Marie Belloc Lowndes

GODFREY PAVELY was standing in his private room at Pavely's Bank. It was only a little after ten, and he had not been in the room many minutes, yet already he had got up from his writing-table and moved over to the middle one of the three windows overlooking the prim, exquisitely kept walled garden, which even nowadays reminded him of his early childhood. He had gazed out of the window for a few moments, but now he stood with his back to the window, staring unseeingly before him, a piece of note paper crushed up in his hand.

For close on a hundred years his well-to-do careful-living forbears had passed their pleasant, uneventful lives in this spacious Georgian house, set in the centre of the wide High Street of the prosperous market town of Pewsbury.

What was now known as "Mr. Pavely's own room" had been the dining-room of his grandparents. He himself had always known it as part of the Bank, but it still had some of the characteristics of a private living-room. Thus, on the dark green walls hung a number of quaint family portraits, his great-grandfather, his grandfather and grandmother, two uncles who had died in youth, and a presentation portrait of his own father. These were arranged about and above the mantelpiece, opposite the place where stood his wide, leather-topped writing-table.

Taking up most of the wall opposite the windows was a bookcase of really distinguished beauty. Godfrey Pavely had been gratified to learn, some five or six years ago, that this piece of furniture was of very considerable value, owing to the fact that it was supposed to have been, in a special sense, the work and design of Chippendale himself. But just now, at this moment, he felt as if he hated the substantial old house and everything in it.

He had come into this room, twenty minutes ago, to find the usual pile of open letters on the table. On the top of the pile was an unopened envelope marked Private, and it was the contents of that envelope that he now held crushed up—not torn up—in his hand.

And as he stood there, staring before him unseeingly at the bookcase, there suddenly flashed into his mind a vision of the first time he had brought Laura here, to his own room at the Bank. They had only just became engaged, and he was still feeling an almost oppressive joy of having compassed that which he had so steadfastly desired.

He could see her graceful figure walking through the mahogany door, he could almost hear her exclaim, "What a charming room, Godfrey! I can't help wishing that we were going to live here, in Pewsbury!"

She had gone over and stood exactly where he was standing now, and then she had turned and gazed into the walled garden, at that time brilliant with tulips and wallflowers. Coming round behind her, he had put his arm, a little awkwardly, round her shoulders. At once she had slipped from beneath his grasp, but not unkindly—only with a gentle word that at any moment some one might come in, and he, poor fool that he had been, had admired her maidenly delicacy....

He glanced down at the piece of notepaper he held in his hand, and, smoothing it out, he read it through for the tenth or twelfth time. Then, as there came a knock at the door, he hastily thrust it into his pocket.

"Come in!" he cried impatiently; and his head clerk came into the room.

Mr. Privet had a delicate, refined, thoughtful face. He was very much respected in the town, and regarded as an important, integral part of Pavely's Bank. He was one of the very few people in the world who were really attached to Godfrey Pavely, and he perceived at once that there was something wrong.

"We promised to send over to Mr. Johnson to say when you would be ready to see him, sir. Shall I send over now?"

"Yes—no. Tell him I'll be ready in half an hour. And, Privet?"

"Yes, sir."

"I've a rather important letter to write. Will you see that I'm not disturbed till I ring?"

The old man shut the door quietly, and Godfrey Pavely drew irresolutely towards his writing-table, the table where he did so much hard, good, and profitable work each day.

But he did not sit down at once; instead, he took the letter he had been so nearly caught reading out of his pocket, and once more he read it through—

"This is to warn you that there is a great deal of talk going on in Pewsbury and the surrounding neighbourhood about your wife and a certain gentleman who is a near neighbour of yours. It is well not to be jealous, but confidence may be carried too far. Try going home when you are not expected, and you will surely find them together.

"A Well-Wisher to the

"Pavely Family."

The words had been written, or rather printed, in ink, on a very common sheet of notepaper—the kind of notepaper which is sold in penny packets in every village and small sweetstuff shop in the kingdom.

Now in theory there is nothing easier than to despise and disregard an anonymous letter. But in practice such a missive as Godfrey Pavely had just received, however vulgar, and even, as in this case, obviously written by a malicious person, invariably produces a horrible sensation of discomfort and acute uneasiness. For one thing, the fact that some unknown human being has devoted so much unwonted thought and spiteful interest to one's private affairs is in itself an ugly revelation.

