CHAPTER XI
When Godfrey Pavely arrived at the Bank next morning it seemed to himthat days, instead of hours, had gone by, since that hateful anddegrading scene had taken place between himself and his wife's brother.
Laura had not spoken to him again, except to utter the few sentenceswhich were necessary to keep up the pretence that they two were on theirusual 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 eleveno'clock. At last Godfrey, getting up, had said in a nervous,conciliatory tone, "Well, good-night, Laura." But she had not answeredhim, for by that time the servants were gone to bed, and there was nolonger any reason for hypocrisy.
Laura had always been an exceptionally silent woman, but this was thefirst time, in the long armed neutrality of their married life, that shehad actually refused to answer when he spoke to her. Feeling acutelyuncomfortable, because curiously helpless, Godfrey Pavely now wonderedhow long this state of things was to endure.
He asked himself whether he had said anything yesterday which couldreally justify Laura in this extraordinary attitude. Now and again thereseemed to sound in his ears the voice in which she had uttered the lastwords which she had spoken to him of her own free will. "Don't speak tome," she had exclaimed passionately. "I shall never, never forgive youfor this!"
Women were so unreasonable--ridiculously, absurdly unreasonable. Lauraknew exactly what Gillie was like, for he, Godfrey, had gone to specialpains to make Laura fully understand the mean, despicable and_dangerous_ way in which her brother had behaved over the forgedcheque--for forgery it was, though it had been difficult to persuadeLaura of the fact. He remembered now, how, at last, after he had forcedhis wife to understand, she had abased herself, imploring him to saveher brother from the consequences of his wicked action.
Godfrey also remembered sorely how grateful Laura had seemed to be aftereverything had been arranged, and Gillie had finally gone off to Mexico,a ruined and discredited man. He felt a glow of virtuous satisfactionwhen he recalled how she had thanked him--her kind, generoushusband--for what he had done! True, the loan then advanced had beenpaid back, and Gillie--to use the stupid expression which seems to becreeping into the British language--had "made good." But that was noreason why he should come back and thrust himself into his, Godfrey's,home, and make friends with Godfrey's only child--after he had actuallygiven an undertaking, in his own, melodramatic words, "never to darkenGodfrey's door again."
Yet in his innermost heart Godfrey Pavely was sorry now that he hadbehaved as he had done yesterday. He had allowed his temper to get thebetter of him, always a silly thing for a sensible man to do. Bybehaving as he had done he had put a weapon into Laura's hands....
At one moment he considered the advisability of going into FreshleyManor on his way home to-day, to consult Mrs. Tropenell. And then he hadsuddenly remembered that his brother-in-law was actually her guest! Thatfact 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 takenthere the place occupied by the unpleasantness connected with thoseabsurd anonymous letters. For the first time, this morning he forgotthem.
There came a knock at the door. "A letter, sir, has just been brought byMrs. Tropenell's man. He said there was an answer, so he's waiting."
With quickened pulse, Godfrey Pavely opened the letter. He had long beenfamiliar with Mrs. Tropenell's clear, flowing handwriting, and hewondered 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 towardshim in a high-minded, straightforward way, and on two occasions he hadhad reason to be specially grateful to her, for on each of theseoccasions she had intervened, successfully, between Laura and himself,and made Laura see reason. But she never alluded to the past, even inthe remotest way, and he had come of late years to think and hope shehad forgotten those now distant, painful, active misunderstandings.
If Mrs. Tropenell was now pleading with him for a reconciliation withGilbert Baynton, then he knew that it would be very difficult for him tosay "no" to a woman to whom he owed so much. It would also be a gracefulway of getting out of the difficulty in which he had involvedhimself....
But the contents of the letter disagreeably surprised him, for they werequite 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 anunfortunate man--stared down at the letter.
He felt moved and perplexed by the way it was worded. "Your affectionateold friend"--what a strange way to sign herself! Mrs. Tropenell hadnever signed herself so before. And what exactly did she mean by sayingthat it was her request, not Laura's? In spite of those words, he feltconvinced that Laura, too proud to ask this favour of him after theshameful way she had behaved yesterday, had persuaded Mrs. Tropenell toask it for her.
