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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14489 ***
+
+NIGHTFALL
+
+by
+
+ANTHONY PRYDE
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+"Tea is ready, Bernard," said Laura Clowes, coming in from the
+garden.
+
+It was five o'clock on a June afternoon, but the hall was so dark
+that she had to grope her way.  Wanhope was a large, old-fashioned
+manor-house, a plain brick front unbroken except in the middle, where
+its corniced roof was carried down by steps to an immense gateway of
+weathered stone, carved with the escutcheon of the family and their
+Motto: FORTIS ET FIDELIS. Wistarias rambled over both sides,
+wreathing the stone window-frames in their grape-like clusters of
+lilac bloom, and flagstones running from end to end, shallow, and so
+worn that a delicate growth of stonecrop fringed them, shelved down
+to a lawn.
+
+Indoors in the great hall it was dark because floor and staircase
+and wall and ceiling were all lined with Spanish chestnut-wood,
+while the windows were full of Flemish glass in purple and sepia
+and blue.  There was nothing to reflect a glint of light except a
+collection of weapons of all ages which occupied the wall behind
+a bare stone hearth; suits of inlaid armour, coats of chainmail
+as flexible as silk, assegais and blowpipes, Bornean parangs and
+Gurkha kukris, Abyssinian shotels with their double blades,
+Mexican knives in chert and chalcedony, damascened swords and
+automatic pistols, a Chinese bronze drum, a Persian mace of the
+date of Rustum, and an Austrian cavalry helmet marked with a
+bullet-hole and a stain.
+
+Gradually, as her eyes grew used to the gloom Laura found her way
+to her husband's couch.  She would have liked to kiss him, but
+dared not: the narrow mocking smile, habitual on his lips, showed
+no disposition to respond to advances.  Dressed in an ordinary
+suit of Irish tweed, Bernard Clowes lay at full length in an easy
+attitude, his hands in his pockets and his legs decently extended
+as Barry, his male nurse, had left them twenty minutes ago: a
+big, powerful man, well over six feet in height, permanently
+bronze and darkly handsome, his immense shoulders still held back
+so flat that his coat fitted without a wrinkle--but a cripple
+since the war.
+
+Laura Clowes too was tall and slightly sunburnt,  but thin for
+her height, and rather plain except for her sweet eyes, her silky
+brown hair, and--rarer gift!--the vague elegance which was a
+prerogative of Selincourt women.  She rarely wore expensive
+clothes, her maid Catherine made most of her indoor dresses,
+and yet she could still hold her own, as in old days, among
+women who shopped in the Rue de la Paix.  This afternoon, in her
+silk muslin of the same shade as the trail of wistaria tucked
+in where the frills crossed over her breast, she might have gone
+astray out of the seventeenth century.
+
+"Tea is in the parlour," said Mrs. Clowes. "Shall I wheel you
+round through the garden?  It's a lovely day and the roses are
+in their perfection, I counted eighty blooms on the old Frau
+Karl.  I should like you to see her."
+
+"I shouldn't.  But you can drag me into the parlour if you like,"
+said Bernard Clowes--a grudging concession: more often than not
+he ate his food in the hall.  His wife pushed his couch, which
+ran on cycle wheels and so lightly that a child could propel it,
+into her sitting-room and as near as she dared to the French
+windows that opened without step or ledge on the terrace
+flagstones and the verdure of the lawn.  Out of doors, for some
+obscure reason, he refused to go, though the garden was sweet
+with the scent of clover and the gold sunlight was screened by
+the milky branches of a great acacia.  Still he was in the fresh
+air, and Laura hastily busied herself with her flowered Dresden
+teacups, pretending unconsciousness because if she had shown the
+slightest satisfaction he would probably have demanded to be
+taken back. Her mild duplicity was of course mere make believe:
+the two understood each other only too well: but it was wiser to
+keep a veil drawn in case Bernard Clowes should suddenly return
+to his senses.  For this reason Laura always spoke as if his
+choice of a coffined life were only a day or two old.  Had he
+said--as he might say at any moment--"Laura, I should like to
+go for a drive," Laura would have been able without inconsistency
+to reply, "Yes, dear: what time shall I order the car?" as though
+they had been driving together every evening of their married
+life.
+
+"What have you been doing today?" Clowes  asked, sipping his tea
+and looking out of the window.  He had shut himself up in his
+bedroom with a headache and his wife had not seen him since the
+night before.
+
+"This morning I motored into Amesbury to change the library
+books and to enquire after Canon Bodington. I saw Mrs. Bodington
+and Phoebe and George--,"
+
+"Who's George?"
+
+"Their son in the Navy, don't you remember?  The Sapphire is in
+dry dock--"
+
+"How old is he?"
+
+"Nineteen," said Mrs. Clowes.
+
+"Oh.  Go on."
+
+"I don't remember doing anything else except get some stamps at
+the post office.  Stay, now I come to think of it, I met Mr.
+Maturin, but I didn't  speak to him.  He only took off his hat to
+me, Bernard. He is seventy-four."
+
+"Dull sort of morning you seem to have had," said Bernard Clowes.
+
+"What did you do after lunch?"
+
+"With a great want of intelligence, I strolled down to Wharton to
+see Yvonne, but she was out. They had all gone over to the big
+garden party at Temple Brading.  I forgot about it--"
+
+"Why weren't you asked?"
+
+"I was asked but I didn't care to go.  Now that I am no longer in
+my first youth these expensive crushes cease to amuse me."
+Bernard gave an incredulous sniff but said nothing.  "On my way
+home I looked in at the vicarage to settle the day for the school
+treat.  Isabel has made Jack Bendish promise to help with the
+cricket, and she seems to be under the impression that Yvonne
+will join in the games.  I can hardly believe that anything will
+induce Yvonne to play Nuts and May, but if it is to be done that
+energetic child will do it.  No, I didn't see Val or Mr.
+Stafford.  Val was over at Red Springs and Mr. Stafford was
+preparing his sermon."
+
+"Have you written any letters?"
+
+"I wrote to father and sent him fifty pounds.  It was out of my
+own allowance. He seems even harder up than usual.  I'm afraid
+the latest system is not profitable."
+
+"I should not think it would be, for Mr. Selincourt," replied
+Bernard Clowes politely. "Monte Carlo never does pay unless one's
+pretty sharp, and your father hasn't the brains of a flea.  Was
+that the only letter you wrote?"
+
+"Yes--will you have some more bread and butter?"
+
+"And what letters did you get?"  Clowes pursued his leisured
+catechism while he helped himself daintily to a fragile sandwich.
+This was all part of the daily routine, and Laura, if she felt
+any resentment, had long since grown out of showing it.
+
+"One from Lucian.  He's in Paris--"
+
+"With--?"
+
+"No one, so far as I know," Laura replied, not affecting to
+misunderstand his jibe.  Lucian Selincourt was her only brother
+and very dear to her, but there was no denying that his career
+had its seamy side.  He was not, like her father, a family
+skeleton--he had never been warned off the Turf: but he was
+rarely solitary and never out of debt. "Poor Lucian, he's hard
+up too. I wish I could send him fifty pounds, but if I did he'd
+send it back."
+
+"What other letters did you have?"
+
+Mrs. Clowes had had a sheaf of unimportant notes, which she was
+made to describe in detail, her husband listening in his hard
+patience.  When they were exhausted Laura went on in a hesitating
+voice, "And there was one more that I want to consult you about.
+I know you'll say we can't have him, but I hardly liked to refuse
+on my own imitative, as he's your cousin, not mine.  It was from
+Lawrence Hyde, offering to come here for a day or two."
+
+"Lawrence Hyde?  Why, I haven't seen or heard of him for years,"
+Clowes raised his head with a gleam of interest.  "I remember him
+well enough though.  Good-looking chap, six foot two or three and
+as strong as a horse.  Well-built chap, too.  Women ran after
+him.  I haven't seen him since we were in the trenches together."
+
+"Yes, Bernard.  Don't you recollect his going to see you in
+hospital?"
+
+"So he did, by Jove!  I'd forgotten that.  He'd ten days' leave
+and he chucked one of them away to look me up.  Not such a bad
+sort, old Lawrence."
+
+"I liked him very much," said Laura quietly.
+
+"Wants to come to us, does he?  Why?  Where does he write from?"
+
+"Paris.  It seems he ran across Lucian at Auteuil--"
+
+"Let me see the letter."
+
+Laura give it over.  "Calls you Laura, does he?" Clowes read it
+aloud with a running commentary of his own.  "H'm: pleasant
+relationship, cousins-in-law. . . 'Met Lucian . . . chat about
+old times'--is he a bird of Lucian's feather, I wonder?  He
+wasn't keen on women in the old days, but people change a lot
+in ten years . . . 'Like to come and see us while he's in
+England . . . run over for the day'--bosh, he knows we should
+have to put him up for a couple of nights! . . . 'Sorry to hear
+such a bad account of Bernard'--Very kind of him, does he want
+a cheque?  Hallo!  'Lucian says he is leading you a deuce of a
+life.' Upon my word!"  He lowered the letter and burst out
+laughing--the first hearty laugh she had heard from him for many
+a long day.  Laura, who had given him the letter in fear and
+trembling and only because she could not help herself, was
+exceedingly relieved and joined in merrily.  But while she was
+laughing she had to wink a sudden moisture from her eyelashes:
+this glimpse of the natural self of the man she had married went
+to her heart.  "Is it true?" he said, still with that friendly
+twinkle in his eyes.  "Do I lead you the deuce of a life, poor
+old Laura?"
+
+"I don't mind," said Laura, smiling back at him.  She could have
+been more eloquent, but she dared not.  Bernard's moods required
+delicate handling.
+
+"He's a cool hand anyhow to write like that to a woman about her
+husband.  But Lawrence always was a cool hand. I remember the
+turn-up we had in the Farringay woods when I was twelve and he
+was fourteen.  He nearly murdered me. But I paid him out," said
+Bernard in a glow of pleasurable reminiscence.  "He was too
+heavy for me. Old Andrew Hyde came and dragged him off.  But
+I marked him: he was banished from his mother's drawingroom for
+a week--not that he minded that much . . . Aunt Helen was a
+pretty woman.  Gertrude and I never could think why she married
+Uncle Andrew, but I believe they got on all right, though she was
+a big handsome woman--a Clowes all over--while old Andrew
+looked like any little scrub out of Houndsditch.  Never can tell
+why people marry each other, can you?" Bernard was becoming
+philosophical.  I suppose if you go to the bottom it's Nature
+that takes them by the scruff of the neck and gives them a gentle
+shove and says 'More babies, please.' She doesn't always bring it
+off though, witness you and me, my love.--  But I say, Laura, I
+like the way you handed over that letter!  Thought it would do me
+good, didn't you?  Look here, I can't have my character taken
+away behind my back!  You tell him to come and judge for
+himself."
+
+"You'll get very tired of him, Berns," said Laura doubtfully.
+"You always say you get sick of people in twenty-four hours: and
+I can't take him entirely off your hands--you'll have to do your
+share of entertaining him.  He's your cousin, not mine, and it'll
+be you he comes to see."
+
+"I shan't see any more of him than I want to, my dear, on that
+you may depend," said Bernard with easy emphasis.  "If he
+invites himself he'll have to put with what he can get.  But
+I can stand a good deal of him.  Regimental shop is always
+amusing, and Lawrence will know heaps of fellows I used to know,
+and tell me what's become of them all.  Besides, I'm sick to
+death of the local gang and Lawrence will be a change.  He's got
+more brains than Jack Bendish, and from the style of his letter
+he can't be so much like a curate as Val is."  Val Stafford was
+agent for the Wanhope property.  "Oh,  by George!"
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+Bernard threw back his head and grinned broadly with half shut
+eyes.  "Ha, ha! by Gad, that's funny--that's very funny.  Why,
+Val knows him!"
+
+"Knows Lawrence?  I never heard Val mention his name."
+
+"No, my love, but one can't get Val to open his lips on that
+subject. Lawrence and I were in the same battalion.  He was there
+when Val got his ribbon."
+
+"Really?  That will be nice for Val, meeting him again."
+
+"Oh rather!" said Bernard Clowes. "On my word it's a shame and
+I've half a mind . . .. No, let him come: let him come and be
+damned to the pair of them!  Straighten me out, will you?" He was
+liable like most paralytics to mechanical jerks and convulsions
+which drove him mad with impatience.  Laura drew down the
+helplessly twitching knee, and ran one firm hand over him from
+thigh to ankle.  Her touch had a mesmeric effect on his nerves
+when he could endure it, but nine times out of ten he struck it
+away. He did so now. "Go to the devil!  How often have I told
+you not to paw me about?  I wish you'd do as you're told.  What
+do you call him Lawrence for?"
+
+"I always did.  But I'll call him Captain Hyde if you like--"
+
+"'Mr.,' you mean: he's probably dropped the 'Captain.' He was
+only a 'temporary.'"
+
+"For all that, he has stuck to his prefix," said Laura smiling.
+"Lucian chaffed him about it. But Lawrence was always rather a
+baby in some ways: clocked socks to match his ties, and
+astonishing adventures in jewellery, and so on.  Oh yes, I knew
+him very well indeed when I was a girl.  Mr. and Mrs. Hyde were
+among the last of the old set who kept up with us after father
+was turned out of his clubs.  I've stayed at Farringay."
+
+"You never told me that!"
+
+"I never thought of telling you. Lawrence hasn't been near us
+since we came to Wanhope and I don't recollect your ever
+mentioning his name.  You see I tell you now."
+
+"How old were you when you stayed at Farringay?"
+
+"Twenty-two.  Lawrence and I are the same age."
+
+"And you knew him well, did you?"
+
+"We were great friends," said Mrs. Clowes, tossing a lump of
+sugar out of the window to a lame jackdaw. She had many such
+pensioners, alike in a community of misfortune.  "And, yes,
+Berns, you're right, we flirted a little--only a little: wasn't
+it natural?  It was only for fun, because we were both young and
+it was such heavenly weather--it was the Easter before war broke
+out.  No, he didn't ask me to marry him!  Nothing was farther
+from his mind."
+
+"Did he kiss you?"
+
+Laura slowly and smilingly shook her head. "Am I, Yvonne?"
+
+"But you liked the fellow?"
+
+"Oh yes, he was charming.  A little too much one of a class,
+perhaps: there's a strong family likeness, isn't there, between
+Cambridge undergraduates?  But he was more cultivated than a good
+many of his class.  We used to go up the river together and read
+--what did one read in the spring of 1914?  Masefield, I suppose,
+or was it Maeterlinck?  Rupert Brooks came with the war.  Imagine
+reading 'Pelleas et Melisande' in a Canadian canoe!  It makes one
+want to be twenty-two again, so young and so delightfully
+serious."  It was hard to run on while the glow faded out of
+Bernard's face and a cold gloom again came over it, but sad
+experience had taught Laura that at all costs, under whatever
+temptation, it was wiser to be frank.  It would have been easier
+for the moment to paint the boy and girl friendship in neutral
+tints, but if its details came out later, trivial and innocent
+as they were, the economy of today would cost her dear tomorrow,
+Her own impression was that Clowes had never been jealous of her
+in his life.  But the pretence of jealousy was one of his few
+diversions.
+
+"I dare say you do wish you were twenty-two again," he said,
+delicately setting down his tea cup on the tray--all his
+movements, so far as he could control them, were delicate and
+fastidious. "I dare say you would like a chance to play your
+cards differently.  Can't be done, my, girl, but what a good
+fellow I am to ask Lawrence to Wanhope, ain't I? No one can say
+I'm not an obliging husband.  Lawrence isn't a jumping doll. He's
+six and thirty and as strong as a horse.  You'll have no end of a
+good time knitting up your severed friendship .. 'Pon my word,
+I've a good mind to put him off. . I shouldn't care to fall foul
+of the King's Proctor."
+
+"Will you have another cup of tea before I ring"
+
+"No, thanks . . . Do I lead you the deuce of a life, Lally?"
+
+"You do now and then," said his wife, smiling with pale lips.
+
+"It isn't that I'm sensitive for myself, because I know you don't
+mean a word of it, but I rather hate it for your own sake.  It
+isn't worthy of you, old boy.  It's so--so ungentlemanly."
+
+"So it is.  But I do it because I'm bored.  I am bored, you know.
+Desperately!" He stretched out his hand to her with such haggard,
+hunted eyes that Laura, reckless, threw herself down by him and
+kissed the heavy eyelids.  Clowes put his arm round her neck,
+fondling her hair, and for a little while peace, the peace of
+perfect mutual tenderness, fell on this hard-driven pair.  But
+soon, a great sigh bursting from his breast, Clowes pushed her
+away, his features settling back into their old harsh lines of
+savage pain and scorn.
+
+"Get away! get up! do you want Parker to see you through the
+window?  If there's a thing on earth I hate it's a dishevelled
+crying woman.  Write to Lawrence.  Say I shall be delighted to
+see him and that I hope he'll give us at least a week. Stop.
+Warn him that I shan't be able to see much of him because of
+my invalid habits, and that I shall depute you to entertain
+him.  That ought to fetch him if he remembers you when you were
+twenty-two."
+
+Laura was neither dishevelled nor in tears: perhaps such scenes
+were no novelty to her.  She leant against the frame of the open
+window, looking out over the sunlit garden full of flowers, over
+the wide expanse of turf that sloped down to a wide, shallow
+river all sparkling in western light, and over airy fields on
+the other side of it to the roofs of the distant village strung
+out under a break of woody hill.
+
+"Are you sure you want him?  He used to have a hot temper when he
+was a young man, and you know, Berns, it would be tiresome if
+there were any open scandal."
+
+"Scandal be hanged,"  said Bernard Clowes. "You do as you're
+told."  His wife gave an almost imperceptible shrug of the
+shoulders as if to disclaim further responsibility.  She was
+breathing rather hurriedly as if she had been running, and her
+neck was so white that the shadow of her sunlit wistaria threw a
+faint lilac stain on the warm, fine grain of her skin.  And the
+haggard look returned to Bernard's eyes as he watched her, and
+with it a wistfulness, a weariness of desire, "hungry, and
+barren, and sharp as the sea."  Laura never saw that hunger in
+his eyes.  If he spared her nothing else he spared her that.
+
+"You do as I tell you, old girl," his harsh voice had softened
+again. "There won't be any row.  Honestly I'd like to have old
+Lawrence here for a bit, I'm not rotting now.  He had almost four
+years of it--almost as long as I had.  I'll guarantee it put a
+mark on him.  It scarred us all. It'll amuse me to dine him and
+Val together, and make them talk shop, our own old shop, and see
+what the war's done for each of us: three retired veterans,
+that's what we shall be, putting our legs under the same
+mahogany: three old comrades in arms." He gave his strange,
+jarring laugh. "Wonder which of us is scarred deepest?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+WANHOPE and Castle Wharton--or, to give them their due order,
+Wharton and Wanhope, for Major Clowes' place would have gone
+inside the Castle three times over--were the only country
+houses in the Reverend James Stafford's parish.  The village
+of Chilmark--a stone bridge, crossroads, a church with Norman
+tower and frondlike Renaissance tracery, and an irregular line
+of school, shops, and cottages strung out between the stream and
+chalky beech-crested hillside occupied one of those long, winding,
+sheltered crannies that mark the beds of watercourses along the
+folds of Salisbury Plain.  Uplands rose steeply all along it
+except on the south, where it widened away into the flats of
+Dorsetshire.  Wharton overlooked this expanse of hunting country:
+a formidable Norman keep, round which, by gradual accretion, a
+dwelling-place had grown up, a history of English architecture
+and English gardening written in stone and brick and grass and
+flowers.  One sunny square there was, enclosed between arched
+hedges set upon pillars of carpenters' work, which still kept the
+design of old Verulam: and Yvonne of the Castle loved its little
+turrets and cages of singing birds, and its alleys paved with
+burnet, wild thyme, and watermints, which perfume the air most
+delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but being trodden upon
+and crushed.
+
+Wanhope also, though modest by comparison, had a good deal of
+land attached to it, but the Clowes property lay north up the
+Plain, where they sowed the headlands with red wheat still as
+in the days of Justice Shallow.  The shining Mere, a tributary
+of the Avon, came dancing down out of these hills: strange
+pastoral cliffs of chalk covered with fine sward, and worked by
+the hands of prehistoric man into bastions and ramparts that
+imitated in verdure the bold sweep of masonry.
+
+Mr. Stafford was a man of sixty, white-haired and of sensitive,
+intelligent features.  He was a High Churchman, but wore a felt
+wideawake in winter because when he bought it wideawakes were
+the fashion for High Churchmen.  In the summer he usually roved
+about his parish without any hat at all, his white curls flying
+in the wind.  He was of gentle birth, which tended to ease his
+intercourse with the Castle.  He had a hundred a year of his own,
+and the living of Chilmark was worth 175 pounds net.  So it may
+have been partly from necessity that he went about in clothes at
+which any respectable tramp would have turned his nose up: but
+idiosyncrasy alone can have inspired him to get the village tailor
+to line his short blue pilot jacket with pink flannelette.  "It's
+very warm and comfortable, my dear," he said apologetically to his
+wife, who sat and gazed at him aghast, "so much more cosy than
+Italian cloth."
+
+On that occasion Mrs. Stafford was too late to interfere, but as
+a rule she exercised a restraining influence, and while she lived
+the vicar was not allowed to go about with holes in his trousers.
+After her death Mr. Stafford mourned her sincerely and cherished
+her memory, but all the same he was glad to be able to wear his
+old boots.  However, he had a cold bath every morning and kept
+his hands irreproachable, not from vanity but from an inbred
+instinct of personal care.  Yvonne of the Castle, who spoke her
+mind as Yvonne's of the Castle commonly do, said that the fewer
+clothes Mr. Stafford wore the better she liked him, because he
+was always clean and they were not.
+
+Mr. Stafford had three children; Val, late of the Dorchester
+Regiment, Rowsley an Artillery lieutenant two years younger,
+and Isabel the curate, a tall slip of a girl of nineteen.  They
+were all beloved, but Val was the prop of the family and the
+pride of his father's heart.  Invalided out of the Army after
+six weeks' fighting, with an honourable distinction and an
+irremediably shattered arm, he had been given the agency of the
+Wanhope property, and lived at home, where the greater part of
+his three hundred a year went to pay the family bills.  Most of
+these were for what Mr. Stafford gave away, for the vicar had no
+idea of the value of money, and was equally generous with Val's
+income and his own.
+
+Altogether Mr. Stafford was a contented and happy man, and his
+only worry was the thought, which crossed his mind now and then,
+that Chilmark for a young man of Val's age was dull, and that the
+Wanhope agency led nowhere.  If Val had been an ambitious man!
+But Val was not ambitious, and Mr Stafford thanked heaven that
+this pattern son of his had never been infected by the vulgar
+modern craze for money making. His salary would not have kept him
+in luxury in a cottage of his own, but it was enough to make the
+vicarage a comfortable home for him; and, so long as he remained
+unmarried, what could he want more, after all, than the society
+of his own family and his kind country neighbours?
+
+Rowsley, cheerfully making both ends meet in the Artillery on an
+allowance from his godmother, was off his father's hands.
+Isabel?  Mr. Stafford did not trouble much about Isabel, who was
+only a little girl.  She was a happy, healthy young thing, and
+Mr. Stafford was giving her a thoroughly good education.  She
+would be able to earn her own living when he died, if she were
+not married, as every woman ought to be.  (There was no one for
+Isabel to marry, but Mr. Stafford's principles rose superior to
+facts.)  Meantime it was not as if she were running wild: that
+sweet woman Laura Clowes and the charming minx at the Castle
+between them could safely be left to form her manners and see
+after her clothes.
+
+One summer afternoon Isabel was coming back from an afternoon's
+tennis at Wharton.  Mrs. Clowes brought her in the Wanhope car as
+far as the Wanhope footpath, and would have sent her home, but
+Isabel declined, ostensibly because she wanted to stretch her
+legs, actually because she couldn't afford to tip the Wanhope
+chauffeur.  So she tumbled out of the car and walked away at a
+great rate, waving Laura farewell with her tennis racquet.
+Isabel was a tall girl of nineteen, but she still plaited her
+hair in a pigtail which swung, thick and dark and glossy, well
+below her waist.  She wore a holland blouse and skirt, a sailor
+hat trimmed with a band of Rowsley's ribbon, brown cotton
+stockings, and brown sandshoes bought for 5/11-3/4 of Chapman,
+the leading draper in Chilmark High Street.  Isabel made her own
+clothes and made them badly.  Her skirt was short in front and
+narrow below the waist, and her sailor blouse was comfortably but
+inelegantly loose round the armholes.  Laura Clowes, who had a
+French instinct of dress, and would have clad Isabel as Guinevere
+clad Enid, if Isabel had not been prouder than Enid, looked after
+her with a smile and a sigh: it was a grief to her to see her
+young friend so shabby, but, bless the child! how little she
+cared--and how little it signified after all!  Isabel's poverty
+sat as light on her spirits as the sailor hat, never straight,
+sat on her upflung head.
+
+Isabel knew every one in Chilmark parish.  Pausing before a knot
+of boys playing marbles: "Herbert," she said sternly, "why
+weren't you at school on Sunday?" Old Hewett, propped like a
+wheezy mummy against the oak tree that shaded the Prince of
+Wales's Feathers, brought up his stiff arm slowly in a salute to
+the vicar's daughter. "'Evening," said Isabel cheerfully, "what a
+night for rheumatics isn't it?"  Hewitt chuckled mightily at this
+subtle joke. "'Evening, Isabel," called out Dr. Verney, putting
+up one finger to his cap: he considered one finger enough for a
+young lady whom he had brought into the world.  Isabel knew every
+one in Chilmark and every one knew her.  Such a range of
+intensive acquaintance is not so narrow as people who have never
+lived in a country village are apt to suppose.
+
+Past the schoolhouse, past the wide stone bridge where Isabel
+loved to hang over the parapet watching for trout--but not
+tonight, for it was late, and Isabel after a "company tea" wanted
+her supper: by a footpath through the churchyard, closely mown
+and planted with rosebushes: and so into the church, where, after
+dropping a hurried professional curtsey to the altar, she set
+about her evening duties. Isabel called herself the curate, but
+she did a good deal which is not expected of a curate, such as
+shutting windows and changing lesson-markers, propping up the
+trebles when they went astray in the pointing of the Psalms,
+altering the numbers on the hymn-board, writing out choir papers,
+putting flowers in the vases and candles in the benediction
+lights, playing the organ as required and occasionally blowing
+it. . . . Before leaving the church she fell on her knees, in
+deference to Mr. Stafford and the text by the door, and said a
+prayer.  What did she pray?  "O Lord bless this church and all
+who worship in it and make father preach a good sermon next
+Sunday. I wish I'd been playing with Val instead of Jack, we
+should have won that last set if Jack hadn't muffed his
+services. . . .  Well, this curate was only nineteen."
