There are certain winter days when bed and bath seem to be the only two
tolerable places in the world.
Katty Winslow, on waking up the next morning, that is, on Saturday, the
seventh of January, knew at once, though she was snuggled down deep in
her warm bed, that it was very much colder than it had been the evening
before. She shivered a little, telling herself that perhaps she was not
in as good condition as usual, for she had only just come back from
spending Christmas and the New Year away.
The faithful Harber drew back the curtains, letting in gleams of red
winter sun. And then she brought her mistress a nice cup of hot tea, and
a pretty, wadded, pale-blue bed wrap.
Katty sat up. "I'm not in any hurry to-day," she said. "I'll ring when I
want breakfast." And after having taken her tea she lay down again, and
began to think.
Oddly, or perhaps naturally, enough, her thoughts turned to Godfrey
Pavely. She wondered vaguely where he was, and if he would be home
to-day.
There had been a kind of half arrangement between them that they would
travel down from London together on the Thursday afternoon. That would
have meant for Katty the benefit of The Chase motor--a pleasant as well
as an economical plan--and its owner's company as far as Rosedean.
But Katty had not found Godfrey Pavely at the London station, though she
had lingered about up to the very last moment before taking,
regretfully, a third-class ticket. On arriving at Pewsbury she had also
waited some minutes in the vague hope that Godfrey might have dashed up
just as the train was leaving--not that he was apt to dash at any time,
for he was always very careful of himself, and had a due regard for his
personal dignity. But there was no sign of the familiar figure, and so
Katty had had to take a fly--a slow, smelly, expensive fly--out to
Rosedean.
Yesterday, Friday, had been a rather tiresome, dull day, spent in
hearing from Harber all the disagreeable things which had happened while
she had been away--how Harber's stupid, untrained girl-help had gone and
broken a rather nice piece of china in the drawing-room, and also how it
had come to pass that there were two slates off the roof.
Katty had rather expected Godfrey would come in, if only to apologise
for having failed her during the journey. But the afternoon had gone
slowly by, and at last she felt sure, knowing his ways, that he had not
yet come home. Something must have delayed him--something, perhaps,
connected with that pleasant Portuguese gambling concession which was to
bring them both such a lot of money. But if that were so, she would
almost certainly receive from him this morning one of his rather long,
explanatory letters. Of late Godfrey had fallen into the way of writing
to Katty almost every day when they were apart.
Though Mrs. Winslow meant to keep the fact strictly to herself--for it
was one that might have somewhat surprised even the unsuspicious
Laura--she and Godfrey had actually spent a long day together during
their dual absence from home.
It had fallen out as such pleasant meetings sometimes do fall out, very
naturally and innocently, just a week ago to-day.
Katty, on her way from the south to stay with her friends, the Haworths,
had run up against Godfrey Pavely at King's Cross. That had been a
really extraordinary coincidence, and one of which it would have been
foolish not to take advantage. For it turned out that he also was going
to Yorkshire, and on the business in which they were both interested, to
spend a night with the ex-money-lender, Greville Howard. That gentleman,
it seemed, was making certain difficulties about the matter--he wanted
to stay his hand till he had seen the French bankers who were concerned
with the affair. As he spent each spring in the south of France, that
would not be such a difficulty as it seemed. Still, it was a bore, and
the other had felt he had better go and see him.
After a pleasant journey together, as they were steaming into York
station Godfrey suddenly asked: "Must you go on to your friends at once?
Couldn't you telephone to them to meet you by a later train? I'm in no
hurry." And, smilingly, she had consented.
Of late Katty's heart had become very soft to her old friend. For one
thing he was being so good to her in the matter of money. That two
hundred pounds he had given to her some weeks ago had been followed by
two fifty-pound notes. And yet, though she knew poor Godfrey was quite
unaware of it, her original purpose--the purpose which had so distressed
him, and which, as she well knew, had induced in him such extraordinary
and unusual generosity--had not faltered at all. Katty still meant to
cut the cable, and start a new life elsewhere.
