Love and hatred Part 44

Once or twice he had caught, or thought he had caught, Oliver Tropenell's penetrating eyes fixed searchingly on his face, but he, the host, had avoided looking at his guest. Somehow he could neither look at Oliver, nor even think of Oliver--with Oliver and Laura there, the one sitting opposite to him, the other next him.

Laura? Laura, on Lord St. Amant's left, had looked lovely last night.

She was wearing a white dress, almost bridal in its dead whiteness--a rather singular fact considering that she had till to-day worn unrelieved black. Looking back, her host could not get her out of his mind. To think that she, proud, reserved, Laura Pavely was to be the heroine of a frightful tragedy which would bring not only shame and disgrace on herself and on the man whom Lord St. Amant had every reason to suppose she now loved, but--what was of so very much more concern to him--on that man's mother.

Looking at Laura, seeing that strange, haunting Mona Lisa smile on her lovely face, it had seemed incredible that she should be the central figure of such a story. But how could she escape being the central figure, the heroine of the story, at any rate in the imagination of all those, one might almost count them by millions, rather than thousands, who in a few days or a few weeks would be as familiar with the name "Mrs. Pavely" as they once had been with the names of--of Mrs. Bravo and Mrs. Maybrick?

Yes, Lord St. Amant, staring into the fire, told himself, that that three-quarters of an hour spent in his own dining-room had been the most painful time he had ever lived through in his long life. He felt as if every moment of it was indelibly stamped on his brain. And yet he had completely forgotten what the talk had been about! He supposed they had talked. Silence would have seemed so strange, so unnatural. Yet he could not remember a single thing which had been said.

But his vision of the three who had sat at table with him remained horribly clear.

Now he was haunted specially by Oliver. And then, after a while, Oliver left him, and he was haunted by his poor friend, soon to be his poor wife.

Mrs. Tropenell had been more silent than usual--so much he did remember.

And he wondered uneasily if he had given her any cause for thinking, from his appearance or his manner, that there was anything wrong?

The thought of what was going to happen to Mrs. Tropenell on the day which was now to-morrow, became suddenly so intolerable to Lord St.

Amant that he got up from his chair, and walked twice round the large, shadowed bedroom.

Then he sat down again, and groaned aloud.

It was as though a bridge had been thrown over the chasm of nearly forty years. His withered heart became vivified. Something of the pa.s.sion which he had left for the high-spirited and innocent, yet ardent-natured, girl whom he had loved, and whom he had saved from herself, stirred within him. Secretly, voicelessly, he had always been very proud of what he had, done--and left undone. It was the one good, nay, the one selfless, action of his long, agreeable, selfish life.

But he could not save her now! Some little shelter and protection he would be able to afford her, but what would it avail against the frightful cloud of shame and anguish which was about to envelop her?

He told himself suddenly what he had already told himself when with Sir Angus--namely, that he and Letty must be married at once. She would certainly acquiesce in any course which would benefit Oliver. Yes, Letty would think of nothing but her son, and, the world being what it is, Oliver would of course benefit by the fact that Lord St. Amant was his stepfather. It would add yet another touch of the unusual and the romantic to the story....

Once more his mind swung back to last evening. He and Oliver had stayed alone together some ten minutes after the ladies had gone into the drawing-room, and there had come over Lord St. Amant a wild, unreasoning impulse to unburden his heart. But of course he had checked, battened down resolutely, that foolish almost crazy impulse. As soon as Letty and Laura were safely gone tomorrow morning he must, of course, tackle the terrible task. And then he tried, as he had tried so often during the last twelve hours, to put himself in Oliver Tropenell's place.

He recalled the younger man's easy, a.s.sured manner, and what a real help, nay, more than help, he had been when the house was full of guests. More than one of their neighbours there had spoken warmly, with evident admiration, of Tropenell. "How well he's turned out! He was thought to be such a queer chap as a boy."

A queer chap? Oliver was certainly _that_.

Lord St. Amant forced himself to consider the man whom his intellect, if not his heart, was compelled to recognise as a cold-blooded murderer.

What had been his and Laura's real att.i.tude to one another during G.o.dfrey Pavely's lifetime? Was Laura absolutely innocent? Or, had she played with Tropenell as women sometimes do play with men--as a certain kind of beautiful, graceful, dignified cat sometimes plays with a mouse?

He was still inclined to think _not_,--before yesterday he would certainly have said not. But one never can tell--with a woman....

And what was going to happen now? Oliver had always been a fighter--no doubt Oliver would be prepared to take the "sporting chance."

When he and his guest had gone into the drawing-room last evening, Laura and Oliver had almost at once pa.s.sed through into the smaller drawing-room. They had moved away unconcernedly, as if it was quite natural that they should desire to be by themselves, rather than in the company of Oliver's mother and Laura's host; and Lord St. Amant, looking furtively at Mrs. Tropenell, had felt a sudden painful constriction of the heart as he had noted the wistful glance she had cast on the two younger people. It had been such a touching look--the look of the mother who gives up her beloved to the woman who has become his beloved.