In theory again, most people, if asked what they would do if they received an anonymous letter, would reply (1) that they would put it straight in the fire, or (2) go straight with it to the police. But in practice an anonymous letter, unless the recipient at once guesses with certainty the identity of the writer, is the only clue to what may contain the germ of some ugly plot, or conspiracy to harm or injure the innocent. So it is surely foolish to destroy what may become evidence. As for going to the police, that is, for obvious reasons, the last thing any man would care to do if the anonymous communication deals with the character of a woman near and dear to him. Indeed, the thought of going to the police did not even enter Godfrey Pavely's mind, though it was probably the advice he would have given to any one else who had come to consult him about such a matter.

As he looked at the letter closely, turning it this way and that, he suddenly told himself that it did not read like the work of an illiterate person. Godfrey, and Laura too, were in their different ways very good employers; besides, they had not dismissed any one lately. No, no—it was far more likely to be some one living in Pewsbury, probably with whom he was scarcely acquainted. There were, as the banker could not but be aware, a good many people in the little town who had reason to dislike him—not personally perhaps, but as the one money-dealer of the place.

At last he sat down at his writing-table and drew an envelope towards him. On it he wrote, "To be destroyed, unopened, in case of my death," and then he placed the poisonous little sheet of common notepaper in the envelope, and, fastening it down, put it in one of his inner pockets.

He intended to dismiss the whole thing from his mind, at any rate during this morning, but he found it very difficult, not to say impossible, to do that.

Laura and Oliver Tropenell? His thin lips curled at the thought.

Why, Oliver liked him, Godfrey, far better than he did Laura! He regarded that as certain. And Laura? He could have laughed aloud at the absurd suggestion. Laura was not only the coldest, she was also the most upright, of women.

Early in their married life, when they had gone about together far more than they had done recently, he, Godfrey, had never felt even a twinge of jealousy with regard to her. And yet—and yet in those days Laura had certainly excited a good deal of admiration. There are men who passionately admire that kind of proud, passionless beauty in a woman. Pavely himself had once been such a man. So he knew.

He looked up from the letter he was writing, and all at once, to his own surprise, his thoughts took quite another turn. He told himself suddenly that Tropenell's rather exceptional intimacy with them both might, after all, excite remark, in such a damned censorious, gossiping place as was Pewsbury. He, Godfrey Pavely, was well aware of what a nest of gossip a country town could be, and often is. He had experienced something of it years ago, when there had been all that foolish talk concerning the then Katty Fenton and himself. Once or twice he had felt slightly uneasy lest his present friendship with Katty should be misunderstood. Indeed, he had felt this so strongly to give her what he had thought to be a delicate hint—a hint that she had at once taken—as to the inadvisability of her coming, when in Pewsbury, to see him in his private room at the Bank. She had done that rather often at one time, when she was first his tenant at Rosedean. But now she never came to the Bank. She did not even keep her account at Pavely's, though it would have been a convenience to her to do so.

Mr. Johnson's call, which at any other time would have been a tiresome infliction, was welcome, for it enabled the banker to dismiss this odd, queer, unpleasant business of the anonymous letter from his mind for a while.

But after Mr. Johnson had gone, the trouble came back, and the morning—what was left of it—seemed very long.

He asked himself whether, after all, it might not be wisest to speak of that absurd letter to some one. Should he say anything to Mrs. Tropenell, or well, yes—to Laura? But impatiently he shook his head at the thought. Not only would such a thing shock and disgust his wife, but, what was of far more consequence to him, it might make her turn against Tropenell! Godfrey Pavely had been pleased and surprised at the way in which Laura had tolerated the other man being so much about the house. In Pavely's imagination Tropenell was his friend—not Laura's.

He was glad when he heard a quarter to one chime out from the Parish Church tower, for it meant that he could now get up and go across to the Club for luncheon. He put on his hat and went out into the square hall of the Bank.

As he did so, his head clerk came down the broad staircase.

Mr. Privet's room was only a little smaller, and a little less lacking in dignity, than that of Mr. Pavely himself—indeed, some people thought it a pleasanter room, for it looked out on to the High Street, and was on the first floor.

