PART THREE
CHAPTER XXI
Those winter and spring months which followed the tragic death ofGodfrey Pavely were full of difficult, weary, and oppressive days to hiswidow Laura. Her soul had become so used to captivity, and to beinginstinctively on the defensive, that she did not know how to use herfreedom--indeed, she was afraid of freedom.
Another kind of woman would have gone away to the Continent, alone orwith her child, taking what in common parlance is described as athorough change. But Laura went on living quietly at The Chase, feelingin a queer kind of way as if Godfrey still governed her life, as if sheought to do exactly what Godfrey would wish her to do, all the more sobecause in his lifetime she had not been an obedient or submissive wife.
As the Commissioner of Police had foretold, the large reward offered byMrs. Pavely had brought in its train a host of tiresome and evendegrading incidents. A man of the name of Apra actually came from theContinent and tried to make out that _he_ had been the banker'sunwitting murderer! But his story broke down under a very few minutes'cross-examination at Scotland Yard. Even so, Laura kept the offer of thethousand pounds in being. It seemed to be the only thing that she couldstill do for Godfrey.
Though she was outwardly leading the quiet, decorously peaceful life ofa newly-made widow, Laura's soul was storm-tossed and had lost itsbearings. Her little girl's company, dearly as she loved the child, nolonger seemed to content her. For the first time in her life, she longedconsciously for a friend of her own age, but with the woman living ather gate, with Katty Winslow, she became less, rather than more,intimate.
Also, hidden away in the deepest recess of her heart, was anunacknowledged pain. She had felt so sure that Oliver Tropenell wouldstay on with his mother through the winter and early spring! But, to herbewildered surprise, he had left for Mexico almost at once. He had noteven sought a farewell interview to say good-bye to her alone, and theirfinal good-bye had taken place in the presence of his mother.
Together he and Mrs. Tropenell had walked over to The Chase one lateafternoon, within less than a week of Godfrey's funeral, and he hadexplained that urgent business was recalling him to Mexico at once. Heand Laura had had, however, three or four minutes together practicallyalone; and at once he had exclaimed, in a voice so charged with emotionthat it recalled those moments Laura now shrank from remembering--thosemoments when he had told her of his then lawless love--"You'll let meknow if ever you want me? A cable would bring me as quickly as I cantravel. You must not forget that I am your trustee."
And she had replied, making a great effort to speak naturally: "I willwrite to you, Oliver, often--and I hope you will write to me."
And he had said: "Yes--yes, of course I will! Not that there's much tosay that will interest you. But I can always give you news of Gillie."
He had said nothing as to when they were to meet again. But after he wasgone Mrs. Tropenell had spoken as if he intended to come back thefollowing Christmas.
Oliver had so far kept his promise that he had written to Laura aboutonce a fortnight. They were very ordinary, commonplace letters--notlong, intimate, and detailed as she knew his letters to his mother tobe. Mostly he wrote of Gillie, and of whatever work Gillie at the momentwas engaged upon.
On her side, she would write to him of little Alice, of the child'sprogress with her lessons, of the funny little things that Alice said.Occasionally she would also force herself to put in something aboutGodfrey, generally on some matter connected with the estate, and shewould tell him of what she was doing in the garden, or in the housewhich had been built by his, Oliver's, forbears.
She could not tell him, what was yet oddly true, that the spirit ofGodfrey still ruled The Chase. He had inherited from his parents certainold-fashioned ways and usages, to which he had clung with a sort ofdetermined obstinacy, and as to such matters, his wife, in the dayswhich were now beginning to seem so far away and so unreal, had nevereven dreamt of gainsaying him.
One of these usages was the leaving off of fires, however cold theweather might be, on the first of May, and this year, on the eve of MayDay, Laura remembered, and made up her mind that in this, as in so muchelse, she would now be more submissive to the dead than she had everbeen to the living Godfrey.
* * * * *
Laura sat up late that night destroying and burning certain papersconnected with her past life. She had come to realise how transitory athing is human existence, and she desired to leave nothing behind herwhich might later give her child a clue to what sort of unhappy,unnatural married life she and Godfrey had led.
But it is always a painful task--that of turning over long-dead embers.
Sitting there in the boudoir, close to the glowing fire, and with a bigold-fashioned despatch-box at her side, she glanced at the letters whichher husband had written to her during their brief engagement, and thenshe tied them up again and inscribed them with names and dates. Theymight give Alice pleasure some day, the more so that there wassingularly little else remaining to tell Godfrey's child what he hadbeen like at his best. She, Laura, only knew--Alice, thank God, wouldnever know, would never understand--what melancholy memories theserather formal, commonplace love-letters evoked in the woman who as agirl had been their recipient.
The very few letters which her husband had written to her during theirmarried life, when he happened to be in London or away on business, shehad always destroyed as they came. They had been brief, business-lifecommunications, generally concerning something he desired to be done onthe estate, or giving her the instructions he wished to have telephonedto the Bank.
After glancing absently through them, she burnt many letters which shenow wondered why she had kept--letters for the most part from friends ofher girlhood who had gradually drifted away from her, and the memory ofwhom was fraught with pain. She put aside the meagre packet of herbrother's letters, and then, at last she gathered up in her hands thescore or more large envelopes addressed in Oliver Tropenell's clear,small, masculine handwriting.
