As so often happens after hours or days of crises, and even of quarrel,
things went better for a while after Laura's return to The Chase.
True, life was now, even more than before, dull, sad, and difficult. She
missed Oliver Tropenell's constant companionship and stimulating talk,
more than she was willing to acknowledge even to her innermost self. And
yet, when Godfrey spoke of the other man's absence from Freshley with
regret, his words jarred on her, and made her feel vaguely ashamed. Yet
surely, surely she had nothing to reproach herself with in the matter of
Oliver Tropenell? She would so gladly have kept him as Godfrey's friend
as well as her own.
They had made it up, those two ill-matched people--made it up, that is,
after a fashion. They were now much where they had been six months ago,
just before Oliver Tropenell with his strong, masterful personality had
come into their joint lives.
And Godfrey? Godfrey Pavely was happier, more complacent than usual,
during those late autumn days. He also was ashamed--though not
unreasonably so--of the absurd importance he had attached to those two
vulgar anonymous letters! He was sorry now that he had spoken of the
matter to Oliver Tropenell, for that odd, rather awkward talk of theirs
on the matter had been perhaps a contributory cause of the other man's
sudden departure. If Oliver came home for Christmas, he, Godfrey, would
"make it all right."
The banker had yet another reason for feeling life pleasanter than usual
just now. He was engaged in a rather big bit of financial business of a
kind his soul loved, for it was secret, immediately profitable, and with
a gambling risk attached to it. The only person to whom he had said a
word concerning the affair was Katty Winslow, and even to her, for he
was a very prudent man, he had been quite vague.
With Katty he was becoming daily more intimate. Laura's cold aloofness
made him seek, instinctively, a kinder, warmer, and yes, occasionally, a
tenderer feminine presence. For the first time, lately, Godfrey had
begun to tell himself that Katty would have made an almost perfect
wife.... And Katty could have told you almost the exact moment when that
thought had first flashed upon Godfrey Pavely's brain. But she also knew
that so far he was content, most irritatingly content, with the _status
quo_. Not so she----And one evening Katty tried an experiment which was
on the whole remarkably successful, though its effects were strangely
different from what she had expected.
While dining alone with Godfrey and Laura at The Chase, she startled her
host and hostess by throwing out a careless word as to the possibility
of her leaving Rosedean--of letting the house furnished, for a year....
Laura was astonished to see how much this casual remark of Katty's upset
Godfrey. He uttered an exclamation of deep surprise and annoyance, and
his wife told herself bitterly how strange it was that Godfrey, feeling
so strongly about Katty, should not understand how she, Laura, felt
about Gillie. After all, Gillie was her own brother, and Katty was not
Godfrey's sister--only an old playmate and friend!
Godfrey was, in very truth, much more than upset at those few careless
words of his old friend--playmate, in the sense that Laura meant, she
had never been. So disturbed and taken aback indeed that he lay awake
much of that night.
The next morning he broke his walk into Pewsbury by going into Rosedean,
this being the very first time he had ever done such a thing.
He was kept waiting a few moments--as a matter of fact only a very few
moments--in the familiar little drawing-room, before Katty, wearing a
charming, pale blue dressing-gown, edged with swansdown, joined him.
As was her way, she began speaking at once. "Why, what's the matter?"
she exclaimed. "Has anything gone wrong, Godfrey?"
He answered irritably, "No, not that I know of. But I've something to
say to you." He pulled out his big, old-fashioned gold repeater. "It's
twenty to ten--I thought I'd find you down!"
"I always breakfast upstairs in my own room. But I didn't keep you
waiting long----"
She was still a little breathless, for she had come down very quickly.
And then he began, with no preamble: "I want to know if you really meant
what you said last night about letting this house furnished for a year?
I'm by no means sure if the terms of your lease allow for your doing
that; I shall have to look into it after I get to the Bank. Still, I
thought I'd better come and see you first."
Katty grew very pink. "Oh, Godfrey!" she exclaimed. "Surely you wouldn't
be so unkind----?"
There came over her pretty face that curious, obstinate look which he
had already seen there often enough to dread. Also she made him feel
ashamed of himself. But how attractive she looked--how fresh and
dainty--like a newly opened rose! Katty had twisted up her hair anyhow,
but that only made her look younger, and more natural.
"Let's come out into the garden," she said coaxingly. "Surely you can
stay for a few minutes? This is the very first time you've ever been to
see me in the morning! Why not telephone through and say you've been
delayed,--that you can't be at the Bank till eleven?" She was edging him
as she spoke towards the corner where, behind a screen, there stood the
telephone instrument.