Rosedean was all very well; her close friendship with Godfrey Pavely was
all very well; though of late she had been disagreeably aware that
Godfrey was ashamed--ashamed of giving her that money, ashamed of his
increasing fondness for her, ashamed also of--well, of other little
things which sometimes happened, things which Katty thought quite
unimportant, which she regarded as part of the payment due from her to
Godfrey. But she realised more rather than less, as time went on, that
if she wanted to make anything of her life there must come a change. She
would wait a while, wait perhaps till next autumn--so she had told those
kind friends of hers, the Haworths.
Katty was sometimes surprised to find how sorry she was that things had
not fallen out otherwise. But she had always tried, in all the great
things of life, to look the truth squarely in the face. Only once had
she been caught doing anything else--and that, as we know, had been
years and years ago. She was not likely to make that sort of mistake
now. She had come to see, with a rather painful clearness, that Godfrey
and Laura, however ill they got on together, were not the sort of people
to lend themselves to any kind of juggling with the law to obtain their
liberty.
But she had been disappointed in Oliver Tropenell. She had felt in him
accumulated forces of that explosive energy which leads to determined
action--also she had thought that Gillie would do something.
But the two had disappeared together almost immediately after her talk
with Laura's brother. That was over ten weeks ago now, and neither had
given any sign of life since.
But Katty intended to keep up with Godfrey. For one thing she was keenly
interested in that business in which they were, in a sense, both
engaged. Also one never can tell what life--and death--may not bring
forth. Whatever happened, the link between herself and Godfrey was too
strong ever to be broken. Even if she married again, which she supposed
she would do some time or other, there seemed no reason, to her, at any
rate, why she should not keep up with Godfrey. He was her trustee now,
as well as her oldest friend.
So it was that she had very willingly assented to do him the trifling
favour of spending some further hours in his company.
As they wandered about the old city, and lingered awhile in the great
Minster, neither of them said a word that the whole world might not have
overheard. They visited some of the curiosity shops for which York is
famed, and Katty's companion, with that new generosity which sat on him
so strangely, bought a beautiful, and very costly, old cut-glass pendant
for Rosedean.
They did not meet a soul that either of them knew, excepting, yes,
stop----After they had said goodbye (Godfrey, with a rather shocked
look on his face, for Katty, imprudent, foolish Katty, had woman-like
seemed to expect that he would kiss her in a corner of an empty
waiting-room where at any moment they might have been surprised by some
acquaintance of one or the other of them!)--after, as arranged, they had
said good-bye, and Katty was engaged in taking her ticket for the branch
line station for which she was bound, a curious thing happened.
She suddenly heard a voice, a man's voice, which sounded pleasantly
familiar.
Who could it be? The association evoked was wholly agreeable, but Katty
could not place, in the chambers of her memory, the owner of the rather
peculiar accents which were engaged in asking when the next train back
to London would start.
She had turned round quickly, only to see a small queue of people behind
her, among them surely the owner of that peculiar voice. But no, she did
not know any one there--though among them a man attracted her attention,
for the simple reason that he was staring at her very hard. He was
obviously a foreigner, for his skin was olive-tinted, and he had a
small, black, pointed beard. He stared at Katty with an air of rather
insolent admiration. And then he broke away from the queue, and walked
quickly off, out of the booking-office.
Katty always enjoyed admiration, whatever its source, and yet a queer
kind of shiver had gone through her when this impertinent stranger's
glance rested full on her face. She had had the odious sensation that
the man saw something to be jeered at, as well as admired, in her neat
and attractive self.
* * * * *
At last, reluctantly, Katty got up and went into her well-warmed
comfortable bathroom. It was nice to be home again, at no one's orders
but her own. After she had dressed, she rang, and very soon came her
breakfast, daintily served by the devoted Harber, also the one daily
paper she felt she could afford to take.
