IT was the day of Godfrey Pavely's funeral, and more than one present at the great gathering observed, either to themselves or aloud to some trusted crony or acquaintance, that the banker would certainly have been much gratified had he seen the high esteem in which he was held by both the gentle and simple of the surrounding neighbourhood.
Even Lord St. Amant was a good deal impressed by the scene. Every blind in the High Street was down—a striking mark of respect indeed towards both the dead banker and his widow. Apart from that fact, the town looked as if it was in the enjoyment of a public holiday, but even that was in its way a tribute. The streets were full of people, and round the entrance to the churchyard was a huge crowd. As for the churchyard itself, it was overflowing, and presented a remarkable rather than a touching scene. Only a few of the town-folk were still allowed to be buried in the mediæval churchyard which lay just off the High Street, so a funeral actually taking place there was a very rare event.
The circumstances of Mr. Pavely's death had been so strange that the local paper had printed a verbatim report of the inquest, as well as a very flowery account of the departed, who had been, it was explained, so true and so loyal a townsman of Pewsbury. Yet, even so, there were those present at his funeral who muttered that Mr. Pavely had met his death just asmight have been expected, through his love of money. It was also whispered that the job in which this queer foreigner had been associated with the banker had not been of the most reputable kind. This Fernando Apra—every one knew his queer name because of the big reward—had wanted to raise money for a kind of glorified gambling hell; that was the long and the short of it, after all, so much the shrewder folk of Pewsbury had already found out, reading between the lines of the evidence offered at the inquest.
In an official sense the chief mourners were two distant cousins of Godfrey Pavely—men with whom he had quarrelled years ago—but in a real, intimate sense, the principal mourners were old Mr. Privet, Lord St. Amant, who, though he was so fond of travel, never neglected the duties entailed by his position in the county, and last but by no means least Mr. Oliver Tropenell, who, as every one present was well aware, had during the last few months become the one intimate friend of the dead man. Among the women there were several who knew that at this very moment Mrs. Pavely was being comforted by Mr. Oliver Tropenell's mother, a lady who stood high in public esteem, and with whom Mrs. Pavely as a girl, had spent much of her youth, and from whose house, picturesque Freshley Manor, she had been married to the man whom they were now engaged in burying.
Another person present who aroused even more interest among the good folk of Pewsbury than either Lord St. Amant or Oliver Tropenell, was Mrs. Winslow.
The older townspeople looked at Katty with a good deal of rather excited sympathy, for they rememberedthe gossip and talk there had been about pretty Katty Fenton and the dead man, and of how unkind old Mrs. Pavely, now dead many a year, had shown herself to the lovely, motherless girl.
There were even some there who whispered that poor Godfrey Pavely had again become very fond of his first love—and that, too, when they were both old enough to know better! But these busybodies were not encouraged to say the little they knew. These are things—natural human failings—which should be forgotten at a man's funeral.
Mrs. Winslow did not look unreasonably upset. There were no tears in her bright brown eyes, and her black frock, sable plumed hat, and beautiful black furs, intensified the brilliant pink and white of her complexion. Indeed, many of the people who gazed at Katty that day thought they had never seen her looking so attractive. The world belongs to the living—not to the dead, and poor Godfrey Pavely, with his big, prosperous one-man business, and his almost uncanny cleverness in the matter of making money, belonged henceforth very decidedly to the past. So it was that among the men and women who stared with eager curiosity and respectful interest at the group of mourners, several noticed that Mr. Oliver Tropenell seemed to pay special attention to Mrs. Winslow.
Once he crossed over, and stood close to her for a minute or two by the still open grave, and his dark handsome face showed far more trace of emotion than did hers.
After the funeral, Lord St. Amant dropped Mrs. Winslow at the gate of Rosedean, and, on parting with Katty, he patted her hand kindly, telling himselfthat she was certainly a very pretty woman. Lord St. Amant, like most connoisseurs in feminine beauty, preferred seeing a pretty woman in black.
"You must try and forget poor Godfrey Pavely," he said feelingly.
He was startled and moved by the intensity with which she answered him:—"I wish I could—but I can't. I feel all the time as if he was there, close to me, trying to tell me something! I believe that he was murdered, Lord St. Amant."
"I'm sure you're mistaken. You must never think that!"
"Ah, but I do think so. I'm certain of it!"
Following the old custom, Godfrey Pavely's will was to be read after his burial, and Laura had written to Lord St. Amant asking him if he would be present.
In the great dining-room of The Chase, a dining-room still lined with the portraits of Mrs. Tropenell's ancestors, were two tables, one large long table which was never used, and a round table in the bow-window. To-day it was about the big table that there were gathered the five men and the one woman who were to be present at the reading of the will. Laura was the one woman. The men were Godfrey Pavely's lawyer, the dead man's two cousins—who had perhaps a faint hope of legacies, a hope destined to be disappointed, Oliver Tropenell, present as Laura Pavely's trustee, and Lord St. Amant, who had been a trustee to her marriage settlement.
Laura, in her deep black, looked wan, sad and tired, but perfectly calm. All the men there, with oneexception, glanced towards her now and again with sympathy. The exception was Oliver Tropenell. He had shut her out, as far as was possible, from his mind, and he seemed hardly aware of her presence. He stared straight before him, a look of rather impatient endurance on his face—not at all, so argued Lord St. Amant to himself, the look of a man from whose path a hitherto impassable obstacle has just been removed.
Though rather ashamed of letting his mind dwell on such thoughts at such a time, Lord St. Amant told himself that Mrs. Tropenell had doubtless been mistaken as to what she had confided to him on his return from abroad. Mothers are apt to be jealous where only sons are concerned, and Letty—his dear, ardent-natured friend Letty—had always been romantic.
Lord St. Amant was confirmed in this view by the fact that that very morning Mrs. Tropenell had told him that Oliver was going back to Mexico almost at once. To her mind it confirmed what she believed to be true. But her old friend and some-time lover had smiled oddly. Lord St. Amant judged Oliver by himself—and he had always been a man of hot-foot decisions. It was inconceivable to him that any lover could act in so cold-blooded, careful a fashion as this. No, no—if Oliver cared for Laura as his mother believed he cared, he would not now go off to the other end of the world, simply to placate public opinion.
To those who had known the man, Godfrey Pavely's will contained only one surprise, otherwise it ran on the most conventional lines. Practically the whole of his very considerable fortune was left, subject to Laura's life interest—an interest which lapsed on re-marriage—in trust for his only child.
The surprise was the banker's substantial legacy to Mrs. Winslow. That lady was left Rosedean, the only condition attaching to the legacy being that, should she ever wish to sell the little property, the first offer must be made to Alice Pavely's trustees. Also, rather to the astonishment of some of those present, it was found that the will had only been made some two months ago, and the lawyer who read it out was aware that in some important particulars it had been modified and changed. In the will made by Godfrey Pavely immediately after his marriage he had left his wife sole legatee. After Alice was born the banker had naturally added a codicil, but he had still left Laura in a far greater position of responsibility in regard to the estate than in this, his final will.