He sat down and drew a piece of notepaper towards him. He was glad ofthe opportunity of showing them all how magnanimous he was--how much ofa _man_. Laura should go to London with his full permission. Of coursehe knew quite well, at the back of his mind, that if he refused it shewould probably go just the same. But in all the circumstances it wouldbe just as well to heap coals of fire on her head. She should go--butnot taking their child with her. His little Alice must not becontaminated.
When his daughter was old enough, he, Godfrey, would tell her the truthabout her mother's brother. He did not hold with concealing this sort ofthing from young people. In _his_ family, thank God, there had neverbeen anything to hide. All had always been honest and above-board.Besides, if anything happened to him, Alice would be a very wealthywoman, and Gillie would almost certainly try and get hold of her and ofher 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 alreadyrung waiting for quite a long time. But at last he signed himself: "Youraffectionate, and always grateful, Godfrey Pavely."
When the banker reached home rather early that afternoon--for he felttoo much upset to go in and spend his usual pleasant hour with Katty atRosedean--little Alice met him with the news that "Mummy" had gone toLondon, and that she, Alice, was going to be allowed to sit up to dinnerto bear him company.
It was characteristic of the man that, if relieved, he was also sharplyannoyed. He had hoped to extract from his wife some word of reluctantthanks for his magnanimity. But no, she had not even left a note tellinghim what day she would return!
Things had not fallen out at The Chase that morning as Godfrey Pavelyhad supposed. After breakfast Laura, still in a kind of stupor of painand indignation, had gone into the garden. She had not been there aquarter of an hour when Mrs. Tropenell, who so seldom came to The Chase,had suddenly appeared, walking with stately, leisurely steps over thegrass, to tell her of Oliver's and Gillie's coming departure for theC
ontinent.
It was Mrs. Tropenell who had proposed sending that note to Godfrey, butGodfrey, who so little understood his wife, either for good or evil, wasright in his belief that she would not have allowed her plans to beaffected by his answer. At once Laura had determined to go to London,whether Godfrey gave his consent or no. Yet she was relieved when therecame 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, andin giving it he used the allusive form of words which come naturallywhen a man knows that what he says may be overheard: "Mother has justhad a note saying that it is quite all right. So we propose to call foryou in time to get the five minutes to one from Langford Junction. Doesthat give you enough time?" And she had exclaimed, "Oh, yes, yes! I'mquite ready now."
To that he had made no answer, and she had felt a little chill at theheart. Oliver's voice had sounded curiously cold--but then the telephonedoes sometimes alter voices strangely.
Those eight days in London! Laura was often to live through each ofthose 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 hadnot been really happy, though the first hours had been filled with asort 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, theconstant, painful irritation of his presence.
But her brother, for whose sake, after all, she was in London, jarred onher perpetually. For one thing, Gillie was in extravagant, almostunnaturally 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 smartgrill-rooms which were then the fashion, followed by three hours of amusical comedy, and finally supper at some restaurant, the moreexpensive the better.
To his sister, each evening so spent seemed a dreary waste of precioustime. For in the daytime the two ladies, who had taken rooms in anold-fashioned hotel in a small street off Piccadilly, saw very little ofGillie and Oliver. Gillie had insisted that Oliver and he should go andstay at what he considered the smartest and most modern hotel in London,and though the strangely assorted quartette always lunched together, thetwo partners had a good deal to do each morning and most afternoons.
To Mrs. Tropenell's surprise Oliver apparently had no wish to be withLaura alone. Was it because he was afraid of giving himself away to hiscoarse-minded, jovial partner? Oliver looked stern, abstracted, and,when at the play, bored.
She admitted another possible reason for his almost scrupulous avoidanceof Laura. With regard to the bitter feud between the brothers-in-law,Oliver had spoken to his mother with curious apathy. Perhaps he washonestly desirous of not taking sides. But on the whole Mrs. Tropenellswung more often to her first theory, and this view was curiouslyconfirmed on the one Sunday spent by them in town.
