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 dogand 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 thePewsbury 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 suggestedthat 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 thelittle 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 outstandingexception. 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 hewas, 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 bankingapprenticeship 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 sayingnow, 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 oneday, 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 suggestedthe 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.
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 calculationalways 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 manand a woman, however intimate. In some ways Godfrey Pavely was very old-fashioned.
But she wouldn't let it alone. "Divorceoughtto 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 wasreallyunhappy, 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 edgeof 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.Theneverything 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 Ioften 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 meallyour secrets, Godfrey."
He looked at her puzzled. "Youknowthat 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 callthata 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 youhad 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, bitterlittle 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 casewith 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 shecould 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 surelywas 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 milenearer, 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.
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 windowswas 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 markedPrivate, 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 foolthat 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—