+
+And then, coming out into the fading light, she locked the north
+door behind her and went off whistling like a blackbird, if a
+blackbird could whistle the alto of Calkin's Magnificat in B
+flat. . . . Five minutes climbing of the steep brown floor of
+the beechwood, and she was out on uplands in the dying fires of
+day.  It had been twilight in the valley, but here the wide plain
+was sunlit and the air was fresh and dry: in the valley even the
+river-aspens were almost quiet, but here there was still a sough
+of wind coming and going, through the dry grass thick set with
+lemon thyme and lady's slipper, or along the low garden wall
+where red valerian sprouted out of yellow stonecrop.
+
+A wishing gate led into the garden, and Isabel made for an open
+window, but halfway over the sill she paused, gazing with all her
+soul in her eyes across the vicarage gooseberry bushes.  That
+grey suit was Val's of course, but who was inside the belted coat
+and riding breeches?  "Rows-lee!" sang out Isabel, tumbling back
+into the garden with a generous display of leg.  The raiders rose
+up each holding a handful of large red strawberries melting ripe,
+and Isabel, pitching in her racquet on a sofa, ran across the
+grass and enfolded her brother in her arms.  Rowsley, dark and
+slight and shrewd, returned her hug with one arm, while carefully
+guarding his strawberries with the other--"You pig, you perfect
+pig!" wailed Isabel.  "I was saving them for tea tomorrow,
+Laura's coming and I can't afford a cake.  Oh joy, you can buy me
+one!  How long can you stay?"
+
+"Over the week end: but I didn't come to buy you cakes, Baby. I
+haven't any money either. I came because I wanted you to buy me
+cakes."
+
+"O well never mind, I'll make one," Isabel joyously slipped her
+hand through Rowsley's arm. "Then I can get the flour from the
+baker and it won't cost anything at all--it'll go down in the
+bill. Well give me one anyhow, now they're picked it would be a
+pity to waste them." She helped herself liberally out of Val's
+hand.  "Now stop both of you, you can't have any more."
+
+She linked her other arm in Val's and dragged her brothers out of
+the dangerous proximity of the strawberry beds.  Val sat down on
+a deck chair, one leg thrown over the other, Rowsley dropped at
+full length on the turf, and Isabel doubled herself up between
+them, her arms clasped round her knees.  "How's the Old Man?" she
+asked in friendly reference to Rowsley's commanding officer.
+"Oh Rose, I knew there was something I wanted to ask you.  Will
+Spillsby be able to play on the Fourth?"  Spillsby, a brother
+subaltern and a famous bat, had twisted his ankle at the nets,
+and Rowsley in his last letter had been uncertain whether he
+would be well enough to play the Sappers at the annual fixture.
+
+Happily Rowsley was able to reassure his young sister: the ankle
+was much better and Spillsby was already allowed to walk on it.
+Isabel then turned her large velvet eyes--gazelle eyes with a
+world of pathos in their velvet gloom on her elder brother.
+"Coruscate, Val," she commanded.  "You haven't said anything at
+all yet.  We should all try to be bright in the home circle.  We
+cannot all be witty, but-Ow!  Rowsley, if you pull my hair I
+shall hit you in the--in the place where the Gauls fined their
+soldiers if they stuck out on parade.  Oh, Val, that really isn't
+vulgar, I found it in Matthew Arnold!  Their stomachs, you know.
+They wouldn't have fined you anyhow.  You look fagged, darling--
+are you?"
+
+"Not so much fagged as hungry," said Val in his soft voice. "It's
+getting on for nine o'clock and I was done out of my tea. I went
+in to Wanhope, but Laura was out, and Clowes was drinking whisky
+and soda. I cannot stand whisky at four in the afternoon, and
+Irish whisky at that.  There'll be some supper going before long,
+won't there?"
+
+"Not until half past nine because Jimmy has his Bible class
+tonight."  Jimmy was Mr. Stafford: and perhaps a purist might
+have objected that Mrs. Clowes and Yvonne Bendish had not done
+all they might have done to form Isabel's manners. "I'm so sorry,
+darling," she continued, preparing to leap to her feet.  "Shall I
+get you a biscuit?  There are oatmeals in the sideboard, the kind
+you like, I won't be a minute--"
+
+"Thanks very much, I'd rather wait.  Did you see Mrs. Clowes
+today? Clowes said she was at the Castle."
+
+"So she was, sitting with Mrs. Morley in an angelic striped
+cotton.  Mrs. Morley was in mauve ninon and a Gainsborough hat.
+Yvonne says Mr. Morley is a Jew and made his money in I. D. B.'s,
+which I suppose are some sort of stocks?" Neither of her brothers
+offered to enlighten her, Rowsley because he was feeling
+indolent, Val because he never said an unkind word to any one.
+Isabel, who was enamoured of her own voice flowed on with little
+delay: "If he really is a Jew, I can't think how she could marry
+him; I wouldn't. Mrs. Morley can't be very happy or Laura
+wouldn't go and talk to her.  Laura is so sweet, she always sits
+with people that other people run away from.  Oh Val, did Major
+Clowes tell you their news?" Isabel might refer to her father as
+Jimmy and to Rowsley's commander as the Old Man, but she rarely
+failed to give Bernard Clowes his correct prefix.
+
+"No--is there any?"
+
+"Only that they have some one coming to stay with them.  Won't he
+have a deadly time?" Isabel glanced from Val to Rowsley in the
+certainty of a common response. "Imagine staying at Wanhope!
+However, he invited himself, so it's at his own risk.  Perhaps
+he's embarrassed like you, Rose, and wants Laura to feed him.
+It's rather fun for Laura, though--that is, it will be, if Major
+Clowes isn't too hopeless."
+
+Strange freemasonry of the generations!  Mr. Stafford's children
+loved him dearly and he was wont to say that there were no
+secrets at the vicarage, yet they lived in a conspiracy of
+silence, and even Val, who was mentally nearer to his father's
+age, would have been loth to let Mr. Stafford know as much as
+Isabel knew about Wanhope.  It was assumed that Val's job was the
+very job Val wanted.  Mr. Stafford had indeed a suspicion that it
+was not all plain sailing:  Bernard Clowes retained just so much
+of the decently bred man as to be courteous to his wife before a
+mere acquaintance, but the vicar came and went at odd hours, and
+he observed now and then vague intimations--undertones from
+Bernard himself, an uncontrollable shrinking on Laura's part, an
+occasional hesitation or reluctance in Val--which hinted at
+flying storms.  But Val, the father supposed, could make
+allowance for a cripple: Bernard was so much to be pitied that no
+man would resent an occasional burst of temper!  And there his
+children left him. The younger generation can trust one another
+not to interfere, but when the seniors strike in, with their cut
+and dry precedents and rule of thumb moralities, who knows what
+mischief may follow?  Elder people are so indiscreet!
+
+"It's a cousin of Major Clowes,"  Isabel continued, "but they
+haven't met for years and years--not since the war.  Laura knows
+him too, she met him before she was married and liked him very
+much indeed.  She's looking forward to it--that is, she would be
+if she had spirit enough to look forward to anything."
+
+"Clowes never said a word to me about it," remarked Val.
+
+"Didn't he?" Isabel unfolded herself and stood up. "That means he
+is going to be tiresome.  I must run now, it's five past nine.
+Which will you both have, cold beef or eggs?"
+
+"Oh, anything that's going," said Val.
+
+"Eggs," said Rowsley, "not less than four.  Without prejudice to
+the cold beef if it's underdone.  Hallo!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"What's the matter with your skirt?"
+
+"Nothing," said Isabel shortly.  She screwed her head over her
+shoulder in a vain endeavour to see her own back.  "It's
+perfectly all right."
+
+"It would be, on a scarecrow." Isabel stuck her chin up.  "Have
+you been over to the Castle in that kit, Baby?  Well, if Yvonne
+won't give you some of her old clothes, you might ask the
+kitchenmaid."
+
+"The kitchenmaid has more money than I have," said Isabel
+cheerfully.  "Is it so very bad?  It's clean anyway, I washed and
+ironed it myself."
+
+"It looks very nice and so do you," said Val. Isabel eyed him
+with a softened glance: one could rely on Val to salve one's
+wounded vanity, but, alas!  Val did not know home-made from
+tailor-made. Reluctantly she owned to herself that she had more
+faith in Rowsley's judgment.  "It seems rather short though," Val
+added. "I suppose you will have to go into long frocks pretty
+soon, won't you, and put your hair up?"
+
+"Oh bother my hair and my dresses!" said Isabel with a great
+sigh.  "I will pin my hair up when I get some new clothes, but
+how can I when I haven't any money and Jim hasn't any money and
+neither of you have any money?  Don't you see, idiot," this was
+exclusively to Rowsley, "when I pin my hair up I shall turn into
+a grown up lady?  And then I shall have to wear proper clothes.
+At present I'm only a little girl and it doesn't signify what I
+wear. If any one will give me five pounds I'll pin my hair up
+like a shot.  Oh dear, I wonder what Yvonne would say if Jack
+expected her to outfit herself for five pounds? I do wish some
+one would leave me 10,000 pounds a year.  Get up now, you lazy
+beggar, come and help me lay the supper.  It's Fanny's evening
+out."
+
+She pulled Rowsley to his feet and they went off together leaving
+Val alone on the lawn: good comrades those two, and apparently
+more of an age, in spite of the long gap between them, than
+Rowsley and Val, who was the eldest by only eighteen months.  And
+Val sat on alone, while stains of coral and amber faded out of
+the lavender sky, and a rack of sea clouds, which half an hour
+ago had shone like fiery ripples, dwindled away into smoke--mist
+--a mere shadow on the breast of the night. Stars began to
+sparkle, moths and humming cockchafers sailed by him, a chase of
+bats overhead endlessly fell down airy precipices and rose in
+long loops of darkling flight: honeysuckle and night-scented
+stock tinged with their sweet garden perfume the cool airs from
+the moor.
+
+Val lit a cigarette, a rare indulgence.  If cigarettes grew on
+gooseberry bushes Val would have been an inveterate smoker, but
+good Egyptians were a luxury which he could not often afford
+The Wanhope agency was ample for his needs, though underpaid as
+agencies go: but there was Rowsley, always hard up, uncomplaining,
+but sensitive, as a young fellow in his position is sure to be, and
+secretly fretting because he could not do as other men did: and there
+was Isabel, for whom Val felt the anxiety Mr. Stafford ought to have
+felt, and was trying to make the provision Mr. Stafford ought to have
+made: and then there was the vicar himself, who laid out a great deal
+of money in those investments for which we are promised cent per cent
+interest, but upon a system of deferred payment.
+
+Tonight however Val lit a cigarette, and then a second, to the
+surprise of Isabel, who saw the red spark on the lawn.  She
+thought her brother must be tired, and perhaps it really was the
+long day without food that made him so restless in mind and so
+uneasy.  Bernard Clowes had been more than usually cranky that
+afternoon.  Even the patient Val had had thoughts of throwing up
+his job when the cripple made him go through his week's accounts,
+scrutinizing every entry and cross-examining him on every
+transaction in such a tone as the head of a firm might employ to
+a junior clerk suspected of dishonesty.  It was Bernard's way:
+it meant nothing: but it was irksome to Val, especially when he
+could not soothe himself by dropping into Laura's quiet parlour
+for a cup of tea.  Yet his irritation would not have lingered
+through a cigarette if Isabel's news had not revived it.  This
+cousin of Bernard's!  Val had not much faith in any cousin of
+Bernard Clowes: nor in the kindness of life.
+
+Val was a slight, fair, pleasant-looking man of eight or nine and
+twenty, quiet of movement, friendly-mannered and as inconspicuous
+as his own rather worn grey tweeds: one of a class, till he
+raised his eyes: and then?  There was something strange in Val's eyes
+when they were fully raised, an indrawn arresting brilliance
+difficult to analyse: imaginative and sympathetic, as if he were at
+home in dark places: the quality of acceptance of pain.
+
+Adepts in old days knew by his eyes a man who had been on the
+rack.  Stafford had been racked: and by the pain that is half
+shame, the keenest, the most lacerating and destructive of
+wounds.  He had suffered till he could suffer no more, and
+tonight in the starlit garden he, suffered still, without hope,
+or rebellion, or defence.
+
+Indoors Rowsley and Isabel, with the rapidity of long use, laid
+the cloth, and Isabel fetched cold beef from the larder and
+butter and eggs from the dairy, while Rowsley went down the
+cellar with a jug and a candle and drew from the cask a generous
+allowance of beer.  "Come along in, old Val," said Isabel,
+reappearing at the open window, "You and Rose are both famishing
+and I'm not," this was a pious fiction, "so you can begin and
+I'll wait for Jimmy.  I dare say he's gone wandering off
+somewhere and won't be in till ten."
+
+Val came across the dark, cool lawn and climbed over the window
+sill.  A shabby room, large and low: a faded paper, grey toning
+to blue: a carpet of faded roses on a grey ground: the shaded
+Dresden lamp and roselit supper table shining like an island in
+a pool of shadow, and those two beloved heads, both so dark and
+smooth and young, tam cara capita!  Neither of them suspected
+that Val was unhappy.  His feeling for them was more fatherly
+than fraternal, and Rowsley, strange to say, fell in with Val's
+attitude, coming to his brother for money as naturally as most
+young men go to their parents.  Val sat at the head of the table
+because Mr. Stafford could not carve.  "There!" said Isabel,
+giving him his plate.  "Mustard?  I've just made it so you
+needn't look to see if it's fresh.  Watercress: I picked it
+myself.  Lettuce.  Cream and vinegar and sugar.  Beer.  Now do
+you feel happy?  Lord love you, dear, I like to see you eat."
+
+She sat on the arm of Mr. Stafford's mahogany chair.  "What time
+do you want breakfast? Seven o'clock?  Major Clowes wouldn't come
+down at seven if he were your agent.  Can you get back to tea
+tomorrow?  Laura may bring the cousin up to tea with her and she
+wants him to meet you."
+
+"Very good of her.  Why?"
+
+"Oh, because he was in the Army too and all through the war.  He
+went out with the first hundred thousand.  He's much older than
+you are--the same age as Laura.  Oh, wait a minute!" exclaimed
+Isabel in the tone in which a Frenchwoman says Tenez. I forgot.
+She thinks you must have met him, Val."
+
+"Possibly," said Val.
+
+"Was he in the Dorchesters?" asked Rowsley--much more
+interested than his brother,  no doubt because he was not so
+hungry as Val, who was giving all his attention to his supper.
+
+"No, in the Winchesters," said Isabel.  "Do I mean the
+Winchesters,   Val?  What was Major Clowes' old regiment?"
+
+"Clowes was in the Wintons."
+
+Isabel nodded. "Then so was the cousin.  And Laura says he was
+out there when the Wintons were in the next bit of trench north
+of the Dorchesters.  He was there when--when you were wounded."
+Such was Val Stafford's modesty that in the family circle it was
+not in etiquette to refer in other terms to that famous occasion.
+
+"I don't remember any fellow named Clowes and I never knew
+Bernard Clowes had a cousin out there," said Val, mixing himself
+a salad.
+
+"Oh, his name isn't Clowes.  It's Ryde or Pride or something like
+that.  I'm sorry to be so vague, but Jack Bendish and Yvonne and
+Mrs. Morley were all talking at once.  Lawrence Pied--Fried--"
+
+"Lawrence Hyde?"
+
+"Yes, that's it!  Then you really do remember him?"
+
+"Er--yes.   Is that lamp smoking, Rowsley?  You might turn it
+down a trifle, I can't reach."
+
+"Let me, let me?--  What was he like?"
+
+"Who--Hyde?  Oh," said Val vaguely, "he was like the rest of us
+--very tired."
+
+"Tired?" echoed Isabel with a blank face, "but, Val darling, he
+couldn't have been only tired!  What should you think he was like
+when he wasn't tired?"
+
+"That is a question I have occasionally asked myself," Val
+answered with his faint indecipherable smile.  "My dear child,
+I only saw him once or twice.  He was a senior captain and
+commanded his company. I was a very junior lieutenant."
+
+"Still he was there at the time," reflected Isabel. "O Rose! if
+he's anything like nice, which is almost past praying for in
+Major Clowes' cousin, let's beguile him into the gooseberry
+bushes and make him tell us all about it!  Val is very dear to
+his family, but no one, however tenderly attached to him, could
+call him a brilliant raconteur.  Now Mr. Hyde won't have any
+modest scruples.  Val, if there is a slug in that lettuce I wish
+you would say so. It would hurt my feelings less than for you to
+sit looking at it in a stony silence.  Was he good-looking?"
+
+"Possibly he might be," said Val, "when he scraped the dirt off."
+ After a moment he added, "He was very decent to me."
+
+"Was he?  Then he was nice?"
+
+"Gnat,"  said Rowsley from the middle of his third egg.  Isabel
+rounded him indignantly.
+
+"I'm not gnatting!  I'm not asking Val anything about himself, am
+I? Val can't possibly mind telling me about another man in
+another regiment.  You eat your eggs, there's a good boy, before
+they get cold.--  Laura says the Dorchesters dined the Winchesters
+once when they were in billets.  Was that when you and Mr. Hyde
+were there?"
+
+"Captain Hyde," Val corrected his young sister.  "Yes, we both
+graced the festive board.  It was too festive for me.  We had
+Buszard's soup and curried chicken and real cream, and more
+champagne than was good for us.  But it was not on that occasion
+that Hyde was so decent to me.  The day I--the day Dale went
+down--" Rowsley nodded to him as he raised his glass of beer to
+his lips--"thank you, Rose.--  As I was saying, that evening I
+ran across Hyde between the lines.  The Dorsets and Wintons had
+gone over the top together, and he had been left behind with a
+bullet in his chest.  I was done to the world, but he had some
+brandy left and shared it with me.  If it had not been for Hyde I
+should never have brought Dale in."
+
+"Well, I've never heard that before," said Rowsley to his fourth
+egg.
+
+Isabel was silent, and her eyes in the shadow of a momentary
+gravity were the eyes of a woman and not of a child.  She raised
+them to look out at the evening sky, indigo blue against the
+lamplit interior, or faintly primrose in the west, and wondered
+for the thousandth time why it was still such an effort to Val to
+refer to his brief military experience.  Soft country noises came
+in, peaceful and soothing: the short shrill shriek of a bat, the
+rustle of a branch of rose-leaves moving like a hand over the
+window panes, a faint breathing of wind from the moor.  Surely
+the scar of war ought to be healed by now!  Isabel kept these
+thoughts to herself: young as she was, her solitary life--for
+a woman alone among men is always to some extent solitary--had
+trained her to a clear perception of what had better not be said.
+
+"When is Hyde coming?" asked Val, going on with his salad.
+
+"Tomorrow, didn't you hear me say Laura is going to bring him
+here to tea?  He's staying at his own place, Farringay--I think
+from the way Laura spoke it is what one calls a place--and they
+expect him by the morning train.  Laura's to meet him in the
+car."
+
+"Did you ask her to bring him in to tea,"  said Rowsley, frowning
+over the marmalade jar, "when Val is safe to be out and you
+didn't know I should be here?"
+
+"Yes: oughtn't I to have?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Is there anything else you would like to speak to me about?"
+said Isabel after a pregnant silence. "Dear Rowsley, you seem
+determined to look after my manners and morals!  I asked him to
+please Laura. She's nervous of Major Clowes.  Jack and Yvonne
+are coming too."
+
+"Oh I don't see that it signifies," said Val.  Mrs. Clowes
+wouldn't have accepted if it weren't all right. I don't see that
+you or I need worry if she doesn't.  Isabel is old enough to pour
+out tea for herself.  In any case, as it happens, you'll be here
+if I'm not, and I dare say Jimmy will look in for ten minutes."
+
+"You are sweet, Val," said Isabel gratefully.
+
+"Oh I don't say Rowsley's not right!  Prigs generally are: and
+besides now I come to think of it, Laura did look faintly amused
+when I asked her. But these stupid things never occur to me till
+afterwards!  After all, what am I to do?  I can't manufacture a
+chaperon, and it would be very bad for the parish if the vicar
+never entertained.  And it's not as if Captain Hyde were a young
+man; he's thirty-six if he's a day."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+When the sea retreats after a storm one finds on the beach all
+sorts of strange flotsam.  Bernard Clowes was a bit of human
+wreckage left on the sands of society by the storm of the war.
+When it broke out he was a second lieutenant in the Winchester
+Regiment, a keen polo player and first class batsman who rarely
+opened a book.  He was sent out with the First Division and
+carried himself with his usual phlegmatic good humour through
+almost four years of fighting from Mons to Cambrai.
+
+In the March break-through he had his wrist broken by a rifle-bullet
+and was invalided home, where he took advantage of his leave to get
+married, partly because most of the men he knew were already married,
+and partly to please his sister. There were no other brothers, and
+Mrs. Morrison, a practical lady, but always a little regretful of her
+own marriage with Morrison's Boot and Shoe Company, recommended him
+with the family bluntness to arrange for an olive branch before the
+Huns got him.
+
+Laura, a penniless woman two years his senior and handicapped by
+her disreputable belongings, was not the wife Gertrude Morrison
+would have chosen for him: still it might have been worse, for
+Laura was well-born and personally irreproachable, while Clowes,
+hot-blooded and casual, was as likely as not to have married a
+chorus-girl.  If any disappointment lingered, Gertrude soothed
+it by trying over in her own mind the irritation that she would
+be able to produce in Morrison circles: "Where he met her?
+Oh, when she was staying with her married sister at Castle
+Wharton . . . .Yvonne, the elder Selincourt girl, married into
+the Bendish family."
+
+Bernard did not care a straw either for the paternal handicap or
+for the glories of the Wharton connection.  He took his
+love-affair as simply as his cricket and with the same bold
+confidence. Laura was what he wanted; she would fit into her
+surroundings at Wanhope as delicately as an old picture fits
+into an old frame, and one could leave her about--so he put
+it to himself--without fear of her getting damaged.  When Tom
+Morrison, shrewd business man, dropped a hint about the rashness
+of marrying the daughter of a scamp like Ferdinand Selincourt,
+Bernard merely stared at him and let the indiscretion go in
+silence.  He can scarcely be said to have loved his bride, for
+up to the time of the wedding his nature was not much more
+developed than that of a prize bull, but he considered her a
+very pretty woman, and his faith in her was a religion.
+
+So they were married, and went to Eastbourne for their honeymoon:
+an average match, not marked by passion on either side, but
+destined apparently to an average amount of comfort and good
+will.  They had ten gay days before Laura was left on a victoria
+platform, gallantly smiling with pale lips and waving her
+handkerchief after the train that carried Bernard back to the
+front.
+
+Five months later on the eve of the Armistice he was flung out
+of the service, a broken man, paralysed below the waist, cursing
+every one who came near him and chiefly the surgeons for not
+letting him die.  No one ever desired life more passionately than
+Bernard desired death.  For some time he clung to the hope that
+his mind would wear his body out.  But his body was too young,
+too strong, too tenacious of earth to be betrayed by the renegade
+mind.
+
+There came a day when Clowes felt his youth welling up in him
+like sap in a fallen tree: new energy throbbed in his veins, his
+heart beat strong and even, it was hard to believe that he could
+not get off his bed if he liked and go down to the playing fields
+or throw his leg over a horse.  This mood fastened on him without
+warning in a Surbiton hospital after a calm night without a
+sleeping draught, when through his open window he could see green
+branches waving in sunlight, and hear the cries of men playing
+cricket and the smack of the driven ball: and it was torture.
+Tears forced their way suddenly into Bernard's eyes.  His nurse,
+who had watched not a few reluctant recoveries, went out of the
+room.  Then his great chest heaved, and he sobbed aloud, lying
+on his back with face unhidden, his wide black eyes blinking at
+the sweet pale June sky.  No chance of death for him: he was good
+for ten, twenty, fifty years more:  he could not bear it, but it
+had to be borne.  He tried to pull himself up: if he could only
+have reached the window!  But the arms that felt so strong were
+as weak as an infant's, while the dead weight of his helpless
+legs dragged on him like lead.  The only result of his struggle
+was a dreadful access of pain.  Reaction followed, for he had
+learnt in his A B C days not to whimper when he was hurt, and by
+the time the nurse returned Clowes had scourged himself back to
+his usual savage tranquillity.  "Can I have that window shut,
+please?" he asked, cynically frank. "I used to play cricket
+myself."
+
+Laura Clowes in this period went through an experience almost
+equally formative. Two years older than Bernard, she was also
+more mature for her years and had developed more evenly, and from
+the outset her engagement and marriage had meant more to her then
+to Bernard, because her girlhood had been unhappy and they provided
+a way of escape.  Her sister Yvonne had met Jack Bendish at a
+race-meeting and he had fallen madly in love with her and married
+her in a month in the teeth of opposition.  That was luck--heaven-sent
+luck, for Yvonne on the night before her marriage had broken down
+utterly and confessed that if Jack had not saved her she would have
+gone off with the first man who asked her on any terms, because she
+was twenty-nine and sick to death of wandering with her father on the
+outskirts of society.  Subsequently Yvonne had after a hard fight won
+a footing at Wharton for herself and her sister, and there Laura had
+met Clowes, not such a social prize as Jack, but rich and able to
+give his wife an assured position.  She was shrewd and realized that
+in himself he had little to offer beyond a handsome and highly
+trained physique and a mind that worked lucidly within the limits of
+a narrow imagination but she was beyond all words grateful to him,
+and he fascinated her more than she realized.
+
+The ten days at Eastbourne opened her eyes.  Bernard enjoyed
+every minute of them and was exceedingly pleased with himself
+and proud of his wife, but for Laura they were a time of heavy
+strain.  Innocent and shy, she had feared her husband, only to
+discover that she loved him better than he was capable of loving
+her.  Laura was not blind.  She understood Bernard and all his
+limitations, the dangerous grip that his passions had of him,
+his boyish impatience, his wild-bull courage, and his inability
+to distinguish between a wife and a mistress: she was happiest
+when he slept, always holding her in his arms, exacting even in
+sleep, but so naively youthful in the bloom of his four and
+twenty summers, and, for the moment, all her own.  She loved him
+"because I am I--because you are you," and her tenderness was
+edged with the profound pity that women felt in those days for
+the men who came to them under the shadow of death.  It was her
+hope that the strong half-developed nature would grow to meet her
+need.  It grew swiftly enough: in the forcing-house of pain he
+soon learned to think and to feel: but the change did not lead
+him to his wife's heart.
