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Love and hatred

by Marie Belloc Lowndes · English · Gutenberg #36079 · 540,881 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Love and hatred

Author: Marie Belloc Lowndes


        
Release date: May 11, 2011 [eBook #36079]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36079

Credits: Produced by Suzanne Shell, Ernest Schaal, and the Online
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        file was produced from images generously made available
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LOVE AND HATRED ***




Produced by Suzanne Shell, Ernest Schaal, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)









                            LOVE AND HATRED

                         By MRS. BELLOC LOWNDES

                               Author of
          "Lilla," "Good Old Anna," "The Chink in the Armour,"
                    "The End of Her Honeymoon," etc.


                "_Alas! The love of Woman! It is known
                To be a lovely and a fearful thing._"--BYRON.


                             [Decoration]


                                NEW YORK
                        GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY




                            COPYRIGHT, 1917,
                       BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY


                PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




                            LOVE AND HATRED

                                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 Godfrey 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 Godfrey 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, ignoble, _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 hoarsely, "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 ignoble 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 Godfrey! It was the very first time that
Godfrey 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 Godfrey'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 Godfrey and his--his rather
tiresome ways. I ought not to have done it. It was disloyal. I've never
spoken of Godfrey 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 passion of weeping.

And at that what self-control Oliver Tropenell had retained departed. A
flood of burning, passionate words burst from his lips--of endearment,
of self-abasement, 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.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was late in the afternoon of the same day. From where she was
sitting, under a great cedar tree, Mrs. Tropenell at last saw her son
Oliver and Godfrey Pavely come out of Freshley Manor.

Though the glory and warmth of the summer were now over, Mrs. Tropenell
still spent many hours of each day in her garden. She had always been an
out-of-door woman from the days when she was an eager, impetuous,
high-spirited girl, till now, when youth had gone, though something of
the eager impetuosity of youth remained with her concealed from
strangers by a manner marked by a strong sense of personal dignity.

The two men began walking, slowly, down the grass path leading to the
beech avenue which was the glory of Freshley Manor, as well as a short
cut to Lawford Chase, Godfrey Pavely's larger property.

It was more than an hour since a servant had come out to say that Mr.
Pavely was waiting to see Mr. Tropenell in the library. The man had
added that Mr. Pavely had had tea before leaving the Bank, and only
wanted to see Mr. Tropenell for a few minutes on his way home. And
Oliver, with "I don't think he'll keep me long, mother; I suppose you'll
still be here when I come back?" had stridden off with a certain
reluctance towards the house.

It had always been his mother's joy, but now for many years past her
infrequent joy, to fall in with even the least reasonable of her son's
wishes, and so she had gone on sitting out there, waiting for him to
come back, long after the tea-things had been taken away. There was a
book on the low garden table by her side--such a book as she loved,
telling of great adventure by one of the adventurers--but she left it
where it was.

Mrs. Tropenell felt a vague, exasperating sense of restlessness and
unease. At the back of her heart--that heart which, if no longer that of
a young woman, could still thrill with many varied emotions and a very
passion of maternal love--was the dull ache of a secret, unacknowledged
sense of fear and pain.

She had every reason to be happy to-day--not only happy in her son's
company, but in the coming back, after a long absence on the Continent,
of her old friend, Lord St. Amant. To him she could, perhaps, bring
herself to say something of what was touching her so deeply, and he, she
knew, would reassure her and make light of her fears. St. Amant was what
is called in ordinary parlance a man of the world--the last man, that
is, to be horrified, still less frightened, by a tale of illicit love,
especially when, as the mother honestly believed, it was a love likely
to remain unrequited.

Yes, she would tell her one trusted friend of these besetting fears, of
her more than suspicion that her son Oliver was deep in love with Laura
Pavely, and St. Amant would laugh at her, persuade her maybe to laugh
with him.

And yet? Yet, even so, she asked herself again and again during that
long time of waiting, what these two men who, if of life-long
acquaintanceship and now at any rate nominally intimate friends, were so
unlike the one to the other, could have to talk about, indoors, for
over an hour? Godfrey Pavely and Oliver Tropenell met very often--too
often to her thinking--so why should Godfrey have pursued Oliver home
to-day, just when Oliver had had an hour to spare for his mother?

It was now Thursday, and her son had already dined with the Pavelys
twice this week. To-morrow night Godfrey Pavely was to be in London, and
it had been arranged that his wife, Laura, should spend the evening
here. But that, or so Mrs. Tropenell had quickly reminded herself, had
been Laura's usual custom, long before Oliver had come home from Mexico
for the holiday which had now already lasted nearly four months. In her
long life Mrs. Tropenell had only had one beloved woman friend, and that
friend, that more than sister, had been Laura's mother.

Even now Godfrey Pavely did not seem eager to go home. The two men were
close to the furthest edge of the wide lawn, but they were still talking
earnestly.

Mrs. Tropenell gazed across, with a painful scrutiny, at her son's
visitor.

Godfrey Pavely was a neatly made, neatly dressed, neatly mannered
man--in a way not ill-looking. His reddish-brown hair toned in oddly
with his light, ginger-coloured eyes. He had become rather particular
about his health of late, and went to some trouble to keep himself fit,
and in good condition. Yet he looked more like a townsman than like the
countryman he certainly was. For if the fortunate inheritor of a
successful county banking business, which so far he had managed with
such skill as to save it from any thought of amalgamation, he was also
the owner of a fine old property.

Lawford Chase had belonged to Mrs. Tropenell's ancestors for
centuries--for almost as many centuries as the years in which he,
Godfrey, had owned it. But her father had been careless and extravagant
during his long, happy life, so the owner of Pavely's Bank had bought up
the mortgages on Lawford Chase, and finally foreclosed.

All this was ancient history now, and Mrs. Tropenell felt no bitterness
on that account. Indeed, she had rejoiced, with a sense of real joy,
when her friend's daughter had become mistress of her own old home.

The two men whom she was watching went on talking for what seemed to the
onlooker a very long time; but, at last, Godfrey Pavely, turning on his
heel, walked on, to be at once engulfed by the dark green arch formed by
the high beech trees. Then Mrs. Tropenell saw her son, all her heart
welcoming him, come striding towards her across the long stretch of
short, green turf.

Once more she asked herself what possible link there could be between
men so utterly unlike. Her Oliver--more hers now, she felt, than ever
before, and that though for the first time he was making her secretly,
miserably jealous--was a creature of light and air, of open spaces, if
need be of great waters. He was built, like herself, on a big and
powerful plan; and yet so tall, so spare, so sinewy, that though he was
broad he looked slim, and though four-and-thirty years of age he might
have been taken, even at this small distance from where she sat, for a
long-limbed youth. His life for the last twelve years had been one that
often ages a man--but it had not aged him. His vigour was unbroken, his
vitality--the vitality which had made him so successful, and which
attracted men and women of such very different types--unimpaired.

Mrs. Tropenell had been touched, perhaps in her secret heart little
surprised, at the pleasure--one might almost have said the
enthusiasm--with which her neighbours for miles round had welcomed
Oliver home again, after what had been so long an absence from England.
The fact that he had come back a very wealthy man, and that during those
years of eclipse he had managed to do some of them good turns, of course
counted in his popularity, and she was too open-eyed a woman not to be
well aware of that.

The mother knew that her son was not the downright, rather transparent,
good-natured fellow that he was now taken to be. No man she had ever
known--and she had ever been one of those women of whom men make a
confidant--could keep his own or another's secrets more closely than
could Oliver. He had once written to her the words: "You are the only
human being, mother, to whom I ever tell anything," and she had
instinctively known this to be true.

Yet their relationship was more like that of two friends than of mother
and son. She knew all there was to know of his thoughts, and of his
doubts, concerning many of the great things which trouble and disturb
most thinking modern men. Of the outward life he led in the Mexican
stretch of country of which he had become the administrator and
practical ruler, she also knew a great deal, indeed surprisingly much,
for he wrote by each mail long, full letters; and the romance of his
great business had become an ever continuous source of interest, of
amusement, and of pride to the mother who now only lived for him.

But of those secret things which had moved his heart, warred with his
passions, perchance seared his conscience, he had never told her
anything. Only once had the impenetrable mist of reserve been lightened,
as it were pierced for a moment--and that was now a long time ago, on
his second visit home five years before. He had then come to England
meaning to stay a month. But at the end of ten days he had received a
telegram--what he called, in the American fashion, a cable--and within
an hour he had gone, saying as he kissed his mother good-bye, "A friend
of mine--a woman who has been ill a long time--is now dying. I must go,
even if I'm not in time to see her alive."

In the letters which had followed his return to Mexico, there had been
no word more--nothing even implying sorrow, or a sense of loss--only a
graver note, of which the mother might have remained unaware but for
that clue he had left to sink deep in her mother-heart.

       *       *       *       *       *

He was now close to her, looking down out of his dark, compelling
eyes--eyes which were so like her own, save that now hers shone with a
softer light.

"Pavely stayed a long time," he said abruptly. "Are you tired? D'you
want to go in yet, mother?"

She shook her head. "I'd rather stay out here till it's time to dress."

As she spoke she lifted her face to his, and he told himself what a
beautiful, and noble face it was, though each delicate, aquiline feature
had thickened, and the broad low forehead was now partially concealed
by thick bands of whitening hair. It was a lined, even a ravaged
face--the face of a woman who had lived, had loved, had suffered. But of
that Oliver was only dimly conscious, for his mother's nature if
impetuous and passionate was almost as reserved and secretive as was his
own.

It may be doubted, even, if Oliver Tropenell knew how much his mother
loved him, for it may be doubted if any son ever knows how much his
mother--even if she appear placid or careless--loves him. One thing
Oliver did know, or confidently believed he knew, and that was that his
mother loved him more than she had ever loved anything in the world.
There he was quite content to leave it.

"Pavely wants me to become trustee to Laura's marriage settlement, in
succession to old Mr. Blackmore."

When with Godfrey Pavely, Oliver Tropenell always called the other man
by his Christian name, but behind his back he always spoke of him as
"Pavely."

As his mother remained silent, he went on, a little hurriedly: "The
powers vested in the trustee are very wide, and it seems that money
which was later added to the trust--a matter of seventeen thousand
pounds or so--is invested in some queer form of security."

They both smiled--he a little drily, she with a kind of good-humoured
contempt.

"He's cautious and successful--in spite of that odd, gambling
propensity," she spoke a little defensively. Then, "I suppose you've
consented to act?"

She waited anxiously for his answer; and at last it came, uttered in a
tone of elaborate unconcern: "I said I'd think it over. But I think
I'll take it on, mother. Pavely made rather a personal favour of
it--after all, there's some kind of relationship."

"Yes," agreed Mrs. Tropenell, "yes, there is certainly a connection,
hardly a relationship, between ourselves and Laura."

Her son sat down. He began poking about an invisible stone, lying in
among the grass, with his stick.

"You cared for Laura's mother as if she had been your sister--didn't
you, mother? And yet I can't imagine you with a great woman friend, I
mean, of course, a friend of your own age."

She turned and looked at him. "Ah, my dear,--those are the friends that
count!" and she nearly added, "Don't _you_ find it so?" But, instead,
she went on quickly, "Yes, I loved Laura's mother dearly, dearly--and it
was for her sake that I asked you to be good to her son, to Gillie."

"Laura's extraordinarily fond of Gillie----" There always came a curious
change over Oliver Tropenell's voice when he uttered the name "Laura."
It became as it were softer, infused with feeling--or so his mother
thought.

She waited a moment; then answered slowly, "Women generally are fond of
their only brothers."

"Oh, but it's more than that!"

As she remained silent, he went on musingly: "And Gillie, in his queer
way, is very fond of Laura--though I don't believe he writes to her once
in three months!"

"I suppose Gillie still hates Godfrey?" she said hesitatingly. "Godfrey
behaved so--so--well, not so much badly perhaps, as meanly and even
stupidly--about that unfortunate affair." It was almost as if Mrs.
Tropenell were speaking to herself. Her son turned and looked at her
squarely.

"Yes! Gillie still hates Pavely. And yet, mother, since I came home this
time I've wondered sometimes if Pavely was so very unreasonable about it
after all. You see, Gillie must have been about the most troublesome
and--well, the most dangerous brother-in-law an unlucky country banker
could well have had!"

"And but for you he'd be so still," she said quietly. "From something
Godfrey said the other day I gather that he's really grateful to you,
Oliver?"

Oliver Tropenell got up. "Yes," he said shortly, "he's certainly
grateful. In fact, he seems to think I've limitless power of getting
people out of scrapes----" there was an undercurrent of triumph in his
deep, even tones.

"I suppose the real reason he came to-day was that he's afraid to let a
stranger be Laura's trustee?" There was only the slightest touch of
interrogation in Mrs. Tropenell's voice, and she went on: "Perhaps he'd
be kinder to poor Gillie _now_--" a curious smile played round her
mouth. It was a full-lipped, generous mouth, but it was the least
refined feature of her face.

"No, no. It's not as bad as that! But well, yes, Pavely _has_ used this
portion of Laura's fortune in a way he had no business to do, knowing it
was trust money."

"And you----?"

"Oh, I'm going to buy out her interest in the concern."

"Will that cost you seventeen thousand pounds?"

"Yes, it will. But I don't mind--it's quite a likely gamble. Have you
ever heard of Greville Howard?"

"You mean the great money-lender?"

"He's retired now. But Pavely and he seem to be in a kind of secret
partnership--queer isn't it? Pavely's a clever chap about money, but oh,
mother! he's such an insufferable cad!"

Mrs. Tropenell felt a sudden tremor of fear sweep over her. She had
lately come to what she now realised was a quite wrong conclusion--she
had believed, that is, that Oliver, in a queer, contemptuous way, had
grown fond of Godfrey, as Godfrey had certainly grown fond of Oliver.
But now, all at once, her son had opened a dark window into his soul--or
was it into his heart? There was an under-current of hatred, as well as
of the contempt to which she was accustomed, in the way Oliver had just
spoken of his "friend"--of the man, at once fortunate and unfortunate,
who was Laura Pavely's husband.

She stood up, and put her hand through her son's arm. "It's getting very
cold," she said, and shivered.

He turned on her with quick concern: "I left you too long! I ought to
have sent him away before--but he was such a long time getting it out--"
under his breath he muttered "Damn him!"




CHAPTER II


Mother and son dined alone together, and then, rather early, Mrs.
Tropenell went upstairs.

For a while, perhaps as long as an hour, she sat up in bed, reading. At
last, however, she turned off the switch of her electric reading lamp,
and, lying back in her old-fashioned four-post bed, she shut her eyes
for a few moments. Then she opened them, widely, on to her moonlit room.

Opposite to where she lay the crescent-shaped bow-window was still open
to the night air and the star-powdered sky. On that side of Freshley
Manor the wide lawn sloped down to a belt of water meadows, and beyond
the meadows there rose steeply a high, flat-topped ridge.

Along this ridge Oliver Tropenell was now walking up and down smoking.
Now and again his mother saw the shadow-like figure move across the line
of her vision.

At one moment, last winter, she had feared that he would not be able to
come back this year, as troubles had arisen among his cattle-men. But,
as was Oliver's way, he had kept his promise. That he had been able to
so do was in no small measure owing to his partner, Gilbert Baynton.

Gilbert Baynton--_Laura Pavely's brother_? Of that ne'er-do-weel Oliver
had made from a failure a success; from a waster--his brother-in-law,
Godfrey Pavely, would have called him by a harsher name--an acute and a
singularly successful man of business.

Lying there, her brain working quickly in the darkness, Oliver's mother
told herself that the Pavelys, both Godfrey and Laura, had indeed reason
to be grateful, not only to Oliver, but to her, Oliver's mother! It was
to please her, not them, that Oliver, long years ago, had accepted the
dubious gift of Gilbert Baynton, and the small sum Gilbert's
brother-in-law had reluctantly provided to rid himself of an intolerable
incubus and a potential source of disgrace. Godfrey Pavely was certainly
grateful, and never backward in expressing it. And Laura? Laura was one
of your silent, inarticulate women, but without doubt Laura must be
grateful too.

       *       *       *       *       *

At last Oliver left the ridge, and Mrs. Tropenell went on gazing at the
vast expanse of luminous sky which merged into the uplands stretching
away for miles beyond the boundaries of her garden.

She lay, listening intently, and very soon she heard the cadence of his
firm footfalls on the stone path below the window. Then came the quiet
unlatching of the garden door. Now he was coming upstairs.

Her whole heart leapt out to him--and perchance it was this strong shaft
of wordless longing that caused Oliver Tropenell's feet to linger as he
was going past his mother's door.

Following a sudden impulse, she, who had trained herself to do so few
things on impulse, called out, "Is that you, my darling?"

The door opened. "Yes, mother. Here I am. May I come in?"

He turned and shut out the bright electric light on the landing, and
walked, a little slowly and uncertainly in the darkness, towards where
he knew the bed to be. For a moment she wondered whether she should turn
on the lamp which was at her elbow, then some sure, secret instinct made
her refrain.

She put out her hand, and pulled him down to her, and he, so chary of
caress, put his left arm round her.

"Mother?" he said softly. "This dear old room! It's years since I've
been in this room--and yet from what I can see, it's exactly the same as
it always was!"

And, as if answering an unspoken question, she spoke in very low tones,
"Hardly altered at all since the day you were born here, my dearest, on
the happiest day of my life."

His strong arm tightened about her a little, and, still looking straight
before her, but leaning perhaps a little closer into the shelter of his
arm, she said tremulously, inconsequently it might have seemed: "Oliver?
Are you going to accept Lord St. Amant's invitation?"

With a sharp shoot of hidden pain she felt his movement of recoil, but
all he said was, very quietly, "I've not quite made up my mind, mother."

"It would give me pleasure if you were to do so. He has been a very good
and loyal friend to me for a long, long time, my dear."

"I know that."

She waited a moment, then forced herself to go on: "You were never quite
fair to St. Amant, Oliver."

"I--I feared him, mother."

And then, as she uttered an inarticulate murmur of pain and of protest,
he went on quickly, "The fear didn't last very long--perhaps for two or
three years. You see I was so horribly afraid that you were going to
marry him." In the darkness he was saying something he had never meant,
never thought to say.

And she answered, "It was a baseless fear."

"Was it? I wonder if it was! Oh, of course I know you are telling me the
truth as you see it now--but, but surely, mother?"

"Surely no, Oliver. It is true that St. Amant wished, after his wife's
death, that I should marry him, but he soon saw that I did not wish it,
that nothing was further from my wish--then."

"_Then?_" he cried. "What do you mean, mother? Lady St. Amant only died
when I was fifteen!"

"I would like to tell you what I mean. And after I have told you, I wish
never to speak of this subject to you again. But I owe it to myself as
well as to you, to tell you the truth, Oliver. Where is your hand?" she
said, "let me hold it while I tell you."

And then slowly and with difficulty she began speaking, with a
hesitation, a choosing of her words, which were in sharp contrast to her
usual swift decision.

"I want to begin by telling you," her voice was very low, "that
according to his lights--the lights of a man of the world and of, well
yes, of an English gentleman--St. Amant behaved very well as far as I
was concerned. I want you to understand that, Oliver, to understand it
thoroughly, because it's the whole point of my story. If St. Amant had
behaved less well, I should have nothing to tell--you."

She divined the quiver of half-shamed relief which went through her son.
It made what she wished to say at once easier and more difficult.

"As I think you know, I first met St. Amant when I was very young, in
fact before I was 'out,' and he was the first really clever, really
attractive, and, in a sense, really noted man I had ever met. And
then"--she hesitated painfully.

"And then, mother?" Oliver's voice was hard and matter-of-fact. He was
not making it easy for her.

"Well, my dear, very very soon, he made of me his friend, and I was of
course greatly flattered, but at that time, in the ordinary sense of the
word, St. Amant never made love to me." She went on more firmly. "Of
course I soon came to know that he cared for me in a way he did not care
for the other women with whom his name was associated. I knew very soon
too, deep in my heart, that if his wife--his frivolous, mean-natured,
tiresome wife--died, he certainly would wish to marry me, and for years,
Oliver, for something like six years, I daily committed murder in my
heart."

