The Greatest Works of Marie Belloc Lowndes. Marie Belloc Lowndes
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Pavely is a le moyen homme sensuel—the typical man of his kind and class, Oliver—the self-satisfied, stolid, unimaginative upper middle-class. Such men feel that 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 personal interest. They know scarcely anything of what is going on, either above or below them, and what is more, they do not really care, as long as they and their like prosper."
Oliver nodded impatiently. He knew all that well enough!
His mother went on: "Godfrey Pavely ought to have married some rather clever, rather vulgar-natured, rather pretty girl, belonging to his own little world of Pewsbury. Then, instead of being what he now is, an uncomfortable, not over contented man, he would have been, well—what his 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, his well-shaped head, and long, lean, finely proportioned body. He was sitting at the further end of the bench, and he was now staring right before him. She found it easier—far easier—to speak of Godfrey than of Laura. And so, musingly, she went on:
"Looking back a dozen years, I can think of several young women whom Godfrey would have done well to consider——"
"I can certainly think of one, mother," he said, and in the darkness there came a bitter little smile over his face.
"You mean Katty Winslow? Yes—I think you're right, my dear. When Godfrey turned from Katty to Laura, he made a terrible mistake. Katty, in the old days, had very much the same ambitions, and the same social aspirations, as himself. She was really fond of him too! She would have become—what's the odious word?—'smart.' And Godfrey would have been proud of her. By now he would have stood for Parliament, and then, in due course, would have come a baronetcy. Yes, if the gods had been kind, Godfrey Pavely would have married poor little Katty—he didn't behave over well to her, you know!"
"It seems to me that Mrs. Winslow has made quite a good thing of her life, mother."
"Do you really think that, Oliver?"
"Yes, I do. She managed very cleverly, so I'm told, to get rid of that worthless 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 to want." He spoke with a kind of hard indifference.
"Katty's not the sort of woman to be really satisfied with a pretty little house, a charming little garden, and a platonic share in another woman'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 been kind?"
She left his question without an answer so dangerously long as to create a strange feeling of excitement and strain between them. Then, reluctantly, she answered it. "Laura might have been happiest in not marrying at all, and in any case she should have married late. As to what 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 with a man of the world, older than herself, who would have regarded his wife as a rare and beautiful possession. Such a man would have understood the measure of what she was willing and able to give—and to withhold. I can also imagine Laura married to a young idealist, the kind of man whose attitude to his wife is one of worship, whose demands, if indeed they can be called demands, are few, infrequent——"
Mrs. Tropenell stopped abruptly. What she had just said led to a path she did not mean to follow. But she soon realised with dismay that she had said too much, or too little.
"Do you mean," said Oliver hoarsely, "that Pavely—that Pavely——" he left his question unfinished, but she knew he meant to exact an answer and she did not keep him waiting long for it. Still she chose her words very carefully.
"I think that Godfrey Pavely, in the matter of his relations to his wife, is a very unfortunate, and, some would say, a very ill-used man, Oliver."
Oliver Tropenell suddenly diminished the distance between his mother and himself. The carefully chosen, vague words she had just uttered had been like balm poured into a festering and intolerably painful wound.
"Poor devil!" he said contemptuously, and there was a rather terrible tone of triumph, as well as of contempt, in the muttered exclamation.
Mrs. Tropenell was startled and, what she seldom was, frightened. She felt 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 how different a tone! "Poor devil? Yes, Oliver, Godfrey is really to be pitied, and I ask you to believe me, my son, when I say that he does do his 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 respect Godfrey, I can't help being sorry for him. He once said to me—it's a long time ago—'I thought I was marrying a woman, but I've married a marble 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 so thoroughly 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 answered his own question in a curiously musing, detached tone. "I suppose the only 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 have known it happen." More lightly she went on: "If Laura died, Godfrey wouldn't escape Katty a second time. And one must admit that she would make him an almost perfect wife."
"And if Godfrey died, mother?"
Mrs. Tropenell felt a little tremor of fear shoot through her burdened heart. This secret, intimate conversation held in the starry night was drifting into strange, sinister, uncharted channels. But her son was waiting for an answer.
"I don't know how far Laura's life would alter for the better if Godfrey died. 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 in an unrequited devotion."
He made an impatient movement. "Then do you regard response as essential in every relationship between a man and a woman?"
"I have never yet known a man who did not regard it as essential," she said quietly, "and that, however he might consciously or unconsciously pretend to be satisfied with—nothing."
"I once knew a man," he said, in a low, tense voice, "who for years loved a woman who seemed unresponsive, who forced him to be content with the 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 the woman gave all that he had longed for, all he had schooled himself to believe 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 his mother, turning towards him, laid for a moment her hand on his, as she whispered, "Was that woman at all like Laura, my darling?"