+
+Laura had married a man of a class and apparently normal to a
+fault: she found herself united now to incarnate storm and
+tempest.  The first time she saw him at Surbiton, he drove her
+out in five minutes with curses and insult.  Why?  Laura,
+wandering about half-stunned in the visitors' room, had no idea
+why.  She stumbled against the furniture: she looked at the
+photographs of Windermere and King's College Chapel and the
+Nursing Staff on the walls: she took up Punch and began to read
+it.  Laura was no dreamer, she had never doubted that her husband
+would rather have the use of his legs again than all the feminine
+devotion in the world, but she had hoped to soothe him, perhaps
+for a little while to make him forget:  it had not crossed her
+mind that her anguish of love and service would be rejected.
+Enlightenment was like folding a sword to her breast.
+
+By and by his nurse came down to her, a young hard-looking woman
+with tired eyes.  She had little comfort to give, but what she
+gave Laura never forgot, because it was the truth without any
+conventional or sentimental gloss.  "You're having a bad time
+with him, aren't you?" she said, coldly sympathetic.  "It won't
+last.  Nothing lasts.  You mustn't think he's left off caring for
+you.  I expect he was very fond of you, wasn't he?  That's the
+trouble. Some men take invalid life nicely and let their wives
+fuss over them to their hearts' content, but Major Clowes is one
+of those tremendously strong masculine men that always want to be
+top dog.  Besides, you're young and pretty, if you don't mind my
+saying so, and you remind him of what he's done out of . . .
+Twenty-four, isn't he?  Don't give way, Mrs. Clowes,  you've a
+long road before you; these paralysis cases are a frightful
+worry, almost as bad for the friends as they are for the patient;
+but if you play up it'll get better instead of worse.  He'll get
+used to it and so will you.  One gets used to anything."
+
+Even so: time goes on and storms subside.  Bernard Clowes came
+out of the hospital and he and his wife settled down on friendly
+terms after all. "It's not what you bargained for when you
+married me," said the cripple with his hard smile. "However, it's
+no good crying over spilt milk, and you must console yourself
+with the fact that there's still plenty of money going.  But I
+wish we'd had a little more time together first." He pierced her
+with his black eyes, restless and fiery.  "I dare say you would
+have liked a boy.  So should I.  Nevermind, my girl, you shan't
+miss much else."
+
+Wanhope, the family property, was buried deep in Wiltshire, three
+or four miles from a station.  Laura liked the country: Wanhope
+let it be, then: and Wanhope it was, with the additional
+advantage that Yvonne was at Castle Wharton within a stroll.
+Laura liked a wide house and airy rooms, a wide garden, plenty of
+land, privacy from her neighbours: all this Wanhope gave her, no
+slight relief to a girl who had been brought up between Brighton
+and Monte Carlo. The place was too big to be run without an
+agent?  No drawback, the agent: on the contrary, Clowes looked
+out for a fellow who would be useful to Laura, a gentleman, an
+unmarried man, who would be available to ride with her or make a
+fourth at bridge--and there by good luck was Val Stafford ready
+to hand.  Born and reared in the country, though young and
+untrained, Val brought to his job a wide casual knowledge of
+local conditions and a natural head for business, and was only
+too glad to squire Laura in the hunting field.  For Laura must
+hunt: as Laura Selincourt she had hunted whenever she was offered
+a mount, and she was to go on doing as she had always done.
+Laura would rather not have hunted, for the freshness of her
+youth was gone and the strain of her life left her permanently
+tired, and she pleaded first expense, then propriety.  "Don't be
+a damned fool," replied Bernard Clowes.  So Laura went riding
+with Val Stafford.
+
+"Come in," said Major Clowes in a rasping snarl, and Laura came
+into her husband's room and stumbled over a chair.  The windows
+were shuttered and the room was still dark at eleven o'clock of a
+fine June morning.  Laura, irrepressibly annoyed, groped her way
+through a disorder of furniture, which seemed, as furniture
+always does in the dark, to be out of place and malevolently full
+of corners, and without asking leave flung down a shutter and
+flung up a window.  In a field across the river they were cutting
+hay, and the dry summer smell of it breathed in, and with it the
+long rolling whirr of a haymaking machine and its periodical
+clash, most familiar of summer noises.  And the June daylight lit
+up the gaunt body of Bernard Clowes stretched out on a water
+mattress, his silk jacket unbuttoned over his strong, haggard
+throat.  "Really, Berns," said Laura, flinging down a second
+shutter, "I don't wonder you sleep badly.  The room is positively
+stuffy!  I should have a racking headache if I slept in it."
+
+"Well, you don't, you see," Bernard replied politely.  "Stop
+pulling those blinds about.  Come over here." Laura came to him.
+"Kiss me," said Clowes, and she laid her cool lips on his cheek.
+Clowes received her kiss passively: even Laura,  though she
+understood him pretty well, never was sure whether he made her
+kiss him because he liked it or because he thought she did not
+like it.
+
+"Where are you off to now?" asked Clowes, pushing her away: "you
+look very smart. I like that cotton dress.  It is cotton, isn't
+it?" he rubbed the fabric gingerly between his finger and thumb.
+"Did Catherine make it?  That girl is a jewel. I like that gipsy
+hat too, it's a pretty shape and it shades your eyes.  I call
+that sensible, which can't often be said for a woman's clothes.
+You have good eyes, Laura, well worth shading, though your figure
+is your trump card.  I like these fitting bodices that give a
+woman a chance to show what shape she is.  All you Selincourt
+women score in evening gowns.  Yvonne has a topping figure,
+though she's an ugly little devil.  She has an American
+complexion and her eyes aren't as good as yours.  Where did you
+say you were going?"
+
+"To the station to meet Lawrence. I promised to fetch him in the
+car."
+
+"Lawrence?  So he's due today, is he?  I'd forgotten all about
+him.  And you're meeting him?  Oh yes, that explains the dress
+and hat,  I thought you wouldn't have put them on for my
+benefit."
+
+"Dear, it's only one of the cotton frocks I wear every day, and I
+couldn't go driving without a hat, could I?"
+
+"Can't conceive why you want to go at all."  Laura was silent.
+"If Lawrence must be met, why can't Miller go alone?" Miller was
+the chauffeur.  "Undignified, I call it, the way you women run
+after a man nowadays.  You think men like it but they don't."
+
+Laura wondered if she dared tell him not to be silly.  He might
+take it with a grin, in which case he would probably relent and
+let her go: or--?  The field of alternative conjecture was wide.
+In the end Laura, whose knee was still aching from her adventure
+with the chair, decided to chance it.  But--perhaps because they
+were suffused with irritation--the words had no sooner left her
+lips than she regretted them.
+
+"I won't have it." Bernard's heavy jaw was clenched like a
+bloodhound's. "It's not decent running after Hyde while I'm tied
+here by the leg. I won't have you set all the village talking.
+There's the Times on my table.  Stop. Where are you going?"
+
+"To ring the bell.  It's time Miller started. You don't want your
+cousin to find no one there to meet him--not even a cart for his
+luggage."
+
+"He can walk.  Do him good: and Miller can fetch the luggage
+afterwards.  You do as I tell you.  Take the Times.  Sit down in
+that chair with your face to the light and read me the leading
+articles and the rest of the news on Page 7. Don't gabble: read
+distinctly if you can--you're supposed to be an educated woman,
+aren't you?"
+
+Poor Laura had been looking forward to her drive.  She had taken
+some innocent pleasure in choosing the prettiest of her morning
+dresses, a gingham that fell into soft folds the colour of a
+periwinkle, and in rearranging the liberty scarf on her drooping
+gipsy straw, and in putting on her long fringed gauntlets and
+little country shoes.  Her husband's compliments made her wince,
+Jack Bendish had eyes only for his wife, Val Stafford's
+admiration was sweet but indiscriminate: but she remembered
+Lawrence as a connoisseur.  And worse than the sting of her own
+small disappointment were the breaking of her promise to
+Lawrence, the failure in hospitality, in common courtesy.
+
+And for the thousandth time Laura wondered whether it would not
+have been better for Bernard, in the long run, to defy his
+senseless tyranny.  He was at her mercy: it would have been easy
+to defy him.  Easy, but how cruel!  A trained nurse would have
+made short work of Bernard's whims, he would have been washed and
+brushed and fed and exercised and disregarded--till he died
+under it?   Perhaps.  It was safer at all events to let him go
+his own way.  He could never hope to command his regiment now:
+let him get what satisfaction he could out of commanding his
+wife!  She would have preferred a form of sacrifice which looked
+less like fear, but there was little sentiment in Bernard, and
+love must not pick and choose.  For it was love still, the old
+inexplicable fascination: in the middle of one of his tirades,
+when he was at his most wayward, she would lose herself in the
+contemplation of some small physical trait, the scar of a burn on
+his wrist or the tiny trefoil-shaped birthmark on his temple, as
+if that summed up for her the essence of his personality, and
+were more truly Bernard Clowes then his intemperate insignificance
+of speech. . . . Even when others suffered for it she yielded to
+Bernard, because she loved him and because he suffered so infinitely
+worse than they.
+
+For denial maddened him.  He raised himself on his arm, crimson
+with anger, his chest heaving under the thin silken jacket which
+defined his gaunt ribs--"Sit down, will you, damn you?" Because
+Laura believed that she and she only stood between  her husband
+and despair, she yielded and began to read out the Times leader
+in a voice that was perfectly gentle and placid.
+
+Bernard sank back and watched her like a cat after a mouse.  He
+was under no delusion: he knew she was not cowed or nervous, but
+that the spring of her devotion was pity--pity ever fed anew by
+his dreadful helplessness: and it was this knowledge that drove
+him into brutality.  The instincts of possession and domination
+were strong in him, and but for the accident that wrenched his
+mind awry he would probably have made himself a king to Laura,
+for, once her master, he would have grown more gentle and more
+tender as the years went by, while Laura was one of those women
+who find happiness in love and duty: not a weak woman, not a
+coward, but a humble-minded woman with no great opinion of her
+own judgment, who would have liked to look up to father, brother,
+sister, husband, as better and wiser than herself. But in his
+present avatar he could not master her: and Clowes, feeling as
+she felt, seeing himself as she saw him, came sometimes as near
+madness as any man out of an asylum.  He was not far off it now,
+though he lay quiet enough, with not one grain of expression in
+his cold black eyes.
+
+The 11:39 pulled up at Countisford station, and Lawrence Hyde got
+out of a first class smoking carriage and stood at ease, waiting
+for his servant to come and look after him.  "There'll be a car
+waiting from Wanhope, Gaston--"
+
+"Zere no car 'ere, M'sieu--ze man say."
+
+"What, no one to meet me?" Evidently no one: there were not half
+a dozen people on the flower-bordered platform, and those few
+were country folk with bundles and bags.  Lawrence strolled out
+into the yard, hoping that his servant's incorrigibly lame
+English might have led to a misunderstanding.  But there was no
+vehicle of any kind, and the station master could not recommend a
+cab.  Countisford was a small village, smaller even than
+Chilmark, and owed the distinction of the railway solely to its
+being in the flat country under the Plain.  "But you don't mean
+to say," said Lawrence incredulous, "that I shall have to walk?"
+
+But it seemed there was no help for it, unless he preferred to
+sit in the station while a small boy on a bicycle was despatched
+to Chilmark for the fly from the Prince of Wales's Feathers; and
+in the end Lawrence went afoot, though his expression when faced
+with four miles of dusty road would have moved pity in any heart
+but that of his little valet.  Hyde was one of those men who
+change their habits when they change their clothes.  He did not
+care what happened to him when he was out of England, following
+the Alaskan trail in eighty degrees of frost, or thrashing round
+the Horn in a tramp steamer, but when he shaved off his beard,
+and put on silk underclothing and the tweeds of Sackville Street,
+he grew as lazy as any flaneur of the pavement.  Gaston however
+was not sympathetic. He was always glad when anything unpleasant
+happened to his master.
+
+Leaving Gaston to sit on the luggage, Lawrence swung off with his
+long even stride, flicking with his stick at the bachelor's
+buttons in the hedge.  He could not miss his way, said the
+station master: straight down the main road for a couple of
+miles, then the first turning on the left and the first on the
+left again.  Some half a mile out of Countisford however Lawrence
+came on a signpost and with the traveller's instinct stopped to
+read it:
+
+              WINCANTON              8 M.
+              CASTLE WHARTON         3 1/2 M.
+              CHILMARK               3 M.
+
+So ran the clear lettering on the southern arm.  Eastwards a much
+more weatherbeaten arm, pointing crookedly up a stony cart track,
+said in dim brown characters: "CHILMARK 2 M." Plainly a short cut
+over the moor!  Better stones underfoot than padded dust: and
+Lawrence struck uphill swiftly, glad to escape from the traffic
+of the London road.  But he knew too much about short cuts to be
+surprised when, after climbing five hundred feet in twice as many
+yards--for the gradients off the Plain are steep--he found
+himself adrift on the open moor, his track going five ways at
+once in the light dry grass.
+
+He halted, leaning on his stick.  He was on the edge of the
+Plain: below him stretched away a great half-ring of cultivated
+country, its saliencies the square tower of a church jutting over
+a group of elms, or the glint of light on a stream, or pale
+haystacks dotted round the disorderly yard of a grange--the
+tillage and the quiet dwellings of close on a thousand years.
+On all this Lawrence Hyde looked with the reflective smile of an
+alien.  It touched him, but to revolt.  More than a child of the
+soil he felt the charm of its tranquillity, but he felt it also
+as an oppression, a limitation: an ordered littleness from which
+world-interests were excluded.  He was a lover of art and a
+cosmopolitan, and though the lowland landscape was itself a piece
+of art, and perfect in its way, Hyde's mind found no home in it.
+Yet, he reflected with his tolerant smile, he had fought for it,
+and was ready any day to fight for it again--for stability and
+tradition, the Game Laws, the Established Church, and the
+rotation of crops.  He was the son of an English mother and had
+received the training of an Englishman.  A rather cynical smile,
+now and then, at the random and diffident ways of England was the
+only freedom he allowed to the foreign strain within him.
+
+And when he looked the other way even this faint feeling of
+irritation passed off, blown away by the wind that always blows
+across a moor, thin and sweet now, and sunlit as the light curled
+clouds that it carried overhead through the profound June blue.
+Acres upon acres of pale sward, sown all over with the blue of
+scabious and the lemon-yellow of hawkweed, stretched away in
+rolling undulations like the plain of the sea; dense woods hung
+massed on the far horizon, beech-woods, sapphire blue beyond the
+pale silver and amber, of the middle distance, and under them a
+puff of white smoke from a passing train, or was it the white
+scar of a quarry?  He could not be sure across so many miles of
+sunlit air, but it must have been smoke, for it dissolved slowly
+away till there was no gleam left under the brown hillside.  Here
+too was stability, permanence: the wind ruffling the grass as it
+had done when the Normans crossed their not far distant Channel,
+or rattling over hilltops through leather-coated oak groves which
+had kept their symmetry since their progenitors were planted by
+the Druids.  Here was nothing to cramp the mind: here was the
+England that has absorbed Celt, Saxon, Fleming, Norman,
+generation after generation, each with its passing form of
+political faith: the England of traditional eld, the beloved
+country.
+
+In the meanwhile Lawrence had to find Chilmark.  He had neither
+map nor compass and was unfamiliar with the lie of the land, but,
+mindful of the station master's directions to go south and turn
+twice to the left, he shaped a course south-east and looked for a
+shepherd to ask his way of.  At present there were no shepherds
+to be seen and no houses; here and there a trail of smoke marked
+some hidden hamlet, sunk deep in cup or cranny, but which was
+Chilmark he could not tell.  Down went the track, plunging
+towards a stream that brawled in a wild bottom: up over a rough
+hillside ruby-red with willowherb: then down again to a pool
+shaded by two willows and a silver birch, and lying so cool and
+solitary in its own cloven nook, bounded in every direction by
+half a furlong of chalky hillside, that Lawrence was seized with
+a desire to strip and bathe, and sun himself dry on the brilliant
+mossy lawn at its brink.  But out of regard for the Wanhope lunch
+hour he walked on, following a trickle of water between reeds and
+knotgrafis, till in the next winding of the glen he came on a
+house: only a labourer's cot, two rooms below and one above, but
+inhabited, for smoke was coming out of the chimney.  Lawrence
+turned up a worn thread of path and knocked with his stick at the
+open door.
+
+It was answered by a tall young girl with a dirty face, wearing a
+serge skirt pinned up under a dirty apron.  The house was dirty
+too: the smell of an unwashed, unswept interior came out of it,
+together with the wailing of a fretful baby.  "I've missed my
+way on the moor," said Lawrence, inobtrusively holding his
+handkerchief to his nose. "Can you direct me to Chilmark?"
+
+"Do you mean Chilmark or Castle Wharton?  Oh Dorrie, don't cry!"
+She lifted the babe on her arm and stood gazing at Lawrence in a
+leisured and friendly manner, as if she wondered who he were. "It
+isn't far, but it's a long rambling village and there are any
+number of paths down.  And if you want the Bendishes--" Evidently
+she thought he must want the Bendishes, and perhaps Lawrence's
+judgment was a little bribed by her artless compliment, for at
+this point he began to think her pretty in an undeveloped way:
+certainly she had lovely eyes, dark blue under black lashes,
+which reminded him of other eyes that he had seen long ago--but
+when?  He could not remember those wistful eyes in any other
+woman's face.
+
+"I'm making for Wanhope--Major Clowe's house."
+
+"Oh, but then you must be Captain Hyde," exclaimed Miss
+Stafford:  "aren't you? that Mrs. Clowes was expecting."
+
+"My name is Hyde.  No one met me at the station" in spite of
+himself Lawrence could not keep his grievance out of his voice
+"so, as there are no cabs at Countisford, I had to walk."
+
+"Oh! dear, how sad: and on such a hot day too!  You'll be so
+tired." Was this satire?  Pert little thing!  Lawrence was
+faintly amused--not irritated, because she was certainly very
+pretty: what a swan's throat she had under her holland blouse,
+and what a smooth slope of neck!  But for all that she ought to
+have sirred him.
+
+"So you know Mrs. Clowes, do you?" He said with as much
+politeness as a little girl deserves who has lovely eyes and a
+dirty face.  It had crossed his mind that she might be one of the
+servants at Wanhope: he knew next to nothing of the English
+labouring classes, but was not without experience of lady's
+maids.
+
+"Yes, I know her," said Isabel.  She hung on the brink of
+introducing herself--was not Captain Hyde coming to tea with her
+that afternoon?--but was deterred by a very unusual feeling of
+constraint.  She was not accustomed to be watched as Hyde was
+watching her, and she felt shy and restless, though she knew not
+why.  It never entered her head that he had taken her for Dorrie
+Drury's sister.  She was dressed like a servant, but what of
+that?  In Chilmark she would have remained "Miss Isabel" if she
+had gone about in rags, and it would have wounded her bitterly to
+learn that she owed the deference of the parish rather to her
+rank as the vicar's daughter, who visited at Wanhope and Wharton,
+than to any dignity of her own.  In all her young life no one had
+ever taken a liberty with Isabel.  And, for that matter, why
+should any one take a liberty with Dorrie Drury's sister?
+Isabel's father would not have done so, nor her brothers, nor
+indeed Jack Bendish, and she was too ignorant of other men to
+know what it was that made her so hot under Hyde's eyes.  "But
+you'll be late for lunch. Wait half a minute and I'll run up with
+you to the top of the glen."
+
+Lawrence watched her wrap her charge carefully in a shawl, and
+fetch milk from the dresser, and coax till Dorrie turned her
+small head, heavy with the cares of neglected babyhood, sideways
+on the old plaid maud and began to suck.  Apparently he had
+interrupted the scrubbing of the kitchen floor,  for the tiles
+were wet three quarters of the way over, and on a dry oasis stood
+a pail, a scrubbing brush, and a morsel of soap.  Among less
+honourable odours he was glad to distinguish a good strong whiff
+of carbolic.
+
+Isabel meanwhile had recovered from her little fit of shyness.
+She pulled off her apron and pulled down her skirt (it had been
+kilted to the knee), rinsed her hands under a tap, wiped her face
+with a wet handkerchief, and came out into the June sunshine
+bareheaded, her long pigtail swinging between drilled and slender
+shoulders.  "Yours are London boots," she remarked as she
+buttoned her cuff.  "Do you mind going over the marsh?"
+
+"Not at all."
+
+"Not if you get your feet wet?" Lawrence laughed outright.  "But
+it's a real marsh!" said Isabel offended: "and you're not used to
+mud, are you?  You don't look as if you were." She pointed down
+the glen, and Lawrence saw that some high spring, dammed at its
+exit and turned back on itself, had filled the wide bottom with a
+sponge of moss thickset with flowering rush and silken fluff of
+cotton grass.  "There's no danger in summertime, the shepherds
+often cross it and so do I.  Still if you're afraid--"
+
+"I assure you I'm not afraid," said Lawrence, looking at her so
+oddly that Isabel was not sure whether he was angry or amused.
+Nor was Lawrence.  She had struck out of his male vanity a
+resentment so crude that he was ashamed of it, ashamed or even
+shocked?  He was not readily shocked.  A pure cynic, he let into
+his mind, on an easy footing, primitive desires that the average
+man admits only behind a screen.  Yet when these libertine
+fancies played over Isabel's innocent head they were distasteful
+to him:  as he remembered once, in a Barbizon studio, to have
+knocked a man down for a Gallic jest on the Queen of Heaven
+although Luke's Evangel meant no more to him than the legend of
+Eros and Psyche.  But one can't knock oneself down--more's the
+pity!
+
+"Oh, all right," said Isabel impatiently.  He was watching her
+again!  "But do look where you're going, this isn't Piccadilly.
+You had better hold my hand."
+
+Lawrence was six and thirty.  At eighteen he would have snatched
+her up and carried her over: at thirty-six he said: "Thanks very
+much," touched the tips of her fingers, let them fall. . . .
+Unfortunately however he weighed more than Isabel or the
+shepherds, and, half way across, the green floor quietly gave way
+under him: first one foot immersed itself with a gentle splash
+and then the other--"Oh dear" said Isabel, seized with a great
+disposition to laugh. Lawrence was not amused.  His boots were
+full of mud and water and he had an aching sense of injured
+dignity.  The bog was not even dangerous: and ankle-deep,
+calf-deep, knee-deep he waded through it and got out on the
+opposite bank, bringing up a cloud of little marsh-bubbles on his
+heels.  Isabel would have given all the money she had in the
+world--about five shillings to go away and laugh, but she had
+been well brought up and she remained grave, though she grew very
+red.
+
+"I am so sorry!" she faltered, looking up at Lawrence with her
+beautiful sympathetic eyes (one must never say I told you so).
+"I never thought you really would go in.  You must be very heavy!
+Oh! dear, I'm afraid you've spoilt your trousers, and it was all
+my fault.  Oh! dear, I hope you won't catch cold.  Do you catch
+cold easily?"
+
+"Oh no, thanks.  Do you mind showing me the way to Wanhope?"
+
+Isabel without another word took the steep hillside at a run. In
+her decalogue of manners to refuse an apology was an unpardonable
+sin.  How differently Val would have behaved!  Val never lost his
+temper over trifles, and if anything happened to make him look
+ridiculous he was the first to laugh at himself.  At this time in
+her life Isabel compared Val with all the other men she met and
+much to his advantage.  She forgot that Lawrence was not her
+brother and that no man cares to be made ridiculous before a
+woman, or rather she never thought of herself as a woman at all.
+
+She pointed east by south across the Plain.  "Do you see that
+hawk hovering?  Carry your eye down to the patch of smoke right
+under him, in the trees: those are the Wanhope chimneys.  If you
+go straight over there till you strike the road, it will bring
+you into Chilmark High Street.  Go on past Chapman the draper's
+shop, turn sharp down a footpath opposite the Prince of Wales's
+Feathers, cross the stream by a footbridge, and you'll be in the
+grounds of Wanhope."
+
+"Thank you," said Lawrence, "your directions are most precise."
+He had one hand in his pocket feeling among his loose silver:
+tips are more easily given than thanks, especially when one is
+not feeling grateful, and he was accustomed to pay his way
+through the world with the facile profusion of a rich man.  Still
+he hesitated: if he had not the refined intuition that would have
+made such a blunder impossible to Val Stafford, he had at all
+events enough intelligence to hesitate.  There is a coinage that
+is safer than silver, and Lawrence thought it might well pass
+current (now that she had washed her face) with this fair
+schoolgirl of sixteen, ruffled by sun and wind and unaware of her
+beauty.  He would not confess to himself that the prospect of
+Isabel's confusion pleased him.
+
+He bent his head, smiling into Isabel's eyes. "You're a very kind
+little girl.  May I--?"
+
+"No," said Isabel.
+
+The blood sprang to her cheek, but she did not budge, not by a
+hair's breadth.  "I beg your pardon," said Lawrence, standing
+erect. He had measured in that moment the extent of his error,
+and he cursed, not for the first time, his want of perception,
+which his ever-candid father had once called a streak of
+vulgarity. Defrauded of the pleasure he had promised himself
+from the contact of Isabel's smooth cheek, he grew suddenly very
+tired of her.  Young girls with their trick of attaching
+importance to trifles are a nuisance!
+
+He forced a smile.  "I beg your pardon, I had no idea--  I see
+you're ever so much older than I thought you were.  Some day I
+shall find my way up here again and you must let me make my peace
+with a box of chocolates." He raised his hat--he had not done so
+when she opened the door--and swung off across the moor, leaving
+the vicar's daughter to go back and scrub Mrs. Drury's floor as
+it had never been scrubbed before in its life.  The honours of
+the day lay with Isabel, but she was not proud of them, and her
+face flamed for the rest of the morning.  "You're worse than
+Major Clowes!" she said violently to the kitchen tap.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+"How do?" Bernard Clowes was saying an hour later.  "So good of
+you to look us up."
+
+Lawrence, coming down from his own room after brushing his muddy
+clothes, met his cousin with a good humoured smile which covered
+dismay.  Heavens, what a wreck of manhood!  And how chill it
+struck indoors, and how dark, after the June sunshine on the
+moor! Delicately he took the hand that Clowes held out to him--
+but seized in a grip that made him wince.  Clowes gave his curt
+"Ha ha!"
+
+"I can still use my arms, Lawrence.  Don't be so timid, I shan't
+break to pieces if I'm touched.  It's only these legs of mine
+that won't work.  Awkward, isn't it?  But never mind that now,
+it's an old story.  You had a mishap on the moor, the servants
+tell me?  Ah! while I think of it, let me apologize for leaving
+you to walk from the station.  Laura, my wife, you know, forgot
+to send the car.  By the by, you know her, don't you?  She says
+she met you once or twice before she married me."
