Love and hatred.
by Marie Belloc Lowndes.
PART ONE
CHAPTER I
"Oh, but this is terrible----"
Laura Pavely did not raise her voice, but there was trembling pain, as well as an almost incredulous surprise, in the way she uttered the five words which may mean so much--or so little.
The man whose sudden, bare avowal of love had drawn from her that low, protesting cry, was standing just within the door of the little summer-house, and he was looking away from her, straight over the beautiful autumnal view of wood and water spread out before him.
He was telling himself that five minutes ago--nay, was it as long as five minutes?--they had been so happy! And yet, stop--_he_ had not been happy. Even so he cursed himself for having shattered the fragile, to him the already long perished, fabric, of what she no doubt called their "friendship."
It was she--it always is the woman--who, quite unwittingly, had provoked the words which now could never be unsaid. She had not been thinking at all of him when she did so--she had spoken out of her heart, the heart which some secret, sure instinct bade him believe capable of depths of feeling, which he hoped, with a fierce hope, no man had yet plumbed....
What had provoked his avowal had been the most innocent, in a sense the most beautiful, feeling of which a woman is capable--love for her child.
"The doctor says Alice ought to have a change, that she ought to go to the sea, for a little while. I asked G.o.dfrey if I might take her, but he said he didn"t think it necessary." She had added musingly, "It"s odd, for he really is devoted to the child."
They had been walking slowly, sauntering side by side, very close to one another, for the path was only a narrow track among the trees, towards the summerhouse where they were now--she sitting and he standing.
He had answered in what, if she had been less absorbed in herself and her own concerns, she might have realised was a dangerously still voice: "I think I can persuade G.o.dfrey to let her go. Apart from the child altogether, you ought to have a change." And then--then she had said, rather listlessly, not at all bitterly, "Oh, it doesn"t matter about me!"
Such a simple phrase, embodying an obvious truth, yet they had forced from him the words: "I think it does matter about you, Laura. At least I know it matters a good deal to me, for, as of course you know by now, I love you."
And if his voice had remained quite low and steady, she had seen the blazing, supplicating eyes....
But he had looked away, at once, when he had uttered those irrevocable words; and after a few moments, which had seemed to him an eternity, had come that low, heart-felt cry, "Oh, but this is terrible----"
"Terrible? Why, Laura?" He crossed his arms, and turning, gazed straight down at her bowed figure.
Again there came a long, unnatural pause.
And then she lifted up her face, and under the shadow cast by her wide-brimmed garden hat he saw that even her forehead was flushed. There was an anguished look in the large, deeply blue eyes, which were to him the most exquisite and revealing feature of her delicately drawn face.
"Perhaps I ought not to have said "terrible,"" she said at last in a low voice, "but--but degrading, ign.o.ble, _hateful_, Oliver." She added, her false calm giving way, "And to me such a bitter, bitter disappointment!"
"Why?" he asked harshly. "Why a disappointment, Laura? Most women, nay, all wise human beings, value love--any kind of love offered by even the most unworthy--as the most precious thing in the world!"
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 hoa.r.s.ely, "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 ign.o.ble 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 G.o.dfrey! It was the very first time that G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.dfrey"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 G.o.dfrey and his--his rather tiresome ways. I ought not to have done it. It was disloyal. I"ve never spoken of G.o.dfrey 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 pa.s.sion of weeping.
And at that what self-control Oliver Tropenell had retained departed. A flood of burning, pa.s.sionate words burst from his lips--of endearment, of self-abas.e.m.e.nt, 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.