Katty was one of the many women to whom the daily picture-paper supplied
a long-felt, if unconscious, want. It gave her just the amount of news,
and the kind of news, that her busy mind, absorbed in other things,
could assimilate comfortably. She was no reader, though sometimes she
would manage to gallop through some book that all the world was talking
about. But newspapers had always bored her. Still, she had become very
fond of the paper she now held in her hand. It only cost a halfpenny a
day, and Katty liked small, sensible economies.
That liking of hers was one of the links which bound her to Godfrey
Pavely, but unlike Godfrey, Katty did not care for money for money's
sake. She only liked money for what money could buy. And sometimes, when
she was in a cheerful, mischievous mood, she would tell herself, with a
smile, that if ever her Castle in Spain turned out to have been built on
a solid foundation--if ever, that is, she became Godfrey Pavely's wife,
she would know how to spend the money he had garnered so carefully. She
felt pretty sure, deep in her heart, that should such an unlikely thing
come to pass, she would know how to "manage" Godfrey, and that, if
surprised, he would not really mind what she did. She always got good
value out of everything she acquired, and that would remain true if,
instead of spending pence, she was ever able to spend pounds.
A little before eleven, just as Katty was beginning to think it was time
for her to finish dressing, she heard the gate of her domain open, and
the voice of little Alice Pavely rise up through the still, frosty air,
mingling with the deeper, gentler tones of Laura.
It was an odd thing, considering that the two women were at any rate in
theory intimate friends, that Laura very, very seldom came to Rosedean.
In fact Katty could not remember a single time when Laura had come in
the morning, an uninvited, unexpected guest. So suddenly poor Katty felt
a little chill of apprehension; she got up from her chair, and
waited....
The front door was opened at once. Then came Harber's hurrying footfalls
on the staircase--and, simultaneously, the garden door at the back of
the house swung to. Laura had evidently sent her little girl out of
doors, into the garden. What could she be coming to say?
Quickly Katty examined her conscience. No, there was nothing that Laura
could possibly have found out. As to that half day spent with Godfrey in
York, Laura was surely the last woman to mind--and if she did mind, she
was quite the last woman to say anything about it!
There came a knock at the door: then Harber's voice, "Mrs. Pavely wants
to know, ma'am, if she can come up and speak to you, just for a minute."
"Ask Mrs. Pavely to come up," said Katty, pleasantly.
A minute later, Laura walked forward into the room. It was the first
time she had been in Katty's bedroom since Rosedean had been first
furnished.
She looked round her with a smile. "Why, Katty," she exclaimed, "how
charming and pretty you've made it all! You've added quite a number of
things since I was here last."
"Only the curtains," said Katty quickly (oh, how relieved she felt!),
"only the curtains, and perhaps that arm-chair, Laura."
"Yes, I suppose that _is_ all, but somehow it looks more."
Laura looked exactly as she always looked, rather paler perhaps than
usual, but then Laura was pale. She had that peculiar clear, warm
whiteness of skin that is compared by its admirers to a camellia; this
morning, her lovely, deep blue eyes looked tired, as if she had been
sleeping badly.
"I've really come to ask if you know where Godfrey is? We expected him
home on Thursday. Then he sent a telephone message saying that he
couldn't be back till yesterday. No time was mentioned, but as he had a
lot of appointments at the Bank we of course thought he would be back
early. I myself sat up for him last night till after the last train, but
now, this morning, I've heard nothing from him--and Mr. Privet has heard
nothing."
"What an odd thing!" exclaimed Katty. She really did think it very odd,
for Godfrey was the most precise of men.
She waited a moment, then said truthfully, "No, I haven't the slightest
idea where he is. He wrote me a line late last week about a little
investment of mine. I've got the letter somewhere."
Katty was trying to make up her mind as to whether she should say
anything concerning that joint journey to York. At last she decided not
to do so. It had nothing to do with Godfrey's absence now.
"Doesn't Mr. Privet know where he is?" she asked. "That really _is_ very
odd, Laura."