And then something happened which troubled and greatly startled the
woman who was making this painful confession. Her son gave a kind of
cry--a stifled cry which was almost a groan. "God! How well I understand
that!" he said.

"Do you, Oliver--do you? And yet I, looking back, cannot understand it!
All that was best, indeed the only good that was in St. Amant to give I
had then, and later, after I became a widow, I had it again."

"I suppose he was much the same then as later, or--or was he different
then, mother?"

She knew what he meant. "He was the same then," she said quietly, "but
somehow I didn't care! Girls were kept so ignorant in those days. But of
course the whole world knew he was a man of pleasure, and in time I
grew to know it too. But still it wasn't that which made me unhappy, for
I did not realise what the phrase meant, still less what was implied by
it. But even so, as time went on I was very unhappy. Mine was a false
position--a position which hurt my pride, and, looking back, I suppose
that there must have soon been a certain amount of muffled talk. If I
was not jealous, other women were certainly jealous of me."

She waited for a few moments; the stirring of these long-dead embers was
hurting her more than she would have thought possible.

At last she went on: "Sometimes months would pass by without our
meeting, but he wrote to me constantly, and on his letters--such
amusing, clever, and yes, tender letters--I lived. My aunt, my father,
both singularly blind to the state of things, were surprised and annoyed
that I didn't marry, and, as for me, I grew more and more unhappy."

"Poor mother!" muttered Oliver. And she sighed a sigh of rather piteous
relief. She had not thought he would understand.

"I don't know what I should have done but for two people, your father,
who of course was living here then, our nearest neighbour, and, what
meant very much more to me just then, Laura's mother, Alice Tropenell.
Though she was only a very distant relation, she was like a daughter in
this house. Alice was my one friend. She knew everything about me. She
was--well, Oliver, I could never tell you what she was to me then!"

"I suppose," he said slowly, "that Laura is like her?"

"Laura?" Mrs. Tropenell could not keep the surprise out of her low
voice. "Oh no, my dear, Laura is not in the least like her mother. But
Laura's child is very like Alice--even now."

"Laura's child?" Oliver Tropenell visioned the bright, high-spirited,
merry little girl, who somehow, he could not have told her why, seemed
often to be a barrier between himself and Laura.

"Alice--my friend Alice--was full of buoyancy, of sympathy for every
living thing. She possessed what I so much lacked in those days, and
still alas! lack--sound common-sense. And yet she, too, had her ideals,
ideals which did not lead her into a very happy path, for Robert
Baynton, high-minded though he may have been, was absorbed in
himself--there was no room for any one else." Had she been telling her
story to any one but her son, Mrs. Tropenell would have added, "Laura is
very like him."

Instead, she continued, "No one but Alice would have made Robert Baynton
happy, or have made as good a thing of the marriage as she did--for
happy they were. I think it was the sight of their happiness that made
me at last long for something different, for something more normal in my
life than that strange, unreal tie with St. Amant. So at last, when I
was four-and-twenty, I married your father." Oliver remained silent, and
she said a little tremulously, "He was very, very good to me. He made me
a happy woman. He gave me _you_."

There was a long, long pause. Mrs. Tropenell had now come to what was
the really difficult part of the task she had set herself.

"You are thinking, my boy, of _afterwards_." And as she felt him move
restlessly, she went on pleadingly, "As to that, I ask you to remember
that I was very lonely after your father died. Still, if you wish to
know the real truth"--she would be very honest now--"that friendship
which you so much disliked stood more in the way of your having a
stepfather than anything else could have done."

"I see that now," he said sombrely, "but I did not see it then, mother."

"Even if Lady St. Amant had not lived on, as she did, all those years, I
should not have married St. Amant--I think I can say that in all
sincerity. So you see, Oliver, you need not have been afraid, when at
last he became free."

She sighed a long, unconscious sigh of relief.

"I gather you still see him very often when he's at Knowlton Abbey?"

"Yes, it's become a very comfortable friendship, Oliver. But for St.
Amant I should often feel very lonely, my dear."

She longed to go on--to tell Oliver how hard it had been for her to
build up her life afresh--after he had finally decided to stay on in
Mexico. But she doubted if he would understand....

Suddenly he turned and kissed her.

"Good-night," he said. "I'm grateful to you for having told me all--all
that you have told me, mother."

       *       *       *       *       *

Oliver Tropenell hurried up the silent house. By his own wish the large
garret to which he had removed all his own treasures and boyish
belongings after a delicate childhood spent in a room close to his
mother's, was still in his room, and it had been very little altered.

It was reached by a queer, narrow, turning staircase across which at a
certain point a beam jutted out too low. Tropenell never forgot to duck
his head at that point--indeed he generally remembered as he did so how
proud he had been the first time he had found himself to be too tall to
pass under it straightly! But, strange to say, to-night he did
forget--and for a moment he saw stars.... Fool! Fool that he was to
allow his wits to go wool-gathering in this fashion!

With eyes still smarting, he leapt up the last few steps to the little
landing which he shared with no one else. Opening the door he turned the
switch of the lamp on the writing-table which stood at a right angle to
the deep-eaved window.

Then he shut the door and locked it, and, after a moment of indecision,
walked across to the book-case which filled up the space between the
fireplace and the inner wall of the long, rafted room.

He did not feel in the mood to go to bed, and idly he let his eyes run
over the long rows of books which he had read, in the long ago, again
and again, for like most lonely boys he had been a great reader. They
were a good selection, partly his mother's, partly his own, partly Lord
St. Amant's. He knew well enough--he had always known, albeit the
knowledge gave him no pleasure, that he had owed a great deal, as boy
and man, to his mother's old friend. Lord St. Amant had really fine
taste. It was he who had made Oliver read Keats, Blake, Byron, Poe,
among poets; he who had actually given him _Wuthering Heights_, _Vanity
Fair_, _The Three Musketeers_, _Ali Baba of Ispahan_. There they were
all together.

He had not taken his books with him when he had first gone to Mexico,
for he had not meant to stay there. But at last he had written home to a
great London bookseller and ordered fresh copies of all his old books at
home. The bookseller had naturally chosen good editions, in some cases
rare first editions. But those volumes had never been read, as some of
these had been read, over and over and over again.

But now, to-night, he did not feel as if he could commune with any
comfort even with one of these comfortable, unexacting friends. He felt
too restless, too vividly alive. So suddenly he turned away from the
bookcase, and looked about him. A large French box-bed had taken the
place of the narrow, old-fashioned bedstead of his youth; and his mother
had had moved up to this room a narrow writing-table from the study on
the ground floor which no one ever used.

He walked over to that writing-table now, and sat down. On it, close to
his left hand, stood a large despatch-box. He opened and took out of it
a square sheet of paper on which was embossed his Mexican address.
Drawing two lines across that address, and putting in the present date,
September 19th, he waited, his pen poised in his hand for a full minute.

Then he began writing rather quickly, and this is what he wrote:--

    "MY DEAR LAURA,--Godfrey suggests that I should act as your
    trustee, in succession to Mr. Blackmore. Am I to understand
    that this suggestion has your approval? If yes, I will of
    course consent to act. But please do not think I shall be
    offended if you decide otherwise. You may prefer some woman
    of your acquaintance. Women, whatever Godfrey may tell you,
    make excellent men of business. They are, if anything,
    over-prudent, over-cautious where money is concerned; but
    that is a very good fault in a trustee."

His handwriting was small and clear, but he had left large spaces
between the lines, and now he was at the end of the sheet of paper.
There was just room for another sentence and his signature. He waited,
hesitating and of two minds, till the ink was dry, and then he began
again, close to the bottom of the sheet:--

    "Before we meet again I wish to say one further thing."

He put this first sheet aside, and took another of the same size from
the box by his side:--

    "You said something to-day which affected me painfully. You
    spoke as if what I have done for your brother caused you to
    carry a weight of almost intolerable gratitude. So far as
    any such feeling should exist between us, the gratitude
    should be on my side. In sober truth Gillie has been
    invaluable to me.

    "I remain,
         "Yours sincerely,"

Then very rapidly Oliver Tropenell made an "O" and a "T," putting the T
across the O so that any one not familiar with his signature would be
hard put to it to know what the two initials were.

He read over the words he had just written. They seemed poor,
inadequate, and he felt strongly tempted to write the letter again, and
word it differently. Then he shook his head--no, let it stand!

Slowly he put the second sheet of the letter aside, and placed the first
one, on which the ink was dry, before him. Then he looked round, with a
queer, furtive look, and, getting up, made sure the door was locked.

Coming back to the writing-table, he took out of the despatch-box lying
there a small, square, crystal-topped flagon of the kind that fits into
an old-fashioned dressing-case. The liquid in it was slightly, very
slightly, coloured, and looked like some delicate scent.

From the despatch-box also he now brought out a crystal penholder with a
gold nib. He dipped it in the flagon, and began to write in between the
lines of the letter he had just written. As the liquid dried, the slight
marks made by the pen on the paper vanished, for Oliver Tropenell was
writing in invisible ink.

    "The decks are cleared between us, Laura, for you know now
    that I love you. You said, 'Oh, but this is terrible!' Yes,
    Laura, love is terrible. It is not only cleansing,
    inspiring, and noble, it is terrible also. Why is it that
    you so misunderstand, misjudge, the one priceless gift, the
    only bit of Heaven which God or Nature--I care not
    which--has given to man and woman? What you, judging by
    your words to-day, take to be love is as little like that
    passion as a deep draught of pure cold water to a man dying
    of thirst, is like the last glass of drugged beer imbibed
    by some poor sot already drunk."

Oliver Tropenell waited awhile. There were still two spaces, before the
bottom of the page of notepaper was reached, and again he dipped the pen
into the strange volatile liquid.

    "God bless you, my dear love," he wrote, "and grant you the
    peace which seems the only thing for which you crave."

He waited till the words had quite vanished, and then he took up the two
sheets of paper, folded them in half, and put them in a large envelope
which fitted the paper when so folded. He wrote on the outside, "Mrs.
Pavely, Lawford Chase."

And then, turning out the light with a quick, nervous gesture, he got up
and went over to the long, low, garret window.

For a few moments he saw nothing but darkness, then the familiar scene
unrolled below him and took dim shape in the starlit night.

Instinctively his sombre eyes sought the place where, far away to the
right, was a dark patch of wood. It was there, set amidst a grove of
high trees, that stood Lawford Chase, the noble old house which had been
his mother's early home, and which now contained Laura Pavely, the woman
to whom he had just written two such different letters, and who for
nearly three months had never been out of his waking thoughts.

As his eyes grew more and more accustomed to the luminous darkness, he
saw the group of elms under which this very day a word had unsealed the
depths of his heart, and where he had had the agony of seeing Laura
shrink, shudder, wilt as does a flower in a breath of hot, foetid air,
under his avowal of love.

Violently he put that memory from him, and staring out into the
splendour of this early autumn night, he tried to recapture the mixture
of feelings with which he had regarded Laura Pavely the first time they
had met since her marriage--the first time indeed since she had been a
shy, quiet little girl, and he an eager, highly vitalised youth, five
years older than herself.

Looking back now he realised that what had predominated in his mind on
that hot, languorous June afternoon was astonishment at her utter
unlikeness to her brother, his partner, Gillie Baynton. It was an
astonishment which warred with the beckoning, almost uncanny,
fascination which her gentle, abstracted, aloof manner effortlessly
exercised over him. And yet she had been (he knew it now, he had not
known it then) amazingly forthcoming--for her! As Mrs. Tropenell's son
he would have had a right to Laura Pavely's regard, but he knew now that
what had set ajar the portals of her at once desolate and burdened heart
had been his kindness to, even his business relationship with, her
brother.

Gillie Baynton? Yes, it was to that disconcerting and discordant human
chord that their two natures--his and Laura's--had perforce vibrated and
mingled. Remembering this, Oliver Tropenell reproved himself for his
past discontent with the partner who, whatever his failings, had always
shown him both gratitude and a measure of such real affection as a man
seldom shows another in a business relationship. In spite of Gillie's
faults--nay, vices--he, Tropenell, now often found himself favourably
comparing Laura's brother with Laura's husband.

Oliver Tropenell was acutely, intolerably, jealous of Godfrey
Pavely--jealous in the burning, scorching sense which is so often the
terrible concomitant of such a passion as that which now possessed him.
Godfrey Pavely's presence in his own house, his slightly tyrannical,
often possessive attitude to Laura, the perpetual reminder that he was,
after all, the father of the child Laura had borne, and who seemed to
fill her heart to the exclusion of all else--all this was for this man
who loved her an ever-recurring ordeal which might well have satisfied
the sternest moralist.

That night Oliver Tropenell dreamt of Laura. He thought that he was
pursuing her through a maze of flowering shrubs and trees. She was
fleeing from him, yet now and again she would turn, and beckon....

His first waking thought was that they would meet to-night--here, in his
mother's house. But before that happened a long day would have to be
lived through, for he had made up his mind not to go to The Chase till
Laura again asked him to do so.




CHAPTER III


The door of Mrs. Tropenell's long low drawing-room opened very quietly,
and Laura Pavely came through into the room.

She had left a brightly lighted hall for a room of which the only
present illumination radiated from a shaded reading lamp standing on a
little table behind which sat her hostess. Thus, for perhaps as long as
half a minute, Laura thought herself alone.

During that half minute Mrs. Tropenell, with eyes well accustomed to the
shaded light, gazed at her visitor with an eager, searching look, the
look of one who wishes to see more, and to see further, than she has
ever seen before.

But what she saw--all she saw--was the Laura she knew with a knowledge
that was at once so superficially close, and so little intimate. A woman
whose stillness of manner--a manner which at times made her appear
almost inanimate--covered, as Mrs. Tropenell had secret reason to know,
an extraordinary force of negative will power. It was a force which had
even pierced Godfrey Pavely's complacency, and shattered his firm belief
in all the rights that English law bestows on the man who has the good
or ill fortune to be a husband.

As Laura advanced into the room her hostess saw that her visitor's
beautifully shaped head, set proudly and freely on the slender
shoulders, was thrown back in a characteristic gesture of attention,
and, with a touch of reluctance, she admired afresh the masses of fair,
_cendre_ hair drawn back from the forehead in a way which to most women
would have been trying, yet which to this woman lent an air of
eighteenth-century charm and distinction.

There was no colour in Laura Pavely's face, but her eyes, heavy-lidded,
and fringed with eyelashes darker than her hair, were deeply blue.

To-night she was wearing a very simple evening dress, a white chiffon
tea-gown with a long black lace coat. The under dress was almost high to
the throat, but beneath the black lace the wearer's arms, soft, dimpled,
and rounded, were bare to the shoulder, and gleamed palely, revealingly.

Mrs. Tropenell wondered whether Laura knew that her arms were unusually
lovely; then, for she was a very honest woman, her conscience rebuked
her. Laura's faults with regard to men were faults of omission, not of
commission. Of course she was aware--she could not help being
aware--that she was a singularly attractive and distinguished-looking
creature. But she had always taken her own beauty, her own distinction,
just as she did the rare, distinctive features of her garden, and the
perhaps over-studied charm of her house--as something to be tended and
kept beautiful, but also to be guarded from alien indifferent eyes.

Perhaps because in these days every intelligent woman claims to be
picturesque and witty--beauty, sheer beauty, is somewhat under the
weather. Laura Pavely, to use the current jargon of her day, was not a
"success." She was thought to be affected, "deep," prudish, whereas she
was simply indifferent to the more commonplace human elements about her.

Her marriage had withdrawn her from the circle of the old friends and
neighbours among whom she had been brought up, in a measure because none
of them could "do," excepting in a very casual and cursory sense, with
Godfrey Pavely. The world of his youth, the little world in and about
the country town of Pewsbury, to which he had introduced her as a bride
with such exultant complacency, found her not only disagreeably
superior, but also dull. Besides, during the early days of her marriage
she had been too bewildered by the conditions of her new life, and of
her relationship with her husband, to trouble about making new friends,
or even new acquaintances.

And so it was that in any intimate sense Mrs. Tropenell was still
Laura's only close friend, but the younger woman was rather pathetically
aware of how little she really possessed of the older woman's heart, how
constantly she was compared, and ever to her detriment, to her dead
mother, even how unconscious a rival in the older woman's favour was
Laura's own child--merry, cheerful, loving little Alice.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Aunt Letty? I didn't see you were there."

Laura Pavely had a delightful voice--low, clear, vibrating. It was a
voice which sometimes seemed to promise more depth of feeling than its
owner ever chose to betray.

As she stooped to kiss Mrs. Tropenell, Laura let herself slide down on
to the floor. She knelt there for a moment, and the light gleamed on her
fair hair and upturned face. "Alice sent you her love," she said
softly, "heaps of love. She's better to-night, though not quite well
yet!" And then, as there came a sound of quick footsteps across the
hall, she rose, and drew herself up to her full height, with the grace
of movement and the absence of flurry which were both so characteristic
of her.

Mrs. Tropenell looked up quickly. Had Laura flushed, as she sometimes
did flush, with a deep, unbecoming reddening of her pale face, when
moved or startled? No, she seemed, if anything, paler, more impassive
than usual, and Oliver's mother asked herself, yet again, what of late
she had so often asked herself--if Laura was capable of _any_ feeling,
_any_ passion, save a feeling of horror, a passion of repugnance, for
aught which seemed to smirch her own fastidious physical and spiritual
entity.

That she loved her child, the high-spirited, happy-natured little girl,
whose presence alone made life sweet and normal at Lawford Chase, Mrs.
Tropenell could not doubt--she had had proof of how deeply Laura loved
her child on the only occasion danger had come near to Alice--during a
bout of some childish ailment, when for a few hours the little creature
had been in danger of death. She, the older woman, had been frightened,
awed, by Laura's terrible, dry-eyed agony....

Oliver Tropenell opened the door, and as he walked across the room, his
mother's heart quivered with jealous pain, and even with a feeling of
secret, impotent anger, as she saw the eager, rapt look which lighted up
his dark face.

Laura held out her ringless right hand, but he only just touched it.
"I'm sorry I'm late!" he exclaimed. "As a matter of fact I was reading
a letter just come, by the second post, from Gillie."

"I've written to Gillie to-day," Laura said quietly. It seemed such a
long, long time since yesterday morning. She felt as if the
extraordinary thing which had happened then had been blotted out.

"Have you sent your letter off?"

"No, not yet," she was surprised at the question.

And then there fell a curious silence on those three people, till at
last the door opened, and dinner was announced.

"Oliver! Take in Laura," said Mrs. Tropenell.

On the last occasion when the three had dined alone together there had
been a little smiling discussion as to the order in which they should go
into the dining-room. But that had been many weeks ago. They were not in
such a light mood to-night, and yet--and yet, why should they not be?
The hostess knew of no reason.

The two paired off together, and Oliver's mother asked herself, for
perhaps the thousandth time in the last three months, why she had
allowed this--this friendship between her son and Laura Pavely to come
about? It would have been so easy to arrange that she and her son should
spend the summer abroad! When he had first come home there had been a
talk of their going away together to Italy, or to France--France, which
they had both loved when he was a clever, ardent, headstrong boy, with a
strength of brain and originality of mind too big for his boyish boots.

But the harm, what harm there was--sometimes she hoped it was not so
very much harm after all--had been done quickly. By the end of that
first month at home, Oliver had lost all wish to leave Freshley.

In those early days--or was it that already he was being unconsciously
hypocritical as men are wont to be when in such case as that in which he
now found himself?--he had seemed to have formed an even closer
friendship with Godfrey Pavely than with Godfrey Pavely's wife. They had
even made a joint business expedition to town together, Godfrey as
Oliver's guest, staying in one of those luxurious hotels which seem
equally attractive to the millionaire and the adventurer. But Oliver had
at last thrown off, when alone with his mother, any pretence of liking,
far less of respecting, Godfrey Pavely. Yet when with the other man he
still kept up the sinister fiction. She knew that.

       *       *       *       *       *

The three sat down in the pretty, octagon-shaped dining-room, and the
mother and son talked, Laura saying very little, and never giving,
always accepting--in that sense, perhaps, an elemental woman after all!
Even so, she showed, when she did rouse herself to express an opinion,
that there was a good deal of thought and of intelligence in her small,
beautiful head.