Gillie, grumbling, a good deal at the dulness of the English Sunday, hadmotored off early to the country to spend the day with some people whomhe had known in Mexico. And late that morning Oliver suddenly suggestedthat Laura and he should go out for a turn in the Green Park--only astone's-throw from the rooms the two ladies were sharing.
And that hour, which was perhaps fraught with bigger circumstance thanany one, save Oliver himself, was ever to know, did remain in LauraPavely's memory as a strange and, in a sense, a delicious oasis, in herlong, arid stay in London. For, as the two walked and talked intimatelytogether in a solitude all the greater because peopled by theindifferent and unknown, they seemed to come nearer to one another--andto meet, for the first time, in an atmosphere of clarity and truth.Laura, perhaps because she had felt, during these last few days, sodesperately lonely in a spiritual sense, talked more freely, albeit in amore detached way, to her devoted, considerate, and selfless friend,than she had ever been able to bring herself to do to any other humanbeing.
* * * * *
For a while, after they had turned and begun pacing together under thenow yellowing plane trees, neither of them spoke. Then Oliver saidabruptly, "So all our schemes have vanished into air--I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry too," she said. "I always knew that Godfrey would never allowme to go away with Gillie, but I never, never thought that even he couldbehave as he did to my brother the other day----"
There was a sound of suppressed passion and revolt in her voice that hehad never heard there before. It touched a chord in his own heart, butall he said, slowly, was, "I suppose Gillie irritated him."
"No, I don't think so. There wasn't time for Gillie to do anything, forGodfrey 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 takeGodfrey by surprise----"
"Your mother is always right," she said in a low voice. "I've neverknown 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 youvery 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 bespeaking the truth.
"It's not his fault," she went on painfully, "that he has nothing incommon with me and with my brother, different as we, too, are the onefrom the other. Gillie and I might have been born on different planetsfrom Godfrey."
Laura had not meant to speak of Godfrey to Oliver. Indeed, she hadformed the resolution never to do so again. But somehow, to-day, shefelt as if she might break that salutary rule.
His next words seemed to prove to her that she could trust him tounderstand, for, "Yes," he said quietly, "you're right there, Laura. Youand Godfrey have nothing in common between you, and that being so, Isuppose there's nothing to be done?"
"No, there's nothing to be done," she repeated hopelessly. And then oncemore she broke her wise resolution: "If it hadn't been for Alice, Ishould, even now, be tempted to do what I so nearly did at the timethat Godfrey and Gillie"--she hesitated--"had their firstmisunderstanding."
"What you nearly did then, Laura?" There came an eager, questioningthrill in her companion's strained voice.
"Yes--" Why shouldn't she unburden her heart for once? "Yes, at the timeof that first quarrel between my brother and my husband, I nearly leftGodfrey. But for your mother, I should have done so. Alice was a tinybaby then, and I didn't realise, as I realise now, what an awfulresponsibility a woman takes on herself in breaking up a child's happyhome. Only your mother stopped my doing it, and the fact"--she looked athim with a soundless depth of sadness in her face--"the fact that Gilliedidn't really want me to go and live with him. Of course it was longbefore 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 thedangerous question. They were walking, slowly, slowly, along the broadpath which runs just within the railings along the park side ofPiccadilly. Between twelve and one on an autumn Sunday morning this pathis generally deserted.
She did not answer at once, and he said quickly, "Forgive me! I oughtnot to have asked you that."
"Yes," she said again, "you can ask me anything you like, Oliver. Butit's very difficult to answer such a question truthfully."
And again there fell between them one of those long silences whichplayed a curious part in a conversation neither ever forgot.
At last Laura did answer Oliver's dangerous question. "I have alwaysknown in my heart that your mother was right in making me do what shedid--I mean in persuading me that for my little girl's sake I must goon. Alice loves her father,
though I think, perhaps foolishly, that ofthe 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 wouldhave been for Alice if Godfrey and I had lived apart. I've never doubtedthat--I don't doubt it now. But for that I could not go on--after whathappened the other day."
"Then if, as is of course possible, you and I don't meet again for yearsand years, am I to think of you as always going on in exactly the sameway?" he asked.
Some cruel devil outside himself had seemed to force him to utter thehopeless question which he had already made up his mind should be, mustbe, answered by Fate in the negative.
