Love and hatred Part 45

"Had your journey to London," he asked slowly, "anything to do with my affairs? I thought so once--at dinner. Did Sir Angus Kinross send for you?"

Lord St. Amant could not, did not, speak. But at last he bent his head.

Then Oliver asked another question, quickly, in a matter-of-fact tone: "How many hours have I left?"

"Till to-morrow, I mean till Friday, morning," the other answered in a stifled voice.

He longed to go on, to tell the man standing by his side what Sir Angus had said as to his having "a sporting chance." But there was something in the expression of the rigid, mask-like face which forbade his saying that.

And then Oliver Tropenell turned round and grasped his host's hand.

"I owe you a lot of kindness," he muttered. "I used not to be grateful, but I am grateful, _now_. We'll get Laura and mother off--and then you'll tell me what I have to know."

CHAPTER XXVIII

Mrs. Tropenell stood by the window of the pretty, old-fas.h.i.+oned sitting-room which she had now occupied for over a week, and which she knew would be, in a special sense, her own room, after she had became Lady St. Amant.

She was already dressed for the drive home with Laura Pavely. It was nearly twelve o'clock, and the car would be round in a few minutes. But she was waiting on, up here, for her son, for after breakfast Oliver had said casually: "I'll come up to your room for a moment, mother--I mean before you start for Freshley."

She looked round the room consideringly. Nothing in it had been altered for something like fifty years. Above the Italian marble chimney-piece was a good portrait, in oils, of Lord St. Amant's father, and on either side of the fireplace were crayon drawings of St. Amant as a little boy, and of his two sisters as little girls. Everything here epitomised the placid, happy life of the good and fortunate woman who had been Lord St.

Amant's mother.

But the pretty, old-fas.h.i.+oned, peaceful-looking room told also of the strange transience of human life. With the exception of that early Victorian crayon drawing of the stalwart little boy, almost everything in the nature of a relic or memento spoke of some human being long dead.

Mrs. Tropenell felt curiously at peace. There was something almost final about the feeling which possessed her. Up to last night she had been anxious, restless, full of a secret, painful doubt as to whether she was doing right in marrying Lord St. Amant.

But now, this morning, her doubts had gone, partly owing to a very trifling thing, a quick perception of how well St. Amant and Oliver got on together--now. She had been alone with them at breakfast, and they had talked eagerly together, pa.s.sing quickly from one subject to another, with no intervals of silence. When, at last, Oliver had got up, St. Amant also had risen, and put his arm with an affectionate gesture round the younger man's shoulder, and she had caught a strange look, a look of moved grat.i.tude, on Oliver's dark face....

She had dreaded telling her son of her resolve--but the dread had left her, and she made up her mind to tell him this morning--not to wait, as she had half thought of doing, till he was at home again.

St. Amant and Oliver were going to shoot this afternoon over land belonging to little Alice Pavely. Laura had let The Chase shooting to a neighbour, and the neighbour, whose name was Buckhurst, had invited the other two to join his shooting party to-day, and to-morrow also. Oliver was coming home to Freshley in between....

The door opened. "Mother, may I come in?"

She turned quickly, all her heart, as always, welcoming him. With a little, unacknowledged pang she told herself that Oliver was growing older, that he was losing the look of buoyancy that he had kept so long.

But what a fine, strong, vigorous-looking man he looked!--as he stood there, smiling rather gravely at her.

"Oliver?" she exclaimed, suddenly making up her mind to rush her fence--it was a simile which still often occurred to her--"Oliver, my dear, I want to tell you something. I have promised Lord St. Amant to marry him."

He looked moved and surprised--perhaps more than she had expected him to be. But his answer came instantly: "I am glad, mother. I'm very, very glad! I want to tell you, I've meant to tell you for some time, that I felt I've been very churlish in this matter of Lord St. Amant. He's always been good to me! Very, very good. I owed him a great deal as a boy. Lately, well, mother, you must have noticed it yourself, we've become really friends."

He looked swiftly round the pretty room. Till this morning he had always been here alone with Laura, having eyes only for her. He saw now what a charming room it was--so warm, so cosy too, on this chilly, wintry December day.