Should she burn these too--or keep them?
Slowly she took out of its envelope the first of Oliver's letters whichshe had kept--that in which he expressed his willingness to become hertrustee. For the first time she forgot little Alice, forgot the day whenher daughter would read all that she found here, in her mother'sdespatch-box, with the same eager interest and perchance the same movedpleasure, which she, Laura, had felt when reading the letters her ownbeloved mother had left behind her.
Consideringly she glanced over the first real letter Oliver Tropenellhad ever written to her. Vividly she remembered the whole circumstancessurrounding the sending and receiving of that letter, for it hadfollowed close on the scene which, try as she might, she could not, evennow, forget. It was in this letter that she now held open in her hand,that Oliver had heaped coals of fire on her head, by his quiet, kindlyacceptance of the trusteeship. There was unluckily one passage she feltAlice should never have a chance of reading--for it concerned Gillie.So, though she was sorry to destroy the letter, she felt that on thewhole it would be better to burn it, here and now.
Hesitatingly she held out the large sheet to the bright fire--and as shewas in the act of doing so, quite suddenly there flashed between thelines of firm, black handwriting other lines--clear, brownish lines--ofthe same handwriting. What an extraordinary, amazing, incredible thing!
Laura slipped down on to the hearthrug from the low arm-chair on whichshe had been sitting with her despatch-box beside her, and bent forward,full of tremulous excitement--her heart beating as it had never beatbefore.
"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 too. 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?"
She stopped reading for a mom
ent, then forced herself to go on, and thenext few lines of that strange, passionate secret letter, burntthemselves into her brain.
She let the paper flutter down, and covered her face with her hands.Could she--should she believe what this man said?
"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."
It was a horrible simile, and yet--yes, she felt that it was a truesmile. For the first time Laura Pavely dimly apprehended the meaning oflove in the same sense that Oliver Tropenell understood it.
She took up the sheet of paper again, and with the tears falling downher cheeks, she read the postscript which was superposed, as it were, onto the first.
"God bless you, my dear love, and grant you the peace which seems the only thing for which you crave."
After giving a shamed, furtive look round the empty room, Laura Pavelypressed the letter to her lips, and then she threw it into the fire, andwatched it vanish into brilliant flame, feeling as if a bit of her heartwere being burnt with it.
Slowly she got up and went to the door; opening it, she listened for awhile.
The whole household was asleep, but even so, she locked the door beforecoming back to her station by the fire.
She put more coal on the now glowing embers, and then she took upanother letter Oliver had written to her, a letter written from Parisjust after he and her brother had left London together for that longholiday on the Continent. Outwardly it was a commonplace letter enoughconcerning a change in certain of her investments; but when she held itto the fire, between the black lines there again started into pulsinglife another message, winged from his soul to hers....
"Laura, I have sworn not to speak to you of love, and even in this letter which you will never see, I will not break my oath. But as I go in and out of the old Paris churches (where alone I find a certain measure of solace and peace), in the women whom I see there praying I often seem to discover something akin to your spiritual and physical perfection.
"It is strange, considering the business on which I am engaged, that I should feel thus drawn to haunt these old, dim Paris churches, but there at least I can escape from Gillie, of Gillie who talks perpetually of Godfrey, your owner and your tyrant."
And as she read these last words, there came a cold feeling over Laura'sheart. She realised, for the first time, how Oliver had hated Godfrey.
She read on:
"Gillie does not understand the reverence in which I hold you. Sometimes when he speaks of you--of you and Godfrey--I feel as if some day I shall strike him on the mouth.
"But he is your brother, Laura. According to the measure which is in the man he loves you, aye, and even reverences you too, in his fashion; but with this reverence is mingled a touch of pity, of contempt, that you should be what he calls 'good.'"
Good? Laura looked up and stared into the now glowing fire. Good in anarrow, effortless sense she had always been, but to the man who was solittle her owner, though so much at times her tyrant, she had been,almost from the very first, hard, and utterly lacking in sympathy.
It was with relief that Laura burnt that letter.
The notes Oliver Tropenell had written to her in London while he wasconducting the investigation into Godfrey Pavely's disappearance, held,to her disappointment, no secret writing in between. But the letters shehad received from him since her widowhood all had an invisiblecounterpart.
The first was written on ship-board:
"Laura, I am now free to speak to you of love. The world would say that I must wait in spirit as I have waited in body, but I know at what a cost has been bought the relief from the vow which I faithfully kept.
"The past is dead, the future is my own. I look back, dear love, to the few moments we had by the great window in your drawing-room, when my mother was talking to Alice over by the fire. You were so gentle, so sweet, to me then. It was as if--God forgive me for my presumption--you were regretting my departure. Till that moment I had felt as if the man who had once called you wife stood between us, an angry, menacing shape. But he vanished then, in that house of which he had never been the real master. And since that day he has not haunted me as he haunted me during those long long days of waiting for the news I at once longed for and dreaded.
"When I come back I shall not ask you to love me, I shall only humbly ask you to let me love you."