They had stopped their slow pacing side by side, and he was now lookingdown 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 extraordinarysensation. It was as if this man, whose burning eyes were fixed on herface, were willing her to say aloud something which, however true, werebetter left unsaid. "There will never come any change," she answered,feeling as if the words were being forced out of her, "till, as theMarriage 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 thetruth--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 itany longer, and----" Her voice dropped, and he bent down so that hemight catch the almost whispered words, "I was strongly tempted to--tokill myself," she said. "I used to go and walk up and down that littlepath across the head of the lake, and plan out how I would do it. Evennow I do not think that any one, except perhaps your mother, would everhave suspected. It would have been so easy to make it appear an absoluteaccident."
He remained silent, and she went on, more composedly:
"I had got into a selfish, morbid state, Oliver, and yet the temptationwas not wholly selfish, for I knew that Godfrey was miserable too, andmy sense told me that if anything happened to me he would very soonmarry again--some woman who would appreciate his good qualities, whowould be happy with him, who would not be, as I knew I was, a bitterdisappointment."
Once more her voice had become nearly inaudible, and once more Oliverbent his dark, convulsed face down to hear what she said.
Tears were rolling down Laura's face. But suddenly she made an immenseeffort over herself, and went on, calmly:
"It was your mother who helped me over that bad, foolish time. I don'tknow what I should have done but for Aunt Letty. I think she's the onlyperson in the world to whom Godfrey ever listens--who can ever make anyimpression on him. It's strange in a way, for I know she doesn't reallylike either of us."
As he uttered a violent expression of dissent, she went on: "It's quitetrue, 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. Theonly excuse she can make for me--she told me so once, long ago--is thatI'm inhuman. I suppose in a way I _am_ inhuman?" She looked at himplaintively, a strange, piteous expression in her beautiful, shadowedeyes.
And Oliver Tropenell caught his breath. God--how he loved her! Herinhumanity--to use that cruelly misleading term which she had just usedherself--only made his passion burn with a purer, whiter flame. The onething in the world that mattered to him now was this woman's deliverancefrom the awful death-in-life to which her sensitive conscience, and hermoving love for her child, alone condemned her. Yes, Laura's deliverancewas the only thing worth compassing--and that even if the deliverer werewrecked, soul as well as body, body as well as soul, in the process.
They began walking again, slowly, slowly, once more enwrapped in asilence which said so much more than words could have said, even toLaura'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 wherethey were standing, on the other side of the road, was a huge white andgreen building, handsome and showy, looking strangely un-English and outof place in the famous old London way.
"They pulled down such a wonderful, delightful house just there," shesaid regretfully. "I was once taken to it by my father, when I was quitea little girl. It was like going right back a hundred years--not only toanother London, but to another England. It's a shame that any one shouldhave 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 whereMrs. Tropenell was awaiting them, and the three afterwards spent therest of the day peacefully together. But the next day there began againfor them all the same dreary round--that odd, artificial life of "havinga good time," as Gillie jovially put it.
Somehow Laura did not mind it so much now as she had done before. Hertalk with Oliver had shifted her burden a little, and made her feel asif he and she had gone back to their old, happy, simple friendship. Ithad 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, theretook place a rather pathetic, ridiculous little scene.
Gillie had bought for his sister a beautiful old jewel, and he thrustit--with a merry little word as to this being the first really nicepresent he had ever given her--into her hand. When she opened the caseand saw the emerald and pearl heart, her eyes brimmed over with tears.
Even Gillie was moved. "There, there!" he exclaimed. "Nothing to cryabout--'Nuff said,' Laura. Perhaps we'll meet again sooner than youthink, my friends the Americans say."
And she tried to smile.
Then Gillie turned to Mrs. Tropenell, speaking with much greatersincerity of feeling than he was wont to do. "I'll never forget yourkindness--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 forgeta kindness--or an injury. Now then, Oliver!"
Laura felt her hand seized, closed on in a vice-like pressure whichhurt, then dropped. "Good-bye, Laura," said Oliver in an almostinaudible tone. "Good-bye, till we meet again."