After the will had been read, Lord St. Amant spent a few moments alone with Laura. He felt he had a rather disagreeable task before him, and he did not like disagreeable tasks. Still he faced this one with characteristic courage.
"I've been asked by Sir Angus Kinross to undertake a rather unpleasant duty, my dear Laura—that of persuading you to withdraw the reward you are offering for the discovery of Fernando Apra. He points out that if Apra's story is true, it might easily mean that you would simply be giving a present of a thousand pounds to the person who killed your husband."
Laura heard him out without interruption. Then she shook her head. "I feel it is my duty to do it," she said in a low voice. "Katty, who was Godfrey's greatest friend, says he would have wished it—and I think she's right. It isn't going to be paid out ofthe estate, you know.Iwill pay it—if ever it is earned."
She went on painfully. "I am very unhappy, Lord St. Amant. Godfrey and I were not suited to one another, but still I feel that I was often needlessly selfish and unkind."
Lord St. Amant began to see why Oliver Tropenell was going back to Mexico so soon.
THOSE winter and spring months which followed the tragic death of Godfrey Pavely were full of difficult, weary, and oppressive days to his widow Laura. Her soul had become so used to captivity, and to being instinctively on the defensive, that she did not know how to use her freedom—indeed, she was afraid of freedom.
Another kind of woman would have gone away to the Continent, alone or with her child, taking what in common parlance is described as a thorough change. But Laura went on living quietly at The Chase, feeling in a queer kind of way as if Godfrey still governed her life, as if she ought to do exactly what Godfrey would wish her to do, all the more so because in his lifetime she had not been an obedient or submissive wife.
As the Commissioner of Police had foretold, the large reward offered by Mrs. Pavely had brought in its train a host of tiresome and even degrading incidents. A man of the name of Apra actually came from the Continent and tried to make out thathehad been the banker's unwitting murderer! But his story broke down under a very few minutes' cross-examination at Scotland Yard. Even so, Laura kept the offer of the thousand pounds in being. It seemed to be the only thing that she could still do for Godfrey.
Though she was outwardly leading the quiet, decorously peaceful life of a newly-made widow, Laura's soul was storm-tossed and had lost its bearings. Her little girl's company, dearly as she loved the child, no longer seemed to content her. For the first time in her life, she longed consciously for a friend of her own age, but with the woman living at her gate, with Katty Winslow, she became less, rather than more, intimate.
Also, hidden away in the deepest recess of her heart, was an unacknowledged pain. She had felt so sure that Oliver Tropenell would stay on with his mother through the winter and early spring! But, to her bewildered surprise, he had left for Mexico almost at once. He had not even sought a farewell interview to say good-bye to her alone, and their final good-bye had taken place in the presence of his mother.
Together he and Mrs. Tropenell had walked over to The Chase one late afternoon, within less than a week of Godfrey's funeral, and he had explained that urgent business was recalling him to Mexico at once. He and Laura had had, however, three or four minutes together practically alone; and at once he had exclaimed, in a voice so charged with emotion that it recalled those moments Laura now shrank from remembering—those moments when he had told her of his then lawless love—"You'll let me know if ever you want me? A cable would bring me as quickly as I can travel. You must not forget that I am your trustee."
And she had replied, making a great effort to speak naturally: "I will write to you, Oliver, often—and I hope you will write to me."
And he had said: "Yes—yes, of course I will!Not that there's much to say that will interest you. But I can always give you news of Gillie."
He had said nothing as to when they were to meet again. But after he was gone Mrs. Tropenell had spoken as if he intended to come back the following Christmas.
Oliver had so far kept his promise that he had written to Laura about once a fortnight. They were very ordinary, commonplace letters—not long, intimate, and detailed as she knew his letters to his mother to be. Mostly he wrote of Gillie, and of whatever work Gillie at the moment was engaged upon.
On her side, she would write to him of little Alice, of the child's progress with her lessons, of the funny little things that Alice said. Occasionally she would also force herself to put in something about Godfrey, generally on some matter connected with the estate, and she would tell him of what she was doing in the garden, or in the house which had been built by his, Oliver's, forbears.
She could not tell him, what was yet oddly true, that the spirit of Godfrey still ruled The Chase. He had inherited from his parents certain old-fashioned ways and usages, to which he had clung with a sort of determined obstinacy, and as to such matters, his wife, in the days which were now beginning to seem so far away and so unreal, had never even dreamt of gainsaying him.
One of these usages was the leaving off of fires, however cold the weather might be, on the first of May, and this year, on the eve of May Day, Laura remembered, and made up her mind that in this, as in so much else, she would now be more submissiveto the dead than she had ever been to the living Godfrey.
Laura sat up late that night destroying and burning certain papers connected with her past life. She had come to realise how transitory a thing is human existence, and she desired to leave nothing behind her which might later give her child a clue to what sort of unhappy, unnatural married life she and Godfrey had led.
But it is always a painful task—that of turning over long-dead embers.
Sitting there in the boudoir, close to the glowing fire, and with a big old-fashioned despatch-box at her side, she glanced at the letters which her husband had written to her during their brief engagement, and then she tied them up again and inscribed them with names and dates. They might give Alice pleasure some day, the more so that there was singularly little else remaining to tell Godfrey's child what he had been like at his best. She, Laura, only knew—Alice, thank God, would never know, would never understand—what melancholy memories these rather formal, commonplace love-letters evoked in the woman who as a girl had been their recipient.
The very few letters which her husband had written to her during their married life, when he happened to be in London or away on business, she had always destroyed as they came. They had been brief, business-life communications, generally concerning something he desired to be done on the estate, or giving her the instructions he wished to have telephoned to the Bank.
After glancing absently through them, she burnt many letters which she now wondered why she had kept—letters for the most part from friends of her girlhood who had gradually drifted away from her, and the memory of whom was fraught with pain. She put aside the meagre packet of her brother's letters, and then, at last she gathered up in her hands the score or more large envelopes addressed in Oliver Tropenell's clear, small, masculine handwriting.
Should she burn these too—or keep them?
Slowly she took out of its envelope the first of Oliver's letters which she had kept—that in which he expressed his willingness to become her trustee. For the first time she forgot little Alice, forgot the day when her daughter would read all that she found here, in her mother's despatch-box, with the same eager interest and perchance the same moved pleasure, which she, Laura, had felt when reading the letters her own beloved mother had left behind her.
Consideringly she glanced over the first real letter Oliver Tropenell had ever written to her. Vividly she remembered the whole circumstances surrounding the sending and receiving of that letter, for it had followed close on the scene which, try as she might, she could not, even now, forget. It was in this letter that she now held open in her hand, that Oliver had heaped coals of fire on her head, by his quiet, kindly acceptance of the trusteeship. There was unluckily one passage she felt Alice should never have a chance of reading—for it concerned Gillie. So, though she was sorry to destroy the letter, she felt that on the whole it would be better to burn it, here and now.