+
+Like most men who surrender to their temperaments, Lawrence was
+as a rule well served by his intuitions.  Now and again they
+failed him as with Isabel, but when his mind was alert it was a
+sensitive medium.  He dropped with crossed knees into his chair
+and glanced reflectively at Bernard Clowes, heu quantum
+mutatus. . . . When the body was wrecked, was there not nine
+times out of ten some corresponding mental warp?  Bernard's
+fluent geniality struck him as too good to be true--it was not
+in Bernard's line: and why translate a close friendship into
+"meeting once or twice"? Was Bernard misled or mistaken, or was
+he laying a trap?--Not misled: the Laura Selincourt of Hyde's
+recollection was not one to stoop to petty shifts.
+
+"'Once or twice?'"  Lawrence echoed: "Oh, much oftener than that!
+Mrs. Clowes and I are old friends, at least I hoped we were.  She
+can't be so ungracious as to have forgotten me?"
+
+"She seems to have, doesn't she?"  Bernard with his inscrutable
+smile let the question drop.  "Just touch that bell, will you,
+there's a good fellow? So sorry to make you dance attendance--
+Hallo, here she is!"
+
+Laura had been waiting in the parlour, under orders not to enter
+till the bell rang.  She had heard all, and wondered whether it
+was innocence or subtlety that had walked in and out of Bernard's
+trap.  She remembered Hyde was much like other fourth-year
+University men except that he was not egotistical and not shy:
+he had altered away from his class, but in what direction it was
+difficult to tell: there was no deciphering the pleasant
+blankness of his features or the conventional smile in his black
+eyes.
+
+"I haven't seen you for fourteen years," she said, giving him her
+hand.  "Oh Lawrence, how old you make me feel!"
+
+"Shall I swear you haven't changed?  It would be a poor
+compliment."
+
+"And one I couldn't return.  I shouldn't have known you, unless
+it were by your likeness to Bernard."
+
+"Am I like Bernard?" said Lawrence, startled.
+
+"That's a good joke, isn't it?" said Clowes. "But my wife is
+right.  If I were not paralysed, we should be a good bit alike."
+
+Under the casual manner, it was in that moment that Hyde saw his
+cousin for what he was: a rebel in agony.  There was a tragedy at
+Wanhope then, Lucian Selincourt had not exaggerated.  Though
+Lawrence was not naturally sympathetic, he felt an unpleasant
+twinge of pity, much the same as when his dog was run over in the
+street: a pain in the region of the heart, as well defined as
+rheumatism.  In Sally's case, after convincing himself that she
+would never get on her legs again, he had eased it by carrying
+her to the nearest chemist's: the loving little thing had licked
+his hand with her last breath, but when the brightness faded out
+of her brown eyes, in his quality of Epicurean, Lawrence had not
+let himself grieve over her.  Unluckily one could not pay a
+chemist to put Bernard Clowes out of his pain!  "This is going to
+be deuced uncomfortable," was the reflection that crossed his
+mind in its naked selfishness.  "I wish I had never come near the
+place. I'll get away as soon as I can."
+
+Then he saw that Bernard was struggling to turn over on his side,
+flapping about with his slow uncouth gestures like a bird with a
+broken wing. "Let me--!" Laura's "No, Lawrence!" came too late.
+Hyde had taken the cripple in his arms, lifting him like a child:
+"You're light for your height," he said softly.  He was as strong
+as Barry and as gentle as Val Stafford.  Laura had turned
+perfectly white.  She fully expected Clowes to strike his cousin.
+She could hardly believe her eyes when with a great gasp of
+relief he flung his arm round Hyde's neck and lay back on Hyde's
+shoulder.  "Thanks, that's damned comfortable--first easy moment
+I've had since last night," he murmured: then, to Laura, "we must
+persuade this fellow to stop on a bit.  You're not in a hurry to
+get off, are you, Lawrence?"
+
+"Not I. I'll stay as long as you and Laura care to keep me."
+
+"I and Laura, hey?"
+
+Bernard's flush faded: he slipped from Hyde's arm.
+
+"H'm, yes, you're old friends, aren't you?  Met at Farringay?
+I'd forgotten that." He shut his eyes.  "And Laura's dying to
+renew the intimacy.  It's dull for her down here. Take him into
+the garden,  Lally.  You'll excuse me now, Lawrence, I can't talk
+long without getting fagged.  Wretched state of things, isn't it?
+I'm a vile bad host but I can't help it.  At the present moment
+for example I'm undergoing grinding torments and it doesn't amuse
+me to make conversation, so you two can cut along and disport
+yourselves in any way you like. Give Lawrence a drink, will you,
+my love? . . . . Oh no, thanks, you've done a lot but you can't
+do any more, no one can, I just have to grin and bear it. Laura,
+would you mind ringing for Barry?   I'm not sure I shall show up
+again before dinner-time.  It's no end good of you, old chap, to
+come to such a beastly house. . ."
+
+He pursued them with banal gratitude till they were out of
+earshot, when Lawrence drew a deep breath as if to throw off
+some physical oppression.  Under the weathered archway, down the
+flagged steps and over the lawn. . . . How still it was, and how
+sweet!  The milk-blooms in the spire of the acacia were beginning
+to turn faintly brown, but its perfume still hung in the valley
+air, mixed with the honey-heavy breath of a great white double
+lime tree on the edge of the stream.  There were no dense woods
+at Wanhope, the trees were set apart with an airy and graceful
+effect, so that one could trace the course of their branches; and
+between them were visible hayfields from which the hay had
+recently been carried, and the headlands of the Plain--fair
+sunny distances, the lowlands bloomed over with summer mist, the
+uplands delicately clear like those blue landscapes that in early
+Italian pictures lie behind the wheel of Saint Catherine or the
+turrets of Saint Barbara.
+
+"A sweet pretty place you have here. I was in China nine weeks
+ago.  Everlasting mud huts and millet fields.  I must say there's
+nothing  to beat an English June."
+
+"Or a French June?" suggested Laura, her accent faintly sly.
+"Lucian said he met you at Auteuil."
+
+"Dear old Lucian!  He seemed very fit, but rather worried about
+you, Laura--may I call you Laura?  We're cousins by marriage,
+which constitutes a sort of tie.  Besides, you let me at
+Farringay."
+
+"Farringay. . . . What a long while ago it seems!  I can't keep
+up any pretence of juvenility with you, can I?  We were the same
+age then so we're both thirty-six now.  Isn't it strange to think
+that half one's life is over?  Mine doesn't seem ever to have
+begun.  But you wouldn't feel that: a man's life is so much
+fuller than a woman's.  You've been half over the world while
+Berns and I have been patiently cultivating our cabbage patch.
+I envy you: it would be jolly to have one's mind stored full of
+queer foreign adventures and foreign landscapes to think about in
+odd moments, even if it were only millet fields."
+
+"I've no ties, you see, nothing to keep me in England.  Come to
+think of it, Bernard is my nearest male relative, since my father
+died five years ago."
+
+"I heard of that and wanted to write to you, but I wasn't sure of
+your address"
+
+"I was in Peru.  They cabled to me to come home when he was taken
+ill, but I was up country and missed it.  The first news I had
+was a second cable announcing his death.  It was unlucky."
+
+"For both of you," said Laura gently, "if it meant that he was alone
+when he died." Sincere herself, Mrs. Clowes exacted from her friends
+either sincerity or silence, and her sweet half-melancholy smile
+pierced through Hyde's conventional regrets. He was silent, a little
+confused.
+
+They were near the river now, and in the pale shadow of the lime
+tree Laura sat down on a bench, while Hyde threw himself on a
+patch of sunlit turf at her feet.  Most men of his age would have
+looked clumsy in such an unbuttoned attitude, but Hyde was an
+athlete still, and Laura, who was fond of sketching, admired his
+vigorous grace.  She felt intimate with him already: she was not
+shy nor was Lawrence, but this was an intimacy of sympathy that
+went deeper than the mere trained ease of social intercourse: she
+could be herself with him: she could say whatever she liked.
+And, looking back on the old days which she had half forgotten,
+Laura remembered that she had always felt the same freedom from
+constraint in Hyde's company: she had found it pleasant fourteen
+years ago, when she was young and had no reserves except a
+natural delicacy of mind, and it was pleasant still, but strange,
+after the isolating adventure of her marriage.  Perhaps she would
+not now have felt it so strongly, if he had not been her
+husband's cousin as well as her friend.
+
+She sat with folded hands watching Lawrence with a vague, observant
+smile.  Drilled to a stately ease and worn down to a lean hardihood
+by his life of war and wandering, he was, like his cousin, a big,
+handsome man, but distinguished by the singular combination of black
+eyes and fair hair.  Was there a corresponding anomaly in his
+temperament?  He looked as though he had lived through many
+experiences and had come out of them fortified with philosophy--that
+easy negative philosophy of a man of the world, for which death is
+only the last incident in life and not the most important. Of
+Bernard's hot passions there was not a sign.  Amiable?  Laura fancied
+that so far as she was concerned she could count on a personal
+amiability: he liked her, she was sure of that, his eyes softened
+when he spoke to her.  But the ruck of people?  She doubted whether
+Lawrence would have lost his appetite for lunch if they had all been
+drowned.
+
+The pleasant, selfish man of the world is a common type, but she
+could not confine Lawrence to his type.  He basked in the sun:
+with every nerve of his thinly-clad body he relinquished himself
+to the contact of the warm grass: deliberately and consciously he
+was savouring the honied air, the babble of running water, the
+caress of the tiny green blades fresh against his cheek and hand,
+the swell of earth that supported his broad, powerful limbs.
+This sensuous acceptance of the physical joy of life pleased
+Laura, born a Selincourt, bred in France, and temperamentally out
+of touch with middle-class England.
+
+Whether one could rely on him for any serviceable friendship
+Laura was uncertain.  As a youth he had inclined to idealize
+women, but she was suspicious of his later record.  Good or bad
+it had left no mark on him.  Probably he had not much principle
+where women were concerned.  Few of the men Laura had known in
+early life had had any principles of any sort except a common
+spirit of kindliness and fair play.  Her brother was always
+drifting in and out of amatory entanglements--the hunter or the
+hunted--and he was not much the worse for it so far as Laura
+could see.  Perhaps Hyde was of the game stamp, in which case
+there might well be no lines round his mouth, since lines are
+drawn by conflict: or perhaps a wandering life had kept him out
+of harm's way.  It made no great odds to Laura--she had not the
+shrinking abhorrence which most women feel for that special form
+of evil: it was on the same footing in her mind as other errors
+to which male human nature is more prone than female, a little
+worse than drunkenness but not so bad as cruelty.  From her own
+life of serene married maidenhood such sins of the flesh seemed
+as remote as murder.
+
+The strong southern light broke in splinters on the dancing
+water, and was mirrored in reflected ripplings, silver-pale,
+tremulous, over the shadowy understems of grass and loosestrife
+on the opposite bank.  "And I never gave you anything to drink
+after all!" said Laura after a long, companionable silence.  "Why
+didn't you remind me?"
+
+"Because I didn't want it.  Don't you worry: I'll look after
+myself. I always do.  I'm a charming guest, no trouble to any
+one."
+
+"At least have a cigarette while you're waiting for lunch!  I'm
+sorry to have none to offer you."
+
+"Don't you smoke now?  You did at Farringay."
+
+"No, I've given it up. I never much cared for it, and Bernard
+does so hate to see a woman smoking. He is very old-fashioned in
+some ways."
+
+"And do you always do as Bernard likes?" Lawrence asked with an
+impertinence so airy that it left Laura no time to be offended.
+"--It was a great shock to me to find him so helpless.  Is he
+always like that?"
+
+"He can never get about, if that's what you mean." It was not all
+Hyde meant, but Laura had not the heart to repress him; she felt
+that thrill of guilty joy which we all feel when some one says
+for us what we are too magnanimous to say for ourselves.  "He
+lies indoors all day smoking and reading quantities of novels."
+
+"Fearfully sad.  Very galling to the temper.  But there are a lot
+of modern mechanical appliances, aren't there, that ought to make
+him fairly independent?"
+
+"He won't touch any of them."
+
+"Sick men have their whims.  But can't you drag him out into the
+sun?  He ought not to lie in that mausoleum of a hall."
+
+"He has never been in the garden in all our years at Wanhope."
+
+Lawrence took off his straw hat to fan himself with.  It was not
+only the heat of the day that oppressed him.  "Poor, wretched
+Bernard!  But I dare say I should be equally mulish if I were in
+his shoes.  By the by, was he really in pain just now?"
+
+"Really in pain?" Laura echoed.  "Why--why should you say that?"
+She no longer doubted Lawrence Hyde's subtlety.  "'He's
+constantly in pain and he scarcely ever complains."
+
+"Oh? I didn't know one suffered, with paralysis."
+
+"He has racking neuritis in his shoulders and back."
+
+"That's bad.  I'm afraid he can't be much up to entertaining
+visitors.  Does he hate having me here?"
+
+"No! oh no!  I know he sometimes seems a little odd," said poor
+Laura, wishing her guest were less clear-sighted: and yet before
+he came she had been hoping that Lawrence would divine the less
+obvious aspects of the situation, and perhaps, since a man can do
+more with a man like Bernard than any woman can, succeed in
+easing it.  "But can you wonder?  Struck down like this at five
+and twenty! and he never was keen on indoor interests--sport and
+his profession were all he cared about.  Please, Lawrence, make
+allowances for him--he had been looking forward so much to your
+coming here!  A man's society always does him good, and you know
+how few men there are in this country: we have only the vicar,
+and the doctor, and Jack Bendish and people who stay at the
+Castle.  And if you only realized how different he was with you
+from what he is with most people, you would be flattered!  He
+won't let any one touch him as a rule, except Barry,  whom he
+treats like a machine.  But he was quite grateful to you--he
+seemed to lean on you."
+
+"Did he?"
+
+She had made Lawrence feel uncomfortable again in the region of
+the heart, but he was deliberately stifling pity, as five years
+ago, in a Peruvian fonda, he had subdued his filial tenderness
+and grief.  He was not callous: if he had had the earlier cable
+he would have sailed for home without delay.  But since Andrew
+Hyde was dead and would never know whether his son wept for him
+or not, Lawrence set himself to repress not only tears but the
+fount of human feeling that fed them.  He had dabbled enough in
+psychology to know that natural emotions, if not indulged, may
+only be driven down under the surface, there to work havoc among
+the roots of nerve life.  Lawrence however had no nerves and no
+fear of Nemesis, and no inclination to sacrifice himself for
+Bernard, and he determined, if Wanhope continued to inspire these
+oppressive sensations to send himself a telegram calling him
+away.
+
+He changed the subject.  "It's a long while since I've heard
+stockdoves cooing.  And, yes, that's a nightingale.  Oh, you
+jolly little beggar!" His face fell into boyish creases when he
+smiled. "Do you remember the nightingales at Farringay?  Laura--
+may I say it?--while rusticating in Arden you haven't forgotten
+certain talents you used to possess.  The dress is delightful,
+but where the masterhand appears is in the way it's worn.  That
+carries me back to Auteull."
+
+"Nonsense!" said Laura, changing her attitude, but not visibly
+displeased.
+
+"Oh I shan't say don't move"  Lawrence murmured.  "The slippers
+also. . . . Are there many trout in this river, I wonder?  Hallo!
+there's a big fellow rubbing along by that black stone!   Must
+weigh a cool pound and a half. I suppose the angling rights go
+with the property?"
+
+"You can fish all day long if you like: the water is ours, both
+sides of it, as far south as the mill above Wharton and a good
+half-mile upstream.  The banks are kept clear on principle,
+though none of us ever touch a line.  The Castle people come
+over now and then: Jack Bendish is keen, and he says our sport
+is better than theirs because they fish theirs down too much.
+Val put some stock in this spring."
+
+"Val?"
+
+"You seem to fit in so naturally," Laura smiled, "that I forget
+you've only just come.  Val is Bernard's agent, and I ought not
+to have omitted him from our list of country neighbours, but he's
+like one of the family.  Bernard wants you, to meet him because
+he was near you in the war.  But I don't know that you'll have
+much in common: Val was very junior to you, and he's not keen on
+talking about it in any case.  So many men have that shrinking.
+Have you, I wonder?"
+
+"I'm afraid I don't take impressions easily. Didn't your friend
+enjoy it?"
+
+"He had no chance.  He had only six or seven weeks at the front;
+he was barely nineteen, poor boy, when he was invalided out.
+That was why Bernard offered him the agency--he was delighted to
+lend a helping hand to one of his old brother officers."
+
+"Wounded?"
+
+"Yes, he had his right arm smashed by a revolver bullet.  Then
+rheumatic fever set in, and the trouble went to the heart, and he
+was very ill for a long time.  I don't suppose he ever has been
+so strong as he was before.  What made it so sad was the splendid
+way he had just distinguished himself," Laura continued.  She
+gave a little sketch of the rescue of Dale, far more vivid than
+Val had ever given to his family.  "Perhaps you can imagine what
+a fuss Chilmark made over its solitary hero!  We're still proud
+of him.  Val is always in request at local shows: he appears on
+the platform looking very shy and bored.  Poor boy!  I believe he
+sometimes wishes he had never won that embarrassing decoration."
+
+"What's his name?"
+
+"Val Stafford.  Why--do you remember him?"
+
+"Er--yes, I do," said Lawrence.  He took out his cigar case and
+turned from Laura to light a cigar.  "I knew a lot of the
+Dorchesters. . . Amiable-looking, fair boy, wasn't he?"
+
+"Middle height, and rather sunburnt.  But that description fits
+such dozens!  However, I'm taking you up to tea there this
+afternoon, if the prospect doesn't bore you, so you'll be able to
+judge for yourself.  He has a young sister who threatens to be
+very pretty.  Are you still interested in pretty girls, M. le
+capitaine?"
+
+"Immensely." Hyde lay back on one arm, smoking rather fast. "I
+see no immediate prospect of my being bored, thanks.  Rather fun
+running into Stafford again after all these years! I shall love a
+chat over old times."  He raised his black eyes, and Laura
+started.  Was it her fancy, or a trick of the sunlight, that
+conjured up in them that sparkle of smiling cruelty, gone before
+she could fix it?  "You say he doesn't care to talk about his
+military exploits?  He always was a modest youth, I should love
+to see him on a recruiting platform.  Wait till I get him to
+myself, he won't be shy with me.  Did you tell him I was coming?"
+
+"I told his sister Isabel, who probably told him. I haven't seen
+him since, he hasn't happened to come in; I suppose the hay
+harvest has kept him extra busy--Dear me! why, there he is!"
+
+In the field across the stream a young man on horseback had come
+into view.  Catching sight of Laura he slipped across a low
+boundary wall, his brown mare, a thoroughbred, changing her feet
+in a ladylike way on the worn stones, and trotted down to the
+riverbank, raising his cap.
+
+"Coming in to lunch, Val?" Laura called across the water.
+
+"Thank you very much, I'm afraid I shan't have time."
+
+"But you haven't been in since Sunday!"  Laura's accent was
+reproachful.  "Why are you forsaking us?  We need you more than
+the farm does!"
+
+Val's pleasant laugh was the avoidance of an answer.  "So sorry!
+But I can't come in now, Laura: I have to go over to Countisford
+to talk to Bishop about the new tractor, and I want to get back
+by teatime.  Isabel tells me you're bringing Captain Hyde up to
+see us." He raised his cap again, smiling directly at Lawrence,
+who returned the salute with such gay good humour that Laura was
+able to dismiss that first fleeting impression from her mind.
+So this was Val Stafford, was it?  And a very personable fellow
+too! Hyde had not foreseen that ten years would work as great a
+change in Val as in himself, or greater.
+
+"I was going to call on you in due form, sir, but my young
+sister hasn't left me the chance.  You haven't forgotten me, have
+you?"
+
+"No, I remember you most distinctly.  Delighted to meet you
+again."
+
+"Thank you.  The pleasure is mutual.  Now I must push on or I
+shall be late."
+
+"He can use his arm, then," said Lawrence, as Val rode away,
+jumping his mare over a fence into the road.  "Shaves himself and
+all that, I suppose?  He rides well."
+
+"A great deal too well! and rides to hounds too, but he ought not
+to do it, and I'm always scolding him.  He can't straighten his
+right arm, and has very little power in it.  He was badly thrown
+last winter, but directly he got up he was out again on Kitty."
+
+"Living up to his reputation." Lawrence flicked the ash from his
+cigar.  "I should have known him anywhere by his eyes."
+
+"He has kept very young, hasn't he?  An uneventful life without
+much anxiety does keep people young," philosophized Laura.  "I
+feel like a mother to him.  But you'll see more of him this
+afternoon."
+
+"So I shall," said Lawrence, "if he isn't detained at
+Countisford."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+The reason why Lawrence found Isabel scrubbing Mrs. Drury's
+floor was that Dorrie's pretty, sluttish little mother had been
+whisked off to the Cottage Hospital with appendicitis an hour
+earlier.  She was in great distress about Dorrie when Isabel,
+coming in with the parish magazine, offered to stay while Drury
+went to fetch an aunt from Winterbourne Stoke.  When Drury drove
+up in a borrowed farm cart, Isabel without expecting or receiving
+many thanks dragged her bicycle to the top of the glen and pelted
+off across the moor.  Her Sunbeam was worn and old, so old that
+it had a fixed wheel, but what was that to Isabel?  She put her
+feet up and rattled down the hill, first on the turf and then on
+the road, in a happy reliance on her one serviceable brake.
+
+Her father was locked in his study writing a sermon: Isabel
+however tumbled in by the window.  She sidled up to Mr. Stafford,
+sat on his knee, and wound one arm round his neck.  "Jim
+darling," she murmured in his ear, "have you any money?"
+
+"Isabel," said Mr. Stafford, "how often have I told you that I
+will  not be interrupted in the middle of my morning's work?  You
+come in like a whirlwind, with holes in your stockings--"
+
+Isabel giggled suddenly.  "Never mind, darling, I'll help you
+with your sermon.  Whereabouts are you?  Oh!--'I need not tell
+you, my friends, the story we all know so well'--Jim, that's
+what my tutor calls 'Redundancy and repetition.' You know quite
+well you're going to tell us every word of it.  Darling take its
+little pen and cross it out--so--with its own nasty little
+cross-nibbed J--"
+
+"What do you mean by saying you want money,"  Mr. Stafford
+hurriedly changed the subject, "and how much do you want?  The
+butcher's bill came to half a sovereign this week, and I must
+keep five shillings to take to old Hewitt--"
+
+"I want pounds and pounds."
+
+"My dear!" said Mr. Stafford aghast.  He took off his spectacles
+to polish them, and then as he put them on again, "If it's for
+that Appleton boy I really can't allow it.  There's nothing
+whatever wrong with him but laziness"
+
+"It isn't for Appleton.  It's for me myself."  Isabel sat up
+straight, a little flushed.  "I'm growing up.  Isn't it a
+nuisance? I want a new dress!  I did think I could carry on till
+the winter, but I can't.  Could you let me have enough to buy one
+ready-made?  Chapman's have one in their window that would fit me
+pretty well.  It's rather dear, but somehow when I make my own
+they never come right.  And Rowsley says I look like a scarecrow,
+and even Val's been telling me to put my hair up!"
+
+"Put your hair up, my child?  Why, how old are you? I don't like
+little girls to be in a hurry to turn into big ones"
+
+"I'm not a little girl," said Isabel shortly.  "I'm nineteen."
+
+"Nineteen? no, surely not!"
+
+"Twenty next December."
+
+"Dear me!" said Mr. Stafford, quite overcome. "How time flies!"
+He set her down from his knee and went to his cash box.  "If Val
+tells you to put your hair up, no doubt you had better do it." He
+paused.  "I don't know whether Val said you ought to have a new
+frock, though?  I can't bear spending money on fripperies when
+even in our own parish so many people--" Some glimmering
+perception reached him of the repressed anguish in Isabel's eyes.
+"But of course you must have what you need.  How much is it?"
+
+"1. 11. 6."
+
+"Oh, my dear!  That seems a great deal."
+
+"It isn't really much for a best dress," said poor Isabel.
+
+"But you mustn't be extravagant, darling," said Mr. Stafford
+tenderly.  "I see other girls running about in little cotton
+dresses or bits of muslin or what not that look very nice--much
+nicer on a young girl than 'silksand fine array.' Last time
+Yvonne came to tea she wore a little frock as simple as a
+child's"
+
+"She did," said Isabel.  "She picked it up in a French sale.  It
+was very cheap--only 275 francs."
+
+"Eleven pounds!" Mr. Stafford held up his hands.  "My dear, are
+you sure?"
+
+"Quite," said Isabel. Mr. Stafford sighed. "I must speak to
+Yvonne.  'How hardly shall they...'"  He took a note out of his
+cash box. "Can't you make that do--?" he was beginning when a
+qualm of compunction came upon him.  After all it was a long time
+since he had given Isabel any money for herself, and there must
+be many little odds and ends about a young girl's clothing that
+an elderly man wouldn't understand.  He took out a second note
+and pressed them both hurriedly into Isabel's palm.  "There! now
+run off and don't ask me for another penny for the next
+twelvemonth!" he exclaimed, beaming over his generosity though
+more than half ashamed of it.  "You extravagant puss, you! dear,
+dear, who'd have a daughter?"
+
+Isabel gave him a rather hasty though warm embrace (she was
+terribly afraid that his conscience would prick him and that he
+would take the second note away again), and flew out of the
+window faster than she had come in.  The clock was striking a
+quarter past one, and she had to scamper down to Chapman's to buy
+the dress, and a length of lilac ribbon for a sash, and a packet
+of bronze hairpins, and be back in time to lay the cloth for two
+o'clock lunch.  If it is only for idle hands that Satan finds
+mischief, he could not have had much satisfaction out of Isabel
+Stafford.
+
+Soon after four Mrs. Clowes stepped from her car, shook out her
+soft flounces, and led the way across the lawn, Lawrence Hyde in
+attendance.  The vicarage was an old-fashioned house too large
+for the living, its long front, dotted with rosebushes, rising up
+honey-coloured against the clear green of a beech grove.  There
+are grand houses that one sees at once will never be comfortable,
+and there are unpretentious houses that promise to be cool in
+summer and warm in winter and restful all the year round: of such
+was Chilmark vicarage, sunning itself in the afternoon clearness,
+while faded green sunblinds filled the interior with verdant
+shadow, and the smell of sweetbrier and Japanese honeysuckle
+breathed round the rough-cast walls.
