Love and hatred Part 21

"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 G.o.dfrey 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, G.o.dfrey. 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 G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.dfrey, with his eyes fixed on the gra.s.s, 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 G.o.dfrey 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, G.o.dfrey? 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 G.o.dfrey 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, G.o.dfrey? 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.

G.o.dfrey 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, G.o.dfrey?"

"He's absolutely straight about money," exclaimed G.o.dfrey 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.

G.o.dfrey 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."