Hesitatingly she held out the large sheet to the bright fire—and as she was in the act of doing so, quite suddenly there flashed between the lines of firm, black handwriting other lines—clear, brownish lines—of the same handwriting. What an extraordinary, amazing, incredible thing!
Laura slipped down on to the hearthrug from the low arm-chair on which she had been sitting with her despatch-box beside her, and bent forward, full of tremulous excitement—her heart beating as it had never beat before.
"The decks are cleared between us, Laura, for you know now that I love you. You said, 'Oh, but this is terrible!' Yes, Laura, love is terrible. It is not only cleansing, inspiring, and noble, it is terrible too. Why is it that you so misunderstand, misjudge, the one priceless gift, the only bit of Heaven, which God or Nature—I care not which—has given to man and woman?"
"The decks are cleared between us, Laura, for you know now that I love you. You said, 'Oh, but this is terrible!' Yes, Laura, love is terrible. It is not only cleansing, inspiring, and noble, it is terrible too. Why is it that you so misunderstand, misjudge, the one priceless gift, the only bit of Heaven, which God or Nature—I care not which—has given to man and woman?"
She stopped reading for a moment, then forced herself to go on, and the next few lines of that strange, passionate secret letter, burnt themselves into her brain.
She let the paper flutter down, and covered her face with her hands. Could she—should she believe what this man said?
"What you, judging by your words to-day, take to be love is as little like that passion as a deep draught of pure cold water to a man dying of thirst is like the last glass of drugged beer imbibed by some poor sot already drunk."
"What you, judging by your words to-day, take to be love is as little like that passion as a deep draught of pure cold water to a man dying of thirst is like the last glass of drugged beer imbibed by some poor sot already drunk."
It was a horrible simile, and yet—yes, she felt that it was a true smile. For the first time Laura Pavely dimly apprehended the meaning of love in the same sense that Oliver Tropenell understood it.
She took up the sheet of paper again, and with the tears falling down her cheeks, she read the postscript which was superposed, as it were, on to the first.
"God bless you, my dear love, and grant you the peace which seems the only thing for which you crave."
"God bless you, my dear love, and grant you the peace which seems the only thing for which you crave."
After giving a shamed, furtive look round the empty room, Laura Pavely pressed the letter to her lips, and then she threw it into the fire, and watched it vanish into brilliant flame, feeling as if a bit of her heart were being burnt with it.
Slowly she got up and went to the door; opening it, she listened for a while.
The whole household was asleep, but even so, she locked the door before coming back to her station by the fire.
She put more coal on the now glowing embers, and then she took up another letter Oliver had written to her, a letter written from Paris just after he and her brother had left London together for that long holiday on the Continent. Outwardly it was a commonplace letter enough concerning a change in certain of her investments; but when she held it to the fire, between the black lines there again started into pulsing life another message, winged from his soul to hers....
"Laura, I have sworn not to speak to you of love, and even in this letter which you will never see, I will not break my oath. But as I go in and out of the old Paris churches (where alone I find a certain measure of solace and peace), in the women whom I see there praying I often seem to discover something akin to your spiritual and physical perfection."It is strange, considering the business on which I am engaged, that I should feel thus drawn to haunt these old, dim Paris churches, but there at least I can escape from Gillie, of Gillie who talks perpetually of Godfrey, your owner and your tyrant."
"Laura, I have sworn not to speak to you of love, and even in this letter which you will never see, I will not break my oath. But as I go in and out of the old Paris churches (where alone I find a certain measure of solace and peace), in the women whom I see there praying I often seem to discover something akin to your spiritual and physical perfection.
"It is strange, considering the business on which I am engaged, that I should feel thus drawn to haunt these old, dim Paris churches, but there at least I can escape from Gillie, of Gillie who talks perpetually of Godfrey, your owner and your tyrant."
And as she read these last words, there came a cold feeling over Laura's heart. She realised, for the first time, how Oliver had hated Godfrey.
She read on:
"Gillie does not understand the reverence in which I hold you. Sometimes when he speaks of you—of you and Godfrey—I feel as if some day I shall strike him on the mouth."But he is your brother, Laura. According to the measure which is in the man he loves you, aye, and even reverences you too, in his fashion; but with this reverence is mingled a touch of pity, of contempt, that you should be what he calls 'good.'"
"Gillie does not understand the reverence in which I hold you. Sometimes when he speaks of you—of you and Godfrey—I feel as if some day I shall strike him on the mouth.
"But he is your brother, Laura. According to the measure which is in the man he loves you, aye, and even reverences you too, in his fashion; but with this reverence is mingled a touch of pity, of contempt, that you should be what he calls 'good.'"
Good? Laura looked up and stared into the now glowing fire. Good in a narrow, effortless sense she had always been, but to the man who was so little her owner, though so much at times her tyrant, she had been, almost from the very first, hard, and utterly lacking in sympathy.
It was with relief that Laura burnt that letter.
The notes Oliver Tropenell had written to her in London while he was conducting the investigation into Godfrey Pavely's disappearance, held, to her disappointment, no secret writing in between. But the letters she had received from him since her widowhood all had an invisible counterpart.
The first was written on ship-board:
"Laura, I am now free to speak to you of love. The world would say that I must wait in spirit as I have waited in body, but I know at what a cost has been bought the relief from the vow which I faithfully kept."The past is dead, the future is my own. I look back, dear love, to the few moments we had by the great window in your drawing-room, when my mother was talking to Alice over by the fire. You were so gentle, so sweet, to me then. It was as if—God forgive me for my presumption—you were regretting my departure. Till that moment I had felt as if the man who had once called you wife stood between us, an angry, menacing shape. But he vanished then, in that house of which he had never been the real master. And since that day he has not haunted me as he haunted me during those long long days of waiting for the news I at once longed for and dreaded."When I come back I shall not ask you to love me, I shall only humbly ask you to let me love you."
"Laura, I am now free to speak to you of love. The world would say that I must wait in spirit as I have waited in body, but I know at what a cost has been bought the relief from the vow which I faithfully kept.
"The past is dead, the future is my own. I look back, dear love, to the few moments we had by the great window in your drawing-room, when my mother was talking to Alice over by the fire. You were so gentle, so sweet, to me then. It was as if—God forgive me for my presumption—you were regretting my departure. Till that moment I had felt as if the man who had once called you wife stood between us, an angry, menacing shape. But he vanished then, in that house of which he had never been the real master. And since that day he has not haunted me as he haunted me during those long long days of waiting for the news I at once longed for and dreaded.
"When I come back I shall not ask you to love me, I shall only humbly ask you to let me love you."
Laura went to her writing-table and turned on the light. She moved as one walking in her sleep, for she was in an extraordinary state of spiritual andmental exaltation. She drew a sheet of paper towards her, and before burning the letter she still held in her hand, she copied out, not all, but a certain part of what had been written there in that invisible ink which only flashed into being when held up against a flame.
Then she went back to the fire, and read the next letter—and the next. In a sense they were alike—alike in the measureless love, the almost anguished longing for her presence they expressed, and in their abhorrence, hatred, contempt for the man who had been her husband. It was as if Oliver, in spite of his confident words in the letter which had been written on shipboard, could not forget Godfrey—as if perpetually he felt the dead man's menacing presence to be there, between them.