"If you'd been a minute earlier, sir," said the old man, smiling, "you'd have seen Mrs. Pavely go by! I think she must have been in Mrs. Tropenell's motor, for Mr. Tropenell was driving her himself."

Godfrey Pavely felt a queer little pang of annoyance and surprise.

"I daresay they're still in the town," he said quickly. "I thought it quite possible that they might come in this morning."

But he had thought nothing of the kind.

Mr. Privet shook his head. "Oh no, sir! They were going home sure enough—and rather quickly, too. I thought the car had caught that youngest Sherlock boy, but Mr. Tropenell's a skilful driver, and he missed the child, but only by a few inches, as far as I could judge!"

Godfrey Pavely nodded, walked on, and so out and across the High Street. He could not help feeling a little vexed that Oliver and Laura should have driven into Pewsbury—this morning, of all mornings. He wondered if they often did so. It was fortunate that nothing had happened to that stupid child. It would have been very unpleasant for his wife to be compelled to give evidence at an inquest....

He did not enjoy his luncheon as much as he was wont to do. In a sense he was king of the old-fashioned County Club; every member of it was either on good terms with the prosperous banker, or desired to be so. But try as he might he could not get that odious, absurd, anonymous letter out of his mind! He told himself again and again that it was thoughtless and—and yes, unbecoming—of Laura, to drive in and out of Pewsbury with Oliver Tropenell. Somehow it was the sort of thing he would never have thought his wife was likely to do. Again he wondered if she did it often. If yes, such conduct would of course provide ample reason for low, vulgar gossip.

When, at last, Godfrey Pavely walked back across to the Bank, he had come to the point of asking himself whether after all it might not be best to say just a word of caution to Laura. It need not be more than a word—he knew her well enough to know that! She was the kind of woman to shrink with fastidious disgust from the thought of her name being connected, in any vulgar silly way, with that of a man.

But his mind swung backwards and forwards, like a pendulum. The possibility of his agreeable, cordial relations with Oliver Tropenell being in any way jarred or disturbed so upset him that, finally, he made up his mind to say nothing to Laura.

At three o'clock the banker walked up to his head clerk's room. "I think I'll go home early to-day, Privet," he said.

The old man got up from his chair. He was not only fond, he was proud too, of his employer. Mr. Pavely was a model banker, a model worker. He never went home before four, and often stayed on working till five.

"Very good, sir. It's a fine afternoon. I often wonder you stay as long as you do," he said, with that queer touch of affection in his voice which Godfrey Pavely valued perhaps more than he knew.

The walk home seemed much longer than usual. Two miles and a bit? He was proud of the fact that he could do it with ease in five minutes over the half-hour. To-day, as a matter of fact, he walked so quickly that he did it in twenty-seven minutes, but he was not aware of that.

For the first time for months, he passed by Rosedean without as much as giving Katty a thought, and he took a short cut into The Chase instead of going on, up through the great park gates, as he was wont to do. And then, as he went along one of the paths in the walled kitchen garden, he suddenly heard his wife's voice.

"I think that it would be best to have a mass of red and purple just here. Last year we had blues."

He felt a queer, rather unreasoning, shock of relief, of satisfaction. Laura was evidently speaking to one of the gardeners.

Then, as he came round the corner, he saw that the person to whom Laura was speaking was not a gardener, but Oliver Tropenell himself—Oliver, with a spud in his hand, kneeling before Laura, a basket of bulbs by his side. He was looking up eagerly—a jealous onlooker might have said ardently—into her face. In fact, Tropenell looked, so Godfrey Pavely told himself with some heat, "damned absurd." But before Godfrey came right upon the three of them—for little Alice was flitting about behind her mother—Oliver stood up, with the words, "Then I'd better go and get those other bulbs, hadn't I? Will you come too, Alice?"

Godfrey called out "Hullo! Doing some planting?" But his voice sounded odd to himself. Not so, however, to the others. Laura was honestly unaware that Godfrey was very much earlier than his wont, or, if aware, she did not attach any importance to the fact. Still, she felt afraid that Godfrey would interfere with her gardening scheme, and so she shook her head.