As if compelled to obey, he took up the receiver, and uttered the
familiar words, "Pewsbury 4." And at once there came an answer.
"Is that you, Privet? What a comfort it is to know that I can always
rely on your being there, whoever else isn't! This is only to say that I
have been delayed, and that I don't expect to be at the Bank till
eleven."
Then came the calming, comforting answer, "Very good. That'll be all
right, sir. There's nothing much doing this morning, from what I could
make out when I was looking over your letters just now."
So Godfrey Pavely, feeling rather as if he was being driven along by a
pleasant fate, hung the receiver up, and followed the blue-garbed
figure out of doors, into a little pleasance now filled with exquisite
autumnal colouring, and pungent, searching scents.
In the furthest corner of the walled garden, which was so much older
than the house itself, was a tiny lawn surrounded by high hedges. There
they could talk without any fear of being overlooked or overheard; and,
before her visitor could stop her, Katty had dragged two cane-seated
easy chairs out of her little summer-house.
They both sat down, but this time Katty warily remained silent. She was
waiting for her companion to begin.
"You weren't serious, were you?" he said at last, and she felt the
underlying pain and surprise in his voice. "You don't really mean that
you want to go away, Katty? Where would you go to? What would you do?
Have the Standens asked you to go abroad again--not for a whole year,
surely?"
"No," she said slowly, "not the Standens. If you must know, I've been
offered a furnished cottage rent-free by those friends of mine, the
Haworths, who live near York. The truth is, I can't afford to keep up
Rosedean! I hate saying this to you, but it's the truth."
"If you didn't go away so much----" he began irritably.
But she cut across him sharply, "After all, I've a right to go away if I
like! But it isn't that, Godfrey. I've gone into it all--really I have!
Even if I never left Rosedean I should still be too poor to go on living
here comfortably."
"How much too poor?" he asked.
Katty drew a long breath. In a sense she was speaking at random, but no
one would have known it from the tone in which she answered: "About a
hundred a year--a little less, a little more."
And then Godfrey Pavely said something which very much surprised Katty.
"About that thousand pounds which was left to you the other day," he
said hesitatingly.
"Well? That'll only bring in thirty-five pounds a year; you made all the
arrangements," she added wearily. "You wouldn't let me have it--as I
wanted you to do."
"I couldn't, Katty, you know that! I didn't ask your aunt to make me
your trustee."
"Well, that thirty-five pounds won't make any difference."
She was sorry now she had told him of the little house on her generous
friends' estate. Perhaps he would offer to let her off the Rosedean
rent. But Katty had quite made up her mind to cut the cable, and make a
fresh start elsewhere.
"Wait a bit," he said slowly, "women always run on so fast! When I
mentioned that thousand pounds, I was not thinking of giving it you, as
you call it, to spend. I was thinking of that foreign investment I
mentioned to you last week. If you're willing to take the risk, I might
stretch a point, for if things go well that thousand pounds might easily
be trebled in the course of the next two years. I'm so sure of that,
that I'm quite willing to advance you, say, two hundred pounds."
He knew quite well that his proposal was utterly illogical, and bore, so
to speak, no relation to the fact that the investment he was proposing
might turn up trumps.
Katty's eyes sparkled. She was very fond of ready money, and it was such
a long, long time since she had had any. "D'you mean you'd really give
me two hundred pounds _now_?" she asked joyfully.
And Godfrey, with his eyes fixed on the grass, said in a shamed voice,
"Yes--that is what I do mean."
Somehow it hurt him to feel how that sum of money, so trifling to him,
affected her so keenly. He was better pleased with her next question.
"What sort of an investment exactly is it?"
"It's in the nature of a company promotion," he said slowly. "And of
course you must regard anything I tell you about it as absolutely
private."
"Yes, I quite understand that!"
He drew a piece of paper out of his pocket. "As a matter of fact I've
got a few facts about it jotted down here."
She drew her chair rather nearer to his, and Godfrey Pavely, turning his
narrow yet fleshy face towards her, began speaking with far more
eagerness and animation than usual. Katty, who was by no means a fool
where such things were concerned, listened absorbedly while he explained
the rather big bit of financial business in which he was now interested.