Laura was amazed, troubled, and yet at the same time profoundly stirred and excited by Oliver's retrospective jealousy. It seemed to prove to her as nothing else could have done how passionately, exclusively he loved her, and had always loved her.
Though none of those about her were aware of it, the mistress of The Chase became henceforth a different woman. It was as though she had suddenly become alive where she had been dead, articulate instead of dumb.
Each night, when the house was plunged in darkness and slumber, Laura would light three candles, and read the words of longing and of love which Oliver had written in between the formal lines of the last letter she had received from him. And then, when a new letter came, she would burn the one thathad come before—the one whose contents she had already long known by heart.
And as the spring wore into summer the thing that became, apart from her child, the only real thing in Laura Pavely's life, was her strong, secret link with this man who she knew was coming back to claim her, on whatever terms she chose to exact, as his own. And she fell into a deep, brooding peace—the peace of waiting. She was in no hurry to see Oliver again—indeed, she sometimes had a disturbing dread that his actual presence might destroy that amazing sense of nearness she now felt to him. Unconsciously her own letters to him became more intimate, more self-revealing; she wrote less of Alice, more of herself.
The only uneaseful element in Laura Pavely's life now was Katty Winslow. The two women never met without Katty's making some mention of Godfrey. And once Laura, when walking away with Katty from Freshley Manor, where the two had met unexpectedly, was sharply disturbed by something Katty said.
"I'm told Oliver Tropenell is coming back at or after Christmas. Somehow I always associate him with that awful time we had last January. I think I shall try and be away when he is here—I don't suppose he'll stay long."
Katty spoke with a kind of rather terrible hardness in her voice, fixing her bright eyes on Laura's quivering face.
"Instead of going away as he did, he ought to have stayed and tried to clear up the mystery."
"But the mystery," said Laura in a low voice, "wascleared up, Katty."
But Katty shook her head. "To me the mystery is a greater one than ever," she said decisively.
Early in September Laura received a letter written, as were all Oliver's letters, in sober, measured terms, and yet, even as she opened it, she felt with a strange, strong instinct that something new was here. And as she lived through the few hours which separated her from night and solitude, she grew not only more restless, but more certain, also, of some coming change in her own life.
His open letter ran:—
"I am writing in my new country house. Years ago, after I first came out to Mexico, I stumbled across the place by accident, and at once I made up my mind that some day I would become its possessor. Over a hundred years old, this little château, set on a steep hillside, is said to have been built by a Frenchman of genius who, having got into some bad scrape in Paris, had to flee the country, while the oldrégimewas in full fling."When I first came here, the house had stood empty for over forty years. The garden, beautiful as it was, had fallen into ruin. The fountains were broken, the water no longer played, the formal arbours looked like forest trees. White roses and jasmine mingled with the dense southern vegetation, fighting a losing fight."For a few brief weeks in '67 it was inhabited by Maximilian and his young Empress—indeed, it is said that the Emperor still haunts the cool large rooms on the upper floor—there are but two storeys. So farI have never met his noble ghost. I should not be afraid if I did."I am beginning to think that it is time I came back to Freshley for a while. But my plans are still uncertain."
"I am writing in my new country house. Years ago, after I first came out to Mexico, I stumbled across the place by accident, and at once I made up my mind that some day I would become its possessor. Over a hundred years old, this little château, set on a steep hillside, is said to have been built by a Frenchman of genius who, having got into some bad scrape in Paris, had to flee the country, while the oldrégimewas in full fling.
"When I first came here, the house had stood empty for over forty years. The garden, beautiful as it was, had fallen into ruin. The fountains were broken, the water no longer played, the formal arbours looked like forest trees. White roses and jasmine mingled with the dense southern vegetation, fighting a losing fight.
"For a few brief weeks in '67 it was inhabited by Maximilian and his young Empress—indeed, it is said that the Emperor still haunts the cool large rooms on the upper floor—there are but two storeys. So farI have never met his noble ghost. I should not be afraid if I did.
"I am beginning to think that it is time I came back to Freshley for a while. But my plans are still uncertain."
At last came solitude, and the luminous darkness of an early autumn night. Laura locked herself into her room.
Yes, instinct had not played her false, for the first words of the secret letter ran:—
"Laura, I am coming home. I had meant to linger on here yet another month or six weeks, but now I ask myself each hour of the day and night—why wait?"The room in which I am sitting writing to you, thinking of you, longing for you, was the room of those two great lovers, Maximilian and his Carlotta. The ghost of their love reminds me of the transience of life. I have just walked across to the window, thinking, thinking, thinking, my beloved, of you. For I am haunted ever, Laura, by your wraith. I walk up and down the terrace wondering if you will ever be here in the body—as you already seem to be in the spirit."I am leaving at sunrise, and in three days I shall be upon the sea. You will receive a cable, and so will my mother. The thought of seeing you again—ah, Laura, you will never know what rapture, so intense as to be almost akin to pain, that thought gives me. Lately your letters have seemed a thought more intimate, more confiding—I dare not say less cold. ButI have sworn to myself, and I shall keep my oath, to ask for nothing that cannot be freely given."
"Laura, I am coming home. I had meant to linger on here yet another month or six weeks, but now I ask myself each hour of the day and night—why wait?
"The room in which I am sitting writing to you, thinking of you, longing for you, was the room of those two great lovers, Maximilian and his Carlotta. The ghost of their love reminds me of the transience of life. I have just walked across to the window, thinking, thinking, thinking, my beloved, of you. For I am haunted ever, Laura, by your wraith. I walk up and down the terrace wondering if you will ever be here in the body—as you already seem to be in the spirit.
"I am leaving at sunrise, and in three days I shall be upon the sea. You will receive a cable, and so will my mother. The thought of seeing you again—ah, Laura, you will never know what rapture, so intense as to be almost akin to pain, that thought gives me. Lately your letters have seemed a thought more intimate, more confiding—I dare not say less cold. ButI have sworn to myself, and I shall keep my oath, to ask for nothing that cannot be freely given."
Two days later Laura received a wireless message saying that Oliver would be at Freshley the next day.
A YEAR ago, almost to a day, Mrs. Tropenell had been sitting where she was sitting now, awaiting Laura Pavely. Everything looked exactly as it had looked then in the pretty, low drawing-room of Freshley Manor. Nothing had been added to, nothing withdrawn from, the room. The same shaded reading-lamp stood on the little table close to her elbow; the very chrysanthemums might have been the same.
And yet with the woman sitting there everything was different! Of all the sensations—unease, anxiety, foreboding, jealousy—with which her heart had been filled this time last year, only one survived, and of that one she was secretly very much ashamed, for it was jealousy.
And now she was trying with all the force of her nature to banish the ugly thing from her heart.
What must be—must be! If Oliver's heart and soul, as well as the whole of his ardent, virile physical entity, desired Laura, then she, his mother, must help him, as much as lay within her power, to compass that desire.
