The Rocks of Valpre by Ethel May Dell (best contemporary novels .txt) 📕

she said rather breathlessly. "You--you must take things for granted sometimes. I can't always be explaining my feelings. They won't stand it."
She tried to laugh, but could not. Again desperately she pressed her hand to her throat. How would he take it? She wondered. Would he regard it as a mere childish whim? Or would he see that he was dealing with a woman, and a desperate woman at that?
She scarcely knew what she expected of him, but most assuredly she did not anticipate his next move.
Quite quietly he picked up the jewel-case, and re-entered her room.
"It may as well go among your other treasures," he said. "You needn't wear it--unless you wish--until you have paid me back."
His tone was perfectly ordinary. She wondered what was in his mind, how he regarded her behaviour, why he treated her thus; not guessing that he had set himself resolutely, with infinite patience, to show her how small was her cause for fear.
He laid his hand upon the drawer that contained her trinkets, tried it, turned round to her, faintly smiling.
"May I have the key?"
She had followed him in silence, and now she stood still, The key! The key! It seemed to be searing her flesh, burning through to her very heart. She suddenly felt as if all the Fates were arrayed against her. Why--why--why had she chosen that drawer to guard her secret? Yet how could she have foreseen this? A mist swam before her eyes. Her new-found composure tottered.
"I--have lost it," she murmured.
"Lost it!" he echoed.
"I mean--I mean--" She was stammering now in open confusion--"I must have laid it down somewhere. I--I shall find it again, no doubt."
He turned fully round and looked at her. She clasped her hands to still her quivering nerves. This fresh ordeal was proving too much for her.
"I can't help it," she said, with white lips. "I often mislay things. I am careless, I know. But I always find them again sooner or later. I will have a look for it while you are dressing."
Her words ran on almost meaninglessly. She was speaking for the sake of speaking, because silence would have been too terrible to be borne, because if she had ceased to speak she must have screamed. Even as it was, the fact that her husband said nothing whatever was driving her almost to distraction.
Suddenly she realized that he was waiting for her to stop, that her words were making no impression, that he was not so much as listening to them, his attention being focussed upon her and her alone.
She broke off in desperation. She met his steady eyes. "Don't you--don't you believe me, Trevor?"
He did not instantly reply. For one dreadful moment she thought that he was going to answer in the negative. And then very deliberately he declined her direct challenge.
"I think," he said quietly, "that you don't know what you are saying."
And with that he went slowly back to his own room, taking the jewel-case with him. The door closed softly and she was left alone.
For many seconds thereafter Chris made no movement of any sort. It was as if she were afraid to stir. Her eyes were wide, gazing straight before her, as though fascinated by some scene of terror.
She moved at last stiffly, went to the window, drew a long, deep breath. She asked herself no questions of any sort. There was no need. For the first time in her life she was face to face with her own soul, beyond all possibility of self-deception.
The child Chris was gone for ever, the woman Chris remained, a woman with a tragic secret that must never be revealed. She knew now why she had fought so desperately to keep that episode of Valpre from her husband's knowledge. She only marvelled that the reason had never come home to her before. She knew now why she had always shrunk inwardly from the searching of his eyes. She had always dreaded that he might see too much, even that same secret of which she herself must have been vaguely conscious for years.
It was all clear to her now, so clear that she could never shut her eyes to it again. All her life long she must carry it in her heart, and no one must ever know. Sleeping and waking, she must keep it safely hidden. She must go on living a lie all her life, all her life.
She flung out her arms with a sudden gesture of fierce rebellion. Oh, why had she married? Why? Why? Why? Had she not always known in her heart that she was making a terrible, an irrevocable, mistake? How was it she had been so blind? Why had there been no one to warn her of the snare into which she was walking? Why had no hand held her back?
Trevor himself--but no, Trevor did not so much as know that she had left her childhood behind her yet. He was still wondering what childish peccadillo was troubling her, keeping her from accepting his gift. At least, he was very far from suspecting her actual reason; nor must he ever suspect.
Never, as long as they lived, must he know that she had refused the first thing of value that he had offered her since their wedding because in an instant of overwhelming revelation she had just recognized the fact that she loved--had loved for years--another man.