After he had been speaking to her without interruption for some minutes,
Katty exclaimed: "Yes, I think I see now exactly what you mean! There
certainly doesn't seem much risk attached to it--at any rate as regards
the start off, as it were. But what made these French bankers pick _you_
out, Godfrey? After all, they're doing you a very good turn."
"I don't exactly know why they picked me out, as you call it----" he
spoke hesitatingly. "But during that year I spent in Paris I came across
a great many of that sort of people. My father got me the best possible
introductions."
The piece of paper on which he had jotted certain notes and calculations
was a large piece of thin foreign notepaper covered with small
handwriting in the diluted ink which some French business men use.
"Can you read French?" he asked doubtfully.
She answered rather sharply, "Yes, of course I can!" and held out her
hand.
The letter, which bore a Paris address, and the date of a fortnight
back, was from the French banking house of Zosean & Co. It explained at
some length that a client of the bank, a wealthy South American of
Portuguese extraction named Fernando Apra, had become possessed of an
estate on the coast of Portugal to which was attached a gambling
concession. The idea was to make the place a kind of Portuguese Monte
Carlo, and the present possessor was very desirous that English capital
and English brains should be put into the company. The returns promised
were enormous, and there seemed to be little or no risk attached to the
business--if it was run on the right lines.
"I have gone into the matter very thoroughly," said Godfrey Pavely, "and
I have convinced myself that it's all right. This Fernando Apra already
has a London office. I managed to see him there for a few minutes last
week. His real headquarters are in Paris."
"And are you finding all the money?" asked Katty eagerly. "Will it be
all your money and _my_ thousand pounds, Godfrey? In that case I
suppose we shall get all the profits?"
He smiled a little at woman's cupidity. "No," he said, "I haven't been
able to find it all myself. But I've managed to get in a very good man.
Some one with whom I've done business before, Katty."
"What's his name?" she asked inquisitively.
Godfrey Pavely waited a moment. "I don't know that I ought to tell
you--" he said uncomfortably. "He doesn't want to appear in the
business."
"Of course you ought to tell me!" All sorts of strange ideas floated
through Katty's mind. Was he going to say "Oliver Tropenell"? She rather
expected he was.
"Well, I _will_ tell you," he said, "for I know you can hold your
tongue. The name of the man who's going into this business with me is
Greville Howard."
"D'you mean the big money-lender?" Katty couldn't help a little tone of
doubt, of rather shocked surprise, creeping into her voice.
"Yes," he said doggedly, "I do mean the man who was once a great
money-lender. He's retired now--in fact he's living----" and then he
stopped himself.
"Why, of course!" Katty felt quite excited. "He's living in Yorkshire,
near the Haworths! They've often talked about him to me! They don't know
him--he won't know anybody. He's a rather queer fish, isn't he,
Godfrey?"
"He's absolutely straight about money," exclaimed Godfrey Pavely
defensively. "I've had dealings with him over many years. In fact he's
the ideal man for this kind of thing. He has all sorts of irons in the
fire--financially I mean--on the Continent. He's a big shareholder in
the company that runs the Dieppe and Boulogne Casinos."
He got up. "Well, I ought to be going now. It's all right isn't it,
Katty? You won't talk again of going away?"
"Could you let me have that two hundred pounds this afternoon?" she
asked abruptly.
Godfrey Pavely looked at her with a curious, yearning, rather sad look.
Somehow he would have preferred that Katty should not be quite
so--so--he hardly formulated the thought to himself--so ready to do
_anything_ for money. "Very well," he said. "Very well, my dear"--he
very seldom called her "my dear," but he had done so once or twice
lately. "I'll bring it this afternoon, in notes."
"That _will_ be kind of you," she said gratefully. "But look here,
Godfrey, do take it out of my thousand pounds! Put eight hundred in this
thing."
He shook his head and smiled. Women were queer, curiously unscrupulous
creatures! "That would be right down dishonest of me, Katty."
They were now walking across the little lawn, which was so securely
tucked away, out of sight of any prying window, and before going through
the aperture which had been cut in the hedge, they both turned round and
clasped hands. "Thank you so--so much," she said softly. "You've been a
dear, kind friend to me always, Godfrey."
"Have I?" he said. "Have I, Katty? Not always, I fear."
"Yes, always," and her voice trembled a little.
He bent down and kissed her on the mouth with a kind of shamed,
passionate solemnity which moved, and, yes, a little amused her. What
_queer_, curiously scrupulous creatures men were!
"Go now, or you'll be late," she whispered.
And he went.
PART TWO