CHAPTER V
Mrs. Tropenell, waiting for Oliver to come back, lost count of time, andyet not much more than half an hour had gone by before she heard thesound of a glazed door, which opened on to the garden from a distantpart of the house, burst open.
In that sound she seemed to hear all the impatience, all the pain, allthe frustrated longing she divined in her son.
She got up from her chair and stood listening. Would he go straightupstairs--as she, in her stormy, passionate youth, would have done inhis place?
But no--with a feeling of rushing, unreasoning joy she heard him comingacross the hall. A moment later he walked through into the room and cameand stood before her.
"Mother," he said, "it's a beautiful night. Would you care to come intothe garden for a few minutes?"
As soon as they had stepped out of the French window into the darkness,she took his arm.
"You don't feel it cold?" he asked solicitously.
"Oh no," she said, surprised. "I'm so little cold, Oliver, that Ishouldn't at all mind going over to the blue bench, and sitting down."
They went across the grass, to a curious painted Italian bench which hadbeen a gift of the woman who was so much in both their thoughts.
And there, "I want to ask you a question," he said slowly. "What led tothe marriage of Laura Baynton and Godfrey Pavely? From something sheonce said to me, I gather she thinks that you approved of it."
She felt as if his eyes were burning her in the darkness, and as shehesitated, hardly knowing what to say, he went on, and in his voicethere was something terribly accusing.
"Did _you_ make the marriage, mother? Did you really advise her to takethat fellow?"
The questions stung her. "No," she answered coldly. "I did nothing ofthe kind, Oliver. If you wish to know the truth, the person who was mostto blame was your friend Gillie, Laura's brother. Laura adored herbrother. There was nothing in the world she wouldn't have done for him,and she married Godfrey--it seems a strange thing to look back onnow--to please Gillie."
"But she met Pavely here?"
"Yes, of course she did. As you know, she very often stayed with meafter her father died, and when Gillie Baynton, instead of making a homefor her, was getting into scrape after scrape, spending her money aswell as his own."
He muttered, "Gillie knew she was to have money later."
She went on: "And then Godfrey Pavely in love is a very different personfrom Godfrey Pavely--well, out of love. He was set on marrying Laura,and that over years. He first asked her when she was seventeen, and theymarried when she was twenty-one. In the interval he had done Gillie manygood turns. In fact Godfrey bought Laura from Gillie. That, Oliver, isthe simple truth."
She waited for him to make some kind of comment, but he said nothing,and she went on, a tinge of deep, yearning sadness in her voice, "Don'tlet your friends, or rather their incompatibility of temper--" shehesitated, and then rather solemnly ended her sentence with the words,"affect _our_ relations, my son."
"I'm sorry, mother." Tropenell's voice altered, softened. "Forgive mefor the way I spoke just now! I had got it into my head--I didn't knowquite exactly why--that you had promoted the marriage. I see now thatyou really had nothing to do with it."
"I won't say that! It's difficult to remember exactly what did happen.Godfrey never wearied in his slow, inexorable pursuit of Laura. I thinkthat at last she was touched by his constancy. She knew nothing then ofhuman nature--she knows nothing of it now."
He muttered, "Poor girl! Poor unfortunate girl!" and his way of utteringthe commonplace words hurt his mother shrewdly.
Suddenly she made up her mind to say at least one true thing to him. Itwas a thing she knew well no one but herself would ever say to Oliver.
"I am in a position to know," she said, "and I want you to believe itwhen I tell you, that if Laura is to be as much pitied as you believeher to be--so too, I tell you, Oliver, is Godfrey! If I had known beforethe marriage, even an hour before the actual wedding, what I learntafterwards--I mean as to their amazingly different ideals of life--Iwould have done _anything_ to stop it!"
"What d'you mean exactly, mother, by different ideals of life?"
As he asked the question he moved away from her a little, but he turnedround and bent his eyes on to her face--dimly, whitely, apparent in thestarlit, moonlit night.
She did not speak at once. It seemed to her that the question answereditself, and yet she felt that he was quivering with impatience for heranswer.
"The French," she said in a low voice, "have a very good phrase todescribe the kind of man Godfrey is. Godfrey Pavely is a _le moyen hommesensuel_--the typical man of his kind and class, Oliver--theself-satisfied, stolid, unimaginative upper middle-class. Such men feelthat the world, their English world at any rate, has been made for them,built up by the all-powerful entity they call God in their personalinterest. They know scarcely anything of what is going on, either aboveor below them, and what is more, they do not really care, as long asthey and their like prosper."
