The Essential Writings of Marie Belloc Lowndes. Marie Belloc Lowndes

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СКАЧАТЬ which caused him always to feel better pleased with himself when at Rosedean than when he was at The Chase, but a great and real bond between them was their mutual interest in all the local happenings and local gossip of the neighbourhood.

      Laura was frankly indifferent to all that concerned the town of Pewsbury and the affairs of those whom Mrs. Tropenell called the Pewsburyites. She was not disagreeable about it; she simply didn't care. Katty, in spite of her frequent absences, for she was a popular visitor with a large circle of acquaintances, always came home full of an eager wish to learn all that had happened while she had been away.

      Little by little, imperceptibly as regarded himself, the banker had fallen into the way of telling this woman, who had so oddly slipped back into his life, everything which concerned and interested himself, every detail of his business, and even, which he had no right to do, the secrets of his clients.

      But to this entire confidence there was one outstanding exception. Godfrey Pavely never discussed with Katty Winslow his relations with his wife. Laura's attitude to himself caused him, even now, sharp, almost intolerable, humiliation. Only to Mrs. Tropenell did he ever say a word of his resentment and soreness—and that only because she had been the unwilling confidant of both husband and wife during that early time in their married life when the struggle between Godfrey and Laura had been, if almost wordless, at its sharpest and bitterest.

      On one occasion, and on one only, when with Katty Winslow, had Pavely broken his guarded silence. He had been talking, in a way which at once fascinated and tantalised Katty, of his growing wealth, and suddenly he had said something as to his having no son to inherit his fortune. "It's odd to think that some day there will come along a man, a stranger to me, who will benefit by everything I now do——" and as she had looked up at him, at a loss for his meaning, he had gone on, slowly, "I mean the man whom Mrs. Tropenell and Laura between them will select for my girl's husband."

      Katty, looking at him very straight out of her bright brown eyes, had exclaimed, "You may have a son yet, Godfrey!"

      She had been startled by the look of pain, of rage, and of humiliation that had come into his sulky, obstinate-looking face, as he answered shortly, "I think that's very unlikely."

      Had Godfrey Pavely been a more imaginative man, he would probably by now have come to regret, with a deep, voiceless regret, that he had not married Katty instead of Laura—but being the manner of man he was, he had, so far, done nothing of the sort. And yet? And yet, at one time, say fifteen years ago, he had very nearly married Katty. It was a fact which even now he would have denied, but which she never forgot.

      In those days Godfrey Pavely had been a priggish, self-important young man of twenty-six, with perhaps not so good an opinion of women as he had now, for a man's opinion of women always alters, one way or another, as he grows older.

      Katty, at eighteen, had enjoyed playing on the cautious, judgematical Godfrey's emotions. So well had she succeeded that at one time he could hardly let a day go by without trying to see and to be with her alone. But, though strongly attracted by her instinctive, girlish wiles, he was also, quite unknowingly to her, repelled by those same wiles.

      Poor Katty had made herself, in those days that now seemed to both of them so very, very long ago, a little too cheap. Her admirer, to use a good old word, knew that her appeal was to a side of his nature which it behooved him to keep in check, if he was not "to make a fool of himself." And so, just when their little world—kindly, malicious, censorious, as the case might be—was expecting to hear of their engagement, Godfrey Pavely suddenly left Pewsbury to spend a year in a great Paris discount house.

      The now staid country banker did not look back with any pride or pleasure to that year in France; he had worked, but he had also ignobly played, spending, rather joylessly, a great deal of money in the process. Then, having secretly sown his wild oats, he had come home and settled down to a further time of banking apprenticeship in London, before taking over the sound family business.

      Almost at once, on his return to England, he had made up his mind to marry the beautiful, reserved, the then pathetically young Laura Baynton, who was so constantly with Mrs. Tropenell at Freshley Manor.

      Time went on, and Laura held out; but little by little, perhaps because he saw her so seldom, he broke down her resistance. His father had bought the Lawford Chase estate as a great bargain, many years before, and had been content to let it on a long lease. Godfrey, on becoming his own master at thirty, determined to live there, and his marriage to Laura followed a year later.

      During their honeymoon in Paris—a honeymoon which was curiously and painfully unlike what Godfrey had supposed his honeymoon would and must be—he saw in a paper a notice of Katty Fenton's engagement. Though not given to impulsively generous actions, he went out and bought for Katty, in the Rue de la Paix, a jewelled pendant Laura had just refused to allow him to buy for her. In return he had received what had seemed at the time a delightful letter of thanks, to which was the following postscript, "There's no harm in my saying now, that you, dear Godfrey, were my first love! I've always wanted you to know that. I've always been afraid that you only thought me a sad little flirt."

      The confession, and the shrewd thrust, which was so much truer than he thought Katty knew, moved him, and he had told himself sorely that Katty's husband at any rate would be a very lucky fellow.

      Then once more he had forgotten Katty till one day, years later, "Mrs. Winslow" had suddenly been shown into his private room at the Bank.

      Looking, as he had at once become aware, even prettier and more attractive than when he had last seen her, she had said quietly, "I'm in great trouble, Godfrey, and I've come down from London to consult you about it. Your father and mine were friends" (a rather exaggerated statement that—but Pavely was in no mood to cavil), "and I don't know who else to go to."

      Shortly and simply she had described the dreadful existence she had led since her marriage—then, suddenly, she had rolled up her right sleeve and shown the livid bruises made by Bob Winslow the night before, in a fit of drunken anger, on the slender, soft, white arm.

      Unwontedly moved, the more so that this now unfamiliar Katty seemed to make no excessive demand either on his pity or on his emotions, Godfrey Pavely had thrown himself into the complicated, unsavoury business, and very soon his old-new friend had brought him to advise her in the sense she wished. But it was Laura who had suggested that poor Mrs. Winslow should come and stay with them during the divorce proceedings, and while she had been at Lawford Chase, Katty had avoided, rather than sought out, the master of the house.

      In the matter of Rosedean the banker had behaved in what he himself considered a very handsome manner. Not only had he let the house to Katty for about a third of what he could have got for it in the open market, but he had allowed her a hundred pounds for "doing it up." He believed himself to have also suggested the arrangement by which she obtained the free services, for a certain number of half-days each week, of a very intelligent Scotch under-gardener who was in his employ.

      He had never had reason to regret his kindness. On the contrary, he and Katty had become, as time went on, closer and closer friends, and more and more had he come to miss her during her frequent absences from home.

      Some months ago he had even ventured to tell her that he thought she gadded about a bit too much! Why couldn't she be content to stay quietly at Rosedean? "Look at me and Laura," he had exclaimed. "We hardly ever go away for a holiday, and we very seldom pay a visit!" Katty had shaken her pretty head playfully: "Ah, but you don't know how lonely I am sometimes! Laura is most dear and kind to me, but you know, Godfrey, I don't see her often——"

      He had not liked to remind her that he very often did.

      Then СКАЧАТЬ