Katty spoke with a kind of rather terrible hardness in her voice, fixing her bright eyes on Laura"s quivering face.
"Instead of going away as he did, he ought to have stayed and tried to clear up the mystery."
"But the mystery," said Laura in a low voice, "_was_ cleared up, Katty."
But Katty shook her head. "To me the mystery is a greater one than ever," she said decisively.
Early in September Laura received a letter written, as were all Oliver"s letters, in sober, measured terms, and yet, even as she opened it, she felt with a strange, strong instinct that something new was here. And as she lived through the few hours which separated her from night and solitude, she grew not only more restless, but more certain, also, of some coming change in her own life.
His open letter ran:--
"I am writing in my new country house. Years ago, after I first came out to Mexico, I stumbled across the place by accident, and at once I made up my mind that some day I would become its possessor. Over a hundred years old, this little chateau, set on a steep hillside, is said to have been built by a Frenchman of genius who, having got into some bad sc.r.a.pe in Paris, had to flee the country, while the old _regime_ was in full fling.
"When I first came here, the house had stood empty for over forty years. The garden, beautiful as it was, had fallen into ruin. The fountains were broken, the water no longer played, the formal arbours looked like forest trees. White roses and jasmine mingled with the dense southern vegetation, fighting a losing fight.
"For a few brief weeks in "67 it was inhabited by Maximilian and his young Empress--indeed, it is said that the Emperor still haunts the cool large rooms on the upper floor--there are but two storeys. So far I have never met his n.o.ble ghost. I should not be afraid if I did.
"I am beginning to think that it is time I came back to Freshley for a while. But my plans are still uncertain."
At last came solitude, and the luminous darkness of an early autumn night. Laura locked herself into her room.
Yes, instinct had not played her false, for the first words of the secret letter ran:--
"Laura, I am coming home. I had meant to linger on here yet another month or six weeks, but now I ask myself each hour of the day and night--why wait?
"The room in which I am sitting writing to you, thinking of you, longing for you, was the room of those two great lovers, Maximilian and his Carlotta. The ghost of their love reminds me of the transience of life. I have just walked across to the window, thinking, thinking, thinking, my beloved, of you. For I am haunted ever, Laura, by your wraith. I walk up and down the terrace wondering if you will ever be here in the body--as you already seem to be in the spirit.
"I am leaving at sunrise, and in three days I shall be upon the sea. You will receive a cable, and so will my mother.
The thought of seeing you again--ah, Laura, you will never know what rapture, so intense as to be almost akin to pain, that thought gives me. Lately your letters have seemed a thought more intimate, more confiding--I dare not say less cold. But I have sworn to myself, and I shall keep my oath, to ask for nothing that cannot be freely given."
Two days later Laura received a wireless message saying that Oliver would be at Freshley the next day.
CHAPTER XXII
A year ago, almost to a day, Mrs. Tropenell had been sitting where she was sitting now, awaiting Laura Pavely. Everything looked exactly as it had looked then in the pretty, low drawing-room of Freshley Manor.
Nothing had been added to, nothing withdrawn from, the room. The same shaded reading-lamp stood on the little table close to her elbow; the very chrysanthemums might have been the same.
And yet with the woman sitting there everything was different! Of all the sensations--unease, anxiety, foreboding, jealousy--with which her heart had been filled this time last year, only one survived, and of that one she was secretly very much ashamed, for it was jealousy.
And now she was trying with all the force of her nature to banish the ugly thing from her heart.
What must be--must be! If Oliver"s heart and soul, as well as the whole of his ardent, virile physical ent.i.ty, desired Laura, then she, his mother, must help him, as much as lay within her power, to compa.s.s that desire.
Since G.o.dfrey Pavely"s death, it had been as if Mrs. Tropenell"s life had slipped back two or three years. All these last few months she had written to Oliver long diary letters, and Oliver on his side had written to her vivid chronicles of his Mexican life. Perhaps she saw less, rather than more of Laura than she had done in the old days, for Laura, since her widowhood, had had more to do. She took her duties as the present owner of The Chase very seriously. Still, nothing was changed--while yet in a sense everything had been changed--by the strange, untoward death of G.o.dfrey Pavely.
Oliver"s letters were no longer what they had been, they were curiously different, and yet only she, his mother, perchance would have seen the difference, had one of his letters of two years ago and one of his letters of to-day been put side by side.
The love he had borne for the Spanish woman, of whom he had once spoken with such deep feeling, had not affected his relations with his mother.
But the love he now bore Laura Pavely had. Not long ago Laura had shown Mrs. Tropenell one of Oliver"s letters, and though there was really very little in it, she had been oddly nervous and queer in her manner, hardly giving the older woman time to read it through before she had taken it back out of her hand.
