Love and hatred Part 29

And Laura answered, dully, "No. He's in York to-day. They've found out that G.o.dfrey went to York during that week we know he was in London. I only heard of that this morning, or I would have told you."

Laura will never forget that journey to London, that long, strange, unreal journey, so filled with a sort of terror, as well as pain.

Somehow she could not bring herself to believe that G.o.dfrey was dead.

When they were about half-way there, Katty suddenly exclaimed, "Let me look at that letter again!" And then, when Laura had taken it out of her bag, she asked, "Where's the envelope? The envelope's very important, you know!"

Laura looked at her helplessly. "I don't know. I can't remember. I've a sort of an idea that I threw the envelope into the fire."

"Oh, Laura! What a very, very foolish thing to do! Don't you see there must have been a postmark on the envelope? Can't you remember anything about it? What was the handwriting like?"

Again she felt she would like to shake Laura.

"The address was typewritten--I do remember that. I thought--I don't know what I thought--I can't remember now what I did think. It looked like a circular, or a bill. But it was marked 'Urgent and Confidential'--or something to that effect."

On their arrival in London a piece of good fortune befell Laura Pavely.

Lord St. Amant had been in the same train, and when he saw her on the platform he at once put himself at her disposal. "Scotland Yard? I'll take you there myself. But Sir Angus Kinross would be out just now. It's no good going there till half-past two--at the earliest. I hope you'll both honour me by coming to luncheon in my rooms."

Reached by an arch set between two houses in St. James's Street, and unknown to the majority of the people who daily come and go through that historic thoroughfare, is a tiny square--perhaps the smallest open s.p.a.ce in London--formed by eight to ten eighteenth-century houses. But for the lowness of the houses, this curious little spot might be a bit of old Paris, a backwater of the Temple quarter, beyond the Louvre and the Hotel de Ville, which only those tourists who have a pa.s.sion either for Madame de Sevigne or for the young Victor Hugo ever penetrate.

It was there that Lord St. Amant, some forty years back, when he was still quite a young man, had found a set of four panelled rooms exactly to his liking. And through the many vicissitudes which had befallen the funny little square, he had always contrived to preserve these rooms, though at last, in order to do so, he had had to become the leaseholder of the house of which they formed a part. But he kept the fact of this ownership to himself and to his lawyers, and it was through the latter that the other rooms--the ground floor and the top floor--were let to various quiet, humble folk. His lawyers also, had found for him the intelligent couple who acted as his caretakers, and who managed to make him extremely comfortable during the comparatively short periods he spent in London each year.

Although his club was within a minute's walk, Lord St. Amant, very soon after his first occupancy of these rooms, had so arranged matters that, when he chose to order it, a cold luncheon or dinner could be sent in at a quarter of an hour's notice. And to-day the arrangement, of which he very rarely availed himself, stood him in good stead.

There are a certain number of people who go through life instinctively taking every chance of advancement or of useful friendship offered to them. Such a person was Katty Winslow.

Even in the midst of her real sorrow and distress, she did not lose sight of the fact that Lord St. Amant, with whom her acquaintance up to the present had been so slight as to be negligible, might prove a very useful friend in what now looked like her immediately dreary future. She was well aware that he was probably, nay, almost certainly, prejudiced against her, for she and Mrs. Tropenell had never been on cordial terms; but she set herself, even now, with this terrible thing which she feared, nay, felt almost sure, was true, filling up the whole background of her mind, to destroy that prejudice. To a certain extent she succeeded, during the few minutes, the precious ten minutes, she secured practically alone with her host, in compa.s.sing her wish.

Laura sat down, in the attractive, if rather dark, sitting-room into which Lord St. Amant had shown her, and, blind to everything about her, she was now staring into the fire, oppressed, stunned, by the terrible thing which perchance lay before her.

Lining the panelled walls, which were painted a deep yellow tint, hung a series of curious old colour-prints of London, and, on the writing-table--itself, as Katty's quick eyes had at once realised, a singularly fine piece of eighteenth-century English lacquer--were two portraits. The one was a miniature of a lady in the stiff yet becoming costume of early Victorian days--probably Lord St. Amant's mother; and the other was a spirited sketch of a girl in an old-fashioned riding habit--certainly Mrs. Tropenell forty years ago.

Katty had remained standing, and soon she wandered over to the open door of the room where, with noiseless celerity, the table was being laid for luncheon. It was from there that she almost imperceptibly beckoned to her host. With some prejudice and a good deal of curiosity, he followed her, and together they went over to the deep embrasured window overlooking the tiny square.

There, looking up earnestly into Lord St. Amant's shrewd, kindly face, she said in a low voice: "I want to ask you, Lord St. Amant, to do me a kindness--" she waited a moment, "a true kindness! I want you to arrange that I go to this place, to Duke House, with whoever goes there to find out if the news contained in that horrible letter is true!"

And as he looked extremely surprised, she hurried on, with a little catch in her voice, "G.o.dfrey Pavely was my dear--my very dear, friend.