Since Godfrey Pavely's death, it had been as if Mrs. Tropenell's life had slipped back two or three years. All these last few months she had written to Oliver long diary letters, and Oliver on his side had written to her vivid chronicles of his Mexican life. Perhaps she saw less, rather than more of Laura than she had done in the old days, for Laura, since herwidowhood, had had more to do. She took her duties as the present owner of The Chase very seriously. Still, nothing was changed—while yet in a sense everything had been changed—by the strange, untoward death of Godfrey Pavely.
Oliver's letters were no longer what they had been, they were curiously different, and yet only she, his mother, perchance would have seen the difference, had one of his letters of two years ago and one of his letters of to-day been put side by side.
The love he had borne for the Spanish woman, of whom he had once spoken with such deep feeling, had not affected his relations with his mother. But the love he now bore Laura Pavely had. Not long ago Laura had shown Mrs. Tropenell one of Oliver's letters, and though there was really very little in it, she had been oddly nervous and queer in her manner, hardly giving the older woman time to read it through before she had taken it back out of her hand.
Laura had become more human since her husband's death; it was as if a constricting band had been loosened about her heart. Even so, Oliver's mother often wondered sorely whether Laura would ever welcome Oliver in any character save that of a devoted, discreet, and selfless friend. She doubted it. And yet, when he had written and suggested coming back now, instead of waiting till Christmas, she had not said a word to stop him. And the moment she had heard that he had reached England, and that he was to be here late on this very afternoon, she had sent a note to The Chase and asked Laura to share their first meal.
One thing had made a great difference to Mrs.Tropenell's life during the last few months. That was the constant, familiar presence of Lord St. Amant. Now that he was Lord Lieutenant of the county, he was far more at Knowlton Abbey than he had been for some years, and somehow—neither could have told you why—they had become even closer friends than they had been before.
It was well understood that any supplicant who had Mrs. Tropenell on his side could count on Lord St. Amant's help and goodwill. Though she was of course quite unaware of it, there were again rumours through the whole of the country-side that soon the mistress of Freshley Manor would become Lady St. Amant, and that then the Abbey would be opened as that great house had not been for close on forty years.
And now, to-night, Mrs. Tropenell suddenly remembered that Lord St. Amant was coming to dinner—she had forgotten it in the excitement of Oliver's return. But she told herself, with a kind of eagerness, that her old friend's presence might, after all, make things easier for them all! It is always easier to manage a party of four people than of three. Also, it made less marked the fact of Laura's presence on this, the first evening, of Oliver's return home.
Mrs. Tropenell had not been able to discover from her son's manner whether he was glad or sorry Laura was coming to-night. And sitting there, waiting for her guests, she anxiously debated within herself whether Oliver would have preferred to see Laura for the first time alone. Of course he could have offered to go and fetch her; but he had not availed himself of that excuse, and his mother knew that she would be present at their meeting.
The door opened, quietly, and as had been the case a year ago, Mrs. Tropenell saw her beautiful visitor before Laura knew that there was any one in the darkened room.
Once more Mrs. Tropenell had a curious feeling as if time had slipped back, and that everything was happening over again. The only difference was that Laura to-night was all in black, with no admixture of white. Still, by an odd coincidence the gown she was wearing was made exactly as had been that other gown last year, and through the thin black folds of chiffon her lovely white arms shone palely, revealingly....
And then, as her guest came into the circle of light, Mrs. Tropenell realised with a feeling almost of shock that Laura was very much changed. She no longer had the sad, strained, rather severe look on her face which had been there last year. She looked younger, instead of older, and there was an expression of half-eager, half-shrinking expectation on her face—to-night.
"Aunt Letty? How good of you to ask me——" But her voice sank away into silence as the sound of quick footsteps were heard hastening across the hall.
The door opened, and Oliver Tropenell came in.
He walked straight to Laura, and took both her hands in his. "You got my cable?" he asked.
And then Laura blushed, overwhelmingly. She had had said nothing of that cable to Mrs. Tropenell.
And as they stood there—Oliver still grasping Laura's hands in his—the mother, looking on, saw with a mixture of joy and of jealous pain that Laurastood before him as if hypnotised, her heavy-lidded blue eyes fixed upwards on his dark, glowing face.
Suddenly they all three heard the at once plaintive and absurd hoot of Lord St. Amant's motor—and it was as if a deep spell had suddenly been broken. Slowly, reluctantly, Oliver released Laura's hands, and Mrs. Tropenell exclaimed in a voice which had a tremor in it: "It's Lord St. Amant, Oliver. I forgot that he had asked himself to dinner to-night. He said he could not come till half-past eight, but I suppose he got away earlier than he expected to do."
And then with the coming into the room of her old friend, life seemed suddenly to become again normal, and though by no means passionless, yet lacking that curious atmosphere of violent, speechless emotion that had been there a moment or two ago. Of the four it was Laura who seemed the most moved. She came up and slipped her hand into Mrs. Tropenell's, holding it tightly, probably unaware that she was doing so.
After the first few words of welcome to Oliver, Lord St. Amant plunged into local talk with Mrs. Tropenell, and as he did so, he looked a little wryly at Laura. Why didn't she move away and talk to Oliver? Why did she stick close like that to Letty—to Letty, with whom he had hoped to spend a quiet, cosy, cheerful evening?
But Laura, for the first time in her life, felt as if she were no longer in full possession of herself. It was as if she had passed into the secret keeping of another human being; she had the sensation that her mind was now in fee to another human mind, her will overawed by another human will. And there wasa side to her nature which rebelled against this sudden, quick transference of herself.
With what she now half-realised to have been a kind of self-imposed hypocrisy, she had told herself often, during the last few months, that Oliver and she when they again met would become dear, dear friends. He would be the adorer, she the happy, calm, adored. And that then, after a long probation, perhaps of years, in any case not for a long, long time, she might bring herself half reluctantly, and entirely for his sake, to consider the question of—re-marriage.
But now? Since Oliver had taken her hands in his, and gazed down speechlessly into her eyes, she had known that it was he, not she, would set the pace in their new relationship, and that however sincere his self-imposed restraint and humility. So it was that Laura instinctively clung to Mrs. Tropenell's hand.
The passion of love, which so often makes even quite a young man feel older, steadier, more responsible, has quite the opposite effect on a woman. To every woman love brings back youth, and the deeper, the more instinctive the love, the greater the tremors and the uncertainties which, according to a hypocritical convention, belong only to youth.
The years which Laura had spent with Godfrey Pavely seemed obliterated. Memories of her married life which had been very poignantly present in the early days of her widowhood, filling her with mingled repugnance, pain, and yes, remorse, were now erased from the tablets of her mind. She felt as if it was the young, ignorant Laura—that Laura who had been so full of high, almost defiant ideals—who was now standing, so full of confused longing and hope,if yet also a little fearful, on the threshold of a new, wonderful life....