"Of course Mr. Privet knows where Godfrey was up to Thursday morning. He
stayed where he always does stay when in London, at the Hungerford
Hotel, in Trafalgar Square. He's always stayed there--they know him, and
make him very comfortable. But Mr. Privet telephoned through there
yesterday--as a matter of fact I've only just heard this--and they told
him that Godfrey had left the hotel on Thursday morning. But the
extraordinary thing is," and now Laura really did look somewhat
troubled--"that they were expecting him back there to pack, to leave for
here--at least so the manager understood him to say. He went out in the
morning, and then he didn't come back, as they thought he would do, to
luncheon. All his things are still at the Hungerford Hotel."
Katty began to feel a little uneasy. "Perhaps he's had an accident," she
said. "After all, accidents _do_ happen. Have you done anything, Laura?"
Laura shook her head. "What seems to make the theory of an accident
unlikely is that telephone message. You see, he telephoned quite late on
Thursday saying that he would stay in town over the night. But he didn't
send a similar message to the Bank, as any one knowing Godfrey would
certainly have expected him to do, and he didn't let them know at the
Hungerford Hotel that he would be away for the night. It's all rather
mysterious."
"Yes, it is," said Katty.
"I wonder--" Laura grew a little pink--"I wonder," she said again, "if
you know on what business Godfrey went up to town? Mr. Privet would
rather like to know that."
And then Katty grew a little pink, too. She hesitated. "No, I don't know
what business took him away. You forget that I myself have been away for
quite a long time--I only came back on Thursday afternoon."
"Why, of course!" exclaimed Laura. "I forgot that. You've been away
nearly a fortnight, haven't you?"
"Yes. First I went right down to the south, and then up to Yorkshire."
Somehow she felt impelled to say this.
But Katty's visits were of no interest to Laura at any time, least of
all just now. "Well, I thought I'd come and just ask you on the chance,"
she said.
She got up, and for a moment or two the two young women stood together
not far from the bow window of Katty's bedroom.
Suddenly Katty exclaimed, "Why, there's Oliver Tropenell! What an
extraordinary thing! I thought he was abroad."
"He came back yesterday morning," said Laura quietly.
Katty gave her visitor a quick, searching look. But there was never
anything to see in Laura's face.
"Hadn't I better call out to him? He's evidently on his way to The
Chase. Hadn't I better say you're here?"
And, as Laura seemed to hesitate, she threw open the window. "Mr.
Tropenell?" she called out, in her clear, ringing voice.
The man who was striding past Rosedean, walking very quickly, stopped
rather unwillingly. Then he looked up, and when he saw who it was that
was standing by Mrs. Winslow, he turned in through the gate, and rang
the door-bell.
"Will you go down to him, Laura? I can't come as I am."
"I'll wait while you put on your dress. We can tell him to go out into
the garden with Alice."
She bent over the broad, low bar of the window, and Oliver, gazing up at
her, thought of Rossetti's lines: Heaven to him was where Laura was.
"Will you go through the house into the garden? Alice is there. We'll be
down soon."
Katty lingered a little, though she only had to put on her blouse, her
skirt, and a sports coat. "I feel quite anxious about Godfrey," she said
hesitatingly.
And Laura, in an absent voice, said, "Yes, so do I. But of course by
this time he may be at the Bank. He's quite fond of that very early
morning train. He often took it last summer."
"Yes, but now he would have had to get up in the dark to take it."
"I don't think Godfrey would mind that."
At last the two went downstairs, and out into the garden where Oliver
Tropenell and the child were talking together.
Oliver turned round, and after shaking hands with Mrs. Winslow, he asked
Laura an abrupt question. "Did Godfrey come back last evening after
all?"
Katty looked at him inquisitively. Then he had been at The Chase
yesterday?
Laura shook her head. "No, I sat up for him till midnight. I thought it
almost certain that he'd taken the last train. But we've had no news of
him at all. Perhaps he's at the Bank by now--I'll ring up as soon as I
get home. Come, Alice, my dear."