Mrs. Tropenell, sitting at the top of the oval table, told herself that
in a primeval sense such a woman as Laura might well be the complement
of such a man as was Oliver. He had strength, passion, idealism, enough
to furnish forth half a dozen ordinary human beings. And he had patience
too--patience which is but another name for that self-control in the
secret things of passion which often brings men's desires to fruition.
It was patience and self-control which had been so lacking in Godfrey
Pavely during those early days when Laura had at least desired to fulfil
her duty as a wife.

And yet again and again during that uncomfortable half-hour Mrs.
Tropenell caught herself wishing that Godfrey Pavely was there, sitting
on her right hand. Godfrey always had plenty to say for himself,
especially in that house, and when he felt secure of the discretion of
those about him, he would often tell much that he ought, in his
character of banker, to have left unsaid. He knew the private business
of every one, gentle or simple, for miles round, and took an easy,
unaffected interest in it all. It was only when he touched on wider
matters, especially on politics, that he grew unbearably tedious and
prosy. But then the only person whom Mrs. Tropenell ever listened to
with pleasure on such subjects was her old friend, Lord St. Amant, who
always knew what he was talking about, and always salted what he knew
with happy flashes of wit and humour.

Oliver accompanied the two ladies back into the drawing-room, and his
mother did not know whether to be glad or sorry that she had not had a
few minutes alone with the younger woman. Sometimes it seemed as if she
and Laura never were alone together now. Was it possible that of late
Laura was deliberately avoiding her? As this half suspicion came into
Mrs. Tropenell's mind she looked up and saw her son's eyes fixed on her
face.

There was something imperious, imploring, commanding, in the look he
bent on her. She saw that he was willing her to go away--to leave him,
alone, with Laura....

Under the spell of that look she got up. "I must go upstairs for my
work," she said quietly. "And I have a letter to write too. I shan't be
very long."

It was as if Oliver made but one swift step to the door, and, as he held
it open, his mother turned her head away, lest he should see that tears
had come into her eyes--tears of pain, and yes, of fear.

How was all this to end?

After walking slowly forward into the square brightly lighted hall she
suddenly stayed her steps, and clasped her hands together.

A terrible temptation--terrible, almost unbelievable to such a woman as
was Letitia Tropenell--held her in its grip. She longed with a fearful,
gasping longing, to go back and listen at the door which had just closed
behind her.

So strong was this temptation that she actually visualised herself
walking across to a certain corner, turning down the electric light
switch, then, in the darkness, creeping to the drawing-room door, and
there gently, gently--pushing it open, say half an inch, in order to
hear what those two were now saying, the one to the other....

At last, thrusting the temptation from her, she again began walking
across the brightly lighted hall, and so, slowly, made her way up the
staircase which led to her bedroom.

       *       *       *       *       *

What Mrs. Tropenell would have heard, had she yielded to that ignoble
temptation, would not have told her anything of what she had so longed
to know.

After he had shut the door on his mother, Oliver Tropenell walked back
to the place where he had stood a moment ago. But he did not come any
nearer than he had been before to his guest, and his manner remained
exactly what it had been when they had been three, instead of being, as
they were now, two, in that dimly lighted room.

Still, both he and Laura, in their secret, hidden selves, were
profoundly conscious that Mrs. Tropenell's absence made a great, if an
intangible, difference. It was the first time they had been alone that
day, for it was the first day for many weeks past that Oliver had not
walked over to The Chase, either in the morning or in the afternoon or,
as was almost always the case, both after breakfast and about teatime.

At last, when the silence had become almost oppressive, he spoke, with a
certain hard directness in his voice.

"In the letter I received from Gillie to-day he tells me that he can
easily be spared for a few weeks, and I've already telephoned a cable
telling him to start at once. I've said that if he thinks it advisable I
myself will leave for Mexico as soon as I hear from him."

"Oh, but I don't want you to do that!" Laura Pavely looked up at him
dismayed. "I thought you meant to stay in England right up to
Christmas?"

"Yes, so I did, and I feel almost certain that he won't think it
necessary for me to go back. But the important thing is Gillie's and
your holiday. Why shouldn't he take you and Alice to France or Italy for
a month?"

He saw her face, the face in which there had been a certain rigid,
suffering gravity, light up, soften, and then become overcast again.
Moving a little nearer to the low chair on which she was sitting--"Yes?"
he asked, looking down at her. "What is it you wish to say, Laura?"

"Only that Godfrey would never let me go away with Gillie." She spoke in
a sad, low voice, but she felt far more at her ease than she had yet
felt this evening.

The last time she and Oliver had been alone, they had parted as enemies,
but now there was nothing to show that he remembered their interchange
of bitter, passionate words.

He answered quietly,

"I wonder why you feel so sure of that? I believe that if it were put to
Godfrey in a reasonable way, he could not possibly object to your going
abroad with your brother. It's time they made up that foolish old
quarrel."

"Ah, if only I could get away with Gillie and my little Alice!"

Laura looked up as she spoke, and Oliver Tropenell was moved, almost
unbearably so, by the look which came over her face. Was it the mention
of her child, of her brother, or the thought of getting away from
Godfrey for a while, which so illumined her lovely, shadowed eyes?

He went on, still speaking in the quiet, measured tones which made her
feel as if the scene of yesterday had been an evil dream. "I've even
thought of suggesting that Godfrey should come out with me to Mexico,
while your little jaunt with Gillie takes place. We could all be back
here by Christmas!"

She shook her head. "I'm afraid Godfrey would never go away except in
what he considers his regular holiday time."

"Not even if I made it worth his while?"

She looked up, perplexed. And then a wave of hot colour flamed up in her
face. Her conscience, in some ways a very delicate and scrupulous
conscience, smote her.

Was it her fault that Oliver Tropenell had come so to despise Godfrey?

But he went on, speaking more naturally, that is quickly, eagerly--more
like his pre-yesterday self, "No, I'm not joking! I think I can put
Godfrey in the way of doing some really good business out there. We've
spoken of it more than once--only yesterday afternoon we spoke of it."

"You don't mean with Gillie there?" There was a note of incredulity in
Laura's voice.

"No." They were on dangerous ground now. "Not exactly with Gillie
there--though it seems to me, Laura, that Godfrey ought to make it up
with Gillie."

Slowly, musingly, as if speaking to herself, she said, "If Godfrey ever
goes to Mexico I think he would want me to come too--he always does."
And this was true, for Godfrey Pavely in some ways was curiously
uxorious. Little as they were to one another, Laura's husband never
allowed her to go away by herself, or even with her child, for more than
a very few days.

"You come too--to Mexico?" There was surprise, doubt, in Oliver
Tropenell's voice, and suddenly Laura did a strange thing, imprudent,
uncalled-for in the circumstances in which she found herself with this
man; yet she did it with no trace of what is ordinarily called
coquetry. Lifting up her head, she said rather plaintively, "Surely you
wouldn't mind my coming too, Oliver?"

"Does that mean that you've forgiven me?" he asked.

She got up from the low chair where she had been sitting, and, facing
him, exclaimed impulsively, "I want us both to forget what happened
yesterday! I was wrong, very wrong, in saying what I did about Godfrey,"
her voice faltered, and slowly she added, "But with you, who seemed to
somehow understand everything without being told, I felt, I felt----"

He raised a warning hand, for his ears had caught the sound of light
footfalls in the hall. "Mother's coming back," he said abruptly. "Don't
say anything to her of my cable to Gillie." And at once, without any
change in his voice, he went on: "There's a great deal that would
interest you, quite as much as Godfrey, out there----"

The door opened, and he turned round quickly. "I'm trying to persuade
Laura to come out to Mexico," he exclaimed. "Godfrey has practically
promised to pay me a visit, and I don't see why she shouldn't come too!"

Mrs. Tropenell made no answer. She knew, and she believed that both the
people standing there knew as well as she did, that such an expedition
could never take place so long as Gilbert Baynton was Oliver's partner.
Baynton and Pavely were bitter enemies. There had never been even the
semblance of a reconciliation between them.

But as her son bent his eyes on her as if demanding an answer, she
forced herself to say lightly: "I expect they both will, some day, and
while they are away I can have my dear little Alice!"

When, a little later, Mrs. Tropenell accompanied Laura out into the
hall, she said, "Do come in to-morrow or Sunday, my dear. I seem to see
so little of you now."

"I will--I will!" and as she kissed the older woman, Laura murmured,
"You're so good to me, Aunty Letty--you've always been so very, very
good to me!"

Oliver opened wide the door giving into the garden. He was now obviously
impatient to get Laura once more alone to himself....

After she went back to her drawing-room, Mrs. Tropenell walked straight
across to a window, and there, holding back the heavy curtain, she
watched the two figures moving in the bright moonlight across the lawn,
towards the beech avenue which would presently engulf them.

What were their real relations the one to the other? Was Laura as blind
to the truth as she seemed to be, or was she shamming--as women, God or
the devil helping them--so often sham?

Slowly, feeling as if she had suddenly become very, very old, Mrs.
Tropenell dropped the curtain, and walking back to her usual place, her
usual chair, took up her knitting.




CHAPTER IV


Laura and Oliver Tropenell walked across the grass in silence, and still
in silence they passed through under the great dark arch formed by the
beech trees.

Laura was extraordinarily moved and excited. Her brother, her dear, dear
Gillie, coming home? She had taken the surprising news very quietly, but
it had stirred her to the depths of her nature. Without even telling her
of what he was going to do, the man now walking by her side had brought
about the thing that for years she had longed should come to pass.

In her husband Laura had become accustomed to a man who was cautious and
deliberate to a fault, and who, as so often happens, carried this
peculiarity even more into the affairs of his daily life than into his
business. Often weeks would go by before Godfrey would make up his mind
to carry out some small, necessary improvement connected with the
estate.

Yet here was Oliver, who, without saying a word to her about it, had
decided that Gillie should come to England just to see the sister he had
not seen for seven years! Laura began to think it possible that after
all Godfrey _would_ make it up with her brother. Oliver Tropenell had an
extraordinary influence over Godfrey Pavely; again and again, as
regarded small matters, he had, as it were, made Godfrey's mind up for
him.

A feeling of deep gratitude welled up in her heart for the silent man
by her side. She longed for him to speak now, as he had spoken to her,
kindly, conciliatingly, but a few minutes ago, in the drawing-room.

But Oliver stalked along dumbly in the intense darkness.

And then suddenly she remembered, with a miserable feeling of
discomfort, and yes, of shame, that she could hardly expect him to be as
usual. And so it was she who, making a great effort, at last broke the
unnatural silence.

"I've never thanked you for your letter," she said nervously. "But I'm
very much obliged to you, Oliver, for consenting to be my trustee. And I
know that Godfrey will be! I hope it won't give you much trouble--the
trusteeship, I mean. I know that Mr. Blackmore, for years past, left it
all to Godfrey."

He answered slowly, meditatively, and to her intense relief, quite in
his old way. "Yes, I think Godfrey will be pleased. To tell you the
truth, Laura, I thought I would take advantage of his pleasure to
suggest that plan about Gillie--I mean that you and Gillie and Alice
should all go abroad together."

"If only you can persuade Godfrey to let me have Gillie here for a
while, I shall be more than content!" She spoke with a rather piteous
eagerness.

They were walking very, very slowly. Oliver had now turned on his
electric torch, and it threw a bright patch of light on the path
immediately before them, making all the darkness about them the blacker
and the more intense.

In a hard voice he exclaimed: "Of course Gillie must come here, and stay
here! His being anywhere else would be preposterous----" And then, once
more, he fell into that strange, disconcerting silence.

The last time they two had walked down under the beeches at night had
been some three weeks ago. Laura and Godfrey had dined with the
Tropenells, and then Godfrey had said that he had to go home and do some
work, leaving her to stay on, for nearly an hour, with the mother and
son.

Oliver's torch had gone out that evening, and he had suggested, a little
diffidently, that Laura should take his arm; smiling, she had laid the
tips of her fingers lightly on his sleeve. She had felt so happy then,
so happy, and absolutely at her ease, with her companion....

Tears welled up in her eyes. She was grateful for the darkness, but her
trembling voice betrayed her as she exclaimed, "Oliver? I do again ask
you to forget what happened yesterday, and to forgive me for the things
I said. I'm very sorry that I spoke as I did."

He stopped walking, and put out his torch. "Don't be sorry," he said, in
a low, constrained voice. "It's far better that I should know exactly
how you feel. Of course I was surprised, for I'd always had a notion
that women regarded love from a more ideal standpoint than men seem able
to do. But I see now that I was mistaken." Some of the bitterness with
which his heart was still full and overflowing crept into his measured
voice. "I think you will believe me when I say that I did not mean to
insult you----"

He was going on, but she interrupted him.

"--I'm sorry--sorry and ashamed too, Oliver, of what I said.
Please--please forget what happened----"

He turned on her amid the dark shadows.

"If _I_ forget, will _you_?" he asked sombrely.

And she answered, "Yes, yes--indeed I will! But before we put what
happened yesterday behind us forever, do let me tell you, Oliver, that I
_am_ grateful, deeply grateful, for your----" she hesitated painfully,
and then murmured "your affection."

But Oliver Tropenell did not meet her half-way, as she had perhaps
thought he would. He was torn by conflicting feelings, cursing himself
for having lost his self-control the day before, and yet, even so, deep
in his subtle, storm-tossed mind, not altogether sorry for what had
happened.

And so it was she who went on, speaking slowly and with difficulty: "I
know that I have been to blame! I know that I ought never to have spoken
of Godfrey as I have sometimes allowed myself to do to you. According to
his lights, he is a good husband, and I know that I have been--that I
am--a bitter disappointment to him."

He muttered something--she did not hear what it was, and she hurried on:
"What I have wanted--and oh, Oliver, I have wanted it so much--is a
friend," almost he heard the unspoken words, "not a lover."

She put out her hand in the darkness and laid it, for a moment, on his
arm. And then, suddenly, in that moment of, to him, exquisite,
unhoped-for contact, Oliver Tropenell swore to himself most solemnly
that he would rest satisfied with what she would, and could, grant him.
And so--

"I know that," he said in measured, restrained tones. "And I have made
up my mind to be that friend, Laura. We will both forget what happened
yesterday. If you are ashamed, I am a hundred times more so! And do
believe me when I tell you that what you said about Godfrey--why, I've
forgotten it already--had nothing to do with my outburst. I'm a lonely
man, my dear, and somehow, without in the least meaning it, I know, you
crept into my heart and filled it all. But already, since yesterday,
I've come to a more reasonable frame of mind."

He waited a moment, despising himself for uttering such lying words, and
then he went on, this time honestly meaning what he said: "Henceforth,
Laura, I swear that I'll never again say a word to you that all the
world might not hear. I never did, till yesterday----"

"I know, I know," she said hurriedly. "And that was why I was so
surprised."

"Let's put it all behind us and go back to 'as we were'!" He was
speaking now with a sort of gruff, good-humoured decision, and
Laura sighed, relieved, and yet--so unreasonable a being is
woman--unsatisfied.

The light from his torch flashed again, and they walked on, under the
dark arch of leaves and branches, till they were close to the open road.

And there Laura said, "I wish you would leave me here, Oliver. I feel
sure that Aunt Letty is waiting up for you."

He answered her at once. "It won't make more than five minutes'
difference. I'll only walk as far as the lodge. It's a lonely little
stretch of road."

"Lonely?" she repeated. "Why, there isn't a bit of it that isn't within
hail of Rosedean!"

And then, determined to go back to their old easy companionship, that
companionship which had lately become so easy and so intimate that when
with him she had often spoken a passing thought aloud, "Katty came home
to-day. I must try and see her to-morrow. She's a plucky creature,
Oliver! I wish that Aunt Letty liked her better than she does."

He answered idly, "There's nothing much either to like or dislike in
Mrs. Winslow--at least so it always seems to me."

But she answered quickly, defensively, "There's a great deal to like in
her--when I think of Katty Winslow I feel ashamed of myself. I've known
her do such kind things! And then she's so good about Godfrey--I don't
know what Godfrey would do without her. They knew each other as
children. It's as if she was his sister. All that little Pewsbury world
which bores me so, is full of interest to them both. I'm always glad
when she's at Rosedean. I only wish she didn't go away so often--Godfrey
does miss her so!"

"Yes, I know he does," he said drily.

They walked on in silence till they were close to the low lodge.

Laura Pavely held out her hand, and Oliver Tropenell took it in his
cool, firm grasp for a moment.

"Good-night," he said. "I suppose we shall meet some time to-morrow?"

She answered eagerly. "Yes, do come in, any time! Alice and I shall be
gardening before lunch. Godfrey won't be back till late, for he's sure
to go straight to the Bank from the station. He'll be so much obliged to
you about that trusteeship, Oliver. It's really very good of you to take
so much trouble."

Oliver Tropenell answered slowly, "Yes, I think Godfrey will be
pleased; and as I've already told you, I'll certainly take advantage of
his pleasure, Laura, to suggest the plan about Gillie."

Once more she exclaimed: "If only you can persuade Godfrey to let me
have Gillie at The Chase for a while, I shall be more than content!"

There was a thrill of excitement, of longing, in her low voice, as,
without waiting for an answer, she walked away, leaving him looking
after her. The patch of whiteness formed by the hem of her gown moved
swiftly along--against the moonlit background of grass, trees, and sky.
He stood and watched the moving, fluttering bit of whiteness till it
vanished in the grey silvery haze. Then, slowly, he turned on his heel
and made his way back home.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was nearly a quarter of a mile from the lodge to The Chase, as the
house was always called, but there was a rather shorter way across the
grass, through trees; and Laura, when she came to where she knew the
little path to be, left the carriage way, and stepped up on to the
grass.

She felt oppressed, her soul filled with a piteous lassitude and
weariness of life, in spite of the coming return home of her only
brother. She had been moved and excited, as well as made acutely
unhappy, by what had happened yesterday morning. Mrs. Tropenell, as
almost always happens in such a case, was not fair to Laura Pavely.
Laura had been overwhelmed with surprise--a surprise in which
humiliation and self-rebuke were intolerably mingled--and yes, a certain
proud anger.

The words Oliver had said, and alas! that it should be so, the bitter,
scornful words she had uttered in reply, had, she felt, degraded them
both--she far, far more than him. At the time she had been too deeply
hurt, too instinctively anxious to punish him, to measure her words. And
now she told herself that she had spoken yesterday in a way no man would
ever forget, and few, very few men would ever forgive. Though he had
been kind to-night--very, very kind--his manner had altered, all the
happy ease had gone.

Tears came into Laura Pavely's eyes; they rolled down her cheeks.
Suddenly she found herself sobbing bitterly.

She stopped walking, and covered her face with her hands. With a depth
of pain, unplumbed till now, she told herself that she would never,
never be able to make Oliver understand why she had said those cruel
stinging words. Without a disloyalty to Godfrey of which she was
incapable, she could not hope to make him understand why she had so
profound a distaste, ay, and contempt, for that which, if he had spoken
truly yesterday, he thought the greatest thing in the world. With sad,
leaden-weighted conviction she realised that there must always be
between a man and a woman, however great their friendship and mutual
confidence, certain barriers that nothing can force or clear.

She had believed, though as a matter of fact she had not thought very
much about it, that Oliver Tropenell, in some mysterious way, was unlike
ordinary men. As far as she knew, he had never "fallen in love." Women,
who, as she could not help knowing, had always played so great a part in
her brother Gillie's life, seemed not to exist--so far as Oliver
Tropenell was concerned. He had never even seemed attracted, as almost
every man was, by pretty Katty Winslow, the innocent _divorcee_ now
living at his very gates. So she, Laura, had allowed herself to slip
into a close, intimate relationship which, all unknowingly to her, had
proved most dangerous to him....

Still crying bitterly, she told herself that she had been too happy all
this summer. Godfrey had been kinder, less, less--she shrank from
putting it into words--but yes, less ill-tempered, mean, and tiresome
than usual. Oliver had had such a good effect on Godfrey, and she had
honestly believed that the two were friends.

But how could they be friends if--if it was true that Oliver loved her?
Laura Pavely knew nothing of the well-worn byways of our poor human
nature.