+
+Isabel had laid tea on the lawn, and Mrs. Clowes smiled to herself
+when she saw seven worn deck chairs drawn up round the table; she was
+always secretly amused at Isabel in her character of hostess, at the
+naive natural confidence with which the young lady scattered
+invitations and dispensed hospitality.  But when Isabel came forward
+Laura's covert smile passed into irrepressible surprise.  She raised
+her eyebrows at Isabel, who replied by an almost imperceptible but
+triumphant nod.  In her white and mauve embroidered muslin, her dark
+hair accurately parted at the side of her head and drawn back into
+what she called a soup plate of plaits, Isabel no longer threatened
+to be pretty.  Impelled by that singularly pure benevolence which a
+woman who has ceased to hope for happiness feels for the eager
+innocence of youth, Laura drew her close and kissed her.  "My sweet,
+I'm so glad," she whispered. A bright blush was Isabel's only answer.
+Then Mrs. Clowes stepped back and indicated her cavalier, very big
+and handsome in white clothes and a Panama hat: "May I introduce--
+Captain Hyde, Miss Stafford," with a delicate formality which
+thrilled Isabel to her finger-tips.  Let him see if he would call her
+a little girl now!
+
+Lawrence recognized Isabel at a glance, but he was not abashed.
+He scarcely gave her a second thought till he had satisfied
+himself that Val Stafford was not present.  Lawrence smiled, not
+at all surprised: he had had a presentiment that Val, the modest
+easy-going Val of his recollections, would be detained at
+Countisford: too modest by half, if he was shy of meeting an old
+friend!  Rowsley Stafford was doing the honours and came forward
+to be introduced to Lawrence, a ceremony remarkable only because
+they both took an instantaneous dislike to each other.  Lawrence
+disliked Rowsley because he was young and well-meaning and the
+child of a parsonage, and Rowsley disliked Lawrence because a
+manner which owed some of its serenity to his physical advantages,
+and his tailor, and his income, irritated the susceptibilities of
+the poor man's son.
+
+Poor men's sons were often annoyed by Lawrence Hyde's manner.
+Not so Jack Bendish, sprawling in a deck chair which had no
+sound pair of notches: not so his wife, Laura's sister, Yvonne of
+the Castle, curled up on a moth-eaten tigerskin rug, and clad in
+raiment of brown and silver which even Mr. Stafford would not
+have credited to Chapman's General Drapery and Grocery Stores.
+Isabel was innocently surprised when the Bendishes found they had
+met Captain Hyde in town.  Laura's smile was very faintly tinged
+with bitterness: she knew of that small world where every one
+meets every one, though she had been barred out of it most of her
+life, first by her disreputable father and then by the tragedy of
+her marriage: Rowsley pulled his tooth-brush moustache and said
+nothing.  He was young, but not so young as Isabel, and there
+were moments when he felt his own footing at the Castle to be
+vaguely anomalous.
+
+However, the talk ran easily.  Lawrence, as was inevitable, sat
+down by Yvonne Bendish: she did not raise an eyelash to summon
+him, but it seemed to be a natural law that the rich unmarried
+man should sit beside her and talk cosmopolitan scandal, and show
+a discreet appreciation of her clothing and her eyes.  Meanwhile
+the other four conversed with much greater simplicity upon such
+homely subjects as the coming school treat and the way Isabel had
+done her hair, Rowsley's regimental doings, and a recent turn-up
+between Jack Bendish as deputy M. F. H. and Mr. Morley the Jew.
+
+Bernard Clowes had described Mrs. Jack Bendish as a plain little
+devil, but as a rule the devilry was more conspicuous than the
+plainness.  She was a tall and extremely slight woman, her
+features insignificant and her complexion sallow, but her figure
+indecorously beautiful under its close French draperies.  And yet
+if she had let Lawrence alone he would have gone over to the
+other camp. How they laughed, three out of the four of them, and
+what marvellous good tea they put away!  The little Stafford girl
+had a particularly infectious laugh, a real child's giggle which
+doubled her up in her chair.  Lawrence had no desire to join in
+the school treat and barnyard conversation, but he would have
+liked to sit and listen.
+
+"If no one will have any more tea," said Isabel, jumping up and
+shaking the crumbs out of her lap, "will you all come and eat
+strawberries?"
+
+"Isn't Val coming in?" asked Laura.
+
+"Not till after five.  He said we weren't to wait for him: he was
+delayed in getting off.  He sent his love to you, Laura, and he
+was very sorry."
+
+"His love!" said Yvonne Bendish.
+
+"My dear Isabel, I'm sure he didn't," said Laura laughing.
+
+"Kind regards then," said Isabel: "not that it signifies, because
+we all do love you, darling.  Val's always telling me that if I
+want to be a lady when I grow up I must model my manners on yours.
+Not yours, Yvonne."
+
+"After that the least I can do is to wait and give him his tea
+when he does appear," said Laura. "It's very hot among the
+strawberry beds, and I'm a little tired: and I haven't seen Val
+for days."
+
+"No more have I," said Yvonne in her odd drawl, "and I'm tired
+too."  Mrs. Jack Bendish was made of whipcord: she had been
+brought up to ride Irish horses over Irish fences and to dance all
+night, after tramping the moors all day with a gun.  "I'll stay with
+you and rest.  Jack, you run on.  Bring me some big ones in a cabbage
+leaf.  And, Captain Hyde, you'll find them excellent with bread and
+butter." By which Lawrence perceived that his interest in the other
+camp had not gone unobserved, and that was the worst of Yvonne:
+but--and that was the best of Yvonne: there was no tinge of spite in
+her jeering eyes.
+
+So the sisters remained on the lawn, and Jack Bendish, a
+perfectly simple young man, walked off with Rowsley to pick a
+cabbage leaf.  Isabel was demureness itself as she followed with
+Captain Hyde. The embroidered muslin gave her courage, more
+courage perhaps than if she could have heard his frank opinion of
+it.  "The trailing skirt of the young girl," said Miss Stafford
+to herself, "made a gentle frou-frou as she swept over the velvet
+lawn." A quoi revent les junes filles?  Very innocent was the
+vanity of Isabel's dreams.  She was not strictly pretty, but she
+was young and fresh, and the spotless muslin fell in graceful
+folds round her tall, lissome figure.  To the jaded man of the
+world at her side . . . .  Alas for Isabel!  The jaded man of
+the world was a trifle bored: he was easily bored.  He liked
+listening to Miss Stafford's artless merriment but he had no
+desire to share in it; what had he to say to a promoted
+schoolgirl in her Sunday best?
+
+He began politely making conversation.  "What a pretty place this
+is!" It seemed wiser not to refer even by way of apology to the
+indiscretion of the morning.  "You have a beautiful view over the
+Plain.  Rather dreary in winter though, isn't it?"
+
+"I like it best then," said Isabel briefly.  "Don't you want any
+strawberries?" She indicated the netted furrows among which
+little could be seen of Rowsley and Jack Bendish except their
+stern ends.
+
+"No, thanks, I had too much tea." Isabel checked herself on the
+brink of reminding him that he had eaten only two cucumber
+sandwiches and a macaroon.  In Lawrence Hyde's society her
+conversation had not its usual happy flow, she felt tonguetied
+and missish.  "How close you are to the Downs here!" They were
+following a flagged path between espalier pear trees, and beds of
+broccoli and carrots and onions, and borders full of old standard
+roses and lavender and sweet herbs and tall lilies; at the end
+appeared a wishing gate in a low stone wall, and beyond it,
+pathless and sunshiny, the southern stretches of the Plain.  "Are
+you a great gardener, Miss Isabel?"
+
+"Some," said Isabel. "I look after my pet vegetables.  The
+flowers have to look after themselves.  My father has eruptions
+of industry."  She overflowed into a little laugh.  "We don't
+encourage him in it.  He had a bad attack of weeding last spring,
+and pulled up all my little salads by mistake."  Now that small
+tale, she reflected, would have tickled Jack Bendish, but Captain
+Hyde, though he smiled at it dutifully, did not seem to be
+amused.
+
+"Oh bother you!" Isabel apostrophised him mentally.  "You're not
+the grandson of a duke anyhow. I expect you would be nicer if you
+were."
+
+She folded her arms on the gate and gazed across the Plain.  The
+village below was not far off, but they could see nothing of it,
+buried as it was in the river-valley and behind a green arras of
+beech leaves: in every other direction, far as the eye could see,
+leagues of feathery pale grass besprinkled with blue and yellow
+flowers went away in ribbed undulations, occasionally rolling up
+into a crest on which a company of fir trees hung like men on
+march.  The sun was pale and smudged, the sky veiled: on its
+silken pallor floated, here and there, a blot of dark low cloud,
+and the clear distances presaged rain.
+
+"May I--?" Lawrence took out his cigarettes. Isabel gave a
+grudging assent.  She could not understand how any one could be
+willing to taint the sweet summering air that had blown over so
+many leagues of grass and flowers.  "Dare I offer you one?"
+Lawrence asked, tendering his case.  It was of gold, and bore his
+monogram in diamonds. Isabel eyed it scornfully.  Jack Bendish's
+was only silver and much scratched and dinted into the bargain.
+Now Jack Bendish was the grandson of a duke.
+
+"'No thank you," said Miss Stafford.  "I detest smoking."
+
+ To this Lawrence made no reply at all, no doubt, thought Isabel,
+because he did not consider it worth one.  She was proportionally
+surprised and a trifle flattered when he replaced the cigarette
+to which he had just helped himself. "'The young girl had not
+realized her own power.  She was only just coming into her
+woman's kingdom.  Her heart beat faster and a vermilion blush
+dyed her pale cheek."' Isabel's favourite authors were Stevenson
+and Mr. Kipling, but her mental rubric insisted on clothing itself
+in the softer style of Molly Bawn.
+
+"I don't detest other people's smoking," she explained in a
+rather penitent tone.
+
+"Let's get out on the downs," said Lawrence.  He swung the gate
+to and fro for her, then took off his hat and strolled slowly by
+her side through the rustling grass.  "Really," he said, more to
+himself than to her, "there are places in England that are very
+well worth while."
+
+"Worth while what?"
+
+"Er--worth coming to see.  I suppose there isn't much shooting
+to be had except rabbits." He swung an imaginary gun to his
+shoulder and sighted it at a quarry which seemed to Isabel to be
+equally imaginary.  "See him?  Under that heap of stones left of
+the beech ring." Isabel's vision was both keen and practised, but
+she saw nothing till the rabbit showed his white scut in a
+flickering leap to earth.
+
+"You have jolly good eyes," she conceded, still rather
+grudgingly.
+
+"So have bunnies, unluckily.  Major Clowes tells me there's
+pretty good shooting over Wanhope. I suppose your brother looks
+after it, for of course Clowes can do nothing.  It was a great
+stroke of luck for my cousin, getting hold of a fellow like Val."
+
+"I don't know about that.  It was a great stroke of luck for
+Val."
+
+"I want so much to meet him.  I'm disappointed at missing him this
+afternoon. I remember him perfectly in the army, though he was
+only a boy then and I wasn't much more myself.  He must be close
+on thirty now.  But when I met him this morning it struck me he
+hadn't altered much."  Isabel, looking up eager-eyed, felt
+faintly and mysteriously chilled.  Was there a point of cruelty
+in Hyde's smile? as there was now and then in his cousin's: she
+had seen Bernard Clowes watching his wife with the same secret
+glow.
+
+"Val is old for his age," she said.  "He always seems much older
+than my other brother, although there are only two or three years
+between them."
+
+"Probably his spell in the army aged him.  It must have been a
+formative experience."
+
+This time Isabel had no doubt about it, there was certainly a
+touch of cruel irony in Hyde's soft voice.  Her breath came fast.
+"Why do you say that": she cried--"say it like that?"
+
+The smile faded: Lawrence turned, startled out of his self-possession.
+"Like what?"
+
+"As if you we're sneering at Val!"
+
+"I?--  My dear Miss Isabel, aren't you a little fanciful?"
+
+Isabel supposed so too, on second thoughts: how could any man
+sneer at a record like Val's: unless indeed it were with that
+peculiarly graceless sneer which springs from jealousy?  And,
+little as she liked Captain Hyde, she could not think him weak
+enough for that. She blushed again, this time without any rubric,
+and hung her head.  "I'm sorry! But you did say it as if you
+didn't mean it.  Perhaps you think we make too much fuss over
+Val?  But in these sleepy country villages exciting things don't
+happen every day.  I dare say you've had scores of adventures
+since that time you met Val.  But Chilmark hasn't had any.  That
+makes us remember."
+
+"My dear child," said Lawrence with an earnest gentleness foreign
+to his ordinary manner, "you misunderstood me altogether.  I
+liked your brother very much.  Remember, I was there when he won
+his decoration--" He broke off.  An intensely visual memory had
+flashed over him.  Now he knew of whom Isabel had reminded him
+that morning:  she had her brother's eyes.
+
+"At the very time?  Were you really?  Do, do, do tell me about
+it!  Major Clowes never will--he pretends he can't remember."
+
+"Has Val never told you?"
+
+"Hardly any more than was in the official account--that he was
+left between the lines after one of our raids, and went back in
+spite of his wound to bring in Mr. Dale.  He had to wait till
+after dark?"  Lawrence nodded.. "And 'under particularly trying
+conditions.' Why was that?"
+
+"Because Dale was so close to the German lines. He was entangled
+in their wire."
+
+Isabel shuddered.  "It seems so long ago.  One can't understand
+why such cruelties were ever allowed.  Of course they will never
+be again." This naive voice of the younger generation made
+Lawrence smile.  "And Val had to cut their wire?"
+
+"To peel it off Dale, or peel Dale off it--what was left of him.
+He didn't live more than twenty minutes after he was brought in."
+
+"Did you know Dale?"
+
+"Not well: he was in my cousin's company, not in mine."
+
+"And was Val under fire at the time?"
+
+"Under heavy fire.  The Boches were sending up starshells that
+made the place as light as day."
+
+"I can't understand how Val could do it with his broken arm."
+
+"His arm wasn't broken when he cut their wires."
+
+"Oh!  When was it then?"
+
+Hyde flicked with his stick at the airy heads of grass that rose
+up thin-sown out of a burnished carpet of lady's slipper.  His
+manner was even but his face was dark.  "He had it splintered by
+a revolver--shot on his way home, near our lines."
+
+"Oh!  But the Army doctors said the shot must have been fired at
+close quarters?"
+
+"There, you see I'm not much of an authority,  am I?  No doubt,
+if they said so, they were right.  The fact is I was knocked out
+myself that afternoon with a rifle bullet in the ribs.  It was a
+hot corner for the Wintons and Dorsets."
+
+"Were you?  I'm sorry." Isabel ran her eyes with a touch of
+whimsical solicitude over Hyde's tall easy figure and the
+exquisite keeping of his white clothes.  Difficult to connect him
+with the bloody disarray of war!  "Were you too left lying
+between the lines?"
+
+"With a good many others, English and German.
+
+"There was a fellow near me that hadn't a scratch.  He was
+frightened--mad with fear: he lay up in the long grass and wept
+most of the day.  I never hated any one so much in my life.  I
+could have shot him with pleasure."
+
+"German, of course?"
+
+Hyde smiled.  "German, of course."
+
+"If he had been English he would have deserved to be shot," said
+Isabel briefly: then, reverting to a subject in which she was far
+more deeply interested, "Rowsley--my second brother--said I
+wasn't to cross-examine you: but it was a great temptation,
+because one never can get anything out of Val.  And after all
+we've the right to be proud of him!  Even then, when every one
+was so brave, you would say, wouldn't you, that Val earned his
+distinction? It really was what the Gazette called it, 'conspicuous
+gallantry'?"
+
+"It was a daring piece of work," said Lawrence, reddening to his
+hair.  He fought down a sensation so unfamiliar that he could
+scarcely put a name to it, and forced himself on: "We were all proud
+of him and we none of us forget it.  Don't tell him I said so,
+though.  It isn't etiquette.  You won't think I'm trying to minimize
+what Val did, will you, if I say that we who were through the
+fighting saw so many horrible and ghastly things . . ."  Again his
+voice failed.  He was aware of Isabel's bewilderment, but he was
+seeing more ghosts than he had seen in all the intervening years of
+peace, and they came between him and the sunlit landscape and
+Isabel's young eyes.  War! always war! human bodies torn to rags in a
+moment, and the flowers of the field wet with a darker moisture than
+rain: the very smell of the trenches was in his nostrils, their odour
+of blood and decay.  What in heaven's name had brought it all back,
+and, stranger still, what had moved him to speak of it and to betray
+feelings whose very existence was unknown to him and which he had
+never betrayed before?
+
+The silence was brief though to Lawrence it seemed endless.  He
+drove the ghosts back to quarters and finished quietly: "Well, we
+won't talk about that, it's not a pleasant subject.  Only give
+Val my love and tell him if he doesn't look me up soon I shall
+come and call on him.  We're much too old friends to stand on
+ceremony."
+
+"All right, I will," said Isabel.
+
+There was a shrub of juniper close by, and she felt under its
+sharp branches.  "Do you like honeysuckle?" She held up a fresh
+sprig fragrant with its pale horns, which she had tracked to
+covert by its scent.  Lawrence was not given to wearing
+buttonholes, but he understood the friendly and apologetic
+intention and inclined his broad shoulder for Miss Stafford to
+pass the stem through the lapel of his coat.  Isabel had not
+intended to pin it in for  him, but she was generally willing to
+do what was expected of her.  She took a pin from her own dress
+(there were plenty in it), and fastened the flower deftly on the
+breast of Captain Hyde's white jacket.
+
+And so standing before him, her head bent over her task, she
+unwittingly left Lawrence free to observe the texture of her
+skin, bloomed over with down like a peach, and the curves of her
+young shoulders, a little inclined to stoop, as young backs often
+are in the strain of growth, but so firm, so fresh, so white
+under the thin stuff of her bodice:  below her silken plaits, on
+the nape of her neck, a curl or two of hair grew in close rings,
+so fine that it was almost indistinguishable from its own shadow.
+Swiftly, without warning, Lawrence was aware of a pleasurable
+commotion in his veins, a thrill that shook through him like a
+burst of gay music.  This experience was not novel, he had felt
+it three or four times before in his life, and on the spot, while
+it was sending gentle electric currents to his finger-tips, he
+was able to analyse its origin--item, to warm weather and
+laziness after the strain of his Chinese journey, so much: item,
+to Isabel's promise of beauty, so much: item, to the disparity
+between her age and his own, to her ignorance and immaturity, the
+bloom on the untouched fruit, so much more.  But there was this
+difference between the present and previous occasions when he had
+fallen or thought of falling in love, that he desired no victory:
+no, it was he and not Isabel who was to capitulate, leaning his
+forehead upon her young hand. . . . And he had never seen her
+till that morning, and the child was nineteen, the daughter of a
+country vicarage, brought up to wear calico and to say her
+prayers!  more, she was Val Stafford's sister, and she loved her
+brother.  Lawrence gave himself a gentle shake.  At six and
+thirty it is time to put away childish things. "Thank you very
+much.  Is that Mrs. Clowes calling us?"
+
+It was Laura Clowes and Yvonne Bendish, and Lawrence, as he
+strolled back with Isabel to the garden gate, had an uneasy
+suspicion that the episode of the honeysuckle had been overseen.
+Laura was graver than usual, while Yvonne had a sardonic spark in
+her eye.  "I'm afraid it's no use waiting any longer, Isabel,"
+said Laura.
+
+"What do you think, Lawrence?  It's after six o'clock."
+
+"Hasn't Val come?" said Isabel.
+
+"No, he must have been kept at Countisford.  It's a long ride for
+him on such a hot day.  Perhaps Mrs. Bishop made him stay to
+tea."
+
+"As if he would stay with any old Mrs. Bishop when he knew you were
+coming here!" said Isabel scornfully.  "Poor old Val, I shan't tell
+him how you misjudged him, he'd be so hurt.  But I'll send him down,
+shall I, to see you and Captain Hyde after supper?--Tired?  Oh no,
+he's never too tired to go to Wanhope."
+
+She kissed Laura, gave Lawrence her sweetest friendly smile, and
+returned to the lawn, where Yvonne had apparently taken root upon
+her tigerskin.  Isabel heard Rowsley say, "Make her shut up,
+Jack," but before she could ask why Yvonne was to be shut up the
+daughter of Lilith had opened fire on the daughter of Eve.  "And
+what did you think of Lawrence Hyde?" Mrs. Bendish asked,
+stretching herself out like a snake and examining Isabel out of
+her pale eyes, much the colour of an unripe gooseberry.  "Was he
+very attractive?  Oh Isabel! oh Isabel!  I should not have
+thought this of one so young."
+
+Isabel considered the point. "I can't understand him," she said
+honestly. "I liked parts of him.  He isn't so--so homogeneous as
+most people are.
+
+"Did he ask you for the honeysuckle?"
+
+"No, I gave it to him for a peace offering.  I hurt his feelings,
+and afterwards I was sorry and wanted to make it up with him.
+But would you have thought he had any feelings? any, that is,
+that anything I said would hurt?"
+
+"Certainly not," from Rowsley.
+
+"Any woman can hurt any man," said Yvonne.  "But, of course, you
+aren't a woman, Isabel.  What was the trouble?"
+
+"Oh, something about the war."
+
+"No, my child, it wasn't about the war.  It was something that
+stung up his vanity or his self-love.  Lawrence isn't a
+sentimentalist like Jack or Val."  Here Jack Bendish got as far
+as an artless "Oh, I say!" but his wife paid no attention.
+"Lawrence never took the war seriously."
+
+"But he did," insisted Isabel.  "He coloured all over his face--"
+
+She paused, realizing that Mrs. Bendish, under her mask of
+scepticism, was agog with curiosity.  Isabel was not fond of
+being drawn out.  Lawrence had given her his confidence, and she
+valued it, for with all her ignorance of society she had seen too
+much of plain human nature to suppose that he was often taken off
+his guard as he had been by her: and was she going to expose him
+to Yvonne's lacerating raillery?  A thousand times no!  "I
+misunderstood something he said about Val," she continued with
+scarcely a break, and falling back on one of those explanations
+that deceive the sceptical by their economy of truth.  "It was
+stupid of me, and awkward for him, so I had to apologize."
+
+"I see.  Come, Jack." Yvonne rose to her feet,  more like a snake
+than ever in her flexibility and swiftness, and held Isabel to
+her for a moment, her arm round her young friend's waist.  "But
+if you pin any more buttonholes into Captain Hyde's coat," the
+last low murmur was only for Isabel's ear, "he will infallibly
+kiss you: so now you are forewarned and can choose whether or no
+you will continue to pay him these little attentions."
+
+Isabel was not disturbed.  She had early formed the habit of not
+attending to Mrs. Bendish, and she unwound herself without even
+changing colour.
+
+"You always remind me of Nettie Hills at the Clowes's lodge," she
+retorted.  "Mrs. Hills says she's that flighty in the way she
+carries on, no one would believe what a good sensible girl she is
+under all her nonsense, and walks out with her own young man as
+regular as clockwork."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+And that evening Val Stafford came to pay his respects to his old
+comrade in arms.  Lawrence had travelled so much that it never
+took him long to settle down.  Even at Wanhope he managed within
+a few hours to make himself at home.  A trap sent over to
+Countisford brought back his manservant and an effeminate
+quantity of luggage, and by teatime his room was strewn from end
+to end with a litter of expensive trifles more proper to a pretty
+woman than to a man.  Mrs. Clowes, slipping in to cast a
+housewifely glance to his comfort, held up her hands in mock
+dismay.  "You must give yourself plenty of time to dust all this
+tomorrow morning, Caroline," she said to the house-maid.  She
+laughed at the gold brushes and gold manicure set, the polished
+array of boots, the fine silk and linen laid out on his bed, the
+perfume of sandalwood and Russian leather and eau de cologne.
+"And I hope you will be able to make Captain Hyde's valet
+comfortable.  Did he say whether he liked his room?"
+
+"I reelly don't know, ma'am,"  replied the truthful Caroline.
+"You see he's a foreigner, and most of what he says, well, it
+reelly sounds like swearing.
+
+"Madame." It was Gaston himself, appearing from nowhere at
+Laura's elbow, and saluting her with an empressement that was
+due, if Laura had only known it, to the harmony of her flounces.
+Laura eyed the little Gaston kindly.  "You are of the South,
+are you not?" she said in her soft French, the French of a
+Frenchwoman but for a slight stiffness of disuse: "and are you
+comfortable here, Gaston?  You must tell me if there is anything
+you want."
+
+Gaston was grateful less for her solicitude than for the sound
+of his own language.  When she had left the room he caught up a
+photograph, thrust it back into his master's dressingcase, and
+spat through the open window--"C'est fini avec toi, vieille
+biche," said he: "allons donc! j'aime mieux celle-ci par
+exemple."
+
+But, though Laura laughed, it was with indulgence.  While Isabel
+and Lawrence were conversing among the juniper bushes, the
+Bendishes had given Mrs. Clowes a sketch of Hyde which had
+confirmed her own impressions.  Although he liked good food and
+wine and cigars, he liked sport and travel too, and music and
+painting and books.  His eighty-guinea breechloaders were dearer
+to him than the lady of the ivory frame.  Who was the lady of the
+ivory frame?  Gaston would have been happy to define with the
+leer of the boulevards the relations between his master and
+Philippa Cleve.  Gaston had no doubt of them, nor had Frederick
+Cleve; Philippa had high hopes; Lawrence alone hung fire.  If he
+continued to meet her and she to offer him lavish opportunities
+the situation might develop, for Lawrence was not sufficiently
+in earnest in any direction to play what has been called the
+ill-favoured part of a Joseph, but in his heart of hearts, this
+Joseph wished Potiphar would keep his wife in order.  And,
+strange to say, Yvonne was not far wide of the mark.  She
+believed that Joseph was a sinner but not a willing one: and Jack
+Bendish, a little astray among these feminine subtleties,
+assented after his fashion--"Hyde's rather an ass in some
+ways," he said simply, "but he's an all-round sportsman."
+
+Thus primed, Laura was able to draw out her guest, and dinner
+passed off gaily, for Bernard Clowes was no dog in the manger,
+and listened with sparkling eyes to adventures that ranged from
+Atlantic sailing in a thirty-ton yacht to a Nigerian rhinoceros
+shoot.  Nor was Lawrence the focus of the lime-light-he was
+unaffectedly modest; but when, in expatiating on a favourite
+rifle, he confessed to having held fire till a charging
+rhinoceros bull was within eight and twenty yards of him, Bernard
+could supply the footnotes for himself. "I knew she wouldn't let
+me down," said Lawrence apologetically.  "Ah! she was a bonnie
+thing, that old gun of mine.  Ever shoot with a cordite rifle?"
