the resolution never to do so again. But somehow, to-day, she
felt as if she might break that salutary rule.
His next words seemed to prove to her that she could trust him to
understand, for, "Yes," he said quietly, "you're right there, Laura. You
and Godfrey have nothing in common between you, and that being so, I
suppose there's nothing to be done?"
"No, there's nothing to be done," she repeated hopelessly. And then once
more she broke her wise resolution: "If it hadn't been for Alice, I
should, even now, be tempted to do what I so nearly did at the time
that Godfrey and Gillie"--she hesitated--"had their first
misunderstanding."
"What you nearly did then, Laura?" There came an eager, questioning
thrill in her companion's strained voice.
"Yes--" Why shouldn't she unburden her heart for once? "Yes, at the time
of that first quarrel between my brother and my husband, I nearly left
Godfrey. But for your mother, I should have done so. Alice was a tiny
baby then, and I didn't realise, as I realise now, what an awful
responsibility a woman takes on herself in breaking up a child's happy
home. Only your mother stopped my doing it, and the fact"--she looked at
him with a soundless depth of sadness in her face--"the fact that Gillie
didn't really want me to go and live with him. Of course it was long
before the question of his going to Mexico was raised."
"And have you never regretted that you did not carry out that purpose?"
Oliver Tropenell was looking straight before him as he asked the
dangerous question. They were walking, slowly, slowly, along the broad
path which runs just within the railings along the park side of
Piccadilly. Between twelve and one on an autumn Sunday morning this path
is generally deserted.
She did not answer at once, and he said quickly, "Forgive me! I ought
not to have asked you that."
"Yes," she said again, "you can ask me anything you like, Oliver. But
it's very difficult to answer such a question truthfully."
And again there fell between them one of those long silences which
played a curious part in a conversation neither ever forgot.
At last Laura did answer Oliver's dangerous question. "I have always
known in my heart that your mother was right in making me do what she
did--I mean in persuading me that for my little girl's sake I must go
on. Alice loves her father, though I think, perhaps foolishly, that of
the two she cares for me best----"
"Of course she does!" he exclaimed.
"But whether that be so or not, I know what a terrible thing it would
have been for Alice if Godfrey and I had lived apart. I've never doubted
that--I don't doubt it now. But for that I could not go on--after what
happened the other day."
"Then if, as is of course possible, you and I don't meet again for years
and years, am I to think of you as always going on in exactly the same
way?" he asked.
Some cruel devil outside himself had seemed to force him to utter the
hopeless question which he had already made up his mind should be, must
be, answered by Fate in the negative.
They had stopped their slow pacing side by side, and he was now looking
down into her sad, desolate eyes. He saw the word--the one word "Yes,"
form itself on her quivering lips.
"Do you really mean that, Laura? Answer me truly."
And then suddenly there came over Laura Pavely an extraordinary
sensation. It was as if this man, whose burning eyes were fixed on her
face, were willing her to say aloud something which, however true, were
better left unsaid. "There will never come any change," she answered,
feeling as if the words were being forced out of her, "till, as the
Marriage Service says, 'death us do part.'"
"Do you ever think of that possibility?"
He put the probing question in a singularly detached, almost a light,
tone of inquiry.
But she answered very solemnly, again as if impelled to tell him the
truth--a truth she had never thought to tell to any human being:
"There was a time before Alice was born when I was so unhappy, largely,
as I can see now, through my own fault, when I felt I could not bear it
any longer, and----" Her voice dropped, and he bent down so that he
might catch the almost whispered words, "I was strongly tempted to--to
kill myself," she said. "I used to go and walk up and down that little
path across the head of the lake, and plan out how I would do it. Even
now I do not think that any one, except perhaps your mother, would ever
have suspected. It would have been so easy to make it appear an absolute
accident."