Suddenly she threw her head back and saw the starlit sky above her.
Somehow that wonderful ever-recurring miracle of impersonal, unearthly
beauty calmed and comforted her. Drying her eyes, she told herself that
something after all had survived out of yesterday's wreck. Her friend
might be a man--a man as other men were; but he was noble, and
singularly selfless, for all that. On the evening of the very day on
which she had grievously offended and wounded him, he had written her a
kindly letter, offering to be her trustee.

There had been moments to-day when she had thought of writing Mrs.
Tropenell a note to say she did not feel well--and that she would not
dine at Freshley that night. But oh, how glad she was now that a mixture
of pride and feminine delicacy had prompted her to behave just as if
nothing had happened, as if words which could never be forgotten had
not been uttered between herself and Oliver! She had thought he would
punish her this evening by being sulky and disagreeable--that was her
husband's invariable method of showing displeasure. But with the
exception of a word or two uttered very quietly, and more as if she,
rather than he, had something to forgive, he had behaved as if yesterday
had never been. He had heaped coals of fire upon her head, making it
plain that even now he was only thinking of her--of her and of Gillie,
of how he could pleasure them both by securing her a holiday with her
only brother.

Every word of that restrained, not very natural, conversation held just
now under the beech trees re-echoed in her ears. She seemed to hear
again the slowly uttered, measured words, "I am going to be your friend,
Laura"....

And then there came over Laura Pavely an extraordinary sensation of
moral and mental disturbance. Once more everything which had happened
to-day was blotted out, and she went back to yesterday morning. Again
she lived through those moments during which Oliver Tropenell had
offered her what was to him the greatest thing man has it in him to
bestow--love, even if illicit, unsanctified. And she had rejected the
gift with a passion of scorn, spurning it as she would have done a base
and unclean thing.

Years and years ago, in her quiet, shadowed youth, she too had believed
love to be the most precious, beautiful thing in life. Then, with
marriage to Godfrey Pavely had come the conviction that love was not
beautiful, but very, very ugly--at its best one of those dubious gifts
to man by which old Dame Nature works out certain cunning designs of her
own. And yet, when something of what she believed to be the truth had
been uttered by her during that terrible tense exchange of words, she
had seen how she, in her turn, had shocked, and even repelled, Oliver
Tropenell.

Once more sobs welled up from her throat, once more she covered her face
with her hands....

At last, feeling worn out with the violence of an emotion which, unknown
to her, vivified her whole being, she walked on till the fine Tudor
front of the old house which was at once so little and so much her home,
rose before her. It was an infinite comfort to know that Godfrey would
not be there waiting for her, and that she would be able to make her way
up alone through the sleeping house to the room which opened into her
child's nursery.




CHAPTER V


Mrs. Tropenell, waiting for Oliver to come back, lost count of time, and
yet not much more than half an hour had gone by before she heard the
sound of a glazed door, which opened on to the garden from a distant
part of the house, burst open.

In that sound she seemed to hear all the impatience, all the pain, all
the frustrated longing she divined in her son.

She got up from her chair and stood listening. Would he go straight
upstairs--as she, in her stormy, passionate youth, would have done in
his place?

But no--with a feeling of rushing, unreasoning joy she heard him coming
across the hall. A moment later he walked through into the room and came
and stood before her.

"Mother," he said, "it's a beautiful night. Would you care to come into
the garden for a few minutes?"

As soon as they had stepped out of the French window into the darkness,
she took his arm.

"You don't feel it cold?" he asked solicitously.

"Oh no," she said, surprised. "I'm so little cold, Oliver, that I
shouldn't at all mind going over to the blue bench, and sitting down."

They went across the grass, to a curious painted Italian bench which had
been a gift of the woman who was so much in both their thoughts.

And there, "I want to ask you a question," he said slowly. "What led to
the marriage of Laura Baynton and Godfrey Pavely? From something she
once said to me, I gather she thinks that you approved of it."

She felt as if his eyes were burning her in the darkness, and as she
hesitated, hardly knowing what to say, he went on, and in his voice
there was something terribly accusing.

"Did _you_ make the marriage, mother? Did you really advise her to take
that fellow?"

The questions stung her. "No," she answered coldly. "I did nothing of
the kind, Oliver. If you wish to know the truth, the person who was most
to blame was your friend Gillie, Laura's brother. Laura adored her
brother. There was nothing in the world she wouldn't have done for him,
and she married Godfrey--it seems a strange thing to look back on
now--to please Gillie."

"But she met Pavely here?"

"Yes, of course she did. As you know, she very often stayed with me
after her father died, and when Gillie Baynton, instead of making a home
for her, was getting into scrape after scrape, spending her money as
well as his own."

He muttered, "Gillie knew she was to have money later."

She went on: "And then Godfrey Pavely in love is a very different person
from Godfrey Pavely--well, out of love. He was set on marrying Laura,
and that over years. He first asked her when she was seventeen, and they
married when she was twenty-one. In the interval he had done Gillie many
good turns. In fact Godfrey bought Laura from Gillie. That, Oliver, is
the simple truth."

She waited for him to make some kind of comment, but he said nothing,
and she went on, a tinge of deep, yearning sadness in her voice, "Don't
let your friends, or rather their incompatibility of temper--" she
hesitated, and then rather solemnly ended her sentence with the words,
"affect _our_ relations, my son."

"I'm sorry, mother." Tropenell's voice altered, softened. "Forgive me
for the way I spoke just now! I had got it into my head--I didn't know
quite exactly why--that you had promoted the marriage. I see now that
you really had nothing to do with it."

"I won't say that! It's difficult to remember exactly what did happen.
Godfrey never wearied in his slow, inexorable pursuit of Laura. I think
that at last she was touched by his constancy. She knew nothing then of
human nature--she knows nothing of it now."

He muttered, "Poor girl! Poor unfortunate girl!" and his way of uttering
the commonplace words hurt his mother shrewdly.

Suddenly she made up her mind to say at least one true thing to him. It
was a thing she knew well no one but herself would ever say to Oliver.

"I am in a position to know," she said, "and I want you to believe it
when I tell you, that if Laura is to be as much pitied as you believe
her to be--so too, I tell you, Oliver, is Godfrey! If I had known before
the marriage, even an hour before the actual wedding, what I learnt
afterwards--I mean as to their amazingly different ideals of life--I
would have done _anything_ to stop it!"

"What d'you mean exactly, mother, by different ideals of life?"

As he asked the question he moved away from her a little, but he turned
round and bent his eyes on to her face--dimly, whitely, apparent in the
starlit, moonlit night.

She did not speak at once. It seemed to her that the question answered
itself, and yet she felt that he was quivering with impatience for her
answer.

"The French," she said in a low voice, "have a very good phrase to
describe the kind of man Godfrey is. Godfrey Pavely is a _le moyen homme
sensuel_--the typical man of his kind and class, Oliver--the
self-satisfied, stolid, unimaginative upper middle-class. Such men feel
that the world, their English world at any rate, has been made for them,
built up by the all-powerful entity they call God in their personal
interest. They know scarcely anything of what is going on, either above
or below them, and what is more, they do not really care, as long as
they and their like prosper."

Oliver nodded impatiently. He knew all that well enough!

His mother went on: "Godfrey Pavely ought to have married some rather
clever, rather vulgar-natured, rather pretty girl, belonging to his own
little world of Pewsbury. Then, instead of being what he now is, an
uncomfortable, not over contented man, he would have been, well--what
his worthy father was before him. That odd interest in queer,
speculative money dealings, is the unfortunate fellow's only outlet,
Oliver, for what romance is in him."

"I wonder if you're right, mother?"

"I'm sure I am."

There came a long silence between them.

Mrs. Tropenell could see her son in outline, as it were, his
well-shaped head, and long, lean, finely proportioned body. He was
sitting at the further end of the bench, and he was now staring right
before him. She found it easier--far easier--to speak of Godfrey than of
Laura. And so, musingly, she went on:

"Looking back a dozen years, I can think of several young women whom
Godfrey would have done well to consider----"

"I can certainly think of one, mother," he said, and in the darkness
there came a bitter little smile over his face.

"You mean Katty Winslow? Yes--I think you're right, my dear. When
Godfrey turned from Katty to Laura, he made a terrible mistake. Katty,
in the old days, had very much the same ambitions, and the same social
aspirations, as himself. She was really fond of him too! She would have
become--what's the odious word?--'smart.' And Godfrey would have been
proud of her. By now he would have stood for Parliament, and then, in
due course, would have come a baronetcy. Yes, if the gods had been kind,
Godfrey Pavely would have married poor little Katty--he didn't behave
over well to her, you know!"

"It seems to me that Mrs. Winslow has made quite a good thing of her
life, mother."

"Do you really think that, Oliver?"

"Yes, I do. She managed very cleverly, so I'm told, to get rid of that
worthless husband of hers, and now she's got that pretty little house,
and that charming little garden, and as much of Godfrey as she seems to
want." He spoke with a kind of hard indifference.

"Katty's not the sort of woman to be really satisfied with a pretty
little house, a charming little garden, and a platonic share in another
woman's husband."

"Then she'll marry again. People seem to think her very attractive."

There was a long pause.

"Mother?"

"Yes, my dearest."

"To return to Laura--what should have been _her_ fate had the gods been
kind?"

She left his question without an answer so dangerously long as to create
a strange feeling of excitement and strain between them. Then,
reluctantly, she answered it. "Laura might have been happiest in not
marrying at all, and in any case she should have married late. As to
what kind of man would have made her happy, of course I have a theory."

"What is your theory?" He leant towards her, breathing rather quickly.

"I think," she said hesitatingly, "that Laura might have been happy with
a man of the world, older than herself, who would have regarded his wife
as a rare and beautiful possession. Such a man would have understood the
measure of what she was willing and able to give--and to withhold. I can
also imagine Laura married to a young idealist, the kind of man whose
attitude to his wife is one of worship, whose demands, if indeed they
can be called demands, are few, infrequent----"

Mrs. Tropenell stopped abruptly. What she had just said led to a path
she did not mean to follow. But she soon realised with dismay that she
had said too much, or too little.

"Do you mean," said Oliver hoarsely, "that Pavely--that Pavely----" he
left his question unfinished, but she knew he meant to exact an answer
and she did not keep him waiting long for it. Still she chose her words
very carefully.

"I think that Godfrey Pavely, in the matter of his relations to his
wife, is a very unfortunate, and, some would say, a very ill-used man,
Oliver."

Oliver Tropenell suddenly diminished the distance between his mother and
himself. The carefully chosen, vague words she had just uttered had been
like balm poured into a festering and intolerably painful wound.

"Poor devil!" he said contemptuously, and there was a rather terrible
tone of triumph, as well as of contempt, in the muttered exclamation.

Mrs. Tropenell was startled and, what she seldom was, frightened. She
felt she was face to face with an elemental force--the force of hate.

She repeated his last words, but in how different a spirit, in how
different a tone! "Poor devil? Yes, Oliver, Godfrey is really to be
pitied, and I ask you to believe me, my son, when I say that he does do
his duty by Laura according to his lights."

"Mother?" He put out his hand in the darkness and just touched hers.
"Why is it that Laura is so much fonder of you than you are of Laura?
You don't respect--or even like--Godfrey?"

She protested eagerly. "But I _am_ fond of Laura--very, very fond,
Oliver! But though, as you say, I neither really like nor respect
Godfrey, I can't help being sorry for him. He once said to me--it's a
long time ago--'I thought I was marrying a woman, but I've married a
marble statue. I'm married to something like _that_'--and he pointed to
'The Wingless Victory' your father brought me, years ago, from Italy.
Godfrey is an unhappy man, Oliver--come, admit that you know that?"

"I think she's far, far more unhappy than he is! No man with so
thoroughly good an opinion of himself is ever _really_ unhappy. Still,
it's a frightful tangle."

He stopped short for a moment, then in a very low voice, he asked her,
"Is there no way of cutting it through, mother?" Suddenly he answered
his own question in a curiously musing, detached tone. "I suppose the
only way in which such a situation is ever terminated is by death."

"Yes," she said slowly, "but it's not a usual termination. Still, I have
known it happen." More lightly she went on: "If Laura died, Godfrey
wouldn't escape Katty a second time. And one must admit that she would
make him an almost perfect wife."

"_And if Godfrey died, mother?_"

Mrs. Tropenell felt a little tremor of fear shoot through her burdened
heart. This secret, intimate conversation held in the starry night was
drifting into strange, sinister, uncharted channels. But her son was
waiting for an answer.

"I don't know how far Laura's life would alter for the better if Godfrey
died. I suppose she would go on much as she does now. And, Oliver----"

"Yes, mother."

"I should pity and--rather despise the man who would waste his life in
an unrequited devotion."

He made an impatient movement. "Then do you regard response as essential
in every relationship between a man and a woman?"

"I have never yet known a man who did not regard it as essential," she
said quietly, "and that, however he might consciously or unconsciously
pretend to be satisfied with--nothing."

"I once knew a man," he said, in a low, tense voice, "who for years
loved a woman who seemed unresponsive, who forced him to be content with
the merest crumbs of--well, _she_ called it friendship. And yet, mother,
that man was happy in his love. And towards the end of her life the
woman gave all that he had longed for, all he had schooled himself to
believe it was not in her to give--but it had been there all the time!
She had suffered, poor angel, more than he--" his voice broke, and his
mother, turning towards him, laid for a moment her hand on his, as she
whispered, "Was that woman at all like Laura, my darling?"

"Yes--as far as a Spaniard, and a Roman Catholic, can be like Laura, she
was like Laura."

Even as he spoke he had risen to his feet, and during their short walk,
from the bench where they had been sitting through the trees and across
the lawn, neither spoke to the other. But, as he opened the house door,
he said, "Good-night. I'm not coming in now; I'm going for a walk. I
haven't walked all day." He hesitated a moment: "Don't be worried--I
won't say don't be frightened, for I don't believe, mother, that
anything could ever frighten you--if you hear me coming in rather late.
I've got to think out a rather difficult problem--something connected
with my business."

"I hope Gillie hasn't been getting into any scrape since you've come
home?"

But she only spoke by way of falling in with his humour. Nothing
mattered to her, or to him, just now, except--Laura.

He said hastily, "Oh no, things have been going very well out there. You
must remember, mother, that Baynton's scrapes never affect his work."

He spoke absently, and she realised that he wanted to be away, by
himself, to think over some of the things she had said to him, and so
she turned and went slowly up the staircase, and passed through into her
own bedroom without turning up the light.

Walking over to her window, she gazed down into the moonlit space
beneath. But she could see no moving shadow, hear no sound. Oliver had
padded away across the grass, making for the lonely downs which
encircled, on three sides, the house.

Before turning away from her window, Mrs. Tropenell covered her face
with her hands; she was fearfully moved, shaken to the depths of her
heart. For the first time Oliver had bared his soul before her. She
thrilled with pride in the passionate, wayward, in a measure nobly
selfless and generous human being whom she had created.

How strange, how amazing that Laura made no response to that ardent,
exalted passion! But if amazing, then also, from what ought to be every
point of view, how fortunate! And yet, unreasonable though it was, Mrs.
Tropenell felt sharply angered with Laura, irritated by that enigmatic,
self-absorbed, coldness of hers. What a poor maimed creature, to be so
blind, so imperceptive, to the greatest thing in the world! Dislike, a
physical distaste for the unlucky Godfrey which seemed sometimes to
amount to horror, were this beautiful woman's nearest approach to
passion.




CHAPTER VI


At Rosedean, the small, mid-Victorian house which every one going to and
fro between Freshley Manor and Lawford Chase was bound to pass by, Mrs.
Winslow sat in her drawing-room waiting for Godfrey Pavely.

He was coming in to see her on his way home from Pewsbury, where, at the
Bank, he spent each day at least six of his waking hours.

All the summer, up to to-day, Mrs. Winslow had always had tea in the
garden, but there was now a freshness in the air, and she thought they
would find it more comfortable indoors than out. Still, she had opened
wide the long French window, and the wind blew in, laden with pungent
autumnal scents.

Katty--the old childish name still clung to her--was a very clever
woman. She possessed the power of getting the utmost out of the people
round her, whether they were friends, acquaintances, or servants. Her
little garden was exquisitely kept, and there was no month of the year
when it did not look charming. Her little house, so far as was possible
on very limited means, was perfectly ordered.

Perhaps one secret of her success lay in the fact that she was able to
do everything herself that she asked others to do for her. Katty was a
good gardener, an excellent cook, and an exceptionally clever
dressmaker. Yet she was the last woman to make the mistake so many
clever people make--of keeping a dog and doing the barking oneself.
Katty was willing to show those she employed exactly how she wanted a
thing done, but she expected them to learn how to do it quickly and
intelligently. She had no use for the idle or the stupid.

Katty Winslow was thirty-one, but she looked much younger. She was an
exceedingly pretty woman, with brown eyes, a delicately clear, white and
pink complexion, and curling chestnut hair. She took great pains with
her appearance, and with her health. Thus she ate and drank to rule, and
almost walked to rule.

Early this last summer a bit of cruel bad luck had befallen Mrs.
Winslow. She had caught scarlet fever while on a visit, and for some
days had been very ill. But, perhaps as a result of the long, dull
convalescence, she now looked even prettier, and yes, younger, than she
had done before.

The only daughter of a well-connected but exceedingly poor half-pay
officer, Katherine Fenton, during a girlhood which lasted till she was
four-and-twenty, had been undisputed belle of Pewsbury, and of a
country-side stretching far beyond the confines of that fine old county
town. Like all beauties, she had had her triumphs and her
disappointments; and then, rather suddenly, she had made what had seemed
the irretrievable mistake of an unhappy marriage.

Bob Winslow had been weak, vain, ill-tempered, and, to a certain extent,
vicious. Thus his relations had welcomed his marriage to a clever,
capable young woman, who it was supposed would make, and keep, him
straight. The fact that she had no fortune had been regarded as
unimportant--indeed, Bob Winslow had made on his bride what was regarded
in the Pewsbury world as the splendid marriage settlement of twelve
thousand pounds.

Four and a half per cent, on that sum was now Mrs. Winslow's only
income, and out of that income there were still being paid off heavy
divorce costs, for Bob Winslow, when it had come to the point, had put
up a great fight for his Katty. Not only had he defended the case, but
he had brought on his side vague counter-charges. The Judge, rather
unkindly, had observed that the petitioner had been "somewhat
imprudent," but even so Katty had come out of the painful ordeal very
well--so much was universally allowed, even by the few people in
Pewsbury who had always disliked her, and who did not think she had
treated her husband well.

Godfrey and Laura Pavely had both been very kind to Katty over the
matter of the divorce--indeed, Mrs. Winslow had actually stayed at
Lawford Chase for many weeks during that troubled time, and Laura's
countenance had been of great value to her. This was now three years
ago, and, though they had nothing in common, the two women remained good
friends, as well as what is sometimes less usual, good neighbours.

In nothing had Katty shown herself cleverer than in her management of
Laura. In Laura Pavely's imagination Katty Winslow had her fixed place
as a friend of Godfrey's childhood, and that though he was nine years
older. Mrs. Pavely regarded Mrs. Winslow much as she would have done a
pleasant-natured sister-in-law, and she had been glad to do all that she
could for her. When some one had suggested that Katty should become
Godfrey Pavely's tenant at Rosedean, Laura had thought it an excellent
idea.

It was the fashion to call Rosedean ugly. The house had been built in
the 'sixties, by a retired butcher and grazier, and was of red brick
with white facings. But it was well built, and had far more real
distinction of appearance than the Queen Anne villas which now
surrounded Pewsbury. Also, Rosedean had been built on the site of an old
farmhouse, and Katty's lawn was fringed with some fine old trees, while
a grand old holly hedge concealed a well-stocked kitchen garden. On the
other side of the house were stabling for two horses, a coach-house, and
a paddock.

Katty had devoted a great deal of successful thought to the arrangement
of her dwelling. She knew she could neither compete with the stately
beauty of Laura's Tudor mansion, nor with the old-fashioned
eighteenth-century charm of Mrs. Tropenell's house, so she wisely made
up her mind that her surroundings should be simply bright, pretty and
cosy. Her drawing-room was in its way a delightful room, and those
walking through into it, from the rather dark, early Victorian hall,
gained an instant impression of coolness in summer, of warmth in winter,
of cheerfulness and comfort at all times.