As for Oliver Tropenell, no one looking at his dark, set face could have guessed his thoughts. As a matter of fact, he had heard Pavely's footsteps some moments before Pavely spoke. And he had wondered, with quick irritation, why he had come back from Pewsbury—or Rosedean—so much earlier than usual.

Alice, dark-haired, rosy-cheeked, quite curiously unlike either her father or her mother, was the only one of the four who was still happily at ease. She ran up to her father: "Come and see my garden, father!" she cried. "I'm growing some mustard and cress specially for you. You can take it to the Bank in an envelope and have some for your tea!"

The little girl was aware, deep in her sensitive, affectionate heart, that her father and mother were not quite like other fathers and mothers. They were not cosily loving together, as were the father and mother of the two little girls with whom she sometimes went to tea in Pewsbury, neither were they on the happy terms of easy comradeship which even Alice knew was usual with other children's parents.

But she loved her mother with a passionate, unswerving, admiring love, and her father with a stout, proprietary affection. For his sake, and his sake only, she would have liked to be a boy, for then, so she argued secretly within herself, she could be his office boy at the Bank. Up to now she had felt for Oliver Tropenell the easy, unquestioning liking children give to one who comes and goes. But lately she had become dimly aware that occasionally her mother and Mr. Tropenell were too busy talking together to take much heed of her, and this threw a little shadow across her heart.

For Godfrey Pavely there followed days full of discomfort, unease, and rising annoyance. The whole course of his life was changed. As he came and went about the quiet streets of his native town, as he granted business interviews to the townspeople, he was perpetually asking himself if the person he was speaking to was concerned with this odious matter, whether he or she was among those who took his beautiful wife's name lightly.

His object each afternoon was now to get home early, and see for himself what was going on there, and how far Laura was giving cause for low, vulgar gossip.

Laura was not a child! She must know, if she ever brought herself to think of such a thing, that if a married woman allows a man to hang about her, day after day, in the absence of her husband, there is sure to be talk. Pavely regarded Tropenell's share in the matter with a strange toleration—it was his wife whom he blamed with an increasing severity as the minutes, the hours, and the days went by.

He still went to see Katty Winslow, but no longer as often as he had been wont to do. And when in her company he was distrait, uncomfortable, longing to ask if she thought Oliver's constant presence in his house odd or—or peculiar. But he kept a prudent guard over his tongue. One day Katty said something which would have made it easy for him to speak, and which, as a matter of fact, very nearly did cause him to unburden his heart to her. It was a little word, and said quite pleasantly, with, he felt sure, no ulterior motive of any kind.

"It's odd," she said musingly, "to see what good friends Laura has become with Oliver Tropenell! Who would have thought that she would ever like any man as much as she seems to like him? I suppose it's really owing to the fact that he's in partnership with her brother——"

She waited, and as he said nothing, she went on, with a smile, "But then, for the matter of that, you're just as fond of him as she is, aren't you? I can't see the attraction myself, but I admit that it must be there, for two people as unlike you and Laura are to each other both to like him so much."

"Yes, I do like Tropenell," Godfrey spoke very decidedly. "But I can't make out why he gets on so well with Gilbert Baynton. Gillie couldn't run straight if he tried."

"So I've always understood——"

Katty looked at him curiously. She had never been told the real story of the quarrel between the brothers-in-law, but she was clever enough to have reached a very shrewd notion of the truth. Baynton, so much was clear, had done something which Pavely could neither tolerate nor forgive. In the old days, as a girl, Katty had met Gillie Baynton several times, and he had struck her as a very amusing, agreeable sort of young man.

Godfrey had let slip this opportunity of saying anything, and afterwards, as is usually the case, he was glad that he had kept silence. Clever and sympathetic as she was, Katty could do nothing to help him in this horrid, rather degrading business.

And then, walking into his room at the Bank one morning, he saw on the top of the pile of his letters another common-looking envelope marked Private. He took it up with a sick feeling of half eager, half shrinking, expectancy—

This second anonymous letter greatly added to Godfrey Pavely's wretchedness and discomfort, all the more that it was so moderately worded. It seemed to confirm, to make certain, the fact of growing gossip and scandal.