Good-breeding and the observance of certain long-established, social usages have an inestimable value in all the great crises of human existence. To-night each of the other three felt the comfort of Lord St. Amant's presence among them. His agreeable ease of manner, his pleasant, kindly deference to the older and the younger lady, all helped to lessen the tension, and make what each of his companions felt to be a breathless time of waiting, easier to live through.
He himself was surprised and shocked by the change he saw in Oliver Tropenell's face. Oliver looked worn, haggard, yet filled with a kind of fierce gladness. He appeared to-night not so much the happy, as the exultant, conqueror of fate. He talked, and talked well, of the political situation in Mexico, of certain happenings which had taken place in England during his absence, and though now and again Mrs. Tropenell joined in the talk, on the whole she, like Laura, was content to listen to the two men.
After dinner, while they were still alone in the drawing-room, Laura began to talk, rather eagerly, of her little Alice. She had begun to wonder whether it would not be well for the child to go to school as a weekly boarder. There was such a school within reasonable motoring distance. Alice was becoming rather too grown-up, and unchildlike. She had certain little friends in the town of Pewsbury, but they did not really touch her life.
But even as Mrs. Tropenell and Laura talked the matter over, they both felt their talk to be unreal.Each of them knew that Laura's second marriage, if ever marry she did, would completely alter the whole situation with regard to Alice. Oliver was not the man to hang up his hat in another man's house—besides, why should he do so? The Chase belonged to Alice, even now.
And then rather suddenly, Laura asked a question: "How long is Oliver going to stay in England, Aunt Letty?"
And Mrs. Tropenell quietly answered, "I should think he would stay till after Christmas. I gather everything is going on quite well out there, thanks to Gillie." She waited a moment, and then repeated, thoughtfully: "Yes—I feel sure Oliver means to stay till after the New Year——"
And then she stopped suddenly. There had come a change over Laura's face. Laura had remembered what Mrs. Tropenell for the moment had not done—that early in January Godfrey Pavely would have been dead exactly a year.
As ten o'clock struck, the other two came in, still talking eagerly to one another.
Lord St. Amant sat down by Laura.
"I'm going to have a little shooting party later on—not now, but early in December," he said. "Mrs. Tropenell is coming, and I hope Oliver too. I wonder if you would do me the great pleasure of being there, Laura? It's a long, long time since you honoured the Abbey with your company——"
He was smiling down at her. "I would ask Alice to come too," he went on, "but I think she'd be bored! Perhaps you'll be bored too? I'm not having any verybrilliant or wonderful people, just a few of the neighbours whom I feel I've rather neglected."
Laura laughed. "Of course I shall enjoy coming!" she exclaimed.
Oliver was standing by his mother. Suddenly he muttered, "Mother? Ask Lord St. Amant to come over and speak to you——"
But before she could obey him, Lord St. Amant got up and quickly came over to where Mrs. Tropenell was sitting, leaving a vacant place by Laura.
With his back to the two younger people he sat down close to Mrs. Tropenell, and all at once he saw that her dark eyes were full of tears. He took her hand and patted it gently. "I feel dreadfullyde trop," he murmured. "Can't we go off, we two old folk, to your little room, my dearest? I'm sure you've something you want to show me there, or consult me about?"
And while Lord St. Amant was saying this to his old love, the two on the other side of the room were silent, as if stricken dumb by the nearness each felt to the other.
And at last it was Laura who broke the silence. "I think I must be going home," she said uncertainly.
She looked across at her hostess. "I don't want to make Lord St. Amant think he ought to go too. Perhaps I can slip away quietly?"
"I'll walk back with you."
Oliver spoke with a kind of dry decision.
He got up. "Mother? I'm taking Laura home. I shan't be long. Perhaps Lord St. Amant will stay till I come back. It's quite early."
He turned to Laura, now standing by his side:"Say good-bye to them now. I'll fetch your shawl, and we'll go out through the window."
Laura obeyed, as in a dream. "Good-bye, Aunt Letty. Good-night, Lord St. Amant—I shall enjoy being at the Abbey."
She suffered herself to be kissed by the one—her hand pressed by the other. Then she turned as if in answer to an unseen signal.
Oliver was already back in the room, her Shetland shawl on his arm. He put it round her shoulders, taking care not to touch her as he did so; then he opened the long French window, and stood aside for a moment while she stepped through into the moonlight, out of doors.
They were now in the beech avenue, in a darkness that seemed the more profound because of the streaks of silvery moonlight which lay just behind them. But even so, the white shawl Laura was wearing showed dimly against the depths of shade encompassing her.
All at once Oliver turned and said so suddenly that she, walking by his side, started: "Laura? Do you remember this time last year?"
And as she answered the one word "Yes," he went on: "It was to-night, just a year ago, that I promised to become your friend. And as long as you were another man's wife, I kept my promise, at any rate to the letter. If you tell me to go away for the next three months, I will do so—to-morrow. If I stay, I must stay, Laura, as your lover."
As she remained silent, he went on quickly: "Do not misunderstand me. I only ask for the right to love you—I do not ask for any return."
She was filled with an exquisite, tremulous joy. But that side of her nature which was restrained, and which had been so atrophied, was ignorant of the generosities of love, and shrank from quick surrender. So all she said, in a voice which sounded very cold to herself, was, "But that, Oliver, would surely not be fair—to you?"
"Quite fair!" he exclaimed eagerly—"quite fair. In no case would I ever wish to obtain what was not freely vouchsafed."
He muttered, in a voice so low as to be scarcely audible, some further words which moved her strangely, and vibrated to a chord which had never before been touched, save to jar and to offend.
"To me aught else were sacrilege," were the words Oliver Tropenell said.
By now Laura's eyes had become accustomed to the darkness. She could see her companion's tall, at once broad-shouldered and lean figure, standing at rights angles to herself, keeping its distance....
Taking a step forward, she put out her right hand a little blindly, and laid it on the sleeve of his coat. Laura had always been an inarticulate woman, but with that touch, that fleeting moment of contact between them, something of what she was feeling took flight from her heart to his——
"Laura?"
He grasped her hands as he had grasped them three hours ago when they had first met in his mother's presence. And then again he breathed her name. But this time the touch of doubting, incredulous joy had passed into something ardent, exultant, possessive, and she was in his arms—her self-absorption, her fastidiousness,her lifelong shrinking from any strong emotion, swept away by a force which she had once only known sufficiently to abhor and to condemn, but which she now felt to be divine.
And then Oliver Tropenell said a strange thing indeed. "To have secured this immortal moment, I would willingly die a shameful, ignoble death to-morrow," were the words he whispered, as he strained Laura to his heart, as his lips sought and found her lips....
At last they paced slowly on, and Laura found herself secretly exulting in the violence of Oliver's emotion, and in the broken, passionate terms of endearment with which he endowed her. That her response was that of a girl rather than that of a woman was to her lover an added ecstasy. It banished the hateful, earthy shade of Godfrey Pavely—that shade which had haunted Oliver Tropenell all that evening, even in his mother's house.