No one but Katty herself knew the trouble to which she had been to get
the exact pattern of calendered chintz which she had made up her mind to
obtain. Katty also kept to herself the amount which she had spent, out
of her small reserve, on the thoroughly good, comfortable easy-chairs,
of varying shape, height, and depth, which played such an important, if
unobtrusive, part in the comfort of her visitors.

Every chair in Katty's sitting-room was an easy chair, with the
exception of two gilt ones which were of their kind good, and which she
had bought at a sale. They, however, were never moved away from the
places where they stood, flanking a quaint, old-fashioned cabinet now
filled with some beautiful old china which had come to Katty from a
grandmother.

Yet another peculiarity of Katty's sitting-room was the absence of
pictures. Their place was taken by mirrors. Above the mantelpiece on
which stood six delicately charming Dresden china figures was a
looking-glass of curious octagonal shape, framed in rosewood. Opposite
the French window which opened into the garden was fixed a long, narrow
mirror with a finely carved gilt wood frame. This mirror gave an air of
distinction to the room which would otherwise have been lacking, and it
also enabled Katty to see at any moment how she was looking, whether her
burnished chestnut-brown hair was quite tidy, and her gown fresh-looking
and neat.

There had been a time in her life when Katty Winslow had been
passionately fond of beautiful clothes, and able to indulge her taste.
Now, all she could hope to attain was freshness and neatness. That she
achieved these was to her credit, for they too cost, if not money, then
a good deal of thought and time, on the part of their possessor.

       *       *       *       *       *

Godfrey Pavely had walked out from Pewsbury. From the Bank in the High
Street to Rosedean was rather over two miles, and he had gone along at a
steady, jog-trot pace till he had come in sight of the little house.
Then he quickened his footsteps, and a feeling of pleasurable
anticipation came over him.

The banker was very, very fond of his old friend and sometime
sweetheart. He believed it to be a straightforward, honest affection,
though he could not but be aware, deep in his heart, that "to it" was
just that little touch of sentiment which adds salt and savour to most
of the close friendships formed between a man and a woman.

As a matter of fact, Godfrey Pavely was now happier in Katty Winslow's
company than he was in that of any one else. Not only did she ply him
with a good deal of delicate flattery, which caused him always to feel
better pleased with himself when at Rosedean than when he was at The
Chase, but a great and real bond between them was their mutual interest
in all the local happenings and local gossip of the neighbourhood.

Laura was frankly indifferent to all that concerned the town of Pewsbury
and the affairs of those whom Mrs. Tropenell called the Pewsburyites.
She was not disagreeable about it; she simply didn't care. Katty, in
spite of her frequent absences, for she was a popular visitor with a
large circle of acquaintances, always came home full of an eager wish to
learn all that had happened while she had been away.

Little by little, imperceptibly as regarded himself, the banker had
fallen into the way of telling this woman, who had so oddly slipped back
into his life, everything which concerned and interested himself, every
detail of his business, and even, which he had no right to do, the
secrets of his clients.

But to this entire confidence there was one outstanding exception.
Godfrey Pavely never discussed with Katty Winslow his relations with his
wife. Laura's attitude to himself caused him, even now, sharp, almost
intolerable, humiliation. Only to Mrs. Tropenell did he ever say a word
of his resentment and soreness--and that only because she had been the
unwilling confidant of both husband and wife during that early time in
their married life when the struggle between Godfrey and Laura had been,
if almost wordless, at its sharpest and bitterest.

On one occasion, and on one only, when with Katty Winslow, had Pavely
broken his guarded silence. He had been talking, in a way which at once
fascinated and tantalised Katty, of his growing wealth, and suddenly he
had said something as to his having no son to inherit his fortune. "It's
odd to think that some day there will come along a man, a stranger to
me, who will benefit by everything I now do----" and as she had looked
up at him, at a loss for his meaning, he had gone on, slowly, "I mean
the man whom Mrs. Tropenell and Laura between them will select for my
girl's husband."

Katty, looking at him very straight out of her bright brown eyes, had
exclaimed, "You may have a son yet, Godfrey!"

She had been startled by the look of pain, of rage, and of humiliation
that had come into his sulky, obstinate-looking face, as he answered
shortly, "I think that's very unlikely."

Had Godfrey Pavely been a more imaginative man, he would probably by now
have come to regret, with a deep, voiceless regret, that he had not
married Katty instead of Laura--but being the manner of man he was, he
had, so far, done nothing of the sort. And yet? And yet, at one time,
say fifteen years ago, he had very nearly married Katty. It was a fact
which even now he would have denied, but which she never forgot.

In those days Godfrey Pavely had been a priggish, self-important young
man of twenty-six, with perhaps not so good an opinion of women as he
had now, for a man's opinion of women always alters, one way or another,
as he grows older.

Katty, at eighteen, had enjoyed playing on the cautious, judgematical
Godfrey's emotions. So well had she succeeded that at one time he could
hardly let a day go by without trying to see and to be with her alone.
But, though strongly attracted by her instinctive, girlish wiles, he was
also, quite unknowingly to her, repelled by those same wiles.

Poor Katty had made herself, in those days that now seemed to both of
them so very, very long ago, a little too cheap. Her admirer, to use a
good old word, knew that her appeal was to a side of his nature which it
behooved him to keep in check, if he was not "to make a fool of
himself." And so, just when their little world--kindly, malicious,
censorious, as the case might be--was expecting to hear of their
engagement, Godfrey Pavely suddenly left Pewsbury to spend a year in a
great Paris discount house.

The now staid country banker did not look back with any pride or
pleasure to that year in France; he had worked, but he had also ignobly
played, spending, rather joylessly, a great deal of money in the
process. Then, having secretly sown his wild oats, he had come home and
settled down to a further time of banking apprenticeship in London,
before taking over the sound family business.

Almost at once, on his return to England, he had made up his mind to
marry the beautiful, reserved, the then pathetically young Laura
Baynton, who was so constantly with Mrs. Tropenell at Freshley Manor.

Time went on, and Laura held out; but little by little, perhaps because
he saw her so seldom, he broke down her resistance. His father had
bought the Lawford Chase estate as a great bargain, many years before,
and had been content to let it on a long lease. Godfrey, on becoming his
own master at thirty, determined to live there, and his marriage to
Laura followed a year later.

During their honeymoon in Paris--a honeymoon which was curiously and
painfully unlike what Godfrey had supposed his honeymoon would and must
be--he saw in a paper a notice of Katty Fenton's engagement. Though not
given to impulsively generous actions, he went out and bought for Katty,
in the Rue de la Paix, a jewelled pendant Laura had just refused to
allow him to buy for her. In return he had received what had seemed at
the time a delightful letter of thanks, to which was the following
postscript, "There's no harm in my saying _now_, that you, dear Godfrey,
were my first love! I've always wanted you to know that. I've always
been afraid that you only thought me a sad little flirt."

The confession, and the shrewd thrust, which was so much truer than he
thought Katty knew, moved him, and he had told himself sorely that
Katty's husband at any rate would be a very lucky fellow.

Then once more he had forgotten Katty till one day, years later, "Mrs.
Winslow" had suddenly been shown into his private room at the Bank.

Looking, as he had at once become aware, even prettier and more
attractive than when he had last seen her, she had said quietly, "I'm in
great trouble, Godfrey, and I've come down from London to consult you
about it. Your father and mine were friends" (a rather exaggerated
statement that--but Pavely was in no mood to cavil), "and I don't know
who else to go to."

Shortly and simply she had described the dreadful existence she had led
since her marriage--then, suddenly, she had rolled up her right sleeve
and shown the livid bruises made by Bob Winslow the night before, in a
fit of drunken anger, on the slender, soft, white arm.

Unwontedly moved, the more so that this now unfamiliar Katty seemed to
make no excessive demand either on his pity or on his emotions, Godfrey
Pavely had thrown himself into the complicated, unsavoury business, and
very soon his old-new friend had brought him to advise her in the sense
she wished. But it was Laura who had suggested that poor Mrs. Winslow
should come and stay with them during the divorce proceedings, and while
she had been at Lawford Chase, Katty had avoided, rather than sought
out, the master of the house.

In the matter of Rosedean the banker had behaved in what he himself
considered a very handsome manner. Not only had he let the house to
Katty for about a third of what he could have got for it in the open
market, but he had allowed her a hundred pounds for "doing it up." He
believed himself to have also suggested the arrangement by which she
obtained the free services, for a certain number of half-days each week,
of a very intelligent Scotch under-gardener who was in his employ.

He had never had reason to regret his kindness. On the contrary, he and
Katty had become, as time went on, closer and closer friends, and more
and more had he come to miss her during her frequent absences from home.

Some months ago he had even ventured to tell her that he thought she
gadded about a bit too much! Why couldn't she be content to stay quietly
at Rosedean? "Look at me and Laura," he had exclaimed. "We hardly ever
go away for a holiday, and we very seldom pay a visit!" Katty had shaken
her pretty head playfully: "Ah, but you don't know how lonely I am
sometimes! Laura is most dear and kind to me, but you know, Godfrey, I
don't see her often----"

He had not liked to remind her that he very often did.

Then something happened which quite curiously quickened Godfrey Pavely's
unavowed feeling for Katty. Oliver Tropenell, a virtual stranger to them
all, came home from Mexico to spend the summer in England with his
mother. And three times, during Oliver's first fortnight in England,
Godfrey arrived at Rosedean to find the then stranger there. On these
three occasions each man had tried to sit the other out, and finally
they had left the house together. As a result of these meetings Godfrey
soon caught himself wondering with a mixture of feelings he did not care
to analyse, whether Tropenell could possibly be thinking of marrying
Katty?

He found the notion intolerable.

Then came a strange turn to the situation. Katty had gone away, on one
of those tiresome little visits she was so fond of paying, and
Providence, which means women, especially any woman placed in an
ambiguous position, to stay quietly at home, had caught her out! She had
fallen ill, when on a visit, of scarlet fever, and she had been
compelled to stay away six weeks. During those weeks he, Godfrey Pavely,
and Oliver Tropenell had become friends--on more intimate terms of
friendship than Pavely had ever expected to find himself with any man.
This was, of course, partly owing to the fortunate fact that Laura liked
Oliver too, and didn't seem to mind how often he came and went to The
Chase.

But Godfrey Pavely had a tenacious memory. He did not forget that for a
little while, at any rate, Oliver had seemed to enjoy being in Katty's
company. And when Laura, more than once since Mrs. Winslow's return to
Rosedean, had suggested asking Katty in to dinner to meet Oliver, her
husband coldly vetoed the proposal.




CHAPTER VII


Only Harber, the woman who, after having been maid to Katty during her
troubled married life, had stayed on with her as house-parlourmaid and
general factotum, was aware of how very often Mr. Pavely called at
Rosedean on his daily walk home from Pewsbury. To-day he had hardly
pressed the bell-knob before the front door opened. It was almost as if
Harber had been waiting for him in the hall.

As he put down his hat and stick he was conscious of feeling very glad
that he was going to see Katty. Mrs. Winslow had again been away, was it
for four days, or five? It's true that for part of that time he himself
had been to London, and very busy, but even so the time had seemed long.
He told himself that he had a hundred things to say to her, and he even
felt a little thrill of excitement as he followed the servant through
the hall.

And Katty? Katty, who the moment she had heard the front-door bell had
quietly begun making the tea--she always made tea herself, with the help
of a pretty spirit lamp--Katty also felt a queer little thrill, but for
a very different reason. Since they had last met she had come to a
certain resolution with regard to Godfrey Pavely, and though she did not
mean to say anything to-day even remotely bearing on it, still it
affected her, made her regard him with rather different eyes.

It is a great mistake to think that coldness and calculation always go
together. Katty Winslow was calculating, but she was not cold. For once
she had been quite honest when writing that odd little postscript to her
letter of thanks for Godfrey Pavely's wedding present. Godfrey had, in
very truth, been her first love, and she had suffered acutely in her
heart, as well as in her pride, when he had run away. Even now, she felt
as if there were a strong, secret, passionate link between them, and
there was no day when she did not tell herself that she would have made
the banker a perfect, and yes--a very happy wife.

       *       *       *       *       *

Godfrey came into the drawing-room with a pleased, eager look on his
face. He took his hostess's hand in his, and held it for perhaps a
thought longer than he would have held, say, Mrs. Tropenell's hand. But
the hand he now held was a soft, malleable little hand, not thin and
firm, like that of Oliver's mother.

Katty was smiling at him, such a bright, friendly, pretty smile. "Sit
down," she said softly. "And before we begin talking, take a cup of tea.
You look very tired--and you're late, too, Godfrey. I was beginning to
think that you weren't coming at all!"

And then he said something which surprised her, but which somehow chimed
in quite surprisingly with what had been filling her busy, active brain
of late.

"Jim Beath has been with me most of the afternoon," he spoke wearily,
complainingly. "I had to ask him to lunch at the Club, and he stayed on
and on."

Now the Beaths were by way of being intimate friends of Katty Winslow,
and Jim Beath was a client of Godfrey Pavely.

"Oh, but that's very interesting!" she cried. "I've been wondering so
much how that affair is going on--I do so hope it will be all right!"

And then, as she saw a shocked look come over her visitor's narrow,
rather fleshy face, she said in a low voice, "You know how I feel about
the divorce laws, Godfrey. I can't help it. They're horribly
unfair--so--so ridiculous, in fact!"

As he remained silent, she went on, insisting on her own point of view
far more than was her usual way when talking to her self-opinionated
friend: "Don't you realise how hard it is that two people utterly
unsuited to one another should have to go through that sort of horrid
farce just in order to get free?"

He looked at her uncomfortably. Sometimes, even now, Katty startled him
by the things she said. But how pretty she looked to-day, bending over
the tea-things! Her burnished hair was dressed in thick soft coils, her
white, well-manicured hand busily engaged in pouring him out just the
cup of tea he liked, with the exact proportions of milk, cream, and
sugar that were right--and which Laura never remembered.

So it was mildly that he answered: "I don't think the Beaths ought to
want to get what you call 'free.' Divorce was not instituted to meet a
case like theirs--" he hesitated, and then with a certain effort he went
on: "Divorce was instituted to meet a case like yours, Katty."

Godfrey Pavely was weary of the Beaths and of their divorce plot--for so
he called it to himself. There were other things he wanted to talk to
Katty about. Besides, he did not think that that sort of affair was a
nice subject of discussion between a man and a woman, however intimate.
In some ways Godfrey Pavely was very old-fashioned.

But she wouldn't let it alone. "Divorce _ought_ to meet a case like
theirs," she went on obstinately.

"My dear Katty! What would happen to the country if all the married
people who didn't get on with one another were to separate?"

And then, looking at her defiant face, a most extraordinary and
disagreeable suspicion darted into Godfrey Pavely's mind. Was it
possible, conceivable, that Katty was thinking of Jim Beath as a second
husband for herself? The thought shook him with anger and with
repugnance. He felt he must have that out--here and now.

"Do you like Jim Beath?" he asked slowly; "I know you've been seeing a
great deal of them this last year. In fact, he mentioned you to-day."

She could read him like a book, and she remained silent long enough to
make him feel increasingly suspicious and uncomfortable.

But to-day Katty was not in the mood for a cat-and-mouse game, so she
answered deliberately: "No, Godfrey, I can't say that I do like Jim
Beath! I've tried to like him. But--well, I do thoroughly understand
Nita's feeling towards him. He's so sarcastic--so hard and
unsympathetic!" She waited a moment, then added significantly: "Still, I
think he's behaving awfully well now. He'd have been quite willing to go
on--he told me that himself. But when he saw that Nita was _really_
unhappy, and that she was getting fond of another man, he made up his
mind that he would do all he could to make her free."

Katty was playing rather nervously with the edge of the pretty
tea-cloth, and Pavely wondered whether she was telling him the whole
truth. She was flushed, and she looked unwontedly moved.

"It's a very odd thing for a man to do," he said coldly. "I mean a man
being willing to give up his wife to another man."

"Why shouldn't he? When he doesn't love her, and when she positively
dislikes him! Nita never understood Jim Beath--she was always afraid of
him, and of his sharp, clever tongue. Of course it's sad about their
little boy. But they've made a very good arrangement--they're going to
share him. Jim will have the child half the year, and Nita the other
half, till he goes to school--when they will have him for alternate
holidays."

"You talk as if it was all settled!" Katty's visitor exclaimed crossly.
"If they say as much to other people as they seem to do to you, they
will never get their divorce--the King's Proctor is sure to intervene!"

Katty gave a quick, curious look at her visitor. Godfrey went too
far--sometimes.

The thought flashed through her mind that she was wasting her life, her
few remaining years of youth, on a man who would never be more to her
than he was now, unless--unless, that is, she could bring him to the
point of putting himself imaginatively, emotionally into Jim Beath's
shoes. _Then_ everything might be changed. But was there any hope of
such a thing coming to pass?

But all she said, in a constrained tone, was, "Of course I ought not to
have said anything of the matter to you at all. But I'm afraid, Godfrey,
that I often do tell you things I ought to keep to myself. You must try
and forget what I said."

He was surprised, bewildered, by the sudden steely coldness of her tone.
"Of course you can say anything you like to say to me. Why, Katty, I
tell you all my secrets!"

"Do you?" She glanced over at him rather sharply. "I don't think you
tell me _all_ your secrets, Godfrey."

He looked at her puzzled. "You _know_ that I do," he said in a low
voice. "Come, Katty, you're not being fair! It's because I have such a
high regard for you, that I feel sorry when you talk as you've been
talking just now--as if, after all, the marriage bond didn't matter."

But even as he said these words, Godfrey Pavely felt a wild impulse to
throw over the pretty little gimcrack tea-table, take Katty in his arms,
and kiss her, kiss her, kiss her! He came back, with an inward start, to
hear her exclaim,

"I don't consider the peculiar relations which exist between Nita and
Jim Beath a marriage at all! They have nothing in common the one with
the other. What interests him doesn't interest her----"

She waited a moment, saw that he was reddening uncomfortably, and then
hurried on, driven by some sudden instinct that she was at last playing
on the hidden chord she had so often longed to find and strike in
Godfrey Pavely's sore heart: "Nita can't bear Jim to touch her--she will
hardly shake hands with him! Do you call _that_ a marriage?"

As he remained silent, she suddenly said in a voice so low as to be
almost a whisper, "Forgive me, Godfrey. I--I ought not have said that to
you."

He answered loudly, discordantly, "I don't know what you mean, Katty!
Why shouldn't you say anything you like about these people? They are
nothing, and less than nothing to me, and I don't suppose they're very
much to you."

Even as he spoke he had got up out of the easy chair into which he had
sunk with such happy content a few minutes before. "I must be going
now," he said heavily, "Oliver Tropenell's coming in for a game of
tennis at six."

She made no effort to keep him, though she longed to say to him: "Oliver
Tropenell's been in your house, and in your garden, all afternoon. Both
he and Laura would be only too pleased if you stayed on here till
dinner-time."

But instead of saying that, she got up, and silently accompanied him to
the front door.

There poor Godfrey did linger regretfully. He felt like a child who has
been baulked of some promised treat--not by his own fault, but by the
fault of those about him. "Will you be in to-morrow?" he asked abruptly.
"I think I might come in a little earlier to-morrow, Katty."

"Yes, do come to-morrow! I seem to have a hundred things to say to you.
I'm sorry we wasted the little time we had to-day in talking over those
tiresome people and their matrimonial affairs."

There was also a look of regret in her face, and suddenly he told
himself that he might have been mistaken just now, and that she had
meant nothing--nothing in the least personal or--or probing, in what she
had said. "Look here!" he said awkwardly. "If there's anything you
really want to say--you said you had a hundred things to tell me--would
you like me to come back for a few minutes? There's no great hurry, you
know--I mean about Tropenell and his game."

She shook her head, and to his moved surprise, the tears came into her
pretty brown eyes. "No, not now. I'm tired, Godfrey. It's rather absurd,
but I haven't really got over my journey yet; I think I shall have to
take your advice, and stay at home rather more."