He remained silent, and she went on, more composedly:
"I had got into a selfish, morbid state, Oliver, and yet the temptation
was not wholly selfish, for I knew that Godfrey was miserable too, and
my sense told me that if anything happened to me he would very soon
marry again--some woman who would appreciate his good qualities, who
would be happy with him, who would not be, as I knew I was, a bitter
disappointment."
Once more her voice had become nearly inaudible, and once more Oliver
bent his dark, convulsed face down to hear what she said.
Tears were rolling down Laura's face. But suddenly she made an immense
effort over herself, and went on, calmly:
"It was your mother who helped me over that bad, foolish time. I don't
know what I should have done but for Aunt Letty. I think she's the only
person in the world to whom Godfrey ever listens--who can ever make any
impression on him. It's strange in a way, for I know she doesn't really
like either of us."
As he uttered a violent expression of dissent, she went on: "It's quite
true, Oliver, and what is more, of the two she likes Godfrey the best.
Why shouldn't she? She thinks I've behaved very unkindly to Godfrey. The
only excuse she can make for me--she told me so once, long ago--is that
I'm inhuman. I suppose in a way I _am_ inhuman?" She looked at him
plaintively, a strange, piteous expression in her beautiful, shadowed
eyes.
And Oliver Tropenell caught his breath. God--how he loved her! Her
inhumanity--to use that cruelly misleading term which she had just used
herself--only made his passion burn with a purer, whiter flame. The one
thing in the world that mattered to him now was this woman's deliverance
from the awful death-in-life to which her sensitive conscience, and her
moving love for her child, alone condemned her. Yes, Laura's deliverance
was the only thing worth compassing--and that even if the deliverer were
wrecked, soul as well as body, body as well as soul, in the process.
They began walking again, slowly, slowly, once more enwrapped in a
silence which said so much more than words could have said, even to
Laura's still numb, unawakened heart.
It was she who at last broke the kind of spell which lay on them both.
They had come almost to the end of the broad path. Opposite to where
they were standing, on the other side of the road, was a huge white and
green building, handsome and showy, looking strangely un-English and out
of place in the famous old London way.
"They pulled down such a wonderful, delightful house just there," she
said regretfully. "I was once taken to it by my father, when I was quite
a little girl. It was like going right back a hundred years--not only to
another London, but to another England. It's a shame that any one should
have been allowed to pull down such a bit of old London as that."
And Oliver agreed, absently.
So, talking of indifferent things, they walked back to the hotel where
Mrs. Tropenell was awaiting them, and the three afterwards spent the
rest of the day peacefully together. But the next day there began again
for them all the same dreary round--that odd, artificial life of "having
a good time," as Gillie jovially put it.
Somehow Laura did not mind it so much now as she had done before. Her
talk with Oliver had shifted her burden a little, and made her feel as
if he and she had gone back to their old, happy, simple friendship. It
had also deadened her feeling of acute, unreasoning anger with Godfrey.
At last came the morning when Oliver and Gillie were to go to Paris.
And at the last moment, standing on the platform at Charing Cross, there
took place a rather pathetic, ridiculous little scene.
Gillie had bought for his sister a beautiful old jewel, and he thrust
it--with a merry little word as to this being the first really nice
present he had ever given her--into her hand. When she opened the case
and saw the emerald and pearl heart, her eyes brimmed over with tears.
Even Gillie was moved. "There, there!" he exclaimed. "Nothing to cry
about--'Nuff said,' Laura. Perhaps we'll meet again sooner than you
think, my friends the Americans say."
And she tried to smile.
Then Gillie turned to Mrs. Tropenell, speaking with much greater
sincerity of feeling than he was wont to do. "I'll never forget your
kindness--in the past and in the present--to my sister and to me, Mrs.
Tropenell. I'm not such a careless brute as I seem to be--I never forget
a kindness--or an injury. Now then, Oliver!"
Laura felt her hand seized, closed on in a vice-like pressure which
hurt, then dropped. "Good-bye, Laura," said Oliver in an almost
inaudible tone. "Good-bye, till we meet again."