+Bernard shook his head.  "I'd like you to see my guns," Lawrence
+continued, too shrewd to be tactful. "I'll have them sent down,
+shall I? Or Gaston shall run up and fetch 'em. He loves a day in
+town."
+
+Under this bracing treatment Bernard became more natural than
+Laura had seen him for a long time, and he stayed in the
+drawingroom after dinner, chatting with Lawrence and listening to
+his wife at the piano, till Laura thought the Golden Age had come
+again.  How long would it last?  Philosophers like Laura never
+ask that question.  At all events it lasted till half past nine,
+when the sick man was honestly tired and the lines of no
+fictitious pain were drawn deep about his mouth and eyes.
+
+Mrs. Clowes went away with her husband, who liked to have her at
+hand while Barry was getting him to bed, and Lawrence had
+strolled out on the lawn, when a shutter was thrown down in
+Bernard's room and Laura reappeared at the open window.
+"Lawrence, are you there?" she asked, shading her eyes between
+her hands.
+
+"Here," said Lawrence removing his cigar.
+
+"Will you be so very kind as to unlock the gate over the
+footbridge?  If Val does look us up tonight he's sure to scramble
+over it, which is awkward for him with his stiff arm."
+
+She dropped a key down to Lawrence.  A voice--Bernard's called
+from within, "Good night, old fellow, thanks for a pleasant
+evening.  I'm being washed now."
+
+The night was overcast, warm, quiet, and very dark under the
+trees: there was husbandry in heaven, their candles were all out.
+And by the bridge under the pleated and tasselled branches of an
+alder coppice the river ran quiet as the night, only uttering an
+occasional murmur or a deep sucking gurgle when a rotten stick,
+framed in foam, span down the silken whirl of an eddy: but
+down-stream, where waifs of mist curled like smoke off a grey mirror,
+there was a continual talking of open water, small cold river voices
+that chattered over a pebbly channel, or heaped themselves up and
+died down again in the harsh distant murmur of the weir.  The
+quantity of water that passed through the lock gates should have been
+constant from minute to minute, but the roar of it was not constant,
+nor the pitch of its note, which fell when Lawrence stood erect, but
+rose to a shrill overtone when he bent his head: sometimes one would
+have thought the river was going down in spate, and then the volume
+of sound dwindled to a mere thread, a lisp in the air.  Lawrence was
+observing these phenomena with a mind vacant of thought when he heard
+footsteps brushing through the grass by the field path from the
+village.  Val had come, then, after all!
+
+Val had naturally no idea that any one was near him.  He had
+reached the gate and was preparing to vault it when out of the
+dense alder-shadow a hand seized his arm.  "So sorry if I
+startled you."  But Val was not visibly startled.  "Mrs. Clowes
+sent me, down to let you in."
+
+"Did she?  Very good of her, and of you," returned Val's voice,
+pleasant and friendly.  "She always expects me to walk into the
+river.  But, after all, I shouldn't be drowned if I did.  Is
+Clowes gone to bed?"
+
+"He's on his way there.  Did you want to see him?"
+
+"I'll look in for five minutes after Barry has tucked him up.
+Have you been introduced to Barry yet?  He's quite a character."
+
+"So I should imagine.  He came in to cart Bernard off, and did
+something clumsy, or Bernard said he did, and Bernard cuffed his
+head for him.  Barry didn't seem to mind much.  Why does he stay?
+Is it devotion?"
+
+"He stays because your cousin pays him twice what he would get
+anywhere else.  No, I shouldn't call Barry devoted.  But he does
+his work well, and it isn't anybody's job."
+
+"I believe you," Lawrence muttered.
+
+"Warm tonight, isn't it?  No, thanks, I won't have anything to
+drink--  I've only just finished supper.  By the by, let me
+apologize for my absence this afternoon.  I was most awfully
+sorry to miss you, but I never got away from Countisford till
+after half past five, and my mare cast a shoe on the way back.
+Then I tried to get her shod in Liddiard St. Agnes, which is one
+of those idyllic villages that people write books about, and
+there I found an Odd-fellows' fete in full swing.  The village
+blacksmith was altogether too harmonious for business, so not
+being able to cuff his head, like your cousin, I was obliged to
+walk home.
+
+"Really'?  Have a cigar if you won't have anything else." Val
+accepted one, and in default of a match Lawrence made him light
+it from his own.  He was entirely at his ease, though the
+situation struck him as bizarre, but he did not believe that Val
+was at ease, no, not for all his natural manner and fertility in
+commonplace.  Lawrence was faintly sorry for the poor devil, but
+only faintly: after all, an awkward interview once in ten years
+was a low price to pay for that night which Lawrence never had
+forgotten and never would forget. He had an excellent memory,
+photographic and phonographic, a gift that wise men covet for
+themselves but deprecate in their friends.
+
+Lawrence was no Pharisee, but he was not a Samaritan either.  He
+had deliberately set himself to pull up any stray weeds of moral
+scruple that lingered in a mind stripped bare of Christian ethic,
+a task harder than some realize, since thousands of men who have
+no faith in Christ practise virtues that were not known for
+virtues by the Western world before Christ came to it.  But every
+man is his own special pleader, and Lawrence, whose theory was
+that one man is as good as another, retained a good hearty
+prejudice against certain forms of moral failure, and excused it
+on the ground that it was rather a taste than a principle. He
+looked directly into Stafford's eyes as the red glow of the cigar
+flamed and faded between the two heads so close together, and in
+his own eyes there was the same point of smiling ironic cruelty
+that Isabel had read in them--the same as Stafford himself had
+read in them not so many years ago.  But apparently Stafford read
+nothing in them now.
+
+"Sit down, won't you? you've had a fagging day."  Lawrence
+indicated the chairs left on the lawn.  "Hear me beginning to
+play the host!  As a matter of fact, you must know your way about
+the place far better than I do.  Although we're cousins, Bernard
+and I have seen next to nothing of each other since we were boys
+at school.  You, Val, must know him better than any one except
+his wife.  I want you to tell me about him.  I'm in dangerous
+country and I need a map."
+
+"I should be inclined to vary the metaphor a little and call him
+an uncharted sea," Val smiled as he threw one leg over the other
+and settled himself among his cushions.  He was dead tired,
+having been up since six in the morning and on his feet or in
+the saddle all day.  "But I'm at your service, subject always to
+the proviso that I'm Bernard's agent, which makes my position
+rather delicate.  What is it you want to know?"
+
+Since it was whether Clowes behaved decently to his wife,
+Lawrence shifted in his chair and flicked the ash from his cigar.
+"Imprimis, whether Bernard has a trout rod I can borrow.  I
+didn't know there was any fishing to be had or I'd have brought
+my own."
+
+"You can have mine: I scarcely ever touch a line now.  Certainly
+not in hay-harvest!  I'll send it down for you the first thing--"
+Was it possible that he was as insouciant as he professed to be?
+
+"Oh, thanks very much," Hyde cut in swiftly, but I couldn't
+borrow yours.  I'll find out if Clowes can't lend me one."
+
+"As you please." Stafford left it at that and passed on. "But I
+don't fancy Bernard has ever thrown a line in his life, he is too
+energetic to make a fisherman.  By the way, I suppose you won't
+be staying any length of time at Wanhope?"
+
+Lawrence smiled, the wish was father to the thought: that was
+more like the Val of old times!
+
+"That depends--mainly on my cousin, to be frank: I suspect he'll
+soon get sick of having a third person in the house."
+
+"Oh, probably.  But you needn't take any notice of that."
+Lawrence looked up in surprise.  "But, perhaps, that is none of
+my business.  Or will you let me give you one warning, since
+you've asked for a map?  Don't be too prompt to take Bernard at
+his word.  He may be very rude to you and yet not want you to go.
+He sacks Barry every few weeks. In fact now I come to think of it
+I'm under notice myself, for last time I saw him he told me to
+look out for another job.  He said what he wanted was a practical
+man who knew a little about farming."
+
+"And you stay on?  Quite right, if it suits your book."
+Unconsciously putting the worst construction on everything Val
+said or did, Lawrence's conclusion was that probably Val, an
+amateur farmer, was paid, like Barry, twice what he was worth in
+the market.  "But it wouldn't suit mine.  However, I don't
+imagine Bernard will try it on with me. I'm not Barry.  If he
+hits me I shall hit him back."
+
+"Oh, will you?" returned Val, invisibly amused. "I'm not sure
+that wouldn't be a good plan.  It has at least the merit of
+originality.  All the same I'm afraid Mrs. Clowes wouldn't like
+it, she is a standing obstacle in the way of drastic measures."
+
+"But why do you want me to stay?" Lawrence asked more and more
+surprised.
+
+"Well, here is what brought me up tonight, when I knew Bernard
+would be on his way to bed.  Will you--" he leaned forward, his
+hands clasped between his knees--"stick it out, whatever happens,
+for a week or two, and keep your eyes open?  Life at Wanhope
+isn't all plain sailing."
+
+"Plain sailing for Bernard?"
+
+"Or for his wife."
+
+"You speak as the friend of the house who sees both sides?"
+
+"They're forced on me."
+
+"I'll stay as long as I'm comfortable," said Lawrence, cynically
+frank.  "More I can't promise."
+
+Val leant back with an imperceptible shrug.  He was disappointed
+but not surprised: there was in Hyde a vein of hard selfishness--
+not a weakness, for the egoism which openly says "I will consult
+my own convenience first" is too scornful of public opinion to be
+called weak, but an acquired defensive quality on which argument
+would have been thrown away.  Val's arm dropped inert, he was
+tired, not in body alone, but by the strain of contact with
+another mind, hostile, and pitiless, and dominant.
+
+And Lawrence also was content to sit silent, lulled by the rising
+and falling murmur of the stream, and by that agreeably cruel
+memory. . . .   He had no inclination to recall it to Val, but it
+lent an emotional piquancy to their intercourse.  He had the whip
+hand of Val through the past, and perhaps the present also.
+Lawrence had been struck by Val's allusion to Mrs. Clowes.  He
+was the friend of the house, was he?  Now the position of a
+friend of the house who shields a wife from her husband is
+notoriously a delicate one.
+
+Val roused himself.  "Well, we'll drop this.  I must now say two
+words on a different subject: I'd rather let it alone, and so I
+dare say would you, but we shall meet a good deal off and on
+while you're here, and it had better be got over.  I'm sorry if I
+embarrass you--"
+
+"Set your mind at rest," said Lawrence, silkenly brutal.  "You
+don't embarrass me at all."
+
+He threw away his cigar and got up laughing, and as Val also rose
+Lawrence gently slapped him on the back. "I know what you're
+driving at--that you've not forgotten that small indiscretion
+of yours, or ceased to regret it.  Don't you worry, Val!  You
+always were one of the worrying sort, weren't you?  But you need
+never refer to it again, and I won't if you don't." Surely a
+generous, a handsome offer!  But Stafford only touched with the
+tips of his fingers the ringed and manicured hand of the elder
+man.
+
+"Thank you!  But I wasn't going to say anything of the sort.  The
+fact is that for a long while I've been making up my mind to see
+you some time when you were in England: there was no hurry,
+because so long as my father's alive I can do nothing, but when I
+heard you were coming to Wanhope the opportunity was too good to
+be missed.  Railway fares," Val added with a preoccupied smile,
+"are a consideration to me.  So don't walk away yet, Hyde,
+please.  I have such a vivid recollection of the last time we met.
+Between the lines at dawn.  Do you remember?"
+
+"Everything, Val."
+
+"You were badly hurt, but before you fainted you dragged a
+promise out of me."
+
+"Dragged it out of you?" Lawrence repeated: "that's one way of
+putting it!"
+
+"But I made some feeble resistance at the time," said Val mildly.
+"My head wasn't clear then or for a long while after, but I had
+a--a presentiment that it was a mistake.  You meant it kindly."
+Had he?  Lawrence laughed.  He had never been able, to analyse
+the complex of instincts and passions that had determined his
+dealings with Stafford on that dim day between the lines.
+
+"You were in a damned funk weren't you, Val?"
+
+Stafford gave a slight start, the reaction of the prisoner under
+a blow.  But apart from the coarse cynicism of it, which
+irritated him, it was no more than he had foreseen, and from then
+on till the end he did not flinch.
+
+"Yes, anything you like: you can't overstate it. But my point is
+that I gave you my parole.  Will you release me from it?"
+
+"Good God!" said Lawrence.
+
+He had never been more surprised in his life. "Come in: let us
+talk this over in the light."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Through the open windows of the drawingroom, where candlesticks
+of twisted silver glimmered among Laura's old, silvery brocades,
+and dim mirrors, and branches of pink and white rosebuds blooming
+deliciously in rose-coloured Dubarry jars, the two men came in
+together, Lawrence keenly on the watch.  But observation was
+wasted on Stafford who had nothing to conceal, who was merely
+what he appeared to be, a faded and tired-looking man of middle
+height, with blue eyes and brown hair turning grey, and wellworn
+evening clothes a trifle rubbed at the cuffs. It was difficult to
+connect this gentle and unassuming person with the fiery memory
+of the war, and Lawrence without apology took hold of Stafford's
+arm like a surgeon and tried to flex the rigid elbow-muscles, and
+to distinguish with his fingers used to handling wounds the hard
+seams and hollows below its shrunken joint.  The action, which
+was overbearing was by no means redeemed by the intention, which
+was brutal.
+
+"Surely after all these years you don't propose to confess, Val?"
+
+"I should like to make some sort of amends."
+
+"Too late: these things can never be undone."
+
+"No, of course not.  Undone? no, nothing once done can be undone.
+
+"But one needn't follow a wrong path to the bitter end.  You made
+me give you that promise for the sake of discipline and morale.
+But of the men who were in the trenches with us that night how
+many are left?  Your battalion were pretty badly cut up at
+Cambrai, weren't they?  And the survivors are all back in civil
+life like ourselves.  If it were to come out now there aren't
+twenty men who would remember anything about it: except of course
+here in Chilmark, where they know my people so well."
+
+"But you surely don't contemplate writing to the War Office?
+I've no idea what course they would take, but they'd be safe to
+make themselves unpleasant. I might even come in for a reprimand
+myself!  That's a fate I could support with equanimity, but what
+about you?  If I were you I shouldn't care to be hauled up for an
+interview!"
+
+"Really, if you'll forgive my saying so, I don't want to enter
+into contingencies at all.  Give me my promise back, Hyde,
+there's a good fellow, it's worth nothing now to anyone but the
+owner."
+
+"What about your own people?" said Lawrence, his hands in his
+pockets, and falling unawares into the tone of the orderly room.
+"You'll do nothing while your father's alive: I'm glad you've
+sense enough for that: but what about your brother and sister?
+You're suffering under some unpractical attack of remorse, Val,
+and like most penitent souls you think of nothing but yourself."
+
+"On the contrary, I shrink very much from bringing distress on
+other people.  I'm well aware," said Val slowly, "that a man who
+does what I've done forfeits his right to take an easy way out."
+
+"An easy way?"
+
+"Believe me, I haven't found the way you imposed on me an easy
+one."
+
+"Poor wretch!" said Lawrence under his breath.  Stafford heard,
+perhaps he was meant to hear: and he glanced out over the dark
+turf on which the windows traced a golden oblong, over the trees,
+dark and mysterious except where the same light caught and
+bronzed the tips of their branches.  In its glow every leaf stood
+out separate and defined, clearer than by day through the
+contrast of the immense surrounding darkness: and so it had been
+in that bit of French forest years ago, when the wild bright
+searchlights lit up its plague-spotted glades.  Civilians talk
+glibly of courage and cowardice who have never smelt the odour
+of corruption. . . .
+
+"What's your motive?  Some misbegotten sense of duty?"
+
+"Partly," said Val, turning from the window.  How like his eyes
+were to his young sister's!  The impression was unwelcome, and
+Lawrence flung it off.  "I ought never to have given way to you.
+I ought to have faced Wynn-West and let him deal with me as he
+thought fit.  After all, I was of no standing in the regiment.
+A boy of nineteen--what on earth would it have signified?  I
+was so very young."
+
+Nineteen! yes, one called a lad young at nineteen even in those
+pitiless days.  Under normal conditions he would have had two or
+three years' more training before he was required to shoulder the
+responsibilities and develop the braced muscles of manhood.
+
+"Anyhow it's all over now--"
+
+"No, you forget." A wave of colour swept over Val's face but his
+voice was steady.  "Through me the regiment holds a distinction
+it hasn't earned, and the distinction is in hands that don't
+deserve to hold it. That isn't consonant with the traditions of
+the service."
+
+"Oh, when it comes to the honour of the Army--!" Lawrence jeered
+at him.  "There speaks the soldier born and bred.  But I was only
+a 'temporary.' Give me a personal reason."
+
+"Well, I can do that too!  I hate sailing under false colours.
+The good folk of Chilmark; my own people; Bernard, Laura . . . ."
+Lawrence's eyes began to sparkle: when a man's voice deepens over
+a woman's name--! "Oh, I dare say nothing will ever come of it,"
+Val resumed after a moment: "my father may live another thirty
+years, and by that time I should be too old to stand in a white
+sheet.  Or perhaps I shall only tell one or two people--"
+
+"Mrs. Clowes?"
+
+"I beg your pardon?"
+
+"You would like to tell my cousin and his wife?"
+
+"I should like to feel myself a free agent, which I'm not now,
+because I'm under parole to you."
+
+"And so you will remain," said Lawrence coldly.
+
+"You mean that?"
+
+"Thoroughly.  I've no wish to distress you, Val, but I'm no more
+convinced now than I was ten years ago that you can be trusted to
+judge for yourself.  You were an impulsive boy then with remarkably
+little self-control: you're--forgive my saying so--an impulsive man
+now, capable of doing things that in five minutes you would be
+uncommonly sorry for.  How long would Bernard keep your secret?  If
+I'm not much mistaken you would lose your billet and the whole county
+would hear why.  The whole thing's utter rubbish.  You make too much
+of your ribbon: you--I--it would never have been given if Dale's
+father hadn't been a brass hat."
+
+Stafford was ashy pale. "I know you think you're just."
+
+"No, I don't. I'm not just, my good chap: I'm weakly, idiotically
+generous.  In your heart of hearts you're grateful to me.  Now
+let's drop all this.  Nothing you can say will have the slightest
+effect, so you may as well not say it." He stood by Val's chair,
+laughing down at him and gently gripping him by the shoulder.
+"Be a man, Val! you're not nineteen now.  You've got a comfortable
+job and the esteem of all who know you--take it and be thankful:
+it's more than you deserve.  If you must indulge in a hair shirt,
+wear it under your clothes.  It isn't necessary to embarrass other
+people by undressing in public."
+
+Thought is free: one may be at a man's mercy and in his debt and
+keep one's own opinion of him, impersonal and cold.  With a faint
+smile on his lips Val got up and strolled over to the piano.
+"Hullo, what's all this music lying about?" he said in his
+ordinary manner.  "Has Laura been playing?  Good, I'm so glad:
+Bernard can hardly ever stand it.  See the first fruits of your
+bracing influence!  Oh, the Polonaises . . ."  And then he in
+his turn began to play, but not the melancholy fiery lyrics that
+had soothed Laura's unsatisfied heart.  Val, a thorough musician,
+went for sympathy to the classics.  Impulsive?  There was not
+much impulse left in this quiet, reticent man, who with his old
+trouble fresh on him could sit down and play a chorale of Bach or
+a prelude of Mozart, subordinating his own imperious anguish to
+the grave universal daylight of the elder masters.  Long since
+Val had resolved that no shadow from him should fall across any
+other life.  He had foresworn "that impure passion of remorse,"
+and so keen an observer as Rowsley had grown up in his intimacy
+without suspecting anything wrong.  Unfortunately for Val,
+however, he still suffered, though he was now denied all
+expression, all relief: the wounded mind bled inwardly.  It was
+no wonder Val's hair was turning grey.
+
+Lawrence, no mean judge of music, understood much--not all--of
+the significance of Val's playing.  He was an imaginative man--
+far more so than Val, who would have lived an ordinary life and
+travelled on ordinary lines of thought but for the war, which
+wrenched so many men out of their natural development.  But it
+was again unfortunate for Val that the sporting instinct ran
+strong in Captain Hyde.  He was irritated by Val's grave superior
+dignity, and deep and unacknowledged there was working in him the
+instinct of the bully, the love of cruelty, overlaid by layer on
+layer of civilization, of chivalry, of decency, yet native to the
+human heart and quick to reassert itself at any age: in the boy
+who thrashes a smaller boy, in the young man who takes advantage
+of a woman, in the fighter who hounds down surrendered men.
+
+He settled himself in a chair close to the piano. "Val, I'm very
+glad to have met you.  Having taken so much upon me," he was
+smiling into Val's eyes, "I've often wondered what had become of
+you.  This," he lightly touched Val's arm, "was a cruel handicap.
+I had to disable you, but it need not have been permanent."
+
+"Do you mind moving? you're in my light."
+
+He shifted his chair by an inch or so.  "After all, what's a single
+failure of nerve?  Physical causes--wet, cold, indigestion, tight
+puttees--account for nine out of ten of these queer breakdowns.
+At all events you've paid, Val, paid twice over: when I read your
+name in the Honours List I laughed, but I was sorry for you.  The
+sword-and-epaulets business would have been mild compared to that."
+
+"Cat and mouse, is it?" said Val, resting his hands on the keys.
+
+"What?"
+
+"I'm not going to stand this sort of thing, Hyde, not for a
+minute."
+
+"I don't know what you mean," said Lawrence, reddening slowly to
+his forehead.  But it was a lie: he was not one of those who can
+overstep limits with impunity.  The streak of vulgarity again!
+and worse than vulgarity: Andrew Hyde's sardonic old voice was
+ringing in his ears, "Lawrence, you'll never be a gentleman."
+
+"All right, we'll leave it at that.  Only don't do it again."
+Lawrence was dumb.  "Here's Mrs. Clowes."
+
+Val rose as Laura came in, released at length from attendance on
+her husband. "I heard you playing," she said, giving him her hand
+with her sweet, friendly smile. "So you've introduced yourself to
+Captain Hyde?  I hope you were nice to him, for my gratitude to
+him is boundless. I haven't seen Bernard looking so fit or so
+bright for months and months!  Now sit down, both of you, and
+we'll have cigarettes and coffee.  Ring, Val, will you--? it's
+barely half past ten.
+
+"I can only stay for one cigarette, Laura: I must get home to
+bed."
+
+"But, my dear boy, how tired you look!" exclaimed Laura.  "You do
+too much--I'm sure you do too much.  He wears himself out,
+Lawrence--oh! my scarf!" She was wearing a silver scarf over her
+black dress, and as she moved it fluttered up and caught on the
+chain round her throat. "Unfasten me, please, Val," she said,
+bending her fair neck, and Val was obliged laboriously to
+disentangle the silken cobweb from the spurs of her clear-set
+diamonds, a process which fascinated Lawrence, whose mind was
+more French than English in its permanent interest in women.
+Certainly Val's office of friend of the family was not less
+delicate because Laura, secure in her few years seniority,
+treated him like a younger brother!  Watching, not Val, but Val's
+reflection in a mirror,  Lawrence overlooked no shade of
+constraint, no effort that Val made to avoid touching with his
+finger-tips the satin allure of Laura's exquisite skin.  "Poor
+miserable Val!" Suspicion was crystallizing into certainty.  "Or
+is it poor Bernard?   No, I swear she doesn't know.  Does he know
+himself?"
+
+A servant had brought in coffee, and Lawrence in his quality of
+cousin poured out two cups and carried them over to Laura and to
+Val.  "Well, I'm damned!" murmured Lawrence as Val refastened the
+clasp of the chain.  "Picturesque, all this.--  Here, Val, here's
+your coffee."
+
+"But do you know each other so well as that?" exclaimed Laura,
+arching her wren's-feather eyebrows.
+
+"I was an infant subaltern when Hyde knew me," said Val laughing,
+"and he was a howling swell of a captain.  Do you remember that
+night you all dined with us, sir, when we were in billets?  We
+stood you champagne--"
+
+"Purchased locally.  I remember the champagne."
+
+"Dine with us tomorrow night," said Laura. "Do! and bring
+Isabel." Lawrence gave an imperceptible start: for the last hour
+he had forgotten Isabel's existence except when her eyes had
+looked at him out of her brother's face.  "The child will enjoy
+it, I never knew any one so easily pleased; and you and Lawrence
+and Bernard can rag one another to your heart's content.  Yes,
+you will, I know you will, Army men always do when they get
+together; and you're all boys, even Bernard, even you with your
+grey hair, my dear Val; as for Lawrence, he's only giving himself
+airs."
+
+"Yes, do bring your sister," said Lawrence. "She is the most
+charming young girl I've met for years, if a man of my mature age
+may say so.  She is so natural, a rare thing nowadays: the modern
+jeune fille is a sophisticated product."
+
+"Bravo, Lawrence!" cried Mrs. Clowes, clapping her hands.  "Now,
+Val, didn't I tell you Isabel was going to be very, very pretty?
+That's settled, then, you'll both come: and, to please me," she
+looked not much older than Isabel as she took hold of the lapel
+of Val's coat, "will you wear your ribbon?  I know you hate
+wearing it in civilian kit!  But I do so love to see you in it:
+and it's not as if there would be any one here but ourselves."
+
+Lawrence swung round on his heel and walked away.  One may enjoy
+the pleasures of the chase and yet draw the line at watching an
+application of the rack, and it sickened him to remember that his
+own hand had given a turn to the screw.  It had needed that brief
+colloquy to let him see what Stafford's life was like at Wanhope,
+and in what slow nerve-by-nerve laceration amends were being
+made.  He admired the gallantry of Stafford's reply.
+
+"My dear Laura, I would tie myself up in ribbon from head to foot
+if it would give you pleasure.  I'll wear it if you like, though
+my superior officer will certainly rag me if I do."
+
+"No, I shan't," said Lawrence shortly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+"And now tell me,"  murmured Mrs. Clowes in the mischievously
+caressing tone that she kept for Isabel, "did mamma's little girl
+enjoy her party?"
+
+"Rather!" said Isabel--with a great sigh, the satisfied sigh of
+a dog curling up after a meal. "They were lovely strawberries.
+And what do you call that French thing?  Oh, that's what a
+vol-au-vent is, is it?  I wish I knew how to make it, but probably
+it's one of those recipes that begin 'Take twelve eggs and a quart of
+cream.' I wish nice things to eat weren't so dear, Jimmy would love
+it.  Captain Hyde took two helps--did you see?--big ones!  If he
+always eats as much as he did tonight he'll be fat before he's fifty,
+which will be a pity.  He ate three times what Val did."
