"This is to warn you that there is a great deal of talk going on in Pewsbury and the surrounding neighbourhoodabout 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."
"This is to warn you that there is a great deal of talk going on in Pewsbury and the surrounding neighbourhoodabout 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 careto 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 givento any one elsewho 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 hispresentfriendship 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 itenabled 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 washisfriend—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 carhadcaught 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 wonderedif 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 seemygarden, 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 ifshethought 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 goodfriends 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 markedPrivate.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."
"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 notefrom 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. Theywere 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 anonymousletters 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 somethingwhich 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 freeof 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 whichwhen 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.
"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—thatcharm, 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'sgotto 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. Ithad 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 willhaveto 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 inthe 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 afterall, 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 beenalways 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 intothe 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 considersmy 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 inmyhouse. 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.
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 puther 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—thatbrute—out of his mouth.
He looked round the little hall with quick interestand 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.
"Thisisjolly!" 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'vejust 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 amsosorry 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'tmakeyou tell me!"
She felt piqued at his indifference. "Yes, I will tell you, though it isn'tmysecret!" 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 amquitesure. 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, "IknowLaura 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.Sheknows. 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. Butsomethinghappened."
"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 Olivercouldmarry. 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 innocentdivorcée, 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—thatGodfrey 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 Englandhasstood 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 thatLaura 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, theyaresolved 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 Kattyisher best friend—about such a thing as this. You've admitted thatyoulove 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 won't mention Laura—as it upsets you so much! But after all, my hatred for Pavely and my love for my sister are the two strongest things in my life. Surely you know that well enough, Tropenell? I can't bar Laura out!"
And then came the answer, muttered between the speaker's teeth: "I understand that, Baynton."
"I'm sorry I repeated Mrs. Winslow's tale. But ofcourse it did impress me—it did influence me. I'dliketo believe it, Tropenell."
The secret listener was surprised at the feeling which Gillie's vibrant voice betrayed.
Oliver muttered something—was it, "I'd give my soul to know it true"?
Then, in a lighter tone, Gillie exclaimed, "As to that other matter, I'd rather keep you out of the business altogether if I could! But I can't—quite."
What was it that Oliver answered then? The two men were now walking slowly away towards the further end of the pergola. Mrs. Tropenell strained her ears to hear her son's answer:
"I don't want to keep out of it." Was that what he said, in a very low, tense voice?
Gilbert Baynton was speaking again: "It ismyidea,myscheme, and I mean to carry it through! I shan't want much help—only quite a little help from you."
And then she heard her son's voice again, and he was speaking more naturally this time. "Of course we'll go shares, Gillie! What d'you take me for? Am I to have all the profit, and you all the risk?"
Mrs. Tropenell breathed more freely. They were off from Laura now, and on some business affair. She heard Gillie Baynton laugh aloud. "I'm quite looking forward to it—but it will be a longish job!"
Oliver answered, "I'mnot looking forward to it. You feel quite sure about this thing, Baynton? There's time to draw back—now."
"Sure? Of course I'm sure!" There was triumph, a challenge to fate, in the other's tone. "I've always liked playing for high stakes—you know that, eh?"
"Ay, I know that——"
"And I've never looked back. I've never regretted anything I've done in my life——" there was a ring of boastful assurance in Gilbert Baynton's tone.
"I can't say that of myself—I wish I could."
"You? Why, you've a milk-white record, compared to mine!"
Mrs. Tropenell moved away swiftly over the grass, till she stood at the end of the dark, arched walk. Then, "Oliver!" she called out, "there's a message from Lord St. Amant. He wants to know if you can go over to the Abbey next week, from Saturday till Tuesday. He says there'll be some shooting. I told him you'd ring up before going to bed—I hope that was right."
"Yes, mother. Of course I'll ring up. I'll go in and do it now, if you like. Gillie and I have been having a long business talk."
And then she heard Gilbert Baynton: "I'll stay out here a bit longer, Mrs. Tropenell. I'm getting quite used to the cold and damp of the old country. I don't mind it as much as I did a week ago."
Mother and son walked across the lawn to the house.
When they were indoors, he broke silence first: "Gillie had a bad row with Pavely this afternoon. I don't think it's any use his staying on here. Pavely won't allow Laura to see him again at The Chase."
Mrs. Tropenell uttered an exclamation of dismay.
"Yes, it's unfortunate, I admit. And I don't think it was Gillie's fault! He's described the scene to me in great detail. He was quite willing to go as far as I think he could be expected to go in the way of apology and contrition. But Pavely simply didn't givehim a chance. Pavely's a narrow-minded brute, mother."