The Greatest Works of Marie Belloc Lowndes. Marie Belloc Lowndes
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truthfully."
And again there fell between them one of those long silences which played a curious part in a conversation neither ever forgot.
At last Laura did answer Oliver's dangerous question. "I have always known in my heart that your mother was right in making me do what she did—I mean in persuading me that for my little girl's sake I must go on. Alice loves her father, though I think, perhaps foolishly, that of the 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 would have been for Alice if Godfrey and I had lived apart. I've never doubted that—I don't doubt it now. But for that I could not go on—after what happened the other day."
"Then if, as is of course possible, you and I don't meet again for years and years, am I to think of you as always going on in exactly the same way?" he asked.
Some cruel devil outside himself had seemed to force him to utter the hopeless question which he had already made up his mind should be, must be, answered by Fate in the negative.
They had stopped their slow pacing side by side, and he was now looking down 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 extraordinary sensation. It was as if this man, whose burning eyes were fixed on her face, were willing her to say aloud something which, however true, were better left unsaid. "There will never come any change," she answered, feeling as if the words were being forced out of her, "till, as the Marriage 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 the truth—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 it any longer, and——" Her voice dropped, and he bent down so that he might catch the almost whispered words, "I was strongly tempted to—to kill myself," she said. "I used to go and walk up and down that little path across the head of the lake, and plan out how I would do it. Even now I do not think that any one, except perhaps your mother, would ever have suspected. It would have been so easy to make it appear an absolute accident."
He remained silent, and she went on, more composedly:
"I had got into a selfish, morbid state, Oliver, and yet the temptation was not wholly selfish, for I knew that Godfrey was miserable too, and my sense told me that if anything happened to me he would very soon marry again—some woman who would appreciate his good qualities, who would be happy with him, who would not be, as I knew I was, a bitter disappointment."
Once more her voice had become nearly inaudible, and once more Oliver bent his dark, convulsed face down to hear what she said.
Tears were rolling down Laura's face. But suddenly she made an immense effort over herself, and went on, calmly:
"It was your mother who helped me over that bad, foolish time. I don't know what I should have done but for Aunt Letty. I think she's the only person in the world to whom Godfrey ever listens—who can ever make any impression on him. It's strange in a way, for I know she doesn't really like either of us."
As he uttered a violent expression of dissent, she went on: "It's quite true, 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. The only excuse she can make for me—she told me so once, long ago—is that I'm inhuman. I suppose in a way I am inhuman?" She looked at him plaintively, a strange, piteous expression in her beautiful, shadowed eyes.
And Oliver Tropenell caught his breath. God—how he loved her! Her inhumanity—to use that cruelly misleading term which she had just used herself—only made his passion burn with a purer, whiter flame. The one thing in the world that mattered to him now was this woman's deliverance from the awful death-in-life to which her sensitive conscience, and her moving love for her child, alone condemned her. Yes, Laura's deliverance was the only thing worth compassing—and that even if the deliverer were wrecked, soul as well as body, body as well as soul, in the process.
They began walking again, slowly, slowly, once more enwrapped in a silence which said so much more than words could have said, even to Laura'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 where they were standing, on the other side of the road, was a huge white and green building, handsome and showy, looking strangely un-English and out of place in the famous old London way.
"They pulled down such a wonderful, delightful house just there," she said regretfully. "I was once taken to it by my father, when I was quite a little girl. It was like going right back a hundred years—not only to another London, but to another England. It's a shame that any one should have 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 where Mrs. Tropenell was awaiting them, and the three afterwards spent the rest of the day peacefully together. But the next day there began again for them all the same dreary round—that odd, artificial life of "having a good time," as Gillie jovially put it.
Somehow Laura did not mind it so much now as she had done before. Her talk with Oliver had shifted her burden a little, and made her feel as if he and she had gone back to their old, happy, simple friendship. It had 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, there took place a rather pathetic, ridiculous little scene.
Gillie had bought for his sister a beautiful old jewel, and he thrust it—with a merry little word as to this being the first really nice present he had ever given her—into her hand. When she opened the case and saw the emerald and pearl heart, her eyes brimmed over with tears.
Even Gillie was moved. "There, there!" he exclaimed. "Nothing to cry about—'Nuff said,' Laura. Perhaps we'll meet again sooner than you think, my friends the Americans say."
And she tried to smile.
Then Gillie turned to Mrs. Tropenell, speaking with much greater sincerity of feeling than he was wont to do. "I'll never forget your kindness—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 forget a kindness—or an injury. Now then, Oliver!"
Laura felt her hand seized, closed on in a vice-like pressure which hurt, then dropped. "Good-bye, Laura," said Oliver in an almost inaudible tone. "Good-bye, till we meet again."
Chapter XII
AS so often happens after hours or days of crises, and even of quarrel, things went better for a while after Laura's return to The Chase.
True, life was now, even more than before, dull, sad, and difficult. She missed Oliver Tropenell's constant companionship and stimulating talk, more than she was willing to acknowledge even to her innermost self. And yet, when Godfrey spoke of the other man's absence from Freshley with regret, his words jarred on her, and made her feel vaguely ashamed. Yet surely, surely she had nothing to reproach herself with in the matter of Oliver Tropenell? She would so gladly have kept him as Godfrey's friend as well as her own.
They had made it up, those two ill-matched people—made it up, that is, after a fashion. They were now