Katty heard Oliver Tropenell say in a low voice: "May I walk with you?"
And then Katty cut in: "You'll let me know, Laura, won't you, if you
have any special news? Of course I don't want you to let me know if
Godfrey's safe at the Bank--I'm not so anxious as all that!" She
laughed, her rather affected, little ringing laugh. "But if there's any
other news--especially if he's had an accident of any sort--well, I
_should_ like to know."
"Of course I'll send you word." And then Laura roused herself. "Why
shouldn't you come up to lunch, Katty? I wish you would! And then I
could tell you anything I've heard this morning."
"Thanks, I'd like to do that. I'll follow you in about an hour. I've
things to do, and letters to write, now."
She saw the three off, and once more, as had so often been the case in
the past, her heart was filled with envy--envy, and a certain
excitement.
Oliver Tropenell's return home just now was a complication. She felt
sure it would upset Godfrey, but she could not quite tell how much. She
wondered if Gilbert Baynton had come back too. She rather hoped that he
had.
She wrote her letters, and then, so timing her departure as to arrive
exactly at one o'clock, for at The Chase luncheon was at one, she went
off, meeting, as she expected to do, Oliver Tropenell on his way home to
Freshley.
"Any news?" she called out. And he shook his head. "No--no news at all."
Then he added slowly: "But I don't see that there's any cause for alarm.
Pavely telephoned the day before yesterday saying he was being detained
in town."
"Still, it's odd he didn't write to Laura," said Katty meditatively. "As
a rule he writes to Laura every day when he is in London."
She knew that was one of those half-truths which are more misleading
than a lie. Godfrey was fond of sending home postcards containing
directions as to this or that connected with the house or garden. But
Katty saw the instinctive frown which came over Oliver Tropenell's face,
and she felt pleased. She enjoyed giving this odd, sensitive, secretive
man tiny pin-pricks. She had never really liked him, and now she
positively disliked him. Why had he gone away just when things were
looking promising? And, having gone away for so long, why had he now
come back?
"How is Mr. Baynton?" she asked, smiling.
"He's gone back to Mexico."
And now Katty was really surprised. "Has he indeed?" she exclaimed. "And
without seeing Laura again? I'm rather sorry for _that_!" And as Oliver
made no answer, she went on a trifle maliciously: "I suppose you will be
going off soon, too?"
He hesitated, a very long time it seemed to her, before he answered,
"Yes, I suppose I shall. But things go on all right over there as long
as one of us is there."
Then, with a not over civil abruptness, he left her.
Katty stayed most of that cold wintry Saturday afternoon with Laura, and
as was her way when she chose to do so, she made herself very pleasant
to both the mother and child, and that though little Alice did not like
her.
A little before four she asked Laura if she might telephone herself to
the Bank, and Laura eagerly assented.
Explaining that she was really speaking for Mrs. Pavely, Katty had quite
a long chat with Mr. Privet. She and the old head clerk had always been
good friends, though they met seldom. He could remember her as a
beautiful child, and then as the popular, because the always good
humoured and pleasant-spoken, belle of Pewsbury.
"Yes, I feel very anxious indeed, Mrs. Winslow! I've been wondering
whether it wouldn't be a good thing to communicate with the London
police, if we don't have any news of Mr. Pavely to-morrow. Could you
ascertain for me the exact feelings of Mrs. Pavely?"
"I agree with you, Mr. Privet, for after all, accidents _do_ happen!
Hold the line a moment. I'll go and inquire."
She hurried off to Laura's boudoir. "Mr. Privet suggests that the London
police should be communicated with--if we don't have news of Godfrey by
to-morrow morning."
Laura looked up, startled. "Oh, Katty, don't you think that would make
him very angry--if he's all right, I mean?"
"Perhaps it would," Katty agreed uncomfortably.
She went back to the telephone. "Mrs. Pavely thinks we'd better wait a
little longer before saying anything to the police," she called out.
And thus it was through Laura, as Katty reminded herself in days to
come, that two more precious days were lost.