Oliver nodded impatiently. He knew all that well enough!
His mother went on: "Godfrey Pavely ought to have married some ratherclever, rather vulgar-natured, rather pretty girl, belonging to his ownlittle world of Pewsbury. Then, instead of being what he now is, anuncomfortable, not over contented man, he would have been, well--whathis worthy father was before him. That odd interest in queer,speculative money dealings, is the unfortunate fellow's only outlet,Oliver, for what romance is in him."
"I wonder if you're right, mother?"
"I'm sure I am."
There came a long silence between them.
Mrs. Tropenell could see her son in outline, as it were, hiswell-shaped head, and long, lean, finely proportioned body. He wassitting at the further end of the bench, and he was now staring rightbefore him. She found it easier--far easier--to speak of Godfrey than ofLaura. And so, musingly, she went on:
"Looking back a dozen years, I can think of several young women whomGodfrey would have done well to consider----"
"I can certainly think of one, mother," he said, and in the darknessthere came a bitter little smile over his face.
"You mean Katty Winslow? Yes--I think you're right, my dear. WhenGodfrey turned from Katty to Laura, he made a terrible mistake. Katty,in the old days, had very much the same ambitions, and the same socialaspirations, as himself. She was really fond of him too! She would havebecome--what's the odious word?--'smart.' And Godfrey would have beenproud of her. By now he would have stood for Parliament, and then, indue course, would have come a baronetcy. Yes, if the gods had been kind,Godfrey Pavely would have married poor little Katty--he didn't behaveover well to her, you know!"
"It seems to me that Mrs. Winslow has made quite a good thing of herlife, mother."
"Do you really think that, Oliver?"
"Yes, I do. She managed very cleverly, so I'm told, to get rid of thatworthless husband of hers, and now she's got that pretty little house,and that charming little garden, and as much of Godfrey as she seems towant." He spoke with a kind of hard indifference.
"Katty's not the sort of woman to be really satisfied with a prettylittle house, a charming little garden, and a platonic share in anotherwoman's husband."
"Then she'll marry again. People seem to think her very attractive."
There was a long pause.
"Mother?"
"Yes, my dearest."
"To return to Laura--what should have been _her_ fate had the gods beenkind?"
She left his question without an answer so dangerously long as to createa strange feeling of excitement and strain between them. Then,reluctantly, she answered it. "Laura might have been happiest in notmarrying at all, and in any case she should have married late. As towhat kind of man would have made her happy, of course I have a theory."
"What is your theory?" He leant towards her, breathing rather quickly.
"I think," she said hesitatingly, "that Laura might have been happy witha man of the world,
older than herself, who would have regarded his wifeas a rare and beautiful possession. Such a man would have understood themeasure of what she was willing and able to give--and to withhold. I canalso imagine Laura married to a young idealist, the kind of man whoseattitude to his wife is one of worship, whose demands, if indeed theycan be called demands, are few, infrequent----"
Mrs. Tropenell stopped abruptly. What she had just said led to a pathshe did not mean to follow. But she soon realised with dismay that shehad said too much, or too little.
"Do you mean," said Oliver hoarsely, "that Pavely--that Pavely----" heleft his question unfinished, but she knew he meant to exact an answerand she did not keep him waiting long for it. Still she chose her wordsvery carefully.
"I think that Godfrey Pavely, in the matter of his relations to hiswife, is a very unfortunate, and, some would say, a very ill-used man,Oliver."
Oliver Tropenell suddenly diminished the distance between his mother andhimself. The carefully chosen, vague words she had just uttered had beenlike balm poured into a festering and intolerably painful wound.
"Poor devil!" he said contemptuously, and there was a rather terribletone of triumph, as well as of contempt, in the muttered exclamation.
Mrs. Tropenell was startled and, what she seldom was, frightened. Shefelt she was face to face with an elemental force--the force of hate.
She repeated his last words, but in how different a spirit, in howdifferent a tone! "Poor devil? Yes, Oliver, Godfrey is really to bepitied, and I ask you to believe me, my son, when I say that he does dohis duty by Laura according to his lights."
"Mother?" He put out his hand in the darkness and just touched hers."Why is it that Laura is so much fonder of you than you are of Laura?You don't respect--or even like--Godfrey?"