Just as they were about to step out from under the arch of the beech trees on to the high road, he again took her in his arms. "Laura?" he whispered. "May I tell my mother?" But as he felt her hesitating: "No!" he exclaimed. "Forget that I asked you that! We will say nothing yet. Secrecy is a delicious concomitant of love." She heard the added, whispered words, uttered as if to his own heart, "At least so I have ever found it." And they were words which a little troubled Laura. Surely she was the first woman he had ever loved?
"Aunt Letty has a right to know," she murmured. "But no one else, Oliver, must know, till January is past." And then she hung her head, perchance alittle ashamed of this harking back to the conventions of her everyday life.
He was surprised to hear her say further and with an effort, "I would rather Lord St. Amant didn't know. We shall be staying at Knowlton Abbey together in December."
"We shall," he said exultantly. "For that I thank God!"
Then suddenly he released her from out of his strong encompassing arms, and stooping down very low he kissed the hem of her long black gown....
After they had parted Oliver Tropenell waited on and on in the dark garden till he heard Lord St. Amant's car drive away. Then he walked quickly across the lawn and back into his mother's drawing-room.
"Mother?" he said briefly. "Laura and I are going to be married. But we do not wish any one to know this till—till February."
Even now he could not wholly banish Godfrey Pavely's intrusive presence from his Laura-filled heart.
TO any imaginative mind there is surely something awe-inspiring in the thought of the constant secret interlocking of lives which seem as unlikely ever to meet, in a decisive sense, as are two parallel lines.
How amazed, how bewildered, Laura Pavely would have been could she have visioned even a hundredth part of the feeling concerning herself which filled her nearest neighbour, Katty Winslow's, heart!
Even in the old days Katty had disliked Laura, and had regarded her with a mixture of contempt and envy. And now that Oliver Tropenell had come back—now that Katty suspected him of being Laura's potential, if not actual, lover—she grew to hate the woman who had always been kind to her with an intense, calculating hate.
It seemed as if she hardly ever looked out of one of her windows without seeing Oliver on his way to The Chase, or Laura on her way to Freshley—and this although the secret lovers behaved with great discretion, for Oliver was less, rather than more, with Laura than he used to be in the old days when Godfrey was alive. Also, wherever Laura happened to be, her child—cheerful, eager little Alice—was sure to be close by.
Laura, so much Katty believed herself to have discovered, was now happy, in her cold, unemotional way, in the possession of a man's ardent devotion,while she, Katty, who had asked so comparatively little of life, had been deprived of the one human being who could, and perhaps in time would, have given her all she wanted.
Poor Godfrey Pavely! No one ever spoke of him now, in that neighbourhood where once he had counted for so much. Already it was as if he had never been. But to Katty Winslow he was still an insistent, dominating presence. Often she brooded over his untimely death, and sometimes she upbraided herself for not having made some sort of effort to solve the mystery. The reward was still in being, but one day, lately, when she had made some allusion to it in Laura's presence, Laura, reddening, had observed that she was thinking of withdrawing it.
"Lord St. Amant and the Scotland Yard people never approved of it," she said, "and as you know, Katty, it has led to nothing."
Early in October, Laura, Oliver and Alice, passing by Rosedean one day, turned in through the gate. "Why shouldn't we go in and ask Katty to come to tea?" It was Laura's suggestion. Somehow she was sorry for Katty—increasingly sorry. Yet she could not help feeling glad when Harber coldly informed her that Mrs. Winslow had left home, and would not be back for ten days.
At the very time that happy little group of people was at her door, Katty herself was standing in a queue of people waiting to take her ticket at York station.
Though Mrs. Winslow would have been honestly surprised had any one told her she was sentimental,she had actually come down by an earlier train than was necessary in order that she might retrace the ways that she and her friend had trodden together a year ago in January.
She had first gone to the Minster, moving swiftly along the paved streets where she had walked and talked slowly, pleasantly, with the dead man. Then she had wandered off to the picturesque thoroughfare lined with curiosity shops. How kind, how generous Godfrey had been to her just here! Every time she looked up in her pretty little drawing-room at Rosedean, his gift met her eye.
While she was engaged on this strange, painful pilgrimage, there welled up in Katty's heart a flood of agonised regret and resentment. She told herself bitterly that Godfrey's death had aged her—taken the spring out of her. Small wonder indeed that in these last few weeks she should have come to hate Laura with a steady, burning flame of hate....
So it was that Katty Winslow was in a queer mental and physical state when she returned to the big railway station to complete her journey. She did not feel at all in the mood to face the gay little houseparty where she was sure of an uproarious, as well as of an affectionate, welcome.
As she stood in the queue of rather rough North-country folk, waiting to take her third-class ticket, there swept over her a sudden, vivid recollection of that incident—the hearing of a voice which at the time had seemed so oddly familiar—which had happened on the day she had parted from Godfrey Pavely for the last time.
And then—as in a blinding, yet illuminating flash—therecame to her the conviction, nay, more, the certain knowledge, as to whose voice it had been that she had heard on the last occasion when she had stood there, in the large, bare booking office. The voice she had heard—she was quite,quitesure of it now, it admitted of no doubt in her mind at all—had been the peculiar, rather high-pitched, voice of Gillie Baynton....
She visualised the arresting appearance of the man who had been the owner of the voice, and who had gazed at her with that rather impudent, jeering glance of bold admiration. Of course it was Gillie, but Gillie disguised—Gillie with his cheeks tinted a curious greenish-orange colour, Gillie with his fair hair dyed black, Gillie—her brain suddenly supplied the link she was seeking for feverishly—exactly answering to the description of the sinister Fernando Apra—the self-confessed murderer of Godfrey Pavely. Katty left the queue in which she was standing, and walked across to a bench.
There she sat down, and, heedless of the people about her, put her chin on her hand and stared before her.
What did her new knowledge portend? What did it lead to? Was Laura associated with this extraordinary, bewildering discovery of hers? But the questions she put to herself remained unanswered. She failed to unravel even a little strand of the tangled skein.
Slowly she got up again, and once more took her place in the queue outside the booking office. It would be folly to lose her train because of this discovery, astounding, illuminating, as it was.
She was so shaken, so excited, that she longed to confide in one of the Haworths, brother or sister, to whose house she was going—but some deep, secretive instinct caused her to refrain from doing that. Still, she was so far unlike herself, that after her arrival the members of the merry party all commented to one another on the change they saw in her.
"She's as pretty as ever," summed up one of them at last, "but somehow she looks different."
All that night Katty lay awake, thinking, thinking—trying to put together a human puzzle of which the pieces would not fit. Gillie Baynton, even if he disliked his brother-in-law, had no motive for doing the awful thing she was now beginning to suspect he had done. She found herself floating about in a chartless sea of conjectures, of suspicions....
She felt better, more in possession of herself, the next morning. Yet she was still oppressed with an awful sense of bewilderment and horror, uncertain, too, as to what use she could make of her new knowledge.