PART III

CHAPTER I
WAR

Two days before that on which Aunt Philippa had decided to take her departure Mordaunt went again to town. Noel, whose holidays were drawing to a close, accompanied him to the station in a state of high jubilation, albeit Holmes was in charge of the motor and there was not the faintest chance of his being allowed to take the wheel.
"I hope you're going to behave yourself," were Mordaunt's last words.
And the youngster's cheery grin and impudent "You bet, old chap!" ought to have warned him not to hope for behaviour too exemplary.
Noel, in fact, had been anticipating his brother-in-law's departure with considerable eagerness. Though he liked him thoroughly, he was an undoubted check upon his enjoyment. He kept him within bounds after a fashion which had at first amused but had of late begun somewhat to pall upon him; and Noel was only awaiting a suitable opportunity to kick over the traces and gallop free. On this occasion Mordaunt had decided to spend the night in town, so circumstances were propitious.
As for Mordaunt, he had dismissed Noel from his mind almost before the train was out of the station. But for her aunt's presence, he would have persuaded Chris to go with him, even though he knew that she had not the smallest wish to do so. He was growing very anxious with regard to her, and he was firmly determined that she should have a change of scene as soon as Noel's holidays and Aunt Philippa's protracted stay came to an end. It was not that she seemed ill, but she was very far from being herself, and there were times when he even fancied that she simulated gaiety for the deliberate purpose of deceiving him. He knew, too, that her sleep was often broken and troubled, but he never commented upon this; she was so plainly averse to any criticism from him or anyone. A shrewd suspicion had begun to take root in Mordaunt's mind to account for this unwonted reticence; and because of it he treated her with the utmost patience and consideration, asking no question, giving no sign that he so much as noticed the change in her. He invariably turned from any subject she seemed to find distasteful. If she seemed unusually nervous or unreasonable, he passed it over, bearing with her with a tenderness that sometimes moved her in secret to passionate tears the while she asked herself what she had ever done that he should love her so.
For if she had ever doubted the quality of his love, she could not do so now. It surrounded her whichever way she turned, asking nothing of her, never intruding upon her, content simply to shelter her. And though the very fact of it hurt her, it comforted her subtly as well, lulling her fear of him, giving her a certain measure of confidence.
Of Bertrand, in those days, she saw less and less. In the first shock of realization she had instinctively avoided him, possessed by a haunting dread that he might guess her secret. But upon this point she was very soon reassured. The consistent and unwavering friendliness of his attitude quieted her misgivings, and nerved her to treat him, if with less intimacy, at least without visible awkwardness. Whether he noticed her avoidance or not she did not know, but he certainly seemed to be withdrawing himself more and more out of her life. His work with her husband apparently occupied all his thoughts, and then there was Aunt Philippa also to keep him at a distance. How it would be when her aunt departed Chris had no notion, but she was looking forward to that event with an eagerness almost feverish. All her natural sweetness notwithstanding, there were occasions upon which she actively disliked this domineering relative of hers. Aunt Philippa, on her part, who had never taken so much trouble with her niece before, openly marvelled at her intractability, which even the fact that Chris was one of those headstrong Wyndhams did not, in her opinion, wholly justify. No open rupture had occurred, but a very decided animosity had begun to smoulder between them, which a very little provocation might at any moment fan into open hostility.
Chris was leaning against a pillar of the porch when her brother returned. There was very decided dejection in her attitude.
"Cheer up!" Noel exhorted her, as he sprang from the car. "I've got a ripping plan."
He came and twined his arm in hers, and Chris smiled with a hint of wistfulness. She felt as if she had left Noel and his boyish pleasures very far behind of late.
"What do you want to do?" she said.
"Come into the gun-room and I'll tell you." Noel was all eagerness. "Coast clear?" he questioned. "Where's Aunt Phil?"
"Waiting for me to go and help her find fault with the gardeners." Chris was still smiling a little, but there was not much humour in her voice.
"Oh, rats! Don't go!" said Noel. "Come along into the gun-room, and help me make some fireworks. It will be much more fun."
A spark of the old ardour kindled in Chris's eyes. "Oh, are you going to make fireworks?" she said. "Have you got the ingredients?"
He nodded. "Nearly all. Come and see. What we haven't got we must manufacture. I know where there are plenty of cartridges."
Chris yielded to the eager pulling of his arm. "I suppose Trevor wouldn't mind for once," she said. She had grown unaccountably scrupulous in this respect.
But Noel jeered at the notion. "Who cares? It'll be all over long before he comes home to-morrow. We will have a regular jollification to-night. You and I will run the show, and Aunt Phil and Bertrand can look on and admire. I say, Chris, I've got a ripping receipt for Catherine wheels--not the big ones, those little things you hold and buzz round. You know!"
His enthusiasm was infectious. It drew her almost in spite of herself. Besides, it meant a temporary respite from the continual burden that weighed her down, and brief though it must be, she could not bring herself to refuse it. She went with him, therefore, with the feeling of one who has signed a truce with the enemy, and in a couple of minutes they were securely