The little girl was aware, deep in her sensitive, affectionate heart, that her father and mother were not quite like other fathers and mothers. They were not cosily loving together, as were the father and mother of the two little girls with whom she sometimes went to tea in Pewsbury, neither were they on the happy terms of easy comradeship which even Alice knew was usual with other children"s parents.
But she loved her mother with a pa.s.sionate, unswerving, admiring love, and her father with a stout, proprietary affection. For his sake, and his sake only, she would have liked to be a boy, for then, so she argued secretly within herself, she could be his office boy at the Bank. Up to now she had felt for Oliver Tropenell the easy, unquestioning liking children give to one who comes and goes. But lately she had become dimly aware that occasionally her mother and Mr. Tropenell were too busy talking together to take much heed of her, and this threw a little shadow across her heart.
For G.o.dfrey Pavely there followed days full of discomfort, unease, and rising annoyance. The whole course of his life was changed. As he came and went about the quiet streets of his native town, as he granted business interviews to the townspeople, he was perpetually asking himself if the person he was speaking to was concerned with this odious matter, whether he or she was among those who took his beautiful wife"s name lightly.
His object each afternoon was now to get home early, and see for himself what was going on there, and how far Laura was giving cause for low, vulgar gossip.
Laura was not a child! She must know, if she ever brought herself to think of such a thing, that if a married woman allows a man to hang about her, day after day, in the absence of her husband, there is sure to be talk. Pavely regarded Tropenell"s share in the matter with a strange toleration--it was his wife whom he blamed with an increasing severity as the minutes, the hours, and the days went by.
He still went to see Katty Winslow, but no longer as often as he had been wont to do. And when in her company he was distrait, uncomfortable, longing to ask if _she_ thought Oliver"s constant presence in his house odd or--or peculiar. But he kept a prudent guard over his tongue. One day Katty said something which would have made it easy for him to speak, and which, as a matter of fact, very nearly did cause him to unburden his heart to her. It was a little word, and said quite pleasantly, with, he felt sure, no ulterior motive of any kind.
"It"s odd," she said musingly, "to see what good friends Laura has become with Oliver Tropenell! Who would have thought that she would ever like any man as much as she seems to like him? I suppose it"s really owing to the fact that he"s in partnership with her brother----"
She waited, and as he said nothing, she went on, with a smile, "But then, for the matter of that, you"re just as fond of him as she is, aren"t you? I can"t see the attraction myself, but I admit that it must be there, for two people as unlike you and Laura are to each other both to like him so much."
"Yes, I do like Tropenell," G.o.dfrey spoke very decidedly. "But I can"t make out why he gets on so well with Gilbert Baynton. Gillie couldn"t run straight if he tried."
"So I"ve always understood----"
Katty looked at him curiously. She had never been told the real story of the quarrel between the brothers-in-law, but she was clever enough to have reached a very shrewd notion of the truth. Baynton, so much was clear, had done something which Pavely could neither tolerate nor forgive. In the old days, as a girl, Katty had met Gillie Baynton several times, and he had struck her as a very amusing, agreeable sort of young man.
G.o.dfrey had let slip this opportunity of saying anything, and afterwards, as is usually the case, he was glad that he had kept silence. Clever and sympathetic as she was, Katty could do nothing to help him in this horrid, rather degrading business.
And then, walking into his room at the Bank one morning, he saw on the top of the pile of his letters another common-looking envelope marked _Private_. He took it up with a sick feeling of half eager, half shrinking, expectancy--
"A sincere well-wisher wishes once more to inform Mr.
Pavely that all Pewsbury is discussing him and his private affairs. The lady and gentleman in question are more together than ever they were. The other day some one who met them walking together on the downs took them for an engaged couple."
This second anonymous letter greatly added to G.o.dfrey Pavely"s wretchedness and discomfort, all the more that it was so moderately worded. It seemed to confirm, to make certain, the fact of growing gossip and scandal.
At last something happened which to a small extent relieved the tension.
Laura quietly informed him one evening that she much wished to go away for three days to see a friend of her childhood, who had written and begged her to come, and to bring little Alice with her.
She was surprised at the eagerness with which G.o.dfrey a.s.sented to her wish. In certain ways G.o.dfrey Pavely, from the modern point of view, was a tyrannical husband. He very much disliked Laura"s paying visits by herself, and she had long ago given up even suggesting that she should do so. Also, she on her side much disliked asking him the smallest favour.
The day his wife left The Chase was the first happy day G.o.dfrey had had for three weeks. He spent a pleasant hour with Katty; and on his arrival home his feeling of satisfaction was increased by a note from Mrs.
Tropenell inviting him to come and spend at Freshley Manor the three nights Laura was to be away. He wrote accepting with more cordiality of phrase than was his wont, even with so old a friend as was Oliver"s mother.