Should she go straight up to town and tell Sir Angus Kinross of what had happened to her yesterday? Somehow she shrank from doing that. He would suspect her of simply trying to snatch the reward. Katty had never been quite at ease with the Commissioner of Police—never quite sure as to what he knew, or did not know, of her past relations to Godfrey Pavely. And yet those relations had been innocent enough, in all conscience! Sometimes Katty, when thinking of those terrible times last January, had felt sorry she had not told Sir Angus the truth as to that joint journey to York. But, having hidden thefact at first, she had been ashamed to confess it later—and now she would have to confess it.
She was still in this anxious, debating-within-herself frame of mind when, at luncheon, something happened which seemed to open a way before her.
Her host, Tony Haworth, was talking of the neighbourhood, and he said, rather ruefully: "Of course a man like that old rascal who calls himself Greville Howard is worse than no good as a neighbour! For one thing he's a regular recluse. He hardly ever goes outside his park gates. I suppose the conscience of a man who's done so many naughty deeds in a good world is apt to make him feel a bit nervous!"
"How far off does he live from here?" asked Katty slowly. The scene at the inquest rose up before her, especially that moment when "Greville Howard's" affidavit, accompanied by his doctor's certificate, had been read aloud amid a ripple of amusement from the general public present.
"About four miles—but no one ever sees him. He's more or less of an invalid. It's a beautiful old house, and they say he's got some wonderful pictures and furniture there."
"Does he live quite alone?"
Her host hesitated. "Well, yes—but sometimes he has a lady of sorts there. He brought one back from France last June (he has a villa at Monte Carlo), and then—" Tony Haworth hesitated again, but Katty was looking at him eagerly—"then something dreadful happened! The poor woman died. She got a chill, developed pneumonia, and, to do the old rascal justice, he got down the biggest man he could from town. Butit was no good—she died just the same! As far as I know, he's quite alone now—and precious lonely he must find it!"
Katty was very silent for the rest of the meal, and after luncheon she drew her host aside.
"Look here," she said abruptly. "I've something to tell you, Tony. I want to see that person we were speaking about—I mean Greville Howard. I want to see him about Godfrey Pavely. You know he is one of the few people who actually saw the man who killed Godfrey. At the time of the inquest he was ill, and so couldn't attend—I think the police thought he shammed illness. Sir Angus Kinross was convinced (and so was Lord St. Amant) that this Greville Howard knew a great deal more about Fernando Apra than he was willing to tell."
Tony Haworth was much taken aback.
"My dear girl, I don't think there's a chance of your getting at him! However, of course you shall be driven over as soon as you like. Hemaysee you—you'renot the sort of person he's afraid of."
He looked at her a little sharply. "You never had any money dealings with him, had you, Katty? Now, honour bright——"
"Of course not," she laughed. "Is it likely? My husband may have had, in the long, long ago—but I, never!"
An hour or so later, Katty Winslow, alone in her friend's motor, found herself before the lodge of the big lonely place where the retired money-lender—a Yorkshireman by birth—had set up his householdgods. The great gates were closed and locked, but there was a bell, and she rang it.
After a certain interval the lodge-keeper came out.
"I've come to see Mr. Greville Howard," she explained, and smiled amiably at the man.
He looked at her doubtfully. "The master don't see no one excepting by appointment," he said gruffly.
"I think he'll see me."
And then an extraordinary piece of luck befell Katty Winslow. While she was standing there, parleying, she suddenly saw a man inside the park, walking towards the gates.
"I think," she said boldly, "that thatisMr. Greville Howard?" and she saw by the lodgekeeper's face that she was right in her guess.
Moving gracefully forward, she slid past him, and thus she stood just within the gates, while slowly there advanced towards her—and, had she but known it, towards many others—Fate, in the person of a tall, thin, some would have said a very distinguished-looking, elderly man.
As he came up, he looked at Katty with a measuring, thoughtful glance, and his eyes travelled beyond her to the well-appointed motor drawn up in the lonely country road outside.
Now this was the sort of situation to amuse and stimulate, rather than alarm, Katty, the more so that the stranger, who was now close to her, was looking at her pleasantly rather than otherwise.
She took a step towards him.
"Mr. Howard?" she exclaimed, in her full, agreeablevoice. "I wonder if you would be so kind as to grant me a short interview? I want to see you about the late Mr. Godfrey Pavely. He was a great friend of mine."
As she uttered the dead banker's name, Greville Howard's face stiffened into sudden watchfulness. But he said slowly: "May I enquire your name, madam?"
"Oh yes," she said eagerly. "My name is Winslow—I am Mrs. Winslow. I was Godfrey Pavely's oldest friend—we were children together."
"Ah!" he exclaimed. "Your name comes back to me. I think you were mentioned at the inquest, Mrs. Winslow? But you did not give any evidence, if I remember rightly."
"No, I was not asked to give evidence," she answered. "And you yourself, Mr. Howard, were too ill to come and say what you knew about—about——"
"About Mr. Pavely's murderer," he said smoothly.
They were now walking side by side slowly away from the gate, down a broad, well-kept carriage road, the lodge-keeper staring after them.
"Do you know Sir Angus Kinross?" asked Katty's companion suddenly.
She gave him a curious, side-glance look. "I saw him several times last winter," she said hesitatingly. "But, Mr. Howard?—I don't like him!"
"Neither do I." He snapped the words out. "I could have told Scotland Yard a good deal if Kinross had taken the trouble to be civil to me—but he sent me down a fellow whose manner I exceedingly resented."
There followed a long pause. Katty became unpleasantly aware that this strange-looking man—she wondered how old he was—sixty-five?—seventy?—was looking at her with a rather pitiless scrutiny.
"I can see that you are anxious to know the truth," he observed. He added: "Are you aware that the reward has just been withdrawn?"
"No, I didn't know that. But I'm not surprised," she said.
She glanced at him, puzzled, and a little nervous. His keen eyes, grey-green in tint, were much younger than the rest of his face.
"I think I know part of the truth," he went on. "And perhaps you will be able to supply the other part, Mrs. Winslow. I confess to a certain curiosity about the matter."
They were now within sight of a charming-looking old house. It was charming, and yet there was something forlorn about its very perfection. The low, oak, nail-studded front door was shut, not hospitably open—as is generally the case with the door of a Yorkshire country house. But Mr. Greville Howard pulled the bell, and at once the door was opened by a respectable-looking manservant.
"I am taking this lady to my study, and I do not wish to be disturbed till I ring. When I ring you can bring tea."
Katty followed her host through a short, vaulted passage into a square hall. It was a beautiful apartment, in keeping with the delicate, austere charm of the house outside. And round the hall there were some fine Dutch easel pictures.
Out of the hall there opened various doors. Greville Howard pushed open one, already ajar, and Katty walked through into what she at once realised was her companion's own habitual living-room.
With all her cleverness, and her acquaintance with the art-furnishing jargon of the day, Katty would have been surprised to know the value of the contents of this comparatively small room. It contained some notable examples of the best period of early French Empire furniture. This was specially true of the mahogany and brass inlaid dwarf bookcases which ran round three sides of the apartment. Above the bookcases, against the turquoise-blue silk with which the walls were hung, were a number of Meissonier's paintings of Napoleon.