Laura had become more human since her husband"s death; it was as if a constricting band had been loosened about her heart. Even so, Oliver"s mother often wondered sorely whether Laura would ever welcome Oliver in any character save that of a devoted, discreet, and selfless friend. She doubted it. And yet, when he had written and suggested coming back now, instead of waiting till Christmas, she had not said a word to stop him.
And the moment she had heard that he had reached England, and that he was to be here late on this very afternoon, she had sent a note to The Chase and asked Laura to share their first meal.
One thing had made a great difference to Mrs. Tropenell"s life during the last few months. That was the constant, familiar presence of Lord St. Amant. Now that he was Lord Lieutenant of the county, he was far more at Knowlton Abbey than he had been for some years, and somehow--neither could have told you why--they had become even closer friends than they had been before.
It was well understood that any supplicant who had Mrs. Tropenell on his side could count on Lord St. Amant"s help and goodwill. Though she was of course quite unaware of it, there were again rumours through the whole of the country-side that soon the mistress of Freshley Manor would become Lady St. Amant, and that then the Abbey would be opened as that great house had not been for close on forty years.
And now, to-night, Mrs. Tropenell suddenly remembered that Lord St.
Amant was coming to dinner--she had forgotten it in the excitement of Oliver"s return. But she told herself, with a kind of eagerness, that her old friend"s presence might, after all, make things easier for them all! It is always easier to manage a party of four people than of three.
Also, it made less marked the fact of Laura"s presence on this, the first evening, of Oliver"s return home.
Mrs. Tropenell had not been able to discover from her son"s manner whether he was glad or sorry Laura was coming to-night. And sitting there, waiting for her guests, she anxiously debated within herself whether Oliver would have preferred to see Laura for the first time alone. Of course he could have offered to go and fetch her; but he had not availed himself of that excuse, and his mother knew that she would be present at their meeting.
The door opened, quietly, and as had been the case a year ago, Mrs.
Tropenell saw her beautiful visitor before Laura knew that there was any one in the darkened room.
Once more Mrs. Tropenell had a curious feeling as if time had slipped back, and that everything was happening over again. The only difference was that Laura to-night was all in black, with no admixture of white.
Still, by an odd coincidence the gown she was wearing was made exactly as had been that other gown last year, and through the thin black folds of chiffon her lovely white arms shone palely, revealingly....
And then, as her guest came into the circle of light, Mrs. Tropenell realised with a feeling almost of shock that Laura was very much changed. She no longer had the sad, strained, rather severe look on her face which had been there last year. She looked younger, instead of older, and there was an expression of half-eager, half-shrinking expectation on her face--to-night.
"Aunt Letty? How good of you to ask me----" But her voice sank away into silence as the sound of quick footsteps were heard hastening across the hall.
The door opened, and Oliver Tropenell came in.
He walked straight to Laura, and took both her hands in his. "You got my cable?" he asked.
And then Laura blushed, overwhelmingly. She had had said nothing of that cable to Mrs. Tropenell.
And as they stood there--Oliver still grasping Laura"s hands in his--the mother, looking on, saw with a mixture of joy and of jealous pain that Laura stood before him as if hypnotised, her heavy-lidded blue eyes fixed upwards on his dark, glowing face.
Suddenly they all three heard the at once plaintive and absurd hoot of Lord St. Amant"s motor--and it was as if a deep spell had suddenly been broken. Slowly, reluctantly, Oliver released Laura"s hands, and Mrs.
Tropenell exclaimed in a voice which had a tremor in it: "It"s Lord St.
Amant, Oliver. I forgot that he had asked himself to dinner to-night. He said he could not come till half-past eight, but I suppose he got away earlier than he expected to do."
And then with the coming into the room of her old friend, life seemed suddenly to become again normal, and though by no means pa.s.sionless, yet lacking that curious atmosphere of violent, speechless emotion that had been there a moment or two ago. Of the four it was Laura who seemed the most moved. She came up and slipped her hand into Mrs. Tropenell"s, holding it tightly, probably unaware that she was doing so.
After the first few words of welcome to Oliver, Lord St. Amant plunged into local talk with Mrs. Tropenell, and as he did so, he looked a little wryly at Laura. Why didn"t she move away and talk to Oliver? Why did she stick close like that to Letty--to Letty, with whom he had hoped to spend a quiet, cosy, cheerful evening?
But Laura, for the first time in her life, felt as if she were no longer in full possession of herself. It was as if she had pa.s.sed into the secret keeping of another human being; she had the sensation that her mind was now in fee to another human mind, her will overawed by another human will. And there was a side to her nature which rebelled against this sudden, quick transference of herself.
With what she now half-realised to have been a kind of self-imposed hypocrisy, she had told herself often, during the last few months, that Oliver and she when they again met would become dear, dear friends. He would be the adorer, she the happy, calm, adored. And that then, after a long probation, perhaps of years, in any case not for a long, long time, she might bring herself half reluctantly, and entirely for his sake, to consider the question of--re-marriage.