The Greatest Works of Marie Belloc Lowndes. Marie Belloc Lowndes
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His face had become expressionless, and the measured, carefully chosen words made her feel suddenly ashamed, but with a shame merged in an eager hope that she had cruelly misunderstood her—friend.
She stood up and took a step towards him. "Oliver," she said diffidently; "forgive me! I was stupid not to understand. Of course we love one another," she was on firm ground now. "All friends love one another, and you've been such a good friend to me, and more, far more, than a good friend to my poor brother—to Gillie."
He withdrew his gaze from her beseeching eyes, and looked away once more. Now was his chance to play the hypocrite, to eat the words which had given her so much offence....
Hardly knowing that he spoke aloud, he muttered hoarsely, "I can't!" And then he turned to her: "Listen, Laura. I owe you the truth. I have loved you, yes, and in the sense you think so ignoble and so degrading, almost from the first day we met. As time went on, I thought it impossible that you did not know that."
"I did not know it! I trusted you absolutely! I thought that we were all three, friends,—you and I and Godfrey! It was the very first time that Godfrey and I had ever had a friend in common, and it made me so happy."
"Did it indeed?" His words cut like a whip.
"But it's true that you are Godfrey's friend?" she spoke a little wildly. "I've never known him as fond of any man as he is now of you, Oliver."
"His fondness is not returned."
"Then it ought to be!" she cried. "For you've made him like you, Oliver."
She hardly knew what she was saying, distressed, humiliated, wounded as she was in her pride and sense of personal dignity. But what was he saying—this challenging, wrathful stranger who, but a few moments ago, had been her dear, dear friend?
"I would rather, Laura, that you did not bring your husband into this matter."
"But I must bring him in!" She became suddenly aware that here ready to her hand was a weapon with which she could hurt and punish this man who was looking at her with so inscrutable a look—was it a look of love or of hatred?
"I'm sorry now," she went on rapidly, "bitterly, bitterly sorry and ashamed that I ever said a word to you of Godfrey and his—his rather tiresome ways. I ought not to have done it. It was disloyal. I've never spoken of Godfrey to any other man—but somehow I thought you were different from other men."
"Different?" he interjected. "How so, Laura? What right had you to think me different from other men?"
"Because I trusted you," she said inconsequently. "Because somehow you seemed really to care for me—" her voice broke, but she forced herself to go on: "You're not the first man, Oliver, who's made love to me since I married—" she covered her face with her hands.
It seemed to her that some other woman was being driven to make these intimate confidences—not the fastidious, refined, reserved Laura Pavely, who had an almost morbid dislike of the betrayal of any violent or unseemly emotion. But this other woman, who spoke through her lips, had been, was being, wantonly insulted....
Hanging her head as a child might have done, she said defiantly: "I suppose you're surprised?"
"No, I'm not surprised. Why should I be? Go on—" He clenched his hands together. What was it she was going to tell him?
Speaking in short, broken sentences, she obeyed him:
"It was when we used to go about much more than we do now—in the first two or three years after our marriage. I suppose that every woman—who isn't quite happy with her husband—is exposed to that kind of thing. I used to loathe it when I saw it coming. I used to try and fend it off. Sometimes I succeeded—more often I failed. But I never, never expected anything of the sort to happen with you, Oliver. We were such friends—such good, happy friends—you and I and my little Alice," and then she burst into a passion of weeping.
And at that what self-control Oliver Tropenell had retained departed. A flood of burning, passionate words burst from his lips—of endearment, of self-abasement, and promises which he intended, come what might, should be kept.
And she listened shrinkingly, with averted face, absorbed in her own bewildered pain and disappointment.
"I must go back to the house," she said at last. "The doctor will be here in half an hour." And she forced herself to add: "Perhaps you'll be coming over this afternoon?" (How often she had said these words in the last three months—but in how different a tone!).
"I think not. My mother said something about wishing me to stay in to-day—Lord St. Amant may be coming over." As she made no comment, he concluded quietly, "Well, I suppose I had better be going now. Good-bye, Laura."
"Good-bye," she said. And without taking her hand he left her.
She watched his tall figure making its way quickly down through the rough ground to the wood where, ultimately, he would find a path which would lead him to his mother's house.
It was late in the afternoon of the same day. From where she was sitting, under a great cedar tree, Mrs. Tropenell at last saw her son Oliver and Godfrey Pavely come out of Freshley Manor.
Though the glory and warmth of the summer were now over, Mrs. Tropenell still spent many hours of each day in her garden. She had always been an out-of-door woman from the days when she was an eager, impetuous, high-spirited girl, till now, when youth had gone, though something of the eager impetuosity of youth remained with her concealed from strangers by a manner marked by a strong sense of personal dignity.
The two men began walking, slowly, down the grass path leading to the beech avenue which was the glory of Freshley Manor, as well as a short cut to Lawford Chase, Godfrey Pavely's larger property.
It was more than an hour since a servant had come out to say that Mr. Pavely was waiting to see Mr. Tropenell in the library. The man had added that Mr. Pavely had had tea before leaving the Bank, and only wanted to see Mr. Tropenell for a few minutes on his way home. And Oliver, with "I don't think he'll keep me long, mother; I suppose you'll still be here when I come back?" had stridden off with a certain reluctance towards the house.
It had always been his mother's joy, but now for many years past her infrequent joy, to fall in with even the least reasonable of her son's wishes, and so she had gone on sitting out there, waiting for him to come back, long after the tea-things had been taken away. There was a book on the low garden table by her side—such a book as she loved, telling of great adventure by one of the adventurers—but she left it where it was.
Mrs. Tropenell felt a vague, exasperating sense of restlessness and unease. At the back of her heart—that heart which, if no longer that of a young woman, could still thrill with many varied emotions and a very passion of maternal love—was the dull ache of a secret, unacknowledged sense of fear and pain.
She had every reason to be happy to-day—not only happy in her son's company, but in the coming back, after a long absence on the Continent, of her old friend, Lord St. Amant. To him she could, perhaps, bring herself to say something of what was touching her so deeply, and he, she knew, would reassure her and make light of her fears. St. Amant was what is called in ordinary parlance a man of the world—the last man, that is, to be horrified, still less frightened, by a tale of illicit love, especially when, as the mother honestly believed, it was a love likely to remain unrequited.
Yes, she would tell her one trusted friend of these besetting fears, of her more than suspicion that her son Oliver was deep in love with Laura Pavely, and St. Amant would laugh at her, persuade her maybe to laugh with him.
And yet? Yet, even so, she asked herself again and again during that long time of waiting, what these two men who, if of life-long acquaintanceship and now at any rate nominally intimate friends, were so unlike the one to the other, could have to talk about, indoors, for over an hour? Godfrey Pavely and Oliver Tropenell met very often—too often to her thinking—so why should Godfrey have pursued Oliver home to-day, just when Oliver had had an hour to spare for his mother?
It was now Thursday,