The Essential Writings of Marie Belloc Lowndes. Marie Belloc Lowndes

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СКАЧАТЬ in, any time! Alice and I shall be gardening before lunch. Godfrey won't be back till late, for he's sure to go straight to the Bank from the station. He'll be so much obliged to you about that trusteeship, Oliver. It's really very good of you to take so much trouble."

      Oliver Tropenell answered slowly, "Yes, I think Godfrey will be pleased; and as I've already told you, I'll certainly take advantage of his pleasure, Laura, to suggest the plan about Gillie."

      Once more she exclaimed: "If only you can persuade Godfrey to let me have Gillie at The Chase for a while, I shall be more than content!"

      There was a thrill of excitement, of longing, in her low voice, as, without waiting for an answer, she walked away, leaving him looking after her. The patch of whiteness formed by the hem of her gown moved swiftly along—against the moonlit background of grass, trees, and sky. He stood and watched the moving, fluttering bit of whiteness till it vanished in the grey silvery haze. Then, slowly, he turned on his heel and made his way back home.

      It was nearly a quarter of a mile from the lodge to The Chase, as the house was always called, but there was a rather shorter way across the grass, through trees; and Laura, when she came to where she knew the little path to be, left the carriage way, and stepped up on to the grass.

      She felt oppressed, her soul filled with a piteous lassitude and weariness of life, in spite of the coming return home of her only brother. She had been moved and excited, as well as made acutely unhappy, by what had happened yesterday morning. Mrs. Tropenell, as almost always happens in such a case, was not fair to Laura Pavely. Laura had been overwhelmed with surprise—a surprise in which humiliation and self-rebuke were intolerably mingled—and yes, a certain proud anger.

      The words Oliver had said, and alas! that it should be so, the bitter, scornful words she had uttered in reply, had, she felt, degraded them both—she far, far more than him. At the time she had been too deeply hurt, too instinctively anxious to punish him, to measure her words. And now she told herself that she had spoken yesterday in a way no man would ever forget, and few, very few men would ever forgive. Though he had been kind to-night—very, very kind—his manner had altered, all the happy ease had gone.

      Tears came into Laura Pavely's eyes; they rolled down her cheeks. Suddenly she found herself sobbing bitterly.

      She stopped walking, and covered her face with her hands. With a depth of pain, unplumbed till now, she told herself that she would never, never be able to make Oliver understand why she had said those cruel stinging words. Without a disloyalty to Godfrey of which she was incapable, she could not hope to make him understand why she had so profound a distaste, ay, and contempt, for that which, if he had spoken truly yesterday, he thought the greatest thing in the world. With sad, leaden-weighted conviction she realised that there must always be between a man and a woman, however great their friendship and mutual confidence, certain barriers that nothing can force or clear.

      She had believed, though as a matter of fact she had not thought very much about it, that Oliver Tropenell, in some mysterious way, was unlike ordinary men. As far as she knew, he had never "fallen in love." Women, who, as she could not help knowing, had always played so great a part in her brother Gillie's life, seemed not to exist—so far as Oliver Tropenell was concerned. He had never even seemed attracted, as almost every man was, by pretty Katty Winslow, the innocent divorcée now living at his very gates. So she, Laura, had allowed herself to slip into a close, intimate relationship which, all unknowingly to her, had proved most dangerous to him....

      Still crying bitterly, she told herself that she had been too happy all this summer. Godfrey had been kinder, less, less—she shrank from putting it into words—but yes, less ill-tempered, mean, and tiresome than usual. Oliver had had such a good effect on Godfrey, and she had honestly believed that the two were friends.

      But how could they be friends if—if it was true that Oliver loved her? Laura Pavely knew nothing of the well-worn byways of our poor human nature.

      Suddenly she threw her head back and saw the starlit sky above her. Somehow that wonderful ever-recurring miracle of impersonal, unearthly beauty calmed and comforted her. Drying her eyes, she told herself that something after all had survived out of yesterday's wreck. Her friend might be a man—a man as other men were; but he was noble, and singularly selfless, for all that. On the evening of the very day on which she had grievously offended and wounded him, he had written her a kindly letter, offering to be her trustee.

      There had been moments to-day when she had thought of writing Mrs. Tropenell a note to say she did not feel well—and that she would not dine at Freshley that night. But oh, how glad she was now that a mixture of pride and feminine delicacy had prompted her to behave just as if nothing had happened, as if words which could never be forgotten had not been uttered between herself and Oliver! She had thought he would punish her this evening by being sulky and disagreeable—that was her husband's invariable method of showing displeasure. But with the exception of a word or two uttered very quietly, and more as if she, rather than he, had something to forgive, he had behaved as if yesterday had never been. He had heaped coals of fire upon her head, making it plain that even now he was only thinking of her—of her and of Gillie, of how he could pleasure them both by securing her a holiday with her only brother.

      Every word of that restrained, not very natural, conversation held just now under the beech trees re-echoed in her ears. She seemed to hear again the slowly uttered, measured words, "I am going to be your friend, Laura"....

      And then there came over Laura Pavely an extraordinary sensation of moral and mental disturbance. Once more everything which had happened to-day was blotted out, and she went back to yesterday morning. Again she lived through those moments during which Oliver Tropenell had offered her what was to him the greatest thing man has it in him to bestow—love, even if illicit, unsanctified. And she had rejected the gift with a passion of scorn, spurning it as she would have done a base and unclean thing.

      Years and years ago, in her quiet, shadowed youth, she too had believed love to be the most precious, beautiful thing in life. Then, with marriage to Godfrey Pavely had come the conviction that love was not beautiful, but very, very ugly—at its best one of those dubious gifts to man by which old Dame Nature works out certain cunning designs of her own. And yet, when something of what she believed to be the truth had been uttered by her during that terrible tense exchange of words, she had seen how she, in her turn, had shocked, and even repelled, Oliver Tropenell.

      Once more sobs welled up from her throat, once more she covered her face with her hands....

      At last, feeling worn out with the violence of an emotion which, unknown to her, vivified her whole being, she walked on till the fine Tudor front of the old house which was at once so little and so much her home, rose before her. It was an infinite comfort to know that Godfrey would not be there waiting for her, and that she would be able to make her way up alone through the sleeping house to the room which opened into her child's nursery.

      Chapter V

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      Mrs. Tropenell, waiting for Oliver to come back, lost count of time, and yet not much more than half an hour had gone by before she heard the sound of a glazed door, which opened on to the garden from a distant part of the house, burst open.

      In that sound she seemed to hear all the impatience, all the pain, all the frustrated longing she divined in her son.

      She got up from her chair and stood listening. Would he go straight upstairs—as she, in her stormy, passionate youth, would have done in his place?

      But СКАЧАТЬ