Laura went to her writing-table and turned on the light. She moved asone walking in her sleep, for she was in an extraordinary state ofspiritual and mental exaltation. She drew a sheet of paper towards her,and before burning the letter she still held in her hand, she copiedout, not all, but a certain part of what had been written there in thatinvisible ink which only flashed into being when held up against aflame.
Then she went back to the fire, and read the next letter--and the next.In a sense they were alike--alike in the measureless love, the almostanguished longing for her presence they expressed, and in theirabhorrence, hatred, contempt for the man who had been her husband. Itwas as if Oliver, in spite of his confident words in the letter whichhad been written on shipboard, could not forget Godfrey--as ifperpetually he felt the dead man's menacing presence to be there,between them.
Laura was amazed, troubled, and yet at the same time profoundly stirredand excited by Oliver's retrospective jealousy. It seemed to prove toher as nothing else could have done how passionately, exclusively heloved her, and had always loved her.
Though none of those about her were aware of it, the mistress of TheChase became henceforth a different woman. It was as though she hadsuddenly become alive where she had been dead, articulate instead ofdumb.
Each night, when the house was plunged in darkness and slumber, Laurawould light three candles, and read the words of longing and of lovewhich Oliver had written in between the formal lines of the last lettershe had received from him. And then, when a new letter came, she wouldburn the one that had come before--the one whose contents she hadalready long known by heart.
And as the spring wore into summer the thing that became, apart from herchild, the only real thing in Laura Pavely's life, was her strong,secret link with this man who she knew was coming back to claim her, onwhatever terms she chose to exact, as his own. And she fell into a deep,brooding peace--the peace of waiting. She was in no hurry to see Oliveragain--indeed, she sometimes had a disturbing dread that his actualpresence might destroy that amazing sense of nearness she now felt tohim. Unconsciously her own letters to him became more intimate, moreself-revealing; she wrote less of Alice, more of herself.
The only uneaseful element in Laura Pavely's life now was Katty Winslow.The two women never met without Katty's making some mention of Godfrey.And once Laura, when walking away with Katty from Freshley Manor, wherethe two had met unexpectedly, was sharply disturbed by something Kattysaid.
"I'm told Oliver Tropenell is coming back at or after Christmas. SomehowI always associate him with that awful time we had last January. I thinkI shall try and be away when he is here--I don't suppose he'll staylong."
Katty spoke with a kind of rather terrible hardness in her voice, fixingher bright eyes on Laura's quivering face.
"Instead of going away as he did, he ought to have stayed and tried toclear up the mystery."
"But the mystery," said Laura in a low voice, "_was_ cleared up,Katty."
But Katty shook her head. "To me the mystery is a greater one thanever," she said decisively.
* * * * *
Early in September Laura received a letter written, as were all Oliver'sletters, in sober, measured terms, and yet, even as she opened it, shefelt with a strange, strong instinct that something new was here. And asshe lived through the few hours which separated her from night andsolitude, s
he grew not only more restless, but more certain, also, ofsome coming change in her own life.
His open letter ran:--
"I am writing in my new country house. Years ago, after I first came out to Mexico, I stumbled across the place by accident, and at once I made up my mind that some day I would become its possessor. Over a hundred years old, this little chateau, set on a steep hillside, is said to have been built by a Frenchman of genius who, having got into some bad scrape in Paris, had to flee the country, while the old _regime_ was in full fling.
"When I first came here, the house had stood empty for over forty years. The garden, beautiful as it was, had fallen into ruin. The fountains were broken, the water no longer played, the formal arbours looked like forest trees. White roses and jasmine mingled with the dense southern vegetation, fighting a losing fight.
"For a few brief weeks in '67 it was inhabited by Maximilian and his young Empress--indeed, it is said that the Emperor still haunts the cool large rooms on the upper floor--there are but two storeys. So far I have never met his noble ghost. I should not be afraid if I did.
"I am beginning to think that it is time I came back to Freshley for a while. But my plans are still uncertain."
At last came solitude, and the luminous darkness of an early autumnnight. Laura locked herself into her room.
Yes, instinct had not played her false, for the first words of thesecret letter ran:--
"Laura, I am coming home. I had meant to linger on here yet another month or six weeks, but now I ask myself each hour of the day and night--why wait?
"The room in which I am sitting writing to you, thinking of you, longing for you, was the room of those two great lovers, Maximilian and his Carlotta. The ghost of their love reminds me of the transience of life. I have just walked across to the window, thinking, thinking, thinking, my beloved, of you. For I am haunted ever, Laura, by your wraith. I walk up and down the terrace wondering if you will ever be here in the body--as you already seem to be in the spirit.
"I am leaving at sunrise, and in three days I shall be upon the sea. You will receive a cable, and so will my mother. The thought of seeing you again--ah, Laura, you will never know what rapture, so intense as to be almost akin to pain, that thought gives me. Lately your letters have seemed a thought more intimate, more confiding--I dare not say less cold. But I have sworn to myself, and I shall keep my oath, to ask for nothing that cannot be freely given."
Two days later Laura received a wireless message saying that Oliverwould be at Freshley the next day.