At ten o'clock tea had been brought in--an old-fashioned habit which was, perhaps, the only survival of the late Lady St. Amant's reign at the Abbey, and, to the surprise of Mrs. Tropenell, her companion had poured himself out a cup and had drunk it off absently.

She had smiled, exclaiming, "You shouldn't have done that! You know you never can take tea and coffee so near together!" And he had said, "Can't I? No, of course I can't. How stupid of me!"

And Laura, hearing the opening and the shutting of doors, had come back, and said that she felt sleepy. They had had another glorious walk, she and Oliver....

Yes, that had been how the evening had worn itself out, so quiet and pleasant, so peaceful--outwardly. It was, indeed, outwardly just the kind of evening which Lord St. Amant had promised himself only yesterday should be repeated many times, after his marriage to his old friend. But now he knew that that had been the last apparently pleasant, peaceful evening that was ever likely to fall to his share in this life. Even if Oliver Tropenell, aided by his great wealth and shrewd intellect, escaped the legal consequences of his wicked deed, his mother would ever be haunted by the past--if indeed the fiery ordeal did not actually kill her.

The old man, sitting by the fire, began to feel very, very tired--tired, yet excited, and not in the least sleepy. He turned and looked over at his bed, and then he shook his head. Yet he would have to get into that bed and pretend that he had slept in it, before his valet came into the room at half-past seven.

It was years, years, _years_ since he had last tried to make an unslept-in bed look as if it had been slept in.

He told himself fretfully that it was odd how unwilling he felt to go over in his own mind the amazing story told him by Sir Angus Kinross. He had thought of nothing else on his long journey from London, but since he had arrived at the Abbey, since he had seen Oliver, he could not bear to think over the details of the sinister story. He forced himself to glance at them, as it were obliquely, for a moment. Yes, he could quite see what Sir Angus meant! Oliver certainly had a sporting chance, backed with the power of commanding the best legal advice and the highest talent at the Bar, coupled with the kind of sympathy which is aroused, even in phlegmatic England, by what the French call a _crime pa.s.sionel_.

Once more Lord St. Amant took up the little faded red leather-bound volume, but he had hardly pushed aside the green ribbon which marked his place in it, when there struck on his ears the metallic sound of an alarum clock--one which he judged to have been carefully m.u.f.fled and deadened, yet which must be quite sufficiently audible to fulfil its purpose of awakening any sleeper in the room where it happened to be.

Now, on hearing that sound, Lord St. Amant was exceedingly surprised, for, as far as he knew, only one other room was occupied on this side of the corridor. That room was that which his late wife had chosen in preference to the one which had been his mother's, and by an odd whim he had a.s.signed it to Laura Pavely.

He turned slightly round in his chair, and glanced at the travelling clock which was on his dressing-table.

It was half-past five.

Why should Laura, or any one else in that great house for the matter of that, wish to be awakened on a winter's morning at such an hour?

While he was thinking this over, he heard the sound of a key turning quietly in a lock, and then there came that of the slow opening of a door on to the corridor.

He stood up, uncertain what to do, and feeling his nerves taut.

Though he was now an old man, his limbs had not lost all their suppleness, and after a moment of hesitation he sprang to his door and opened it.

Yes! He could hear the firm tread of footsteps coming down the corridor towards him, to his left.

He flung his door wide open, and into the stream of light thrown by his powerful reading lamp into the corridor, there suddenly appeared Oliver Tropenell----

For a flashing moment the tall figure loomed out of the darkness, and then was engulfed again....

Lord St. Amant shut the door and hurried back to the fireplace. He cursed the impulse, bred half of genuine alarm, half of eager curiosity, which had made him the unwilling sharer in another man's--and woman's--secret.

Laura? Laura?--_Laura?_ He was so taken aback, so surprised, so utterly astounded, and yes, so shocked, that for a moment he forgot the terrible thing which had now filled his mind without ceasing for so many hours.

Then it came back, a thousand-fold more vivid and accusing.

Laura? Good G.o.d, how mistaken he had been in her! Manlike, he told himself, most unfairly, that somehow what he had now learnt made everything--anything possible.

But before he had time to sit down, the door opened again, and Oliver Tropenell walked into the room.

"I wish you to know," he began, without any preamble, "that Laura and I were married a week ago in London. She wished to wait--in fact it had been arranged that we should wait--till February or March. But to please me--only to please me, St. Amant--she put her own wishes, her own scruples aside. If there is any blame--the blame is entirely, _entirely_ mine." He waited a moment, and then went on rapidly:

"As far as the rest of the world--the indifferent world--is concerned, it will believe that Laura and I were married when of course we should have been, after G.o.dfrey Pavely had been dead a year. But Laura would like my mother to know. In fact she intends, I believe, to tell my mother to-morrow."

Lord St. Amant found himself debating, with a kind of terrible self-questioning, whether now was the moment to speak to Oliver.

"Of course I understand," he said shakily. "And I think Laura did quite right. But even so I suggest that nothing is said to your mother--yet. I have a very serious reason for asking you to beg Laura to keep your marriage absolutely secret."

He was looking earnestly, painfully into the face of the younger man.

Oliver Tropenell's countenance suddenly stiffened. It a.s.sumed a terrible, mask-like expression.