+
+"Is that what you were thinking of all the time?  I noticed you
+didn't say very much."
+
+"Well, I was between Captain Hyde and Major Clowes, and they
+neither of them think I'm grown up," explained Isabel.  "They
+talked to each other over the top of me.  Oh no, not rudely,
+Major Clowes was as nice as he could be" (Isabel salved her
+conscience by reflecting that this was verbally true since Major
+Clowes could never he nice), "and Captain Hyde asked me if I was
+fond of dolls--"
+
+"My dear Isabel!"
+
+"Or words to that effect.  Oh! it's perfectly fair, I'm not grown
+up, or only by fits and starts.  Some of me is a weary forty-five
+but the rest is still in pigtails.  It's curious, isn't it?
+considering that I'm nearly twenty.  Let's go through the wood,
+my stockings are coming down."  Out of sight of the house in a
+clearing of the loosely planted alder-coppice by the bridge, she
+pulled them up, slowly and candidly: white cotton stockings
+supported by garters of black elastic.  "After all," she
+continued, "I'm housekeeper, and in common politeness we shall
+have to dine you back, so I really did want to see what sort of
+things Captain Hyde likes.  But it's no use, he won't like
+anything we give him.  Not though we strain our resources to the
+uttermost. Laura! would Mrs. Fryar give me the receipt for that
+vol-au-vent? I don't suppose we could run to it, but I should
+love to try."
+
+"Mrs.  Fryar would be flattered," said Laura, finding a chair in
+the forked stem of a wild apple-tree,  while Isabel sat plump
+down on the net of moss-fronds and fine ivy and grey wood-violets
+at her feet.  "But, my darling, you're not to worry your small
+head over vol-au-vents!  Lawrence will like one of your own roast
+chickens just as well, or any simple thing--"
+
+"Oh no, Lawrence won't!" Isabel gave a little laugh.  "Excuse my
+contradicting you, but Lawrence isn't a bit fond of simple
+things.  That's why he doesn't like me, because I'm simple,
+simple as a daisy.  I don't mind--much," she added truthfully.
+"I can survive his most extended want of interest.  After all
+what can you expect if you go out to dinner in the same nun's
+veiling frock you wore when you were confirmed, with the tucks
+let down and the collar taken out?  O! Laura,  I wish someone
+would give me twenty pounds on condition that I spent it all on
+dress!  I'd buy--I'd buy--oh,--silk stockings, and long
+gloves, and French cambric underclothes, and chiffon nightgowns
+like those Yvonne wears (but they aren't decent: still that
+doesn't matter so long as you're not married, and they are so
+pretty)!  And a homespun tailor-made suit with a seam down the
+back and open tails: and--and--one of those real Panamas that
+you can pull through a wedding ring: and--oh! dear, I am greedy!
+It must be because I never have any clothes at all that I'm
+always wanting some. I ache all over when I look at catalogues.
+Isn't it silly?"
+
+If so it was a form of silliness with which Mrs. Clowes was in
+full sympathy.  In her world, to be young and pretty gave a woman
+a claim on Fate to provide her with pretty dresses and the
+admiration of men.  As for Yvonne, till she married Jack Bendish
+she had never been out of debt in her life.  "No, it's the most
+natural thing on earth," said Laura.  "How I wish--!"
+
+"No, no," said Isabel hastily.  "It's very, very sweet of you,
+but even Jimmy wouldn't like it: and as for Val I don't know what
+he'd say!  Poor old Val, he wants some new evening clothes
+himself, and it's worse for him than for me because men do so
+hate to look shabby and out at elbows.  He's worn that suit for
+ten years.  My one consolation is that Captain Hyde couldn't wear
+a suit he wore ten years ago.  It would burst."
+
+"Isabel!  really!  you ridiculous child, why have you such a
+spite against poor Lawrence?  Any one would think he was a
+perfect Daniel Lambert!  Do you know he's a pukka sportsman and
+has shot all over the world?  Lions and tigers, and rhinoceros,
+and grizzly bears, and all sorts of ferocious animals!  He's
+promised me a black panther skin for my parlour and he's
+persuaded Bernard to call in Dr. Verney for his neuritis, so I
+won't hear another word against him!"
+
+"Has he?  H'm. . . . No, I haven't any prejudice against him: in
+fact I like him," said Isabel, smiling to herself.  "But he
+reminds me of Tom Wallis at the Prince of Wales's Feathers.  Do
+you remember Tom?   'Poor Tom,' Mrs. Wallis always says, 'he went
+from bad to worse.  First it was a drop too much of an evening:
+and then he began getting drunk mornings: and then he 'listed for
+a soldier!' Not that Captain Hyde would get drunk, but he has the
+same excitable temperament. . . .  Laura!"
+
+"What is it?" said Mrs. Clowes, framing the young face between
+her hands as Isabel rose up kneeling before her.  In the
+quivering apple-tree shadow Isabel's eyes were very dark, and
+penetrating and reflective too, as if she had just undergone one
+of those transitions from childhood to womanhood which are the
+mark and the charm of her variable age.  Laura was puzzled by her
+judgment of Lawrence Hyde, so keen, yet so wide of the truth as
+Laura saw it: "excitable" was the last thing that Laura would
+have called him, and she couldn't see any likeness to Tom Wallis.
+But one can't argue over a man's character with a child. "Why so
+serious?"
+
+"This evening, at dinner, weren't there some queer
+undercurrents?"
+
+"Undercurrents!" Laura drew her hands away. She looked startled
+and nervous.  "What sort of undercurrents?"
+
+"When they were chaffing Val about his ribbon. Oh, I don't know,"
+said Isabel vaguely.  Laura drew a breath of relief. "I was sorry
+you made him wear it.  But he'd cut his hand off to please you,
+darling.  You don't really realize the way you can make Val do
+anything you like."
+
+"Nonsense," said Laura, but with an indulgent smile, which was
+her way of saying that it was true but did not signify.  She was
+no coquette, but she preferred to create an agreeable impression.
+Always in France, where women are the focus of social interest,
+there had been men who did as Laura Selincourt pleased, and the
+incense which Val alone continued to burn was not ungrateful to
+her altar.  "As if Val would mind about a little thing like
+that."
+
+Isabel shook her head.  "Perhaps you weren't attending.  Major
+Clowes was very down on him for wearing it--chaffing him, of
+course, but chaffing half in earnest: a snowball with a stone in
+it.  Naturally Val wasn't going to say you made him--"
+
+"No, but Lawrence did: or I should have cut in myself."
+
+"Yes, after a minute, he interfered, and then Major Clowes shut
+up, but it was all rather--rather queer, and I'm sure Val hated
+it.  You won't make him do it again, will you?  Val's so odd.
+Laura--don't tell any one--I sometimes think Val's very
+unhappy."
+
+"Val, unhappy?  You fanciful child, this is worse than Tom
+Wallis! What should make Val unhappy?  He might be dull," said
+Laura ruefully.  "Life at Wanhope isn't exciting!  But he's keen
+on his work and very fond of the country.  Val is one of the most
+contented people I know."
+
+A shadow fell over Isabel's face, the veil that one draws down
+when one has offered a confidence to hands that are not ready to
+receive it.  "Then it must be all my imagination." She abandoned
+the subject as rapidly as she had introduced it. "O! dear, I am
+sleepy." She stretched herself and yawned, opening her mouth wide
+and shutting it with a little snap like a kitten.  "I was up at
+six to give Val his breakfast, and I've been running about all
+day, what with the school treat next week, and Jimmy's new
+night-shirts that I had to get the stuff for and cut them out,
+and choir practice, and Fanny taking it into her head to make
+rhubarb jam.  How can London people stay up till twelve or one
+o'clock every night?  But of course they don't get up at six."
+
+"Have a snooze in my hammock," suggested Laura. "I see Barry
+coming, which means that Bernard is going off and I shall have to
+run away and leave you, and probably the men won't come out for
+some time.  Take forty winks, you poor child, it will freshen you
+up."
+
+"I never, never go to sleep in the daytime," said Isabel firmly.
+"It's a demoralizing habit.  But I shouldn't mind tumbling into
+your hammock, thank you very much." And, while Mrs. Clowes went
+away with Barry, she slipped across to Laura's large comfortable
+cot, swung waist-high between two alders that knelt on the river
+brink.
+
+Isabel sprawled luxuriously at full length, one arm under her
+head and the other dropped over the netting: her young frame was
+tired, little flying aches of fatigue were darting pins and
+needles through her knees and shoulders and the base of her
+spine.  The evening was very warm and the stars winked at her,
+they were green diamonds that sparkled through chinks in the
+alder leafage overhead: round dark leaves like coins, and
+scattered in clusters, like branches of black bloom.  Near at
+hand the river ran in silken blackness, but below the coppice,
+where it widened into shallows, it went whispering and rippling
+over a pebbly bottom on its way to the humming thunder of the
+mill.  And in a fir-tree not far off a nightingale was singing,
+now a string of pearls dropping bead by bead from his throat, now
+rich turns and grace-notes, and now again a reiterated metallic
+chink which melted into liquid fluting:
+
+              Vogek im Tannenwald
+              Pfeifet so hell:
+              Pfeifet de Wald aus und ein,
+         wo wird mein Schatze sein?
+         Vogele im Tannenwald pfeifet so hell.
+
+Isabel was still so young that she felt the beauty more deeply
+when she could link it with some poetic association, and as she
+listened to the nightingale she murmured to herself "'In some
+melodious plot of beechen green with shadows numberless'--but
+it isn't a beech, it's a fir-tree," and then wandering off into
+another literary channel, "'How thick the bursts come crowding
+through the leaves!  Eternal passion--eternal pain' . . . but I
+don't believe he feels any pain at all.  It is we who feel pain.
+He's not been long married, and it's lovely weather, and there's
+plenty for them to eat, and they're in love . . . what a heavenly
+night it is!  I wish some one were in love with me.  I wonder if
+any one ever will be.
+
+"How thrilling it would be to refuse him!  Of course I couldn't
+possibly accept him--not the first: it would be too slow,
+because then one couldn't have any more.  One would be like
+Laura.  Poor Laura!  Now if she were in that tree"--Isabel's
+ideas were becoming slightly confused--"it would be natural for
+her to be melancholy--only if she were a bird she wouldn't care,
+she would fly off with some one else and leave Major Clowes, and
+all the other birds would come and peck him to death.  They
+manage these things better in bird land."  Isabel's eyes shut but
+she hurriedly opened them again.  "I'm not going to go to sleep.
+It's perfectly absurd.  It can't be much after nine o'clock.  I
+dare say Captain Hyde will come out before so very long . . . I
+should like to talk to him again by myself.  He isn't so
+interesting when other people are there. I wonder why I told
+Laura he was getting fat?  He isn't: he couldn't be, to travel
+all over the world and shoot black panthers.  And if he did take
+two helps of vol-au-vent, you must remember, Isabel, he's a big
+man--well over six feet--and requires good support.  He
+certainly is not greedy or he would have tried to pick out the
+oysters: all men love oysters.
+
+"He was nice about Val's ribbon, too . . . wish I understood
+about that ribbon.  Val was grateful: he said 'Thanks, Hyde'
+while Major Clowes was speaking to Barry.  Laura isn't stupid,
+but she never understands Val.  'Contented?' My dearest darling
+Val!  If he were being roasted over a slow fire he would be
+'contented' if Laura was looking on.  That's the worst of being
+perfectly unselfish: people never realize that you're unselfish
+at all.  Wives don't seem to hear what their husbands say.  Often
+and often Major Clowes is absolutely insulting to Val, before
+Laura and before me.  But Laura always looks on Val as a boy.
+Perhaps if Captain Hyde hears it going on he'll interfere and
+shut Major Clowes up as he did tonight.  He can manage Major
+Clowes . . . which is clever of him! 'A strong, silent man'--as
+a matter of fact he talks a good deal. . . . But I loved him for
+sitting on Major Clowes.  I'd rather he were nice to Val than to
+me.
+
+"But he might be nice to me too. . . .
+
+"He was, yesterday afternoon.  How he coloured up! He was
+absolutely natural for the minute.  That can't often happen.
+People who don't like giving themselves away are thrilling when
+they do."
+
+Another yawn came upon her.
+
+"O! dear, I really mustn't go to sleep.  What a lulling noise you
+make, you old river!  I don't think I can get up at six tomorrow.
+This hammock is as comfortable as a bed.  'The young girl
+reclined in a graceful attitude, her head pillowed on her slender
+hand, her long dark lashes entangled and resting on her ivory
+cheek.' Well, they couldn't rest anywhere else: unless they were
+long enough to rest on her nose. 'Her--her breathing  was soft
+and regular . . .'"  It became so.  Isabel slept.
+
+Val would rather have owed no gratitude to a man he disliked so
+much as Hyde.  When Bernard was wheeled away, an interchange of
+perfunctory civilities was followed by a constrained silence,
+which Val broke by rising.  "Hyde, if you'll excuse me, I'll say
+five words to Bernard before Barry begins getting him to bed.
+There's a right of way dispute going on that he liked me to keep
+him posted up in."
+
+"Do," said Lawrence vaguely. He brushed past Val and escaped into
+the garden.
+
+Lawrence was enjoying his stay at Wanhope, but tonight he felt
+defrauded, though he knew not why.  He had had an agreeable day.
+In the morning Jack Bendish had appeared on horseback and Lawrence
+had ridden over with him to lunch at Wharton, a sufficiently amusing
+experience, what with the crabbed high-spirited whims of Jack's
+grandfather and the old-fashioned courtesy of Lord Grantchester, and
+Yvonne's romantic toilette: later Laura had joined them and they had
+played bowls on the famous green: in the cool of the evening he had
+strolled home with Laura through the fields.  Dinner too had been
+amusing in its way, the wines were excellent, the parlour maid waited
+at table like a deft ghost, and he recognized in Mrs. Fryar an artist
+who was thrown away alike on Bernard's devotion to roast beef and
+Val's inability to remember what he ate.  Yet Lawrence was left
+vaguely discontented.
+
+Bernard's manner to Val had set his teeth on edge.  Bernard could
+have meant no harm: no one had ever known the truth except
+Lawrence and Val, and possibly Dale with such torn shreds of
+consciousness as H. E. and barbed wire had left him: but in all
+innocence Bernard had set the rack to work as deftly as Lawrence
+could have done it himself.  Lawrence pitied--no, that was a
+slip of the mind: he was not so weak as to pity Stafford, but
+their intercourse was difficult, genant.
+
+And Isabel Stafford too: Clowes had left her out of the
+conversation as though she were a child, and though Lawrence
+tried to bring her in she remained, so to say, in the nursery
+most of the time, speaking when she was spoken to but without any
+of her characteristic freshness and boldness.  She was the
+schoolgirl that Clowes expected her to be.  Her very dress
+irritated Lawrence, as if he had seen a fine painting in a tawdry
+frame, or a pearl of price foiled by a spurious setting.  He had
+not felt any glow at all, and was left to suppose his fancy had
+played him a trick.  Disappointing! and now there was no chance
+of revising his impression, for apparently she had gone away with
+Laura--who should have known better than to leave Captain Hyde
+to his own devices.  But probably Miss Stafford had refused to
+face the men alone: it was what a little shy country girl would
+do.
+
+Isabel's arm hanging over the edge of the hammock, and pearly
+white in the dark, was his first warning of her presence.  He
+crossed the wood with his hunter's step and found her lapped in
+dreams, the starlight that filtered between the alder branches
+chequering her with a faint diaper of light and shade.  Only the
+very young can afford to be, seen asleep, when the face sinks
+back into its original repose, and lines and wrinkles reappear in
+the loss of all that smiling charm of expression which may efface
+them by day.  Laura, asleep, looked old and haggard.  But Isabel
+presented a blank page, a face virginally pure, and candid, and
+lineless: from the attitude of her young body one would have
+thought she was constructed without bones, and from her serenity
+it might have been a child who slept there in the June night, so
+placidly entrusting herself to its mild embrace.  Vividly aware
+that he had no right to watch her, Lawrence stood watching her,
+though afraid at every breath that she would wake up: it was hard
+to believe that even in her sleep she could remain insensible of
+his eyes.  Here was the authentic Isabel, the girl who had
+enchanted him on the moor: the incarnation of that classic beauty
+by which alone his spirit was capable of being touched to fine
+issues.  The alder branches quivered, their clusters of black
+shadow fell like an embroidered veil over the imperfections of
+her dress, but what light there was shone clear on her head and
+throat, and the pearly moulding of her shoulder, based where her
+sleeve was dragged down a little by the tension of her weight
+upon it.  All the mystery of womanhood and all its promise of
+life in bud and life not yet sown lay on this young girl asleep
+in the starshine.  Lights flashed up in the house, figures were
+moving between the curtains: Laura had left Bernard, soon she
+would come out into the garden and call to Isabel, and Isabel
+would wake and his chance be lost.  His chance?  Isabel had
+rashly incurred a forfeit and would have to pay.  The frolic was
+old, there was plenty of precedent for it, and not for one moment
+did Lawrence dream of letting her off.  A moth, a dead leaf might
+have settled on her sleeping lips and she would have been none
+the wiser, and just such a moth's touch he promised himself, the
+contact of a moment, but enough to intoxicate him with its
+sweetness, and the first--yes, he believed it would be the
+first: not from any special faith in Isabel's obduracy, but
+because no one in Chilmark was enough of a connoisseur to
+appreciate her.  Yes, the first, the bloom on the fruit, the
+unfolding of the bud, he promised himself that: and warily he
+stooped over Isabel, who slept as tranquil as though she were in
+her own room under the vicarage eaves.  Lawrence held his breath.
+If she were to wake?  Then?--Oh, then the middleaged friend of
+the family claiming his gloves and his jest!  But Lawrence was
+not feeling middle-aged.
+
+"O! dear," said Isabel, "I've been asleep!"
+
+She sat up rubbing her eyes.  "Laura, are you there?" But no one
+was there.  Yet, though she was alone, in the solitude of the
+alder shade Isabel blushed scarlet.  "What a ridiculous dream!
+worse than ridiculous, What would Val say if he knew?  Really,
+Isabel, you ought to be whipped!" She slipped to her feet and
+peered suspiciously this way and that into the shadowy corners of
+the wood.  Not a step: not the rustle of a leaf: no one.
+
+Yet Isabel's cheeks continued to burn, till with a little
+frightened laugh she buried them in her hands. "O! it was--
+it was a dream--?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Lawrence's reflections when he went to bed that night were more
+insurgent and disorderly than usual.  In his negative philosophy,
+when he shut the door of his room, it was his custom to shut the
+door on memory too--to empty his mind of all its contents except
+the physical disposition to sleep.  He cultivated an Indian's
+self-involved and deliberate vacancy.  On this his second night
+at Wanhope however--Wanhope which was to bring him a good many
+white nights before he was done with it--he lay long awake,
+watching the stars that winked and glittered in the field of his
+open window, the same stars that were perhaps shining on Isabel's
+pillow. . . .
+
+Isabel: it was on her that his thoughts ran with a tiring
+persistency against which his common sense rebelled.  A kiss!
+what was it after all?  A Christmas forfeit, a prank of which
+even Val Stafford could have said no worse than that it was
+beneath the dignity of his six and thirty years:  only too
+flattering for such a little country girl, sunburnt, simple, and
+occasionally tongue-tied.  The lady of the ivory frame (whom
+Lawrence had fished out of her seclusion and set up on his
+dressing table, to the disgust of Caroline: who was a Baptist,
+and didn't care to dust a person who wore so few clothes), the
+lady of the ivory frame was far handsomer than Isabel, or at
+least handsome in a far more finished style.
+
+Lawrence had the curiosity to get out of bed and carry Mrs. Cleve
+to the window.  Yes, she certainly was an expensive luxury, this
+smiling lady, her eyes large and liquid, her waved hair rippling
+under its diamond aigrette, her rather wide, eighteenth century
+shoulders dimpling down under a collar of diamonds to the half
+bare swell of her breast: and for an amateur of her type she was
+charming, with her tired, sophisticated glance and her fresh
+mouth, like a rouged child: but it was borne in on Lawrence that
+she was not for him.  He had kissed her two or three times, as
+occasion served and she seemed to desire it, but he had never
+lain awake afterwards, nor had his heart beaten any faster, no,
+not even in the summerhouse at Bingley when she was fairly in his
+arms.  He pitched the photograph into a drawer.  Frederick Cleve
+was safe, for him.
+
+Strolling out on the balcony,  Lawrence folded his arms on the
+balustrade.  The night was hot: perhaps that was why he could not
+sleep.  By his watch it was ten minutes past two.  The moon was
+near her setting.    She lay on her back with tumbled clouds all
+round her: mother & pearl clouds, quilted, and tinged with a
+sheen of opal.  He wondered whether Bernard was asleep: poor
+Bernard, lying alone through the dreary hours.   Perhaps it was
+because Lawrence was not at all like a curate that Bernard had
+already made his cousin free of certain dark corners which Val
+had never been allowed to explore.  "My wife?  She's not my
+wife," Clowes had said, staring up at Lawrence with his wide
+black eyes.  "She's my nurse."  And he went on defining the
+situation with the large coarse frankness which he permitted
+himself since his accident, and which did not repel Lawrence, as
+it would have repelled Val or Jack Bendish, because Lawrence
+habitually used the same frankness in his own mind.  There was
+some family likeness between the cousins, and it came out in
+their common contempt for modern delicacy, which Bernard called
+squeamishness and Lawrence damned in more literary language as
+the Victorian manner.
+
+The moon dipped lower over the trees while Lawrence took one of
+his sharp turns of self-analysis.  Most men live in a haze, but
+Lawrence was naturally a clear thinker, and he had neither a warm
+heart nor a sentimental temperament to blind him.  Cleve was
+safe: but with his Rabelaisian candour and cultivated want of
+scruple Lawrence reflected that Cleve had been anything but safe
+at Bingley.  Whence the change?  From Isabel Stafford!  Lawrence
+shrugged his shoulders: he was accustomed to examine himself in a
+dry light of curiosity, and no vice or weakness shocked him,  but
+here was pure folly.
+
+What was he doing at Wanhope?  "I'm contracting attachments," he
+reflected, unbuttoning his silk jacket to feel the night air cool
+on his chest, a characteristic action: wind, sunshine, a
+wandering scent,  the freshness of dew, all the small sensuous
+pleasures that most men neglect, Lawrence would go out of his way
+to procure.   "I'm breaking my rule." Long ago he had resolved
+never to let himself get fond of any one again, because in this
+world of chance and change, at the mercy of a blindly striking
+power, the game is not worth the candle: one suffers too much.
+
+As for Miss Stafford, one need not be a professed stole to draw
+the line at a little country girl, pious to insipidity and simple
+to the brink of silliness.  Here Lawrence, not being one of those
+who deny facts when they are unwelcome, caught himself up: she
+was not insipid and her power over him was undeniable.  Twice
+within forty-eight hours she had defeated his will, and what was
+stranger was that each time he had surrendered eagerly, feeling
+for the moment as though it didn't matter what he said or did
+before Isabel.--It was at this point of his analysis that Lawrence
+began to take fright.  "You rascal," he said to himself, "so that's
+why you're off Mrs. Cleve, is it?  What is it you want--to marry the
+child?  You would be sick to death of her in six weeks--and haven't
+you had enough of giving hostages to Fortune?"
+
+Hostages to fortune: that pregnant phrase frightens men who fear
+nothing else in heaven or earth.  But not one of Hyde's friends
+knew that he had ever given fortune a hostage.  He was not
+reserved as a rule: indeed he was always willing to argue creed
+and code with a frankness rare in the self-conscious English
+race: he was never shy and there was little in him that was
+distinctively English.  But he was too subtle and inconsistent
+for the average homogeneous Englishman, and not even the comrades
+of trench and tent knew much about his private life.  Lawrence
+was one of those products of a high civilization which have in
+them pretty strong affinities with barbarism,--but always with a
+difference.  The noble savage tortures his enemy out of hate or
+revenge: Lawrence, more sophisticated in brutality, was capable
+of doing it by way of a psychological experiment.  The savage
+takes a short cut from desire to possession:  Lawrence though his
+blood ran hot curbed it from caution, because in modern life
+women are a burden and a drag.
+
+This was the trained and tempered Lawrence Hyde, a personage of
+great good humour and numitigable egoism.  This was the companion
+of easy morals with whom Lawrence was on familiar terms.  But on
+that first white night at Wanhope Lawrence grew dimly aware of
+the upheaval of deeper forces, as if his youth were stirring in
+its grave.  When Laura Clowes smiled at him with her gallant
+bearing: when Bernard gripped his hand in wishing him good night:
+when Val in the middle of the psychological experiment pierced
+him with his grave tired eyes, all sorts of feelings long dormant
+and believed to be dead came to life in Lawrence: pity, and
+affection, and remorse and shame.  "Hang the fellow!" Lawrence
+reflected.  "He's too like his sister.  And Isabel?  She is a
+child."  Whose voice was it that answered, "This is the woman I
+have been waiting for all my life?"
+
+And then, turning at bay, he came to a sufficiently cynical
+conclusion.  "No nonsense!" he said to himself.  "Your trouble is
+that she's twenty and you're six and thirty, which is a dangerous
+age.  But you don't want to marry her, and there's no middle
+course.  Fruit defendu, mon ami: hands off!  If you can't be
+sensible you'll have to shift out of Wanhope and compromise on
+Mrs. Cleve."
+
+The rain held off, and after breakfast--a cheery meal at which
+Bernard for the first time for many months appeared dressed and
+in a good temper--Lawrence fulfilled the main duty of a guest by
+going for a walk.
+
+He came by footbridge and field path into the High Street, where
+he was immediately buttonholed by the vicar.  Lawrence had a
+fixed idea that all priests were hypocrites: they must be, since
+as educated men they could not well believe the fables they were
+paid to teach!  But it was hard to associate hypocrisy with Mr.
+Stafford, whose fond ambition it was to nail Lawrence Hyde to
+lecture on his Chinese travels before the Bible Class.  "Oh, nothing
+religious," he explained, holding his victim firmly by the coat as
+Lawrence edged away.  "Only half an hour's story-telling to put a few
+new ideas into their heads--as if you were talking to a young brother
+of your own.  I'm always trying to get them to emigrate, but they
+need a great deal of shoving."  Lawrence said they could not emigrate
+to China, and, further, that he didn't regard them as brothers.  "How
+narrow you are, some of you University men!" sighed Mr. Stafford.
+"What a concept of society!  But," brightening, "you're not so bad as
+you're painted.  Come, come! a fifth-of-August recruit can't very
+well deny that we're all brothers in arms?" Before Lawrence escaped
+he was not sure that he hadn't pledged himself to an address on
+"Fringes of the Empire," with special reference to the C.U.M.C.A.