At last something happened which to a small extent relieved the tension. Laura quietly informed him one evening that she much wished to go away for three days to see a friend of her childhood, who had written and begged her to come, and to bring little Alice with her.

She was surprised at the eagerness with which Godfrey assented to her wish. In certain ways Godfrey Pavely, from the modern point of view, was a tyrannical husband. He very much disliked Laura's paying visits by herself, and she had long ago given up even suggesting that she should do so. Also, she on her side much disliked asking him the smallest favour.

The day his wife left The Chase was the first happy day Godfrey had had for three weeks. He spent a pleasant hour with Katty; and on his arrival home his feeling of satisfaction was increased by a note from Mrs. Tropenell inviting him to come and spend at Freshley Manor the three nights Laura was to be away. He wrote accepting with more cordiality of phrase than was his wont, even with so old a friend as was Oliver's mother.

Surely he and Oliver Tropenell, at last alone together, could combine to put an end to this foolish, vulgar gossip? It would be so much easier to speak to and consult with Oliver in Laura's absence.

Once he had made up his mind to speak to the other man, Pavely was able, almost, to forget the whole hateful business. Still, he said nothing till the second morning of his visit. Then, at breakfast, he made a proposal.

"I feel as if I'd like to take this afternoon off. Would you care for a good long walk, eh? We might start about half-past two, have tea in Witanbury, and be back here for dinner."

Oliver nodded. He was at once glad and sorry that Godfrey was so entirely unaware of the growing tide of dislike, nay of hatred, that he felt for him. Secretive as he was by nature, and by the life he had now led for so long, Oliver Tropenell was yet no hypocrite. He loathed the part fate had forced on him, that of pretending a cordial friendship for this man whom he so utterly despised. His mother had invited Godfrey Pavely to stay with them for three nights without first telling Oliver that she was thinking of doing so; and then, when she had realised, too late, his annoyance, she could only explain that Godfrey had always stayed with her on the very rare occasions when Laura had been away.

Mother and son were together when Godfrey started off on his daily walk into Pewsbury.

"I wonder what he's going to talk to you about?" said Mrs. Tropenell a little nervously. The thought of the coming afternoon expedition made her vaguely uneasy.

"He's never at a loss for a word, though he very seldom says anything worth hearing."

Oliver was looking with unhappy, frowning eyes after the other man's trim, rather jaunty figure.

All that morning Mrs. Tropenell watched her son with anxious fear. He wandered restlessly in and out of the house, and though he never mentioned Laura, his mother knew that he was missing her with an almost agonised sense of loss.

Oliver was fighting a losing battle with himself—a battle in which no help from outside could be of any avail. He no longer spoke of going away; instead, he had told his mother of his scheme for bringing Gillie to Europe, and of sending Laura and her brother off to Italy, for a happy little holiday. She ventured to say that she thought that plan to be quite out of the question. Godfrey would never allow it—he had not forgiven Gillie, in spite of the fact that Gillie had now "made good."

It was nearer three than half-past two, when the two men started out, and they had been walking for a full hour, with snatches of talk, and such comfortable intervals of silence as is possible only between intimates, when suddenly Godfrey Pavely stopped walking.

Surprised, Tropenell also came to a stand. They were on a stretch of lonely upland, with nothing save a couple of birds in sight.

"Look here, Oliver, there's something I want to say to you! I hope you won't be offended. But we're such good friends, you and I, that I think you'll understand."

The colour rushed into Oliver Tropenell's face. He turned and faced the other squarely, but he felt tense with excitement, and a sense of challenge. He knew, instinctively, that Pavely was going to say something about Laura—Laura, and perhaps Gillie, her brother.

"Yes," he said quietly. "Yes, Godfrey? What is it? I can't imagine your saying anything to me that would offend me."

"I want you to read what's inside that," said Godfrey in a low voice, and he handed Oliver an envelope.

Oliver was relieved, but he looked down at the envelope suspiciously.

"But this isn't to be opened till you're dead!" he exclaimed.

"Open it now," said Godfrey roughly, "I only put that in case I met with an accident—you'll see why I did it, in a moment."

With a queer feeling of misgiving Oliver Tropenell drew the common little sheet of notepaper out of the envelope, and in silence read over what was written there in those deceitful, printed characters.