Surely he and Oliver Tropenell, at last alone together, could combine to put an end to this foolish, vulgar gossip? It would be so much easier to speak to and consult with Oliver in Laura"s absence.
Once he had made up his mind to speak to the other man, Pavely was able, almost, to forget the whole hateful business. Still, he said nothing till the second morning of his visit. Then, at breakfast, he made a proposal.
"I feel as if I"d like to take this afternoon off. Would you care for a good long walk, eh? We might start about half-past two, have tea in Witanbury, and be back here for dinner."
Oliver nodded. He was at once glad and sorry that G.o.dfrey was so entirely unaware of the growing tide of dislike, nay of hatred, that he felt for him. Secretive as he was by nature, and by the life he had now led for so long, Oliver Tropenell was yet no hypocrite. He loathed the part fate had forced on him, that of pretending a cordial friendship for this man whom he so utterly despised. His mother had invited G.o.dfrey Pavely to stay with them for three nights without first telling Oliver that she was thinking of doing so; and then, when she had realised, too late, his annoyance, she could only explain that G.o.dfrey had always stayed with her on the very rare occasions when Laura had been away.
Mother and son were together when G.o.dfrey started off on his daily walk into Pewsbury.
"I wonder what he"s going to talk to you about?" said Mrs. Tropenell a little nervously. The thought of the coming afternoon expedition made her vaguely uneasy.
"He"s never at a loss for a word, though he very seldom says anything worth hearing."
Oliver was looking with unhappy, frowning eyes after the other man"s trim, rather jaunty figure.
All that morning Mrs. Tropenell watched her son with anxious fear. He wandered restlessly in and out of the house, and though he never mentioned Laura, his mother knew that he was missing her with an almost agonised sense of loss.
Oliver was fighting a losing battle with himself--a battle in which no help from outside could be of any avail. He no longer spoke of going away; instead, he had told his mother of his scheme for bringing Gillie to Europe, and of sending Laura and her brother off to Italy, for a happy little holiday. She ventured to say that she thought that plan to be quite out of the question. G.o.dfrey would never allow it--he had not forgiven Gillie, in spite of the fact that Gillie had now "made good."
It was nearer three than half-past two, when the two men started out, and they had been walking for a full hour, with s.n.a.t.c.hes of talk, and such comfortable intervals of silence as is possible only between intimates, when suddenly G.o.dfrey Pavely stopped walking.
Surprised, Tropenell also came to a stand. They were on a stretch of lonely upland, with nothing save a couple of birds in sight.
"Look here, Oliver, there"s something I want to say to you! I hope you won"t be offended. But we"re such good friends, you and I, that I think you"ll understand."
The colour rushed into Oliver Tropenell"s face. He turned and faced the other squarely, but he felt tense with excitement, and a sense of challenge. He knew, instinctively, that Pavely was going to say something about Laura--Laura, and perhaps Gillie, her brother.
"Yes," he said quietly. "Yes, G.o.dfrey? What is it? I can"t imagine your saying anything to me that would offend me."
"I want you to read what"s inside that," said G.o.dfrey in a low voice, and he handed Oliver an envelope.
Oliver was relieved, but he looked down at the envelope suspiciously.
"But this isn"t to be opened till you"re dead!" he exclaimed.
"Open it now," said G.o.dfrey roughly, "I only put that in case I met with an accident--you"ll see why I did it, in a moment."
With a queer feeling of misgiving Oliver Tropenell drew the common little sheet of notepaper out of the envelope, and in silence read over what was written there in those deceitful, printed characters.
He read it once, twice--thrice. Then he handed the sheet of paper back, with a look of disgust and contempt on his dark face, to the man standing by his side.
"Well!" he exclaimed. "I don"t know what you expect me to say? If you"d had as many anonymous letters as I"ve had in my time--they rain in Mexico--you wouldn"t give much thought to this kind of garbage!"
Holding out the letter as if it were something dirty, he handed it back to the other man.
"I haven"t given much thought to it----" and then G.o.dfrey stopped short.
He felt as if some other man, and not his sober self, were uttering the lie.
"No," said Oliver quickly, "I don"t suppose you have. But still, I can"t help being rather sorry you kept it, and--and that you showed it to me.
There"s nothing to be done! I suppose it"s the work of some clerk whom you"ve dismissed in the last few weeks?"
"I"ve dismissed no one," said Pavely shortly. Somehow Tropenell was not taking this disagreeable business quite as he had meant him to take it.
In a rather different voice Oliver went on: "Show me the letter again. I want to see if there"s a date to it."
"It arrived exactly three weeks ago to-day," said Pavely slowly, "and it was posted in Pewsbury."
Light broke in on Tropenell. This, then, was why G.o.dfrey had taken to coming home at such odd hours, and why he had telephoned several times from the Bank, sending messages to Laura, and, on at least one occasion, a message to Tropenell himself!
He set his lips tightly together, and a flood of bitter wrath welled up from his heart.