When we were quite young people, when I was living with my father in Pewsbury----"

"I remember your father," said Lord St. Amant, in a softened, kindly tone, and his mind suddenly evoked the personality of the broken-down, not very reputable gentleman to whom the surrounding gentry had taken pains to be kind.

"In those days," went on Katty rather breathlessly, "G.o.dfrey and I fell in love and became engaged. But his people were furious, and as a result--well, he was made to go to Paris for a year, and the whole thing came to an end. Later, after I had divorced my husband, when I was living at Rosedean, it--it----"

She stopped, and tears--the first tears she had shed this terrible morning--came into her eyes.

"I quite understand--you mean that it all began again?"

Lord St. Amant, hardened man of the world though he was, felt moved, really moved by those hurried, whispered confidences, and by the bright tears which were now welling up in his guest's brown eyes.

Katty nodded. "He was unhappy with Laura--Laura had never cared for him, and lately she, Laura----" Again she broke off what she was saying, and reddened deeply.

"Yes?" said Lord St. Amant interrogatively. He felt suddenly on his guard. Was Mrs. Winslow going to bring in Oliver Tropenell? But her next words at once relieved and excessively surprised him.

"You know all about the Beath affair?"

And it was his turn to nod gravely.

"Well, there was something of the same kind thought of--between G.o.dfrey and myself. If--if Laura could have been brought to consent, then I think I may say, Lord St. Amant, that G.o.dfrey hoped, that I hoped----"

Once more she broke off short, only to begin again a moment later: "But I want you to understand--please, _please_ believe me--that neither he nor I was treacherous to Laura. You can't be treacherous to a person who doesn't care, can you? I've only told you all this to show you that I have a right to want to know whether G.o.dfrey is alive or--or dead."

And then Lord St. Amant asked a question that rather startled Katty--and put her, in her turn, on her guard. He glanced down at the letter, that extraordinary typewritten letter, which Laura had handed to him.

"Have you any reason to suppose that G.o.dfrey Pavely was really a.s.sociated in business with this mysterious man?" he asked.

Looking down into her upturned face he saw a queer little quiver wave across her mouth, that most revealing feature of the face. But she eluded the question. "I did not know much of G.o.dfrey's business interests. He was always very secret about such things."

"She certainly knows there is such a man as Fernando Apra!" he said to himself, but aloud he observed kindly: "I presume Mr. Pavely wrote to you during the early days of his stay in London?"

Katty hesitated. "Yes," she said at last, "I did have a letter from him.

But it was only about some business he was doing for me. I was not at Rosedean, Lord St. Amant. I was away on a visit--on two visits."

And then Katty flushed--flushed very deeply.

He quickly withdrew his gaze from her now downcast face, and--came to a quite wrong conclusion. "I see," he said lightly, "you were away yourself, and probably moving about?"

"Yes--yes, I was," she eagerly agreed.

She was feeling a little more comfortable now. Katty knew the great value of truth, though she sometimes, nay generally, behaved as if truth were of no value at all.

In a sense Lord St. Amant had known Katty from her childhood--known her, that is, in the way in which the great magnate of a country neighbourhood, if a friendly, human kind of individual, knows every man, woman and child within a certain radius of his home. He was of course well aware of Mrs. Tropenell's prejudice against Katty, and, without exactly sharing it, he did not look at her with the kindly, indulgent eyes with which most members of his s.e.x regarded the pretty, unfortunate, innocent _divorcee_, to whom Mr. and Mrs. G.o.dfrey Pavely had been so truly kind.

But now, as the upshot of Katty's murmured confidences, her present host certainly acquired a new interest in, and a new sympathy for, Mrs.

Winslow. Of course she had not deceived him as completely as she believed herself to have done, for he felt certain that she knew more of G.o.dfrey Pavely's movements, during the early days of his stay in London a fortnight ago, than she admitted. He was also quite convinced that they had met secretly during their joint absence from home.

But Lord St. Amant would have felt a hypocrite indeed had he on that account thought any the worse of Katty Winslow. He told himself that after all the poor little woman did not owe him _all_ the truth! If G.o.dfrey Pavely had indeed come to his death in this extraordinary, accidental way, then Katty, whatever Mrs. Tropenell might feel, was much to be pitied; nice women, even so broad-minded a woman as was his own, close friend, are apt to be hard on a woman who is not perhaps quite--nice!

It was therefore with a good deal of curiosity that he watched his two guests while they ate the luncheon prepared for them.

Laura practically took nothing at all. She tried to swallow a little of the delicious, perfectly cooked cold chicken and mousse-au-jambon, but in the end she only managed to drink the whole of the large gla.s.s of water her host poured out for her. Katty, on the other hand, made a good meal, and took her full share of a half-bottle of champagne. As a result she looked, when luncheon was over, more like her usual, pretty, alert self than she had looked yet. Laura grew paler and paler, and at last Lord St. Amant, with kindly authority, insisted on her taking a cup of coffee, and a tiny liqueur gla.s.sful of brandy poured into it French fashion.

"I'm afraid," he said feelingly, "that you have a very painful ordeal in front of you, my dear. You won't make it any better by going without food."

But she gazed at him as if she had not understood the purport of his words.