For a long moment they advanced towards one another as if something
outside themselves was drawing them together. Then Godfrey Pavely put
out his hand, and grasped hers firmly. It was almost as if he was
holding her back--at arm's length.

Katty laughed nervously. She shook her hand free of his, opened the door
wide, and exclaimed: "Well! Good-bye till to-morrow then. My love to
Laura."

He nodded, and was gone.

She shut the door behind him, and, turning, went slowly upstairs. She
felt tired, weak, upset--and, what she did not often feel, restless and
unhappy as well. It irritated her--nay, it did more than irritate, it
hurt her shrewdly--to think of those three people who were about to
spend a pleasant couple of hours together. She could so easily, so
safely, have made a fourth at their constant meetings.

If only Laura Pavely were a little less absorbed in herself, a little
more what ordinary people called good-natured! It would have been so
natural for Laura, when she knew that Oliver Tropenell was coming to
dinner, to send across to Rosedean, and ask her, Katty, to make a
fourth. It was not as if Laura was at all jealous. She was as little
jealous of Godfrey and of Katty--and at that thought Katty gave a queer,
bitter little laugh which startled her, for she had laughed aloud--as
was Godfrey of Laura and Oliver! With as little or as much reason? Katty
would have given a great deal to be able to answer her own question. She
thought she knew half the answer--but it was, alas! by far the less
important half.

She opened the door of her bedroom, went through into it, and without
troubling to take off her pretty blouse and freshly ironed linen skirt,
walked deliberately to her bed, lay down, and shut her eyes--not to
sleep but to think.

       *       *       *       *       *

What had been forced upon Katty Winslow's notice during the last few
weeks had created a revolution in her mind and in her plans.

For a while, after her return from that dreary period of convalescence
in a seaside home, she, who was generally so positive, had doubted the
evidence of her own eyes and senses. But gradually that which she would
have deemed the last thing likely to happen had emerged, startlingly
clear. Oliver Tropenell, to use Katty's own expression, had fallen madly
in love with Laura Pavely. No woman could doubt that who saw them
together. When Katty had left Rosedean, there had been the beginnings
of--well, not exactly a flirtation, but a very pleasant friendship
between Tropenell and herself. Now he hardly seemed to know that she
existed.

But if it was only too plain to see how matters stood with Oliver, this
was far from being the case as regarded Laura. Katty owned herself quite
ignorant of Laura's real nature, and, as is so often the case with
those who know nothing, she was inclined to believe that there was
nothing to know.

Perhaps, after all, it was only because this man was the son of her
friend that Laura allowed him to be always with her. They were always
together--not always alone, for Oliver seemed to be at The Chase quite
as much when Godfrey was at home, as at other times. But with Katty, she
being the manner of woman she was, it was the other times which
impressed her imagination. In the six short weeks she, Katty, had been
away, Oliver Tropenell had evidently become a component part of Laura
Pavely's life.

She knew, vaguely, how the two spent their time, and the knowledge irked
her--the more that it suggested nothing of their real relations. Thus
gardening was one of Laura's favourite occupations and few pleasures;
and Oliver, who could never have gardened before--what gardening could
there be to do in Mexico?--now spent hours out of doors with Laura,
carrying out her behests, behaving just as an under-gardener would
behave, when working under his mistress's directions.

And Godfrey, instead of objecting to this extraordinary state of things,
seemed quite pleased. Oliver, so much was clear, had become Godfrey
Pavely's friend almost as much as he was Laura's.

As she lay there, straight out on her bed, Katty told herself with
terrible bitterness that it was indeed an amazing state of things to
which she had come back--one which altered her own life in a strange
degree. She had not realised, till these last few weeks, how much
Godfrey Pavely was to her, and how jealous she could become even of
such an affection as his cordial liking of Oliver Tropenell.

Yet when Godfrey was actually with her, she retained all her old
ascendency over him; in certain ways it had perhaps even increased. It
was as if his unsuspecting proximity to another man's strong, secret
passion warmed his sluggish, cautious nature.

But that curious fact had not made his friend Katty's part any the more
easy of late. Far from it! There was no pleasing Godfrey in these days.
He was hurt if she was cold; shocked, made uneasy in his conscience, if
she responded in ever so slight a way to the little excursions in
sentiment he sometimes half-ashamedly permitted himself.

Tears came into her eyes, and rolled slowly down her cheeks, as she
recalled what had happened a few moments ago in the hall. He had been
aching to take her in his arms and kiss her--kiss her as he had been
wont to do, in the old days, in the shabby little lodging where she
lived with her father. Poor little motherless girl, who had thought
herself so clever. At that time she had believed herself to be as good
as engaged to "young Mr. Pavely," as the Pewsbury folk called him. Even
now she could remember, as if it had happened yesterday, the bitter
humiliation, as well as the pain which had shaken her, when she had
learnt, casually, of his sudden disappearance from Pewsbury.

What hypocrites men were! The fact that often they were unconscious
hypocrites afforded Katty little consolation.

It was plain that Godfrey was quite unaware of Oliver's growing
absorption in Laura, but that surely was not to his credit. A man of
his age, and with his experience of life, ought to have known, ought to
have guessed, ought to have seen--by now! Instead, he remained absorbed
in himself, in the tiresome little business interests of his prosperous
life, in his new friendship for Oliver Tropenell, and--in that
ambiguous, tantalising friendship with herself.

Again she told herself that she was wasting what remained to her of
youth and of vitality over a thoroughly unsatisfactory state of things,
and painfully she determined that, if what she had gradually come to
plan since her return home did not come to pass, she would leave
Rosedean, and make another life for herself elsewhere.

       *       *       *       *       *

The things Katty toiled and schemed for had a way of coming to pass. She
had planned her divorce long before it had actually taken place, at a
time indeed when it seemed impossible to believe that it ever could take
place. Bob Winslow had been adoringly, slavishly devoted to her for more
than two-thirds of their married life, and it had taken her trouble and
time to drive him into the courses it was necessary he should pursue to
procure her freedom.

She had no doubt--there could be no doubt--that were Godfrey free he
would turn to her instinctively at once. She was well aware of her power
over him, and till lately she had been virtuously proud of what she
imagined to be her loyalty to Laura. Also she had had no wish to make
her own position at Rosedean untenable.

Even as it was, Godfrey came far too often to see her. Had she lived
nearer to Pewsbury, even a mile nearer, his frequent calls on her would
have meant a flood of ill-natured gossip in the little town.

Yes, the situation, from Katty's point of view, was thoroughly
unsatisfactory, and, as far as she was concerned, it was time it was
ended or mended. And then, once more, for the hundredth time, her
restless, excited mind swung back to what was to her just now the real
mystery, the all-important problem--the relations between Oliver
Tropenell and Laura Pavely.

Of course it was possible--though Katty thought not likely--that
Tropenell was still unaware of his passion for Laura. Perhaps he still
disguised it under the name of "friendship." But even if that were so,
such a state of things could not endure for very long. Any day some
trifling happening might open his eyes, and, yes--why not?--Godfrey's.




CHAPTER VIII


Godfrey Pavely was standing in his private room at Pavely's Bank. It was
only a little after ten, and he had not been in the room many minutes,
yet already he had got up from his writing-table and moved over to the
middle one of the three windows overlooking the prim, exquisitely kept
walled garden, which even nowadays reminded him of his early childhood.
He had gazed out of the window for a few moments, but now he stood with
his back to the window, staring unseeingly before him, a piece of note
paper crushed up in his hand.

For close on a hundred years his well-to-do careful-living forbears had
passed their pleasant, uneventful lives in this spacious Georgian house,
set in the centre of the wide High Street of the prosperous market town
of Pewsbury.

What was now known as "Mr. Pavely's own room" had been the dining-room
of his grandparents. He himself had always known it as part of the Bank,
but it still had some of the characteristics of a private living-room.
Thus, on the dark green walls hung a number of quaint family portraits,
his great-grandfather, his grandfather and grandmother, two uncles who
had died in youth, and a presentation portrait of his own father. These
were arranged about and above the mantelpiece, opposite the place where
stood his wide, leather-topped writing-table.

Taking up most of the wall opposite the windows was a bookcase of
really distinguished beauty. Godfrey Pavely had been gratified to learn,
some five or six years ago, that this piece of furniture was of very
considerable value, owing to the fact that it was supposed to have been,
in a special sense, the work and design of Chippendale himself. But just
now, at this moment, he felt as if he hated the substantial old house
and everything in it.

He had come into this room, twenty minutes ago, to find the usual pile
of open letters on the table. On the top of the pile was an unopened
envelope marked _Private_, and it was the contents of that envelope that
he now held crushed up--not torn up--in his hand.

And as he stood there, staring before him unseeingly at the bookcase,
there suddenly flashed into his mind a vision of the first time he had
brought Laura here, to his own room at the Bank. They had only just
became engaged, and he was still feeling an almost oppressive joy of
having compassed that which he had so steadfastly desired.

He could see her graceful figure walking through the mahogany door, he
could almost hear her exclaim, "What a charming room, Godfrey! I can't
help wishing that we were going to live here, in Pewsbury!"

She had gone over and stood exactly where he was standing now, and then
she had turned and gazed into the walled garden, at that time brilliant
with tulips and wallflowers. Coming round behind her, he had put his
arm, a little awkwardly, round her shoulders. At once she had slipped
from beneath his grasp, but not unkindly--only with a gentle word that
at any moment some one might come in, and he, poor fool that he had
been, had admired her maidenly delicacy....

He glanced down at the piece of notepaper he held in his hand, and,
smoothing it out, he read it through for the tenth or twelfth time.
Then, as there came a knock at the door, he hastily thrust it into his
pocket.

"Come in!" he cried impatiently; and his head clerk came into the room.

Mr. Privet had a delicate, refined, thoughtful face. He was very much
respected in the town, and regarded as an important, integral part of
Pavely's Bank. He was one of the very few people in the world who were
really attached to Godfrey Pavely, and he perceived at once that there
was something wrong.

"We promised to send over to Mr. Johnson to say when you would be ready
to see him, sir. Shall I send over now?"

"Yes--no. Tell him I'll be ready in half an hour. And, Privet?"

"Yes, sir."

"I've a rather important letter to write. Will you see that I'm not
disturbed till I ring?"

The old man shut the door quietly, and Godfrey Pavely drew irresolutely
towards his writing-table, the table where he did so much hard, good,
and profitable work each day.

But he did not sit down at once; instead, he took the letter he had been
so nearly caught reading out of his pocket, and once more he read it
through--

    "This is to warn you that there is a great deal of talk
    going on in Pewsbury and the surrounding neighbourhood
    about your wife and a certain gentleman who is a near
    neighbour of yours. It is well not to be jealous, but
    confidence may be carried too far. Try going home when you
    are not expected, and you will surely find them together.

    "A WELL-WISHER TO THE
                     "PAVELY FAMILY."

The words had been written, or rather printed, in ink, on a very common
sheet of notepaper--the kind of notepaper which is sold in penny packets
in every village and small sweetstuff shop in the kingdom.

Now in theory there is nothing easier than to despise and disregard an
anonymous letter. But in practice such a missive as Godfrey Pavely had
just received, however vulgar, and even, as in this case, obviously
written by a malicious person, invariably produces a horrible sensation
of discomfort and acute uneasiness. For one thing, the fact that some
unknown human being has devoted so much unwonted thought and spiteful
interest to one's private affairs is in itself an ugly revelation.

In theory again, most people, if asked what they would do if they
received an anonymous letter, would reply (1) that they would put it
straight in the fire, or (2) go straight with it to the police. But in
practice an anonymous letter, unless the recipient at once guesses with
certainty the identity of the writer, is the only clue to what may
contain the germ of some ugly plot, or conspiracy to harm or injure the
innocent. So it is surely foolish to destroy what may become evidence.
As for going to the police, that is, for obvious reasons, the last thing
any man would care to do if the anonymous communication deals with the
character of a woman near and dear to him. Indeed, the thought of going
to the police did not even enter Godfrey Pavely's mind, though it was
probably the advice he would have given _to any one else_ who had come
to consult him about such a matter.

As he looked at the letter closely, turning it this way and that, he
suddenly told himself that it did not read like the work of an
illiterate person. Godfrey, and Laura too, were in their different ways
very good employers; besides, they had not dismissed any one lately. No,
no--it was far more likely to be some one living in Pewsbury, probably
with whom he was scarcely acquainted. There were, as the banker could
not but be aware, a good many people in the little town who had reason
to dislike him--not personally perhaps, but as the one money-dealer of
the place.

At last he sat down at his writing-table and drew an envelope towards
him. On it he wrote, "To be destroyed, unopened, in case of my death,"
and then he placed the poisonous little sheet of common notepaper in the
envelope, and, fastening it down, put it in one of his inner pockets.

He intended to dismiss the whole thing from his mind, at any rate during
this morning, but he found it very difficult, not to say impossible, to
do that.

Laura and Oliver Tropenell? His thin lips curled at the thought.

Why, Oliver liked him, Godfrey, far better than he did Laura! He
regarded that as certain. And Laura? He could have laughed aloud at the
absurd suggestion. Laura was not only the coldest, she was also the most
upright, of women.

Early in their married life, when they had gone about together far more
than they had done recently, he, Godfrey, had never felt even a twinge
of jealousy with regard to her. And yet--and yet in those days Laura had
certainly excited a good deal of admiration. There are men who
passionately admire that kind of proud, passionless beauty in a woman.
Pavely himself had once been such a man. So he knew.

He looked up from the letter he was writing, and all at once, to his own
surprise, his thoughts took quite another turn. He told himself suddenly
that Tropenell's rather exceptional intimacy with them both might, after
all, excite remark, in such a damned censorious, gossiping place as was
Pewsbury. He, Godfrey Pavely, was well aware of what a nest of gossip a
country town could be, and often is. He had experienced something of it
years ago, when there had been all that foolish talk concerning the then
Katty Fenton and himself. Once or twice he had felt slightly uneasy lest
his _present_ friendship with Katty should be misunderstood. Indeed, he
had felt this so strongly to give her what he had thought to be a
delicate hint--a hint that she had at once taken--as to the
inadvisability of her coming, when in Pewsbury, to see him in his
private room at the Bank. She had done that rather often at one time,
when she was first his tenant at Rosedean. But now she never came to the
Bank. She did not even keep her account at Pavely's, though it would
have been a convenience to her to do so.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. Johnson's call, which at any other time would have been a tiresome
infliction, was welcome, for it enabled the banker to dismiss this odd,
queer, unpleasant business of the anonymous letter from his mind for a
while.

But after Mr. Johnson had gone, the trouble came back, and the
morning--what was left of it--seemed very long.

He asked himself whether, after all, it might not be wisest to speak of
that absurd letter to some one. Should he say anything to Mrs.
Tropenell, or well, yes--to Laura? But impatiently he shook his head at
the thought. Not only would such a thing shock and disgust his wife,
but, what was of far more consequence to him, it might make her turn
against Tropenell! Godfrey Pavely had been pleased and surprised at the
way in which Laura had tolerated the other man being so much about the
house. In Pavely's imagination Tropenell was _his_ friend--not Laura's.

He was glad when he heard a quarter to one chime out from the Parish
Church tower, for it meant that he could now get up and go across to the
Club for luncheon. He put on his hat and went out into the square hall
of the Bank.

As he did so, his head clerk came down the broad staircase.

Mr. Privet's room was only a little smaller, and a little less lacking
in dignity, than that of Mr. Pavely himself--indeed, some people thought
it a pleasanter room, for it looked out on to the High Street, and was
on the first floor.

"If you'd been a minute earlier, sir," said the old man, smiling, "you'd
have seen Mrs. Pavely go by! I think she must have been in Mrs.
Tropenell's motor, for Mr. Tropenell was driving her himself."

Godfrey Pavely felt a queer little pang of annoyance and surprise.

"I daresay they're still in the town," he said quickly. "I thought it
quite possible that they might come in this morning."

But he had thought nothing of the kind.

Mr. Privet shook his head. "Oh no, sir! They were going home sure
enough--and rather quickly, too. I thought the car _had_ caught that
youngest Sherlock boy, but Mr. Tropenell's a skilful driver, and he
missed the child, but only by a few inches, as far as I could judge!"

Godfrey Pavely nodded, walked on, and so out and across the High Street.
He could not help feeling a little vexed that Oliver and Laura should
have driven into Pewsbury--this morning, of all mornings. He wondered if
they often did so. It was fortunate that nothing had happened to that
stupid child. It would have been very unpleasant for his wife to be
compelled to give evidence at an inquest....

He did not enjoy his luncheon as much as he was wont to do. In a sense
he was king of the old-fashioned County Club; every member of it was
either on good terms with the prosperous banker, or desired to be so.
But try as he might he could not get that odious, absurd, anonymous
letter out of his mind! He told himself again and again that it was
thoughtless and--and yes, unbecoming--of Laura, to drive in and out of
Pewsbury with Oliver Tropenell. Somehow it was the sort of thing he
would never have thought his wife was likely to do. Again he wondered
if she did it often. If yes, such conduct would of course provide ample
reason for low, vulgar gossip.

When, at last, Godfrey Pavely walked back across to the Bank, he had
come to the point of asking himself whether after all it might not be
best to say just a word of caution to Laura. It need not be more than a
word--he knew her well enough to know that! She was the kind of woman to
shrink with fastidious disgust from the thought of her name being
connected, in any vulgar silly way, with that of a man.

But his mind swung backwards and forwards, like a pendulum. The
possibility of his agreeable, cordial relations with Oliver Tropenell
being in any way jarred or disturbed so upset him that, finally, he made
up his mind to say nothing to Laura.

At three o'clock the banker walked up to his head clerk's room. "I think
I'll go home early to-day, Privet," he said.

The old man got up from his chair. He was not only fond, he was proud
too, of his employer. Mr. Pavely was a model banker, a model worker. He
never went home before four, and often stayed on working till five.

"Very good, sir. It's a fine afternoon. I often wonder you stay as long
as you do," he said, with that queer touch of affection in his voice
which Godfrey Pavely valued perhaps more than he knew.

The walk home seemed much longer than usual. Two miles and a bit? He was
proud of the fact that he could do it with ease in five minutes over the
half-hour. To-day, as a matter of fact, he walked so quickly that he did
it in twenty-seven minutes, but he was not aware of that.

For the first time for months, he passed by Rosedean without as much as
giving Katty a thought, and he took a short cut into The Chase instead
of going on, up through the great park gates, as he was wont to do. And
then, as he went along one of the paths in the walled kitchen garden, he
suddenly heard his wife's voice.

"I think that it would be best to have a mass of red and purple just
here. Last year we had blues."

He felt a queer, rather unreasoning, shock of relief, of satisfaction.
Laura was evidently speaking to one of the gardeners.

Then, as he came round the corner, he saw that the person to whom Laura
was speaking was not a gardener, but Oliver Tropenell himself--Oliver,
with a spud in his hand, kneeling before Laura, a basket of bulbs by his
side. He was looking up eagerly--a jealous onlooker might have said
ardently--into her face. In fact, Tropenell looked, so Godfrey Pavely
told himself with some heat, "damned absurd." But before Godfrey came
right upon the three of them--for little Alice was flitting about behind
her mother--Oliver stood up, with the words, "Then I'd better go and get
those other bulbs, hadn't I? Will you come too, Alice?"

Godfrey called out "Hullo! Doing some planting?" But his voice sounded
odd to himself. Not so, however, to the others. Laura was honestly
unaware that Godfrey was very much earlier than his wont, or, if aware,
she did not attach any importance to the fact. Still, she felt afraid
that Godfrey would interfere with her gardening scheme, and so she shook
her head.

As for Oliver Tropenell, no one looking at his dark, set face could have
guessed his thoughts. As a matter of fact, he had heard Pavely's
footsteps some moments before Pavely spoke. And he had wondered, with
quick irritation, why he had come back from Pewsbury--or Rosedean--so
much earlier than usual.

Alice, dark-haired, rosy-cheeked, quite curiously unlike either her
father or her mother, was the only one of the four who was still happily
at ease. She ran up to her father: "Come and see _my_ garden, father!"
she cried. "I'm growing some mustard and cress specially for you. You
can take it to the Bank in an envelope and have some for your tea!"

