Love and hatred Part 17

As he looked at her a little oddly, and with a queer little smile all over his face, she exclaimed, "I _know_ Laura wouldn't." And he nodded, a little ashamed of that queer little smile.

Gilbert Baynton's face stiffened into deep gravity. His eyes were shining, and he was staring down at the little table, his half-finished cup of tea forgotten.

He sat down again. "Has Laura told you this?" he asked abruptly. "Are you her confidante?"

Katty hesitated. "No," she said at last. "I don't suppose Laura has spoken of the matter to any living soul. But if you promise absolutely not to give me away--I can tell you how you can a.s.sure yourself of the truth. Ask Mrs. Tropenell. _She_ knows. I won't say any more."

"And Pavely?" he asked. "What part does my fine brother-in-law play?

Does proper G.o.dfrey know? Is priggish G.o.dfrey jealous?"

She answered slowly: "I think that Mr. Pavely suspects. He and Oliver Tropenell were great friends till quite lately. But there's a coldness now. I don't know what happened. But _something_ happened."

"I see now why Tropenell has stayed here so long. I thought it must be a woman! I thought some prudish, dull, English girl had got hold of him----" He waited a moment.

"Well, I'm eternally grateful to you, Mrs. Winslow, for giving me this hint! You see, I'm very fond of Tropenell. It's a peculiar kind of feeling--there's nothing in the world I wouldn't do for him. Good G.o.d! I only wish that he and Laura----"

He was going to say "would have the pluck to bolt together!" but Katty supplied a very different ending to his sentence.

"Ah," she exclaimed, "I only wish that Laura and Oliver _could_ marry.

They're made for one another. You can't see them together without seeing that!" She went on feelingly, "Laura was dreadfully unhappy with G.o.dfrey Pavely even before Oliver Tropenell came into her life. She and Mr.

Pavely are quite unsuited to one another."

There was a queer bitterness in her voice.

And then Gillie Baynton suddenly remembered--remembered the flood of gossip there had been at one time concerning those two--pretty Katty Fenton, as she had been then, and G.o.dfrey Pavely, the man who later became his own brother-in-law.

He gave her a queer, shrewd glance, and Mrs. Winslow went on, rather quickly and breathlessly,

"You mustn't think that I dislike G.o.dfrey Pavely! He's been very good to me--as good as Laura. I'm what they call an innocent _divorcee_, Mr.

Baynton, and they both helped me through the trouble. It was pretty bad at the time, I can tell you. But of course I can't help seeing--no one could help seeing--that G.o.dfrey and Laura aren't suited to one another, and that they would each be much, much happier apart."

At the back of her clever, astute mind was the knowledge that it was quite on the cards that Oliver, or Oliver's mother, would say something to Gilbert Baynton concerning herself and her intimacy with G.o.dfrey Pavely. She must guard against that, and guard against it now.

So she went on, pensively, "I don't know, to tell you the truth, for which of them I'm the more sorry--Laura, G.o.dfrey, or Oliver! They're all three awfully to be pitied. Of course, if they lived in America it would be quite simple; Laura and G.o.dfrey would be divorced by mutual consent, and then Laura would be able to be happy with Mr. Tropenell."

"And is nothing of that sort possible here?" asked Gillie Baynton curiously. "This old England _has_ stood still!"

Katty shook her head regretfully. "No, there's nothing of the sort possible here. Of course there are ways and means----"

The other fixed his eyes on her. "Yes?" he said interrogatively.

"I fear that they are not ways and means that G.o.dfrey or Laura would ever lend themselves to."

"Then there's no cutting the Gordian knot?"

But that wasn't quite what Katty meant to imply. "I don't know," she said hesitatingly. "G.o.dfrey would do almost anything to avoid any kind of scandal. But then you see one comes up against Laura----"

He nodded quickly. "Yes, I quite understand that Laura would never do anything she thought wrong--queer, isn't it?"

Gilbert Baynton stayed on at Rosedean for quite another half-hour, but nothing more was said on the subject which was filling his mind and that of his hostess. They walked about the pretty, miniature garden, talking in a desultory way over old times, and about some of the people they had both known years ago.

And then, at last, she took him to the gate. They looked at one another like two augurs, and he said under his breath, "Well, it's a pretty kettle of fish I've come home to, eh? I thought there was some sort of mystery. I'm very much obliged to you for having put me on the track to solve the riddle."

"Ah," she said, "but the riddle isn't solved yet, Mr. Baynton, is it?"

He answered, gravely for him, "No, those sorts of riddles are very hard to solve." He hesitated, then exclaimed in a meaning tone, "Still, they _are_ solved sometimes, Mrs. Winslow."

It was late the same night, a warm, St. Martin's summer night, and Mrs.

Tropenell, sitting alone after dinner, made an excuse of a telephone message to join her son and Gillie Baynton out of doors.

After Baynton's return from The Chase the two men had gone off for a long walk together over the downs, and they had come home so late that dinner had had to be put off for half an hour. Instead of joining her later, they had gone out again, but this time only into the garden.

Noiselessly she moved across the gra.s.s, and then, just as she was going to step under the still leaf-draped pergola, she heard her son's voice--a voice so charged with emotion and pain that, mastered by her anxiety, she stopped just behind one of the brick arches, and listened.

"You'll oblige me, Baynton, by keeping your sister's name out of this."

"Oh, very well! I thought you'd be glad to know what that woman said to me--I mean Mrs. Winslow."

"I'm not glad. I'm sorry. Mrs. Winslow is mistaken."

The short sentence came out with laboured breath as if with difficulty, and the one who overheard them, the anguished eavesdropper, felt her heart stirred with bitter impotence.

How Oliver cared--how much Oliver cared!

"Why are you so sure of that?" Again she heard Baynton's full, caressing voice. "Laura's a very reserved woman! I'd rather believe her best friend--apparently Katty _is_ her best friend--about such a thing as this. You've admitted that _you_ love her."

And as the other made no answer, Gillie went on, speaking in a very low voice, but with every word clearly audible from the place where Mrs.

Tropenell stood listening: "Of course I won't mention Laura--as it upsets you so much! But after all, my hatred for Pavely and my love for my sister are the two strongest things in my life. Surely you know that well enough, Tropenell? I can't bar Laura out!"

And then came the answer, muttered between the speaker's teeth: "I understand that, Baynton."

"I'm sorry I repeated Mrs. Winslow's tale. But of course it did impress me--it did influence me. I'd _like_ to believe it, Tropenell."

The secret listener was surprised at the feeling which Gillie's vibrant voice betrayed.

Oliver muttered something--was it, "I'd give my soul to know it true"?

Then, in a lighter tone, Gillie exclaimed, "As to that other matter, I'd rather keep you out of the business altogether if I could! But I can't--quite."

What was it that Oliver answered then? The two men were now walking slowly away towards the further end of the pergola. Mrs. Tropenell strained her ears to hear her son's answer:

"I don't want to keep out of it." Was that what he said, in a very low, tense voice?

Gilbert Baynton was speaking again: "It is _my_ idea, _my_ scheme, and I mean to carry it through! I shan't want much help--only quite a little help from you."

And then she heard her son's voice again, and he was speaking more naturally this time. "Of course we'll go shares, Gillie! What d'you take me for? Am I to have all the profit, and you all the risk?"