Love and hatred Part 25

"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 G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.dfrey'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 G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.dfrey," 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 G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.dfrey'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 G.o.dfrey, 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. G.o.dfrey 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-p.r.i.c.ks. 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."