The little girl was aware, deep in her sensitive, affectionate heart,
that her father and mother were not quite like other fathers and
mothers. They were not cosily loving together, as were the father and
mother of the two little girls with whom she sometimes went to tea in
Pewsbury, neither were they on the happy terms of easy comradeship which
even Alice knew was usual with other children's parents.

But she loved her mother with a passionate, unswerving, admiring love,
and her father with a stout, proprietary affection. For his sake, and
his sake only, she would have liked to be a boy, for then, so she argued
secretly within herself, she could be his office boy at the Bank. Up to
now she had felt for Oliver Tropenell the easy, unquestioning liking
children give to one who comes and goes. But lately she had become dimly
aware that occasionally her mother and Mr. Tropenell were too busy
talking together to take much heed of her, and this threw a little
shadow across her heart.

For Godfrey Pavely there followed days full of discomfort, unease, and
rising annoyance. The whole course of his life was changed. As he came
and went about the quiet streets of his native town, as he granted
business interviews to the townspeople, he was perpetually asking
himself if the person he was speaking to was concerned with this odious
matter, whether he or she was among those who took his beautiful wife's
name lightly.

His object each afternoon was now to get home early, and see for himself
what was going on there, and how far Laura was giving cause for low,
vulgar gossip.

Laura was not a child! She must know, if she ever brought herself to
think of such a thing, that if a married woman allows a man to hang
about her, day after day, in the absence of her husband, there is sure
to be talk. Pavely regarded Tropenell's share in the matter with a
strange toleration--it was his wife whom he blamed with an increasing
severity as the minutes, the hours, and the days went by.

He still went to see Katty Winslow, but no longer as often as he had
been wont to do. And when in her company he was distrait, uncomfortable,
longing to ask if _she_ thought Oliver's constant presence in his house
odd or--or peculiar. But he kept a prudent guard over his tongue. One
day Katty said something which would have made it easy for him to speak,
and which, as a matter of fact, very nearly did cause him to unburden
his heart to her. It was a little word, and said quite pleasantly, with,
he felt sure, no ulterior motive of any kind.

"It's odd," she said musingly, "to see what good friends Laura has
become with Oliver Tropenell! Who would have thought that she would ever
like any man as much as she seems to like him? I suppose it's really
owing to the fact that he's in partnership with her brother----"

She waited, and as he said nothing, she went on, with a smile, "But
then, for the matter of that, you're just as fond of him as she is,
aren't you? I can't see the attraction myself, but I admit that it must
be there, for two people as unlike you and Laura are to each other both
to like him so much."

"Yes, I do like Tropenell," Godfrey spoke very decidedly. "But I can't
make out why he gets on so well with Gilbert Baynton. Gillie couldn't
run straight if he tried."

"So I've always understood----"

Katty looked at him curiously. She had never been told the real story of
the quarrel between the brothers-in-law, but she was clever enough to
have reached a very shrewd notion of the truth. Baynton, so much was
clear, had done something which Pavely could neither tolerate nor
forgive. In the old days, as a girl, Katty had met Gillie Baynton
several times, and he had struck her as a very amusing, agreeable sort
of young man.

Godfrey had let slip this opportunity of saying anything, and
afterwards, as is usually the case, he was glad that he had kept
silence. Clever and sympathetic as she was, Katty could do nothing to
help him in this horrid, rather degrading business.

And then, walking into his room at the Bank one morning, he saw on the
top of the pile of his letters another common-looking envelope marked
_Private_. He took it up with a sick feeling of half eager, half
shrinking, expectancy--

    "A sincere well-wisher wishes once more to inform Mr.
    Pavely that all Pewsbury is discussing him and his private
    affairs. The lady and gentleman in question are more
    together than ever they were. The other day some one who
    met them walking together on the downs took them for an
    engaged couple."

This second anonymous letter greatly added to Godfrey Pavely's
wretchedness and discomfort, all the more that it was so moderately
worded. It seemed to confirm, to make certain, the fact of growing
gossip and scandal.

At last something happened which to a small extent relieved the tension.
Laura quietly informed him one evening that she much wished to go away
for three days to see a friend of her childhood, who had written and
begged her to come, and to bring little Alice with her.

She was surprised at the eagerness with which Godfrey assented to her
wish. In certain ways Godfrey Pavely, from the modern point of view, was
a tyrannical husband. He very much disliked Laura's paying visits by
herself, and she had long ago given up even suggesting that she should
do so. Also, she on her side much disliked asking him the smallest
favour.

The day his wife left The Chase was the first happy day Godfrey had had
for three weeks. He spent a pleasant hour with Katty; and on his arrival
home his feeling of satisfaction was increased by a note from Mrs.
Tropenell inviting him to come and spend at Freshley Manor the three
nights Laura was to be away. He wrote accepting with more cordiality of
phrase than was his wont, even with so old a friend as was Oliver's
mother.

Surely he and Oliver Tropenell, at last alone together, could combine to
put an end to this foolish, vulgar gossip? It would be so much easier to
speak to and consult with Oliver in Laura's absence.

Once he had made up his mind to speak to the other man, Pavely was able,
almost, to forget the whole hateful business. Still, he said nothing
till the second morning of his visit. Then, at breakfast, he made a
proposal.

"I feel as if I'd like to take this afternoon off. Would you care for a
good long walk, eh? We might start about half-past two, have tea in
Witanbury, and be back here for dinner."

Oliver nodded. He was at once glad and sorry that Godfrey was so
entirely unaware of the growing tide of dislike, nay of hatred, that he
felt for him. Secretive as he was by nature, and by the life he had now
led for so long, Oliver Tropenell was yet no hypocrite. He loathed the
part fate had forced on him, that of pretending a cordial friendship for
this man whom he so utterly despised. His mother had invited Godfrey
Pavely to stay with them for three nights without first telling Oliver
that she was thinking of doing so; and then, when she had realised, too
late, his annoyance, she could only explain that Godfrey had always
stayed with her on the very rare occasions when Laura had been away.

Mother and son were together when Godfrey started off on his daily walk
into Pewsbury.

"I wonder what he's going to talk to you about?" said Mrs. Tropenell a
little nervously. The thought of the coming afternoon expedition made
her vaguely uneasy.

"He's never at a loss for a word, though he very seldom says anything
worth hearing."

Oliver was looking with unhappy, frowning eyes after the other man's
trim, rather jaunty figure.

All that morning Mrs. Tropenell watched her son with anxious fear. He
wandered restlessly in and out of the house, and though he never
mentioned Laura, his mother knew that he was missing her with an almost
agonised sense of loss.

Oliver was fighting a losing battle with himself--a battle in which no
help from outside could be of any avail. He no longer spoke of going
away; instead, he had told his mother of his scheme for bringing Gillie
to Europe, and of sending Laura and her brother off to Italy, for a
happy little holiday. She ventured to say that she thought that plan to
be quite out of the question. Godfrey would never allow it--he had not
forgiven Gillie, in spite of the fact that Gillie had now "made good."

It was nearer three than half-past two, when the two men started out,
and they had been walking for a full hour, with snatches of talk, and
such comfortable intervals of silence as is possible only between
intimates, when suddenly Godfrey Pavely stopped walking.

Surprised, Tropenell also came to a stand. They were on a stretch of
lonely upland, with nothing save a couple of birds in sight.

"Look here, Oliver, there's something I want to say to you! I hope you
won't be offended. But we're such good friends, you and I, that I think
you'll understand."

The colour rushed into Oliver Tropenell's face. He turned and faced the
other squarely, but he felt tense with excitement, and a sense of
challenge. He knew, instinctively, that Pavely was going to say
something about Laura--Laura, and perhaps Gillie, her brother.

"Yes," he said quietly. "Yes, Godfrey? What is it? I can't imagine your
saying anything to me that would offend me."

"I want you to read what's inside that," said Godfrey in a low voice,
and he handed Oliver an envelope.

Oliver was relieved, but he looked down at the envelope suspiciously.

"But this isn't to be opened till you're dead!" he exclaimed.

"Open it now," said Godfrey roughly, "I only put that in case I met with
an accident--you'll see why I did it, in a moment."

With a queer feeling of misgiving Oliver Tropenell drew the common
little sheet of notepaper out of the envelope, and in silence read over
what was written there in those deceitful, printed characters.

He read it once, twice--thrice. Then he handed the sheet of paper back,
with a look of disgust and contempt on his dark face, to the man
standing by his side.

"Well!" he exclaimed. "I don't know what you expect me to say? If you'd
had as many anonymous letters as I've had in my time--they rain in
Mexico--you wouldn't give much thought to this kind of garbage!"

Holding out the letter as if it were something dirty, he handed it back
to the other man.

"I haven't given much thought to it----" and then Godfrey stopped short.
He felt as if some other man, and not his sober self, were uttering the
lie.

"No," said Oliver quickly, "I don't suppose you have. But still, I can't
help being rather sorry you kept it, and--and that you showed it to me.
There's nothing to be done! I suppose it's the work of some clerk whom
you've dismissed in the last few weeks?"

"I've dismissed no one," said Pavely shortly. Somehow Tropenell was not
taking this disagreeable business quite as he had meant him to take it.

In a rather different voice Oliver went on: "Show me the letter again. I
want to see if there's a date to it."

"It arrived exactly three weeks ago to-day," said Pavely slowly, "and it
was posted in Pewsbury."

Light broke in on Tropenell. This, then, was why Godfrey had taken to
coming home at such odd hours, and why he had telephoned several times
from the Bank, sending messages to Laura, and, on at least one occasion,
a message to Tropenell himself!

He set his lips tightly together, and a flood of bitter wrath welled up
from his heart.

"Then in my place you would do nothing?" asked Godfrey uncertainly.

More and more he was disappointed in the other's attitude. He had
thought Oliver would suggest something which might be useful, or at any
rate laugh the matter off.

But Oliver only looked grim--grim and angry.

"I don't see that you can do anything. It isn't the sort of thing about
which you would care to go to the local police, and even if you knew who
wrote that infamous scrawl I don't see how you could take action. We
can't have Laura's name dragged into this kind of business."

Then he asked in a lower voice, "Have you said anything to her?"

The other shook his head. "I've no intention of saying anything to
Laura. It would distress and disgust her very much."

He was glad to see that Oliver, hearing these words, looked very much
relieved.

They walked on a few paces, and then Godfrey exclaimed, "There's one
thing I do think, Oliver--and I hope you won't be angry with me for
saying it! It must be admitted that you've been a great deal at The
Chase alone with Laura, and also, unfortunately, that that sort of thing
always does make talk in a country town."

Tropenell turned on him sternly: "What sort of thing?" he asked. "I
swear before God that there has never been anything in my attitude to
Laura which should give the slightest rise to comment, or afford the
basest scandalmonger excuse for a word."

And he believed every word of what he said.

"I know that--I know that, my dear fellow!" Godfrey put his hand out,
and for a moment it lay heavily on his friend's shoulder.

But quickly, silently, Tropenell shook himself free of the other's
touch. "If you know that," he was breathing hard now, not trying to
disguise his anger, "then why did you allude just now to the fact that I
am a good deal in your house? Does that mean you wish that I should give
up coming to The Chase?"

"No, of course I don't mean that! You're the one real friend I've
made--well, since I got to man's estate," said Pavely ruefully.

Everything was going wrong. The conversation was taking a turn he had
never thought of or conceived as possible. "What I mean is that
Laura----"

Tropenell stopped him with a passionate gesture: "Cannot we keep Laura's
name out of our discussion?"

Godfrey stared at him, genuinely astonished.

"How can we keep Laura's name out of our discussion? The whole thing
centres about Laura! This letter mentions Laura--ay, and I've had
another letter, which I hadn't meant to show you, but which on second
thoughts I should like you to see."

He began fumbling in another pocket.

"I don't want to see it!" cried Oliver. "I'd rather not see it!"

"But I'd rather you saw it," said Godfrey obstinately.

Tropenell read the second anonymous letter through, and then handed it
back, without comment.

Silently they both turned about, and walked quickly, in almost complete
silence, back to Freshley. "We've come home to tea, after all, mother,"
said Oliver shortly, "we are neither of us in condition for a
fifteen-mile walk."

Neither man referred again to the matter which when they were together
filled both their minds, and on the day of Laura's return to The Chase,
Oliver Tropenell went up to town, without having seen her. Four days
later his mother received a rather cryptic telegram: "Arriving to-night
with a friend."

A friend? Some sure, sombre instinct told Mrs. Tropenell that this would
be Gillie Baynton.




CHAPTER IX


"Godfrey can't eat me! Besides, he'll have to see me some time. Not that
I want to see anything of the fellow--I always hated him! Still, as
things are, it's far better I should take him by surprise, in Laura's
house, than go cap in hand, and ask his leave to see my sister."

It was Gilbert Baynton who was speaking, standing with his legs a little
apart, his fair head thrown back, his hands in his pockets, early in the
afternoon of the day he and Oliver had arrived from London.

Mother and son were both in the room, but it was really with Mrs.
Tropenell that Baynton was having this rather unpleasant argument. He
and Tropenell had had this all out before. Oliver had wanted Gillie to
write to his sister, but he was set on taking her by surprise, and on
stealing a march on Godfrey Pavely.

Mrs. Tropenell looked up at the man standing before her. Gillie was two
years older than her Oliver, and she had been the first woman who had
ever seen him, for it was to her that his mother's doctor had handed the
lusty, already screaming baby. His mother had passionately loved
him--loved him and spoilt him, and so had his rather lackadaisical
father. Physically he was a queer mixture of the two. Gillie Baynton had
his father's fair hair, grace of limb and movement, and plainness of
feature, coupled with his mother's abounding vitality, and her charm of
manner--that charm, that coming-on-ness, which his beautiful sister,
born so many years later, had always lacked.

Gillie had early begun to get into various ugly scrapes, but as a youth
he had always somehow managed to shuffle out of them, for he was
popular, and "had a way with him," as country people say. Also he had
never been lacking in courage of a sort, and courage carries even a
rascal a long way.

Still, Gillie Baynton had been pretty well done for, as far as his own
country was concerned, when he had been sent out, as a kind of forlorn
hope, to Mexico and Oliver Tropenell....

Gillie began speaking again: "I think I know my worthy brother-in-law
quite as well as you do, Mrs. Tropenell. It's much better to take a man
like that by surprise, and not to give him time to think! After all,
he's _got_ to let bygones be bygones."

And now Oliver interposed, for the first time. "Yes, mother, as things
are, I think Gillie had perhaps better try and see Laura now, at once,
before Godfrey Pavely knows he's in England."

"I'll go there right now."

Occasionally, not very often, Gilbert Baynton made use of some little
phrase showing that he lived on the other side of the Atlantic. He had
changed somehow, Mrs. Tropenell could hardly have told you how, for he
had always had a very assured manner. But now Gillie looked what he
was--a very prosperous man of business, though scarcely an English man
of business. The long sojourn in Mexico had not altered her Oliver at
all--not, that is, as far as she could see, but it had altered Gillie
Baynton surprisingly. It had roughened him, and increased his natural
self-assurance.

"Perhaps Laura and little Alice will come back with you to tea? Godfrey,
too, if he seems in the humour for it," she said.

And he nodded. "Thank you, Mrs. Tropenell. That would be very pleasant."

He smiled, a good-humoured, triumphant smile, and was gone.

The other two looked at each other rather doubtfully. And then Oliver,
as if answering her thought, exclaimed, "I don't think he'll stay on at
The Chase till Pavely comes out from Pewsbury! Apart from everything
else, Gillie's a restless creature. We may see him again within a very
short time from now."

"But supposing he and Godfrey do meet?" asked Mrs. Tropenell anxiously.

"Well, if they do meet, I think it's quite on the cards there'll be a
furious row. But that, after all, would clear the air. As Gillie said
just now, Godfrey Pavely will _have_ to put the past behind him.
Perhaps, once they've had it out, they'll be better friends. There's a
good deal to be said for a row sometimes, mother."

"Yes," she said uncomfortably. "I agree, there is."

       *       *       *       *       *

Laura was sitting in what was still known as "the boudoir," by the
household of Lawford Chase. It was a beautiful and stately room,
furnished some ninety years ago, at the time of the marriage of Mrs.
Tropenell's grandmother. The late Mr. Pavely's tenants had not cared to
use it, for it was away from the other living-rooms of the house, and so
nothing in the boudoir had been disturbed or renewed when The Chase had
been prepared for the occupation of the strangers who had lived there
for fourteen years.

The room suited Laura, and Laura suited the room. To-day she had had a
fire lit, for it was beginning to be chilly. Alice had gone off into
Pewsbury to spend the afternoon with two little friends, and now the
mistress of this lovely, old-world room was trying to read a book; but
soon she let the book rest open on her lap, and she stared mournfully,
hopelessly, into the fire.

Things were not going well with Laura Pavely. They had begun going ill
about a month ago, just after that--that unfortunate outburst on
Oliver's part. Yet she had felt so sure, after the talk that she and he
had had together, that they would slip back into their old, easy
relationship! And for a while, perhaps for as long as a week, it had
seemed as if they were going to do so.

But then there had come a change. Godfrey had fallen into the way of
coming home early. In old days, both before the coming to England of
Oliver Tropenell, and during the months that followed, Godfrey had
generally stayed at the Bank rather late, and then, as often as not, he
had gone in and had a chat with Katty on his way home. Now he always
came back before five, and after his return home he and Oliver would
engage in interminable singles on the big tennis court which had been
Godfrey Pavely's one contribution to the otherwise beautiful gardens of
The Chase.

Sometimes, and especially had this been true these last few days, Laura
told herself that perhaps after all, the world, the cynical shrewd
world of which she knew so little, was right, and that a close and
confidential friendship between a man and a woman is an impossible
ideal.

To-day, staring into the fire with dry, unseeing eyes, she felt
miserably unhappy--too troubled and uneasy to occupy herself in any of
her usual ways. More than had ever been the case before, life seemed to
stretch before her in a terrible, dreary, unending monotony.

Something else had come to pass during the last week, the week during
which Oliver Tropenell had been away in London, which she scarcely liked
to think of, or to make more real by dwelling on. Godfrey had altered in
his manner to her, he had become kinder, and yes, more loverlike than he
had been for years. He hung about her, when he was at home, indoors and
out of doors. In an awkward, clumsy way he actually tried to make
himself pleasant! He had even suggested that she should ask one or two
people to stay at The Chase. But she had protested that she much
preferred being alone, and with a shrug of the shoulders he had given
in. After all, he didn't really care for strangers more than she did.

Several times during the last dreary week, he had astonished her by
talking to her of Oliver in a rather fretful, complaining way, as if he
thought it odd that the other man was staying on in England with his
mother, instead of going back to Mexico. He had said that he thought it
strange that such a big business as he understood Oliver Tropenell to
have built up, could run by itself. She had answered coldly, "You
forget that my brother is there." And to that he had made no reply.

Gillie? A pang of pain thrilled through Laura's lonely heart. Oliver had
said nothing more concerning Gillie's visit to Europe. Everything which
had happened, up to, and including, the evening when she and Oliver had
had that curious, intimate conversation when he had promised so solemnly
to be her friend, seemed now like a bright, happy dream compared with
the drab reality of to-day.

And now, in a few minutes, Godfrey would be coming in, and she would
have to rouse herself to listen and to answer, while they had tea
together in the cedar drawing-room, for Godfrey did not care for the
boudoir.

Suddenly she heard uttered in the corridor, outside the door, the eager
words, "Is Mrs. Pavely there? You're sure? All right--I'll go straight
in!" And before she could gather her mind together, the door opened, and
her brother--the brother she had not seen for years, but of whom she had
just been thinking--walked forward into the room, exclaiming heartily,
resonantly: "Well, Laura? Well, little girl? Here I am again!"

She started up, and with a cry of welcoming, wondering delight, threw
herself into his arms, half laughing, half crying, "Oh,
Gillie--Gillie--Gillie! How glad I am to see you! Somehow I thought we
were never going to meet again! Have you only just come? Has Oliver
Tropenell seen you? Why didn't you wire?"