He exclaimed: "It will be good to think of you here--wherever I may be----"

She felt a tremor go through her. Somehow she had thought that he meant to settle down in England; he had never said anything about it, but she had thought that that was his intention.

"Is Laura willing to spend a part of every year in Mexico, my dearest?"

He nodded, rather absently, as if the question hardly required an answer.

She moved closer to him. "You are very happy, are you not, Oliver?" she asked in a low voice, and looking up into his face.

And again he answered at once, almost as though he had seen the question in her eyes before she uttered it: "Very, very happy, mother! I don't suppose any man has ever been happier than I have been."

Again she put an intimate, probing question, wondering at her own courage, her own temerity, in doing so. "Laura wholly satisfies you?"

she asked, allowing nothing of the doubt which was still in her heart to creep into her voice.

"Wholly," he said, again in that strong, confident voice. "And, mother--?" he waited a moment, and then, in a voice suddenly tense with emotion, he muttered--"what she is to me, I, all unworthy though I be, am to her. Do you know what--what response means to a man?"

"I think I do," she said in a low voice.

They remained silent. She felt as if she were, for the first time, fused in intense spiritual communion with her son.

He broke the spell. "There's something I want you to know," he said. And then he stopped short, and, looking away, exclaimed, "Laura shall tell you!" The carriage gong echoed through the great house. He opened the door, she pa.s.sed through it, and so together they walked down to the large, rather bare hall. There they waited a few moments in silence, till there came the sound of light footsteps--Laura running downstairs, a small fur cap on her beautiful head.

She hurried towards them, smiling, and Mrs. Tropenell turned away--a twinge of jealous pain, of which she was ashamed, in her heart--and stared into the big log fire.

She heard Oliver exclaim, in accents at once imploring and imperious: "Laura? Come over here a moment."

At last she, the mother, turned slowly round, to see, through the half-open door of Lord St. Amant's study, the two standing together, locked in each other's arms, Laura looking up into Oliver's face with an expression of rapt devotion, of entire absorption, in her blue, heavy-lidded eyes. As their lips met, Mrs. Tropenell looked quickly away. She asked herself if this exalted pa.s.sion could last, and whether, after all, Oliver were not happier now than he could ever hope to be again?

Laura was very silent during the first half of their homeward drive, but at last she amazed Mrs. Tropenell by suddenly saying: "I want you to know--I feel I must tell you--that Oliver and I were married, in London, ten days ago. And I think--oh, Aunt Letty, I do think that he is happy--at last!"

She said the words very simply, and Mrs. Tropenell felt extraordinarily moved. This then was what Oliver had wanted her to know, and man-like had felt too--too shy to tell her.

"I am very grateful to you for what you have done," she exclaimed, and held the younger woman's hand tightly clasped in hers for a moment.

That was all. But before they parted Laura gave his mother a message from Oliver. It was quite an unimportant message, simply that on his way home he meant to look in at The Chase.

"You don't mind, do you?" Laura asked, a little hesitatingly. And Oliver's mother smiled.

"Of course not, my dear--I'm glad he should! Perhaps you'd like to come back with him, and stay on for dinner?"

But Laura, reddening with one of her rather rare, vivid blushes, shook her head. "I think I ought to stay at home the first evening," she said, "and put Alice to bed. She loves my putting her to bed. I don't want Alice ever to feel jealous."

But this time Mrs. Tropenell made no answer. Poor little Alice! It would be strange indeed if the child did not feel a little jealous as time went on--if, that is, Laura went on being, as she seemed to be, almost mystically absorbed in this wonderful, glowing thing which had come into her life.

It was the afternoon of the same day, and Mrs. Tropenell, after dealing with the various matters which had acc.u.mulated during her week's absence, had gone up to her room to rest before Oliver's return. Lying on her bed, in the fast-gathering twilight, thinking over all that had happened, and all that was happening, to herself and to those she loved, Mrs. Tropenell dozed off for a few moments. Then, in a long flash which seemed to contain aeons of sensation, she went through an amazing and terrifying experience!

On the dead stillness which reigned both within and without the house there suddenly rang out a shot. At the same moment, if not indeed before, her whole being seemed to be bracing itself up to endure a great ordeal. It was as if her spirit, vanquis.h.i.+ng a base, secret, physical terror of the unknown, was about to engage on a great adventure.