She protested eagerly. "But I _am_ fond of Laura--very, very fond,Oliver! But though, as you say, I neither really like nor respectGodfrey, I can't help being sorry for him. He once said to me--it's along time ago--'I thought I was marrying a woman, but I've married amarble statue. I'm married to something like _that_'--and he pointed to'The Wingless Victory' your father brought me, years ago, from Italy.Godfrey is an unhappy man, Oliver--come, admit that you know that?"
"I think she's far, far more unhappy than he is! No man with sothoroughly good an opinion of himself is ever _really_ unhappy. Still,it's a frightful tangle."
He stopped short for a moment, then in a very low voice, he asked her,"Is there no way of cutting it through, mother?" Suddenly he answeredhis own question in a curiously musing, detached tone. "I suppose theonly way in which such a situation is ever terminated is by death."
"Yes," she said slowly, "but it's not a usual termination. Still, I haveknown it happen." More lightly she went on: "If Laura died, Godfreywouldn't escape Katty a second time. And one must admit that she wouldmake him an almost perfect wife."
"_And if Godfrey died, mother?_"
Mrs. Tropenell felt a little tremor of fear shoot through her burdenedheart. This secret, intimate conversation held in the starry night wasdrifting into strange, sinister, uncharted channels. But her son waswaiting for an answer.
"I don't know how far Laura's life would alter for the better if Godfreydied. I suppose she would go on much as she does now. And, Oliver----"
"Yes, mother."
"I should pity and--rather despise the man who would waste his life inan unrequited devotion."
He made an impatient movement. "Then do you regard response as essentialin every relationship between a man and a woman?"
"I have never yet known a man who did not regard it as essential," shesaid quietly, "and that, however he might consciously or unconsciouslypretend to be satisfied with--nothing."
"I once knew a man," he said, in a low, tense voice, "who for yearsloved a woman who seemed unresponsive, who forced him to be content withthe merest crumbs of--well, _she_ called it friendship. And yet, mother,that man was happy in his love. And towards the end of her life thewoman gave all that he had longed for, all he had schooled himself tobelieve it was not in her to give--but it had been there all the time!She had suffered, poor angel, more than he--" his voice broke, and hismother, turning towards him, laid for a moment her hand on his, as shewhispered, "Was that woman at all like Laura, my darling?"
"Yes--as far as a Spaniard, and a Roman Catholic, can be like Laura, shewas like Laura."
Even as he spoke he had risen to his feet, and during their short walk,from the bench where they had been sitting through the trees and acrossthe lawn, neither spoke to the other. But, as he opened the house door,he said, "Good-night. I'm not coming in now; I'm going for a walk. Ihaven't walked all day." He hesitated a moment: "Don't be worried--Iwon't say don't be frightened, for I don't believe, mother, thatanything could ever frighten you--if you hear me coming in rather late.I've got to think out a rather difficult problem--something connectedwith my business."
"I hope Gillie hasn't been getting into any scrape since you've comehome?"
But she only spoke by way of falling in with his humour. Nothingmattered to her, or to him, just now, except--Laura.
He said hastily, "Oh no, things have been going very well out there. Youmust remember, mother, that Baynton's scrapes never affect his work."
He spoke absently, and she realised that he wanted to be away, byhimself, to think over some of the things she had said to him, and soshe turned and went slowly up the staircase, and passed through into herown bedroom without turning up the light.
Walking over to her window, she gazed down into the moonlit spacebeneath. But she could see no moving shadow, hear no sound. Oliver hadpadded away across the grass, making for the lonely downs whichencircled, on three sides, the house.
Before turning away from her window, Mrs. Tropenell covered her facewith her hands; she was fearfully moved, shaken to the depths of herheart. For the first time Oliver had bared his soul before her. Shethrilled with pride in the passionate, wayward, in a measure noblyselfless and generous human being whom she had created.
How strange, how amazing that Laura made no response to that ardent,exalted passion! But if amazing, then also, from what ought to be everypoint of view, how fortunate! And yet, unreasonable though it was, Mrs.Tropenell felt sharply angered with Laura, irritated by that enigmatic,self-absorbed, coldness of hers. What a poor maimed creature, to be soblind, so imperceptive, to the greatest thing in the world! Dislike, aphysical distaste for the unlucky Godfrey which seemed sometimes toamount to horror, were this beautiful woman's nearest approach topassion.