Gillie was as touched and flattered as it was in him to be, for he
remembered his sister as having been always quiet and restrained. And
when they had parted, just before he had gone out to Mexico, she had
seemed almost inanimate with--had it been vicarious?--shame and pain.

"I thought I'd take you by surprise." He looked round him with a
pleased, measuring look. "Nothing altered!" he exclaimed, "and you've
got a fire? That's good! I feel it awfully cold here, I mean in England.
They haven't started fires yet, over at Freshley."

He repeated, "Nothing's altered--you least of all, Laura. Why, you don't
look a day older!"

She sighed. "I feel," she said, "a lifetime older."

"I don't!" he cried briskly, "I feel younger. And Godfrey?" His voice
altered, becoming just a little graver. "Time stood still with Godfrey
too, eh?"

"I don't think Godfrey's altered much----" She was hesitating. And then,
very carefully, she added the words, "Godfrey's quite good to me, you
know, Gillie."

"Oh, well--of course he always liked you the best!" And then he laughed,
but to them both his laughter sounded just a little hollow. "I gather
that he and Tropenell don't quite hit it off?"

She turned on him quickly, and he was puzzled at the look of extreme
astonishment which came over her face. "What makes you think that?" she
exclaimed. "They're the greatest friends! Godfrey likes Oliver Tropenell
better than I thought he'd ever like anybody."

And then, before Gillie Baynton could answer this, to him, surprising
statement, the door opened, and the man of whom they were speaking stood
gazing into the room as if he could not believe in the reality of the
sight before him.

The brother and sister moved apart, and Gilbert Baynton held out his
hand.

"Well, Godfrey," he exclaimed, "here I am again! I expect Tropenell told
you that I was thinking of coming to Europe? But I can't be more than a
month in the old country--if as long--unless Tropenell goes back leaving
me behind for a bit. He did make some such suggestion, but I think we're
more likely to go back together."

As he spoke on, he let his hand slowly drop to his side, for the man he
was addressing had made no answering movement of welcome, or even of
greeting.

Such a flood of wrath had mounted up into Godfrey Pavely's brain when he
saw Gilbert Baynton standing there, with his arm round Laura's shoulder,
that he was fearful the words he meant to utter would never get
themselves said. He had never felt so angry before, and the sensation
had a curious physical effect on him. He felt, as country folk so
vividly put it, "all of a tremble."

A curious, ominous, sinister silence fell on the room. Laura,
unconsciously, drew a little nearer to her brother; and Godfrey, who was
staring straight at her, saw the movement, and it intensified the
passion of anger which was working in his brain as wine does in the
body.

"I must ask you to leave my house at once," he said in a low voice. "I
have had no reason to change my mind as to what I said when you were
last in this house, Gilbert Baynton."

_"Godfrey!"_ There was a passionate protest and revolt in the way Laura
uttered her husband's name.

But her brother put up his hand. "Hush, Laura," he said. "It's much
better I should tackle this business alone. In fact, if you don't mind,
you'd better leave the room."

She shook her head. "No, I mean to stay."

He shrugged his shoulders, and looked straight at Godfrey Pavely. "Look
here!" he exclaimed, "isn't all this rather--well, highfaluting rot?
It's quite true that when I left here I didn't mean ever to darken your
doors again. But everything's altered now! I've paid you back every cent
of that money--it wasn't even your money, it was my own sister's money.
She didn't mind my having it--I heard her tell you so myself."

"You forged my signature to obtain it," said Godfrey. He spoke in a very
low voice, almost in a whisper. He was the sort of man who always
suspects servants of listening at the door.

"Yes, I own I was a damned fool to do that--though as a matter of fact
you goaded me to it! However, it's a long time ago, and I suggest that
we'd better let bygones be bygones. If I don't marry, and I'm not a
marrying man, your child will be my heiress. Laura's my only sister, the
only thing in the world I really care for----"

Laura put her hand through his arm when she heard him say that.

And then Godfrey spoke again, his voice a little raised: "That makes no
difference," he said--"I mean your having paid the money back makes no
difference. I won't have you in my house, and if Laura considers my
wishes she won't see you again while you're in England."

Laura said at once: "I shall not consider your wishes, Godfrey. Of
course I shall see my brother as often as I can."

But Godfrey went on, still directly addressing Gilbert Baynton, "I can't
prevent Laura seeing you, if she insists upon it. She's a grown-up
woman, and I can't turn the key on her. But she shan't see you in _my_
house. And, as far as I'm concerned, this is the last time I'll ever set
eyes on your face."

"Don't you be so sure of that!" Gillie muttered the words between his
teeth. His fair face had turned a deep red-brick colour, his blue eyes
were blazing.

Again there fell on the three of them that strange, ominous, sinister
silence.

Then Gilbert Baynton turned to his sister. He actually laughed out loud.
But even Pavely noticed, with bitter satisfaction, that the laughter
sounded very forced.

"Ha! ha! ha! Godfrey's not a bit changed. He's just the same old
narrow-minded, sanctimonious prig he always was!"

He took Laura in his arms, and kissed her two or three times very
warmly. "Never mind, little girl," he said. "I shan't make trouble
between you and Godfrey for long! I shan't be in England for more than a
few days. I'm off to Paris next week."

He disengaged himself gently from Laura's clinging arms, went to the
door, opened it, then shut it very quietly behind him.

Laura turned away, and stared into the fire.

Godfrey began, awkwardly, conciliatingly, "Now, my dear Laura----"

She put up her hand. "Don't speak to me," she said, in what he felt to
be a dreadful voice of aversion and of pain. "I shall never, never
forgive you for this!"

He shrugged his shoulders, and went out of the room, into the long
corridor. And then he walked quickly through it and so to the hall of
the fine old house, of which, try as he might, he never felt himself, in
any intimate sense, the master.

The hall was empty. Quietly he opened the front door. Yes, Gillie had
kept his word this time! He really had gone. Pavely could see the alert,
still young-looking figure of the man whom in his mind he always called
"that scoundrel" hurrying down the carriage road which led to the great
gates of The Chase.




CHAPTER X


Katty Winslow stood by her open gate. She had wandered out there feeling
restless and excited, though she hardly knew why. During the last
fortnight she had spent many lonely hours, more lonely hours than usual,
for Godfrey Pavely came much less often to see her than he had done in
the old, easygoing days.

And yet, though restless, Katty was on the whole satisfied. She thought
that things were going very much as she wished them to go. It was of
course annoying to know so little, but she was able to guess a good
deal, and she felt quite sure that the leaven was working.

But the suspense and the uncertainty had got on her nerves, and she had
made up her mind to leave Rosedean perhaps for as long as a fortnight.
Two days ago she had written to various friends who were always glad to
see her. That was why, as she stood at the gate, she was able to tell
herself that she was waiting for the postman.

She thought it very probable that Godfrey Pavely would be walking past
her house about this time. A couple of days ago he had come in for about
half an hour, but he had been dull and ill at ease, his mind evidently
full of something he was unwilling or ashamed to tell. And she had
watched him with an amused, sympathetic curiosity, wondering how long
his cautious reticence would endure. If she had put her mind to it,
perhaps Katty could have made him speak of that which filled his sore
heart, but she felt that the time was not yet ripe for words between
herself and Godfrey. She was afraid of jarring him, of making him say
something to her which both of them afterwards might regret. No, not any
words of love to herself--of that she was not afraid--but some dogmatic
pronouncement on divorce, and perchance on re-marriage.

And then, as she stood there, glancing up and down the lonely country
road, she suddenly saw a man walking quickly towards her--not from
Pewsbury, but from the opposite direction, which led only from The
Chase.

Katty's bright brown eyes were very good eyes, and long before the
stranger could see her she had, as it were, taken stock of him. Somehow
his clothes were not English-looking, and he wore a kind of grey Homburg
hat.

He was walking at a great pace, and as he came nearer, some vague
feeling of curiosity made Katty step out of the gate, and look straight
up the road towards him. All at once she made up her mind that he was
American--a well-to-do and, according to his lights, a well-dressed
American.

Now Katty Winslow looked very charming, as she stood out there, in her
heather-mixture tweed skirt, and pale blue flannel blouse--charming, and
also young. And the stranger--to her he seemed entirely a stranger--when
he was quite close up to her, suddenly took off his hat and exclaimed,
"Why, Miss Fenton! It is Miss Fenton, isn't it?"

He was now smiling broadly into her face, his bold, rather challenging
eyes--the blue eyes which were the best feature of his face, and the
only feature which recalled his beautiful sister--full of cordial
admiration.

"You don't remember me?" he went on. "Well, that's quite natural, for of
course you made a much deeper impression on me than I did on you!"

And then all at once it flashed across Katty who this pleasant,
bright-eyed wayfarer must be. It must be, it could only be, Gilbert
Baynton--the peccant Gillie!

"Mr. Baynton?" she said questioningly, and she also threw a great note
of welcome and cordiality into her voice.

"Yes," he said. "Gilbert Baynton--very much at your service----?"

"--Mrs. Winslow," she said hurriedly. "I'm Mrs. Winslow now." She saw
that the name conveyed nothing to him. "Do come in," she went on
pleasantly, "if only for a moment, Mr. Baynton. Though it's early for
tea, perhaps you'll stay and have a cup with me? I had no idea you were
in England! I suppose you're staying with Laura, at The Chase?"

He shook his head, the smile faded from his face, and Katty, who was
observant, saw that her question was ill-timed.

"It's delightful--seeing an old friend again, and I was feeling so
bored--all by myself!"

As he followed her into the house, Gillie told himself that this was
distinctly amusing--quite good fun! It would take the horrible taste of
his interview with that--that _brute_--out of his mouth.

He looked round the little hall with quick interest and curiosity.
There was no sign of a man about, only a lady's slender walking-stick
and a bright red parasol, in the umbrella-stand. Was pretty little Katty
a widow? Somehow she did not look like a widow!

She opened a door which gave out of the hall on the left, and called
out, "Harber? I should like tea in about five minutes."

Then she shut the door, and led the way down the little hall, and
through into her sitting-room.

Gillie again glanced about him with eager appreciation. This was the
sort of room he liked--cosy, comfortable, bright and smiling like its
attractive mistress.

"Sit down," she exclaimed, "and tell me everything that's happened to
you since we last met! Why, it must be, let me see, quite twelve years
ago?"

She took up a china box: "Have a cigarette--I'll have one too."

He waved the box aside, took out his own case, and held it out to her.
"I think you'll like these," he said. Then he struck a match, and as
their fingers touched, the lighting of her cigarette took quite a little
while.

"This _is_ jolly!" He sank back into one of Katty's well-cushioned easy
chairs. "You've the prettiest room I've been in since I came to England,
Mrs. Winslow."

"Oh, then you haven't been into Laura's boudoir?"

"Yes, I've just come from there." Again his face altered as he spoke,
and this time there came a look of frowning anger over it. Then, almost
as if he read the unspoken question in her mind, he said slowly, "Look
here, Mrs. Winslow, as you seem to know my sister so well, I may as well
tell you the truth. I've just been ordered out of her house by my
brother-in-law, Godfrey Pavely. I suppose you know that he and I had a
row years ago?" He was looking at her rather hard as he spoke, and she
nodded her head.

"Yes," she said frankly, "I do know that, though I don't know what it
was about."

He breathed a little more freely. "It was about money," he said
bitterly. "Just what one would expect it to be with a man like Godfrey.
He was furious because I got Laura to lend me some money. It was to pay
a debt of honour, for I was a gambler in those days. But I'm a good boy
now!"

"Yes," she said, and smiled. "I know you are! You're Oliver Tropenell's
partner, aren't you, Mr. Baynton? He talks awfully nicely of you."

Gillie--his face was fair, his skin very clear, almost like a
girl's--looked pleased. "Good old Tropenell!" he exclaimed. "Yes, he and
I are tremendous pals. He's been the best friend to me man ever had."

"I am _so_ sorry for Laura," said Katty gently.

She was playing with the edge of a piece of Italian embroidery which
covered a small table close to her elbow, and she was thinking--hard.

At that moment the drawing-room door opened, and the tea appeared. While
the table was being drawn up in front of her, the tray placed on to it,
and a taper put to the spirit lamp, Katty's mind went on working busily.
And by the time the maid was leaving the room, she had come to a
decision. Even to her it was a momentous decision--how momentous to
others she was destined never to know.

Again she said slowly, impressively, "Yes, Mr. Baynton, I am sorry
indeed for poor Laura."

"I'm sorry too. Not that it much matters! I didn't want to stay at The
Chase. I always thought it a gloomy place in the old days, when I was a
child--I mean when it still belonged to Mrs. Tropenell's people. Of
course I shall see Laura again--Godfrey can't prevent that! In fact he
admitted that he couldn't."

There was a little pause. And then Katty, her eyes bent downwards, said,
"I didn't quite mean that, Mr. Baynton. Of course I'm very sorry about
your new row with Mr. Pavely, for it must be so hateful to Laura to feel
she can't have her own brother in her own house. But--well----" She
threw her head back, and gazed straight across at him. "Can you keep a
secret?" she asked.

"Yes, of course I can!" He looked at her amused.

"I want you to keep what I'm going to say absolutely to yourself. I
don't want you ever to hint a word of it to Laura--still less to Oliver
Tropenell."

"Of course I won't!" He looked at her with growing curiosity. What was
it she was going to tell him?

"I wonder if I ought to tell you," she murmured.

He laughed outright. "Well, I can't _make_ you tell me!"

She felt piqued at his indifference. "Yes, I will tell you, though it
isn't _my_ secret!" she exclaimed. "But I feel that you ought to know
it--being Laura's brother. Laura," her voice dropped, she spoke in a
very low voice, "Laura is in love with Oliver Tropenell, Mr. Baynton.
And Oliver is in love with Laura--a thousand times more in love with her
than she is in love with him!"

She gave him a swift glance across the tea-table. Yes! Her shot had
told indeed. He looked extraordinarily moved and excited. So excited
that he got up from his chair.

"Good God!" he exclaimed incredulously. "Laura?" And then, "Tropenell?
Are you sure of this, Mrs. Winslow?"

"Yes," she answered in a quiet, composed voice that carried conviction.
"I am _quite_ sure. They are both very, very unhappy, for they are good,
high-minded people. They wouldn't do anything wrong for the world."

As he looked at her a little oddly, and with a queer little smile all
over his face, she exclaimed, "I _know_ Laura wouldn't." And he nodded,
a little ashamed of that queer little smile.

Gilbert Baynton's face stiffened into deep gravity. His eyes were
shining, and he was staring down at the little table, his half-finished
cup of tea forgotten.

He sat down again. "Has Laura told you this?" he asked abruptly. "Are
you her confidante?"

Katty hesitated. "No," she said at last. "I don't suppose Laura has
spoken of the matter to any living soul. But if you promise absolutely
not to give me away--I can tell you how you can assure yourself of the
truth. Ask Mrs. Tropenell. _She_ knows. I won't say any more."

"And Pavely?" he asked. "What part does my fine brother-in-law play?
Does proper Godfrey know? Is priggish Godfrey jealous?"

She answered slowly: "I think that Mr. Pavely suspects. He and Oliver
Tropenell were great friends till quite lately. But there's a coldness
now. I don't know what happened. But _something_ happened."

"I see now why Tropenell has stayed here so long. I thought it must be a
woman! I thought some prudish, dull, English girl had got hold of
him----" He waited a moment.

"Well, I'm eternally grateful to you, Mrs. Winslow, for giving me this
hint! You see, I'm very fond of Tropenell. It's a peculiar kind of
feeling--there's nothing in the world I wouldn't do for him. Good God! I
only wish that he and Laura----"

He was going to say "would have the pluck to bolt together!" but Katty
supplied a very different ending to his sentence.

"Ah," she exclaimed, "I only wish that Laura and Oliver _could_ marry.
They're made for one another. You can't see them together without seeing
that!" She went on feelingly, "Laura was dreadfully unhappy with Godfrey
Pavely even before Oliver Tropenell came into her life. She and Mr.
Pavely are quite unsuited to one another."

There was a queer bitterness in her voice.

And then Gillie Baynton suddenly remembered--remembered the flood of
gossip there had been at one time concerning those two--pretty Katty
Fenton, as she had been then, and Godfrey Pavely, the man who later
became his own brother-in-law.

He gave her a queer, shrewd glance, and Mrs. Winslow went on, rather
quickly and breathlessly,

"You mustn't think that I dislike Godfrey Pavely! He's been very good to
me--as good as Laura. I'm what they call an innocent _divorcee_, Mr.
Baynton, and they both helped me through the trouble. It was pretty bad
at the time, I can tell you. But of course I can't help seeing--no one
could help seeing--that Godfrey and Laura aren't suited to one another,
and that they would each be much, much happier apart."

At the back of her clever, astute mind was the knowledge that it was
quite on the cards that Oliver, or Oliver's mother, would say something
to Gilbert Baynton concerning herself and her intimacy with Godfrey
Pavely. She must guard against that, and guard against it now.

So she went on, pensively, "I don't know, to tell you the truth, for
which of them I'm the more sorry--Laura, Godfrey, or Oliver! They're all
three awfully to be pitied. Of course, if they lived in America it would
be quite simple; Laura and Godfrey would be divorced by mutual consent,
and then Laura would be able to be happy with Mr. Tropenell."

"And is nothing of that sort possible here?" asked Gillie Baynton
curiously. "This old England _has_ stood still!"

Katty shook her head regretfully. "No, there's nothing of the sort
possible here. Of course there are ways and means----"

The other fixed his eyes on her. "Yes?" he said interrogatively.

"I fear that they are not ways and means that Godfrey or Laura would
ever lend themselves to."

"Then there's no cutting the Gordian knot?"

But that wasn't quite what Katty meant to imply. "I don't know," she
said hesitatingly. "Godfrey would do almost anything to avoid any kind
of scandal. But then you see one comes up against Laura----"

He nodded quickly. "Yes, I quite understand that Laura would never do
anything she thought wrong--queer, isn't it?"

Gilbert Baynton stayed on at Rosedean for quite another half-hour, but
nothing more was said on the subject which was filling his mind and that
of his hostess. They walked about the pretty, miniature garden, talking
in a desultory way over old times, and about some of the people they had
both known years ago.

And then, at last, she took him to the gate. They looked at one another
like two augurs, and he said under his breath, "Well, it's a pretty
kettle of fish I've come home to, eh? I thought there was some sort of
mystery. I'm very much obliged to you for having put me on the track to
solve the riddle."

"Ah," she said, "but the riddle isn't solved yet, Mr. Baynton, is it?"

He answered, gravely for him, "No, those sorts of riddles are very hard
to solve." He hesitated, then exclaimed in a meaning tone, "Still, they
_are_ solved sometimes, Mrs. Winslow."

       *       *       *       *       *

It was late the same night, a warm, St. Martin's summer night, and Mrs.
Tropenell, sitting alone after dinner, made an excuse of a telephone
message to join her son and Gillie Baynton out of doors.

After Baynton's return from The Chase the two men had gone off for a
long walk together over the downs, and they had come home so late that
dinner had had to be put off for half an hour. Instead of joining her
later, they had gone out again, but this time only into the garden.

Noiselessly she moved across the grass, and then, just as she was going
to step under the still leaf-draped pergola, she heard her son's
voice--a voice so charged with emotion and pain that, mastered by her
anxiety, she stopped just behind one of the brick arches, and listened.

"You'll oblige me, Baynton, by keeping your sister's name out of this."

"Oh, very well! I thought you'd be glad to know what that woman said to
me--I mean Mrs. Winslow."

"I'm not glad. I'm sorry. Mrs. Winslow is mistaken."

The short sentence came out with laboured breath as if with difficulty,
and the one who overheard them, the anguished eavesdropper, felt her
heart stirred with bitter impotence.

How Oliver cared--how much Oliver cared!

"Why are you so sure of that?" Again she heard Baynton's full, caressing
voice. "Laura's a very reserved woman! I'd rather believe her best
friend--apparently Katty _is_ her best friend--about such a thing as
this. You've admitted that _you_ love her."

And as the other made no answer, Gillie went on, speaking in a very low
voice, but with every word clearly audible from the place where Mrs.
Tropenell stood listening: "Of course I 

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