He read it once, twice—thrice. Then he handed the sheet of paper back, with a look of disgust and contempt on his dark face, to the man standing by his side.

"Well!" he exclaimed. "I don't know what you expect me to say? If you'd had as many anonymous letters as I've had in my time—they rain in Mexico—you wouldn't give much thought to this kind of garbage!"

Holding out the letter as if it were something dirty, he handed it back to the other man.

"I haven't given much thought to it——" and then Godfrey stopped short. He felt as if some other man, and not his sober self, were uttering the lie.

"No," said Oliver quickly, "I don't suppose you have. But still, I can't help being rather sorry you kept it, and—and that you showed it to me. There's nothing to be done! I suppose it's the work of some clerk whom you've dismissed in the last few weeks?"

"I've dismissed no one," said Pavely shortly. Somehow Tropenell was not taking this disagreeable business quite as he had meant him to take it.

In a rather different voice Oliver went on: "Show me the letter again. I want to see if there's a date to it."

"It arrived exactly three weeks ago to-day," said Pavely slowly, "and it was posted in Pewsbury."

Light broke in on Tropenell. This, then, was why Godfrey had taken to coming home at such odd hours, and why he had telephoned several times from the Bank, sending messages to Laura, and, on at least one occasion, a message to Tropenell himself!

He set his lips tightly together, and a flood of bitter wrath welled up from his heart.

"Then in my place you would do nothing?" asked Godfrey uncertainly.

More and more he was disappointed in the other's attitude. He had thought Oliver would suggest something which might be useful, or at any rate laugh the matter off.

But Oliver only looked grim—grim and angry.

"I don't see that you can do anything. It isn't the sort of thing about which you would care to go to the local police, and even if you knew who wrote that infamous scrawl I don't see how you could take action. We can't have Laura's name dragged into this kind of business."

Then he asked in a lower voice, "Have you said anything to her?"

The other shook his head. "I've no intention of saying anything to Laura. It would distress and disgust her very much."

He was glad to see that Oliver, hearing these words, looked very much relieved.

They walked on a few paces, and then Godfrey exclaimed, "There's one thing I do think, Oliver—and I hope you won't be angry with me for saying it! It must be admitted that you've been a great deal at The Chase alone with Laura, and also, unfortunately, that that sort of thing always does make talk in a country town."

Tropenell turned on him sternly: "What sort of thing?" he asked. "I swear before God that there has never been anything in my attitude to Laura which should give the slightest rise to comment, or afford the basest scandalmonger excuse for a word."

And he believed every word of what he said.

"I know that—I know that, my dear fellow!" Godfrey put his hand out, and for a moment it lay heavily on his friend's shoulder.

But quickly, silently, Tropenell shook himself free of the other's touch. "If you know that," he was breathing hard now, not trying to disguise his anger, "then why did you allude just now to the fact that I am a good deal in your house? Does that mean you wish that I should give up coming to The Chase?"

"No, of course I don't mean that! You're the one real friend I've made—well, since I got to man's estate," said Pavely ruefully.

Everything was going wrong. The conversation was taking a turn he had never thought of or conceived as possible. "What I mean is that Laura——"

Tropenell stopped him with a passionate gesture: "Cannot we keep Laura's name out of our discussion?"

Godfrey stared at him, genuinely astonished.

"How can we keep Laura's name out of our discussion? The whole thing centres about Laura! This letter mentions Laura—ay, and I've had another letter, which I hadn't meant to show you, but which on second thoughts I should like you to see."

He began fumbling in another pocket.

"I don't want to see it!" cried Oliver. "I'd rather not see it!"

"But I'd rather you saw it," said Godfrey obstinately.

Tropenell read the second anonymous letter through, and then handed it back, without comment.

Silently they both turned about, and walked quickly, in almost complete silence, back to Freshley. "We've come home to tea, after all, mother," said Oliver shortly, "we are neither of us in condition for a fifteen-mile walk."

Neither man referred again to the matter which when they were together filled both their minds, and on the day of Laura's return to The Chase, Oliver Tropenell went up to town, without having seen her. Four days later his mother received a rather cryptic telegram: "Arriving to-night with a friend."

A friend? Some sure, sombre instinct told Mrs. Tropenell that this would be Gillie Baynton.