+
+It was too sunny to fish, but the trout lured him, and from the
+cross-roads by the stone bridge he struck into a footpath that
+led upstream into the hills, behind whose green spurs Chilmark
+before long was out of sight.  Here it was lonely country.
+Sometimes on a headland the sun flashed white over a knot of
+labourers, scything the hay where no machine could go: sometimes
+a shepherd's cote gleamed far off above the pale wattlings of a
+fold:  but as he wound on--and on into the Plain there was no
+sign of man in all the hot landscape, and no motion but the
+bicker of the stream over its stony bed, and the hum of insect
+life busy on its millions of dark and tiny vibrant wings.  Not a
+breath of wind stirred among these grassy valleys, and Lawrence,
+feeling warm, had sat down by a pool under a sapling birchtree,
+when he heard a step on the path.  It was Isabel Stafford.
+
+He had hardly seen her again overnight, for Val had carried his
+young sister away before ten o'clock.  He waited for her in the
+rare shadow of the birchtree, a tall powerful figure in a white
+drill suit of the tropics, his fair skin and black eyes shaded by
+a wide Panama hat.  Isabel as she drew near was vexed to find
+herself blushing.  She was a little shy of Captain Hyde, a little
+averse to meet his sparkling eyes.
+
+"Isn't it hot?" she said, frankly wiping her face with a large
+handkerchief.  "This is a favourite pool of mine, I often sit
+here when I come this way.  I never saw such beautiful dragonflies,
+did you?  They must be nearly as big as hummingbirds."
+
+Over the brown mirror of the pool a troop of great dragonflies
+were ceaselessly darting to and fro, their metallic wings making
+a faint whirr as they looped in blinding mazes through the air
+that glowed blue with their splendour.  "Very beautiful," said
+Lawrence.
+
+"Are you out for a walk?  I'm on my way to Wancote." Here panic
+fell on Isabel, the panic that lies in wait for young girls: if
+he were to think she thought he ought to offer to escort her!
+"I'm late, I must go on now.  Good-bye!"
+
+Lawrence stood looking down at her, impassive, almost sombre, but
+for the hot glow in his eyes.  His caution had gone overboard.
+"Mayn't I come too?"
+
+"Oh. . . ."
+
+"Do let me."
+
+"If you--if you like."
+
+The valley narrowed as it receded, the upland air began to
+sparkle with a myriad prismatic needles that glittered from the
+wings of flies and beetles, and from dewdrops on patches of turf
+still as grey as hoarfrost in the shadow on the edge of a wood,
+and from wayside hollies whose leaf-points were all starred in
+silver.  The blue bow overhead was stainless, not a cloud in it
+nor a mist: azure, azure, and unfathomable, like the heart of
+man, or the justice of God.--Isabel was not shy now but alert
+and radiant, as if she had caught a sparkle from the air: and
+expansive, as women are when they are sure of pleasing.  "'For
+the jaded man of the world at her side, the young girl's rustic
+freshness was her chief charm.  She was so different from the
+beautiful but heartless mondaines he had known in Town.  No
+diamonds glittered round her slender throat, and her hands,
+though small and well-shaped, were tanned by the summer sun.  But
+for the jaded-man-of-the-world, weary of sparkling epigram or
+caustic repartee, her simple chatter held a fascination of its
+own.' I don't believe," reflected Isabel, coming down mentally to
+plain prose, "he'd mind if I talked to him about the dinner or
+last week's washing bill."
+
+She did not in fact enter on any such intimate topic, but
+conversed sedately about parish politics and the beauties of the
+Plain.  "This is a very lonely part," she said, "there are
+scarcely any houses.  I'm taking the magazine to one of Major
+Clowes' shepherds.  It's rather interesting going there.  He's
+mad."
+
+"Mad!"
+
+"As a March hare.  He's perfectly harmless of course, and an
+excellent shepherd.  In lambing time he looks after the ewes like
+a mother, Val says his flock hardly ever lose a lamb.  But he's a
+thrilling person to district-visit.  Last time I went he had the
+Prince of Wales staying with him."
+
+"Why on earth don't they put him in an asylum?"
+
+"Do you know much about country villages?" Isabel enquired.  "I
+thought not.  They never put any one in an asylum till after he's
+got into trouble, and not always then if he doesn't want to go:
+just as they never build a bridge over a level crossing till one
+or two people have been killed.  We had a woman in Chilmark that
+was much madder than poor dear Ben is.  She took a knife out of
+her drawer once when I was there and told me she was going to cut
+her throat with it.  She made me feel the edge to see how sharp
+it was.  At last she cut the children's throats instead of her
+own, and then they put her away, but none of them died and she's
+out again now. She's supposed to be cured.  You see a County
+asylum doesn't keep people longer than it must because the money
+comes out of the rates."
+
+"Do you mean to say," Lawrence fastened on the point that struck
+him most forcibly, "that your father lets you go to such places
+by yourself?"
+
+"Oh yes: why not?  He would think it showed want of faith to
+prevent me.  He's very sensible about things like that," said
+Isabel without affectation.  "There are always typhoid and
+diphtheria about in the autumn, but Jimmy never fusses.  It
+wouldn't be much use if he did, with him and Val always in and
+out of infected houses."
+
+"Pure fatalism--" said Lawrence, hitting with his stick at the
+flowers by their path.  "Your brother ought to put his foot
+down--" Isabel seized his arm.
+
+"Take care!--  There was a bee in it.  You really are most
+careless Captain Hyde! I shan't take you for any more walks if
+you do that.  I dare say it was one of my own bees, and he had
+the very narrowest escape!  And Val wouldn't dream of interfering.
+Ben and I are the best of friends.  Besides, it's Mrs. Janaway I
+really go to see, poor dear,  she don't ever hear a bit o' news from
+week's end to week's end.  Wouldn't you be glad to see me," her eyes
+were destitute of challenge but not of humour, "if you lived three
+miles deep in the Plain, alone with your husband and the Prince of
+Wales?"
+
+"I should be delighted to see you at any time."
+
+Isabel, not knowing what to do with this speech, let it alone.
+"And the dog: I mustn't forget the dog.  They have a thoroughbred
+Great Dane.  Mr. Bendish gave Ben the puppy because it was the
+worst of the litter and they thought it would die: but it didn't
+die--no animal does that Ben gets hold of--and he's too fond of
+it now to part with it, though a dog fancier from Amesbury has
+offered him practically his own price for it."
+
+"I should like to see the Dane."
+
+"Well, you will, if you come with me.  There's the cottage."
+
+They had turned a bend and the head of the dale lay before them,
+a mere dimpling depression between breasts of chalky grass.  Set
+close by the way on a cross-track, which forded the brook by
+stepping stones and went on over the downs to Amesbury, stood a
+small, square, tumbledown cottage, its door opening on primeval
+turf, though behind it a plot of garden enclosed in a quickset
+hedge provided Mrs. Janaway with cabbages and gooseberries and
+sour apples and room to hang out the clothes.
+
+"Ben won't be in, but Billy will be looking after Clara.  Billy
+is no good with the sheep, but he's death on tramps.  In fact if
+I weren't here it wouldn't be too safe for you to go to the door.
+A Dane can pull any man down: I've heard even Jack Bendish say he
+wouldn't care to tackle him--"
+
+Even Jack Bendish!  Lawrence smiled.  He felt the prick of
+Isabel's blade, it amused him, automatically he reacted to it,
+she made him want to fight the Dane first and Jack Bendish
+afterwards--but he retained just too much of the ascendancy of
+his six and thirty years to gratify her by self-betrayal.
+"You're a very brave young lady," he said cheerfully, "but if I
+were Val--"
+
+He stopped short.  From the cottage window,  now not twenty yards
+off, there had come a burst of the most appalling screams he had
+ever heard in his life, the mechanical screaming of mortal agony.
+Isabel went as white as chalk and even Hyde felt the blood turn
+cold at his heart.  Next moment the door was torn open and out of
+it came a big red-bearded man, dressed in a brown tweed jacket
+and velveteen trousers tied at the knees, and prancing high in a
+solemn jig.  In one hand he held up an iron stake and in the
+other a rag of red and black carpet . . . the body of a woman in
+a black dress, her arms and legs hanging down, her face a scarlet
+mask that had ceased to scream.
+
+"Keep back, Isabel," said Lawrence: then, running across the
+turf, "Drop that, Janaway! drop her!" in the hard authoritative
+voice of the barrack square.  With the fitful docility of the
+mad, Janaway obeyed, and directly he did so Lawrence checked and
+stood on the defensive, taking a moment to collect his wits--he
+had need of them:  he had to make his head guard his hands.  He
+was a tall powerful man, but so was the shepherd: to offset
+Hyde's science, Janaway was mad and would be stopped by no
+punishment short of a knock-out blow: and Lawrence carried only
+an ordinary walking-stick, while Janaway had hold of an upright
+from a bit of iron railing, five feet long and barbed like a
+spear.
+
+"If he whacks me over the head with that or jabs it into my
+stomach, I'm done," Lawrence thought, and pat to the moment
+Janaway, his mouth open and his teeth bare, rushed on him and
+struck at his eyes.  Lawrence parried and sprang aside: but his
+arm was jarred to the elbow.  "That was a close call.  Ha! my
+chance now . . ."  Like a flash, as Janaway turned, Lawrence
+ran in to meet him body to body, seized him by the lapels of his
+coat, pinned down his arms, set one foot against his thigh, and
+with no great exertion of strength, by the Samurai's trick of
+falling with one's enemy, heaved him up and shot him clean over
+his own shoulder: then, as they dropped together, struck with his
+wrist a paralysing blow at the base of the spine.  Janaway's yell
+of fury was choked into a rattling groan.
+
+Lawrence was up in a twinkling, but the shepherd lay where he had
+fallen, and Lawrence let him lie: he knew that, so handled, the
+victim could be counted out of action, perhaps for good and all.
+He stood erect, breathing deep.  Ben could wait, but what of Mrs.
+Ben?  He was shocked to find Isabel already at her side on the
+reddened turf.
+
+Mechanically Lawrence picked up his stick before he went to join
+her. Clara was huddled up over a pool of blood, her head between
+her knees: not a pleasant sight for a young girl.  But Isabel,
+though white and trembling, was collected.  "I can't feel her
+heart, I--I'm afraid--"
+
+She broke off.  Her glance had travelled beyond Lawrence and her
+features were stiffening into a mask of fear.  "Oh, the dog, the
+dog!"  she pointed past him.  "Billy, Billy, down, sir!"
+
+From some eyrie on the hillside the Dane had watched without
+emotion the legitimate spectacle of his master beating his
+mistress: in the war of the sexes, a dog is ever on the man's
+side.  But when the tables were turned Billy went to the rescue.
+He was coming round the corner of the cottage when Isabel caught
+sight of him, travelling in great bounds at the pace of a wolf,
+but silent.  Lawrence had but just time to swing Isabel behind
+him before the Dane leapt for his throat.  Lawrence struck him
+over the head, but the blow glanced: so sudden, so thundering
+came the impact that Lawrence all but went down under it: and
+once down. . . .
+
+The great jaws snapped one inch from his cheek, and before the
+Dane could recover Lawrence had seized him by the throat and
+fought him off.  Then Lawrence set his back against the cottage
+wall and felt safer.  A second blow got home, and spoilt Billy's
+beauty for ever:  it laid open his left eye and the left side of
+his jaw. Undaunted, the Dane gave himself an angry shake, which
+spattered Lawrence with blood, and gathered his haunches for a
+second spring.  But by now Lawrence had clubbed his stick and was
+beating him about the head with its heavy knobbed handle.  Swift
+as the dog was, the man was swifter: they fought eye to eye, the
+man forestalling every motion of the dog's whipcord frame:
+Lawrence's blood was up, he would have liked to fight it out
+bare-handed.  They would not have been ill-matched, for when the
+Dane reared Lawrence overtopped him only by an inch or so, and
+the weight of the steelclad paws on his breast tore open his
+clothes and pinned him to the wall.  But Lawrence thrashed him
+off his feet whenever he tried to rise, till at length the lean
+muzzle sank with a low baffled moan.
+
+Even then there was such fell strength in him that Lawrence dared
+not spare him, and blow rained on blow.--"Don't kill him," said
+Isabel.  "Put this over his head."
+
+Lawrence took the length of serge she gave him and with
+characteristic indifference to danger stooped over the dog, whose
+spirit he admired, and tried to swathe his head in its heavy
+folds.  But, torn, blinded, baffled, the Dane was undefeated.  He
+wrenched his jaws out of their mufflings and rolled his head from
+side to side, snapping right and left.  "Oh Billy," cried Isabel,
+"you know me, lie down, dear old man!" A pure-bred dog when sight
+and hearing are gone will recognize a familiar scent.  In an
+agony of pity Isabel flung her arm over the heaving shoulders--
+
+"Don't!" Lawrence dragged her off, but too late: the Dane's teeth
+had snapped on her wrist.   The next moment he was lying on his
+side with his brains beaten out.  Lawrence was willing to spare
+his own enemy but not Isabel's.
+
+"Oh," said Isabel, shivering and moaning, "oh, my poor old
+Billy!"
+
+"Damn your poor old Billy," said Lawrence: "let me look at your
+arm."
+
+He carried her indoors, leaving Janaway and his wife and the Dane
+lying scattered on the sunlit turf.  He did not care one straw
+whether they lived or died.  In the little front parlour, neat
+and fresh with its window full of white muslin and red geraniums,
+he laid Isabel on a sofa and rolled up her sleeve: the flesh was
+not much torn but the Dane's fangs had sunk in deep and clean.
+"How far are we from a doctor?"
+
+"Four miles.  Why?  Billy wasn't mad.  I shall be all right
+directly.   May I have some water to drink?"
+
+"Curse these country hamlets," said Lawrence.  He could not carry
+her four miles, nor was she fit to walk so far: but to fetch help
+would mean an hour or so's delay.  He went into the kitchen to
+filla tumbler from the pump, and found an iron wash-bowl in Clara
+Janaway's neat sink, and a kettle boiling on the hob beside a
+saucepan of potatoes that she had been cooking for dinner.
+Isabel sat up and took the glass from his hand.
+
+"I'm so sorry," she murmured, raising her beautiful dark eyes in
+a diffident apology. "It was all my own fault." Lawrence slipped
+a cushion under her head and drew her gently down.  "Oh, thank
+you!  But please don't trouble about me. I do feel rather queer."
+Lawrence thought it probable.  He had been bitten by a dog
+himself and knew how horribly such a wound smarts.  "It was all
+so--so very dreadful.  But I shall be all right directly.. Do go
+back to the others: I'm afraid poor Clara--oh!   oh, Captain
+Hyde!  What are you doing?"
+
+"Set your teeth and shut your eyes," said Lawrence "it won't take
+long.  Your beloved Billy wasn't a nice animal to be bitten by.
+No, he wasn't mad, but his teeth weren't very clean, and we don't
+want blood poisoning to set up.  Steady now." He pressed his lips
+to her arm.
+
+Isabel's hand lay lax in his grasp while he methodically sucked
+the wound and rinsed his mouth from her tumbler.  He hurt her,
+but she had been bred to accept pain philosophically.  "Is it
+done?" she asked meekly when he released her.  "Not any more?"
+
+"No, that's enough.  Now for a drop of warm water." He bathed the
+wound thoroughly and in default of a better dressing bound it up
+with his own handkerchief.  "I wish I had some brandy to give
+you, but there isn't a drop in the place.  Your estimable friend
+appears to have been a teetotaller.  I don't doubt he was a
+pattern of all the virtues.--  But for that matter I couldn't give
+the child publichouse stuff.--  Now, my little friend, if you'll
+lie quiet for five minutes, I'll see what's going on outside."
+
+"Please may I have my skirt?"
+
+"Your what?"
+
+"My serge skirt."
+
+It had not struck Lawrence till then that she was dressed in a
+white muslin blouse and a pink and blue striped petticoat.  "Do
+you mean to say that was your skirt you gave me to tie up the
+dog's head in?"
+
+"I hadn't anything else," said Isabel still more apologetically,
+and blushing--she was feeling very guilty, very much ashamed of
+the trouble she had given: "and you don't know how fond Ben was
+of Billy!"
+
+"Oh, damn Billy!" said Lawrence for the second time.
+
+He went out into the summer sunshine.  The dog, the fallen man,
+the fallen woman, not one of  them had stirred a hair.  All was
+peaceful and clear in every note of black and white and scarlet
+on the turf plat where they lay as if on a stage, in their green
+setting of dimpled hillside and beech grove and marsh.  There was
+a sickly smell in the hot bright air which carried Lawrence back
+to the trenches.
+
+He went to examine the human wreckage.  No need to examine Billy
+--his record for good or ill was manifestly closed: and Lawrence
+had a sickening suspicion that Mrs. Janaway too had finished with
+a world which perhaps had not offered her much inducement to
+remain in it.  He lifted her up and laid her down again in a
+decent posture, straightening her limbs and sweeping back her
+clotted grey hair: no, no need to feel for the pulse in that
+faded breast from which her husband had partly torn away the
+neatly darned stuff bodice, so modest with its white tucker and
+silver Mizpah brooch.  Lawrence composed its disorder with a
+reverent hand, spreading his own coat over her face.
+
+He went on to Ben, and was frankly disappointed to find that Ben
+was not dead--far from it: he gave a deep groan when Lawrence
+rolled him over: but it was a case of broken arm and collarbone,
+if not of spinal injury as well.  Lawrence found a length of line
+in the yard--Clara's clothes-line, in fact--and knotted it into
+a triple cord, for, though no sane man could have got far in such
+a state, it was on the cards that Janaway in his madness might
+scramble up and wander away on the downs.  So Lawrence lashed him
+hand and foot, and Ben blinked and grinned at the sun and
+slavered over his beard.
+
+It was while thus employed that Lawrence began to wonder what
+would have happened if Isabel had come to Wancote alone.  She
+might have run away.  But would she, while Ben was engaged in
+carpet-beating?  Not she!  Lawrence was not a fanciful man: but
+the red and grey remains of Clara Janaway would have set the
+visualizing faculty to work in the mind of a ploughboy.  After
+tying the last of a dozen knots, reef knots and none too loose,
+he went to the back of the cottage where Isabel could not see him
+and was swiftly and violently sick.
+
+After that he felt better.  There was a pump in the yard, and he
+rinsed his head and hands under it, and washed off as best he
+could the stains of the fight, and re-knotted his scarf and shook
+himself down into his disordered clothes before going back to
+Isabel. And then it was that Isabel received of him a fresh
+impression as though she had never known him before, one of those
+vivid second impressions that efface earlier memories.
+
+Val had always held paternal rank, Captain Hyde had been
+introduced as Val's late superior officer, and so Isabel had
+accepted him as Val's contemporary, of the generation before her
+own.  But framed in the sunlit doorway, a very tall handsome man
+in undress, his coat thrown off, his trousers belted on his lean
+flanks, his wet shirt modelling itself over his powerful throat
+and shoulders and sticking to his ribs,  Hyde might have been
+only six or seven and twenty: and certainly his manner was not
+middle-aged!  Val's language was refined enough for a curate, and
+even Rowsley in his young sister's presence never went beyond a
+sarcenet oath; but Hyde's frank fury was piquant to Isabel's not
+very decorous taste.  When he came in, her pain and faintness
+began to diminish as if a stream of warm fresh life were flowing
+into her veins.
+
+"Are you better, Miss Isabel?"
+
+"Ever so much better, thank you.  Is--is Clara--?"
+
+Cool, grave, and tranquil, Lawrence took her hand.  "Clara is
+dead."  He felt her trembling, and found a form of consolation
+which would have been slow to occur to his unprompted fancy.
+"Better so, isn't it?  She wouldn't have been very happy after her
+husband's trying to kill her."
+
+"No, she wouldn't want them to put him in an asylum," Isabel
+agreed, but in a subdued voice.  "Did you forget my skirt?"
+
+"No, but it was rather in a mess with the unfortunate Billy, and
+I'm afraid you'll have to do without it.  I'm going to take you
+home now.  You can walk, can't you, with my help?  I'd like to
+carry you a few steps, till we're out of sight of the cottage.
+Put your arm round my neck." Isabel hesitated.  She had been
+frightened out of her life and still felt cruelly shaken, but her
+quick sense of the ridiculous protested against this deference
+paid to her when she wasn't really hurt and it was all her own
+fault.  What would Val have said?  But apparently Captain Hyde
+was less exacting than Val.  "Ah! let me: it is an ugly little
+scene outside and I don't want you to be haunted by it."
+
+She resigned herself.  She had not yet begun to feel shy of
+Lawrence, she was a child still, a child with the instincts of a
+woman, but those instincts all asleep.  They quickened in her
+when she felt the glow of his life so near her own, but there was
+a touch of Miranda in Isabel, and no cautionary withdrawal
+followed.
+
+And Lawrence?  The trustfulness of a noble nature begets what it
+assumes.  One need not ask what would have become of Miranda if
+she had given her troth to an unworthy Ferdinand, because the
+Mirandas of this world are rarely deceived.  Hyde was but a
+battered Ferdinand.  He was a man of strong and rather coarse
+fibre who had indifferently indulged tastes that he saw no reason
+to restrain.  But he was changing: when he carried Isabel across
+the sunlit grass plot, her beautiful grave childish head lying
+warm on his shoulder, he had travelled far from the Hyde of the
+summer house at Bingley.
+
+"My word!" said Yvonne Bendish, startled out of her drawl.  "Is
+it you,  Isabel?" She reined in and sat gazing with all her eyes
+at the couple coming down the field path to Chilmark Bridge.
+"Have you had an accident?  What's happened?"
+
+"Excuse my hat," said Lawrence with rather more than his habitual
+calm.  "How lucky to have met you.  There has been a shocking
+business up at Wancote.  Perhaps you would take Miss Stafford
+home?  She should be got to bed, I think."
+
+Mrs. Jack Bendish was not soon ruffled, nor for long.  "Lift her
+in," she said.  "Sorry I can't make room for you too, Captain
+Hyde, you are as white as a ghost.  Very upsetting, isn't it? but
+don't worry, girls of her age turn faint rather easily.  Her arm
+hurt? . . ."  She pointed down the road with her whip.  "Dr.
+Verney lives at The Laburnus, on the right, beyond the publichouse.
+If you would be so kind as to send him up to the vicarage?"
+
+She whipped up her black ponies and was gone.  Lawrence was
+grateful to her for asking no questions, but he would rather have
+taken Isabel direct to Val.  Romance in bud requires a delicate
+hand.  Now Mrs. Jack Bendish had all the bourgeois virtues except
+modesty and discretion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+The Wancote affair made a nine days' wonder in the Plain.  Indeed
+it even got into the London papers, under such titles as "A
+Domestic Tragedy" or "Duel with a Dog": and, while the Morning
+Post added a thumbnail sketch of Captain Hyde's distinguished
+career, the Spectator took Ben as the text of a "middle" on "The
+Abuse of Asylum Administration in Rural Districts."
+
+Lawrence himself, when he had despatched Hubert Verney to the
+vicarage, would have liked to cut his responsibility.  But it
+could not be done: first there was the village policeman to run
+to earth and information to be laid before him, and then, since
+Brown's first flustered impulse was to arrest all concerned from
+Lawrence to Clara Janaway,  Lawrence had to walk down with him to
+Wharton to interview Jack Bendish, as both the nearest magistrate
+and the nearest sensible man.  But after pouring his tale into
+Jack's sympathetic ear he felt entitled to wash his hands of the
+affair.  Instead of going back to Wanhope with the relief party
+he got Bendish to drop him at the field path to Wanhope: and he
+slipped up to his room by a garden door, bathed, changed, and
+came down to lunch without trace of discomposure.  Gaston,
+curtly ordered to take his master's clothes away and burn them,
+was eaten by curiosity, but in vain.
+
+Even before his cousin, Lawrence did not own to his adventure
+till the servants had left the room.  If it could have been kept
+dark he would not have owned to it at all.  He did so only
+because it must soon be common property and he did not care to be
+taxed with affectation.
+
+When, bit by bits his story came out across the liqueur glasses
+and the early strawberries, Major Clowes laid his head back and
+roared with laughter.  Lawrence was annoyed: he had not found it
+amusing and he felt that his cousin had a macabre and uncomfortable
+sense of humour.  But Bernard,  wiping the tears from his eyes,
+developed unabashed his idea of a good joke.  "Hark to him!  Now
+isn't that Lawrence all over?  What! can't you run down for
+twenty-four hours to a hamlet the size of Chilmark but you must
+bring your faics divers in your pocket?"
+
+"It isn't my fault if you have dangerous lunatics at large," said
+Lawrence, helping himself daintily to cream.  "If this is a
+specimen of the way things go on in country districts, thank you,
+give me a London slum.  The brute was as mad as a hatter.  He
+ought to have been locked up years ago.  I can't conceive what
+Stafford was about to keep him on the estate."
+
+"All very fine," Bernard chuckled, "but I'd lay any odds Ben
+didn't go for Mrs. Ben till he saw you coming."
+
+"Adventures are to the adventurous," Laura mildly translated the
+bitter jest.  Her mission in life was to smooth down Bernard's
+rough edges.  "But that is too ugly, Berns.  You oughtn't to say
+such a thing even in fun.  It was no fun for Lawrence."
+
+"I don't object to an occasional scrap," said Lawrence.  "But
+this one was overdone." He shivered suddenly from head to foot.
+
+"Hallo, old man, I didn't know you had a nerve in your body!"
+said Bernard staring at him.
+
+Lawrence went on with his strawberries in an ungenial silence.
+He was irritated by his momentary self betrayal. If he had cared
+to explain it he would have had to confess that though personally
+indifferent to adventures he disliked to have women mixed up in
+them.  He was glad when Laura with her intuitive tact changed the
+conversation, not too abruptly.
+
+"All modern men have nerves.  I should think Lawrence had as few
+as any, but it must have been a frightful scene.  I must run up
+after lunch and see Isabel.  Poor child!  But she's wonderfully
+brave.  All the Staffords were brought up to be stoical: if they
+knocked themselves about as children they were never allowed to
+cry.  Mr. Stafford is a fanatic on the point of personal courage.
+Val told me once that the only sins for which his father ever
+cuffed him were telling fibs and running away."
+
+"Did he get cuffed often?" Lawrence enquired.
+
+"Shouldn't wonder," said Bernard. "Val's one of your nervy men."
+
+"Not after he was ten years old," said Laura smiling.  "But as a
+little boy he was always in trouble.  Not the wisest treatment,
+was it? for a delicate, sensitive child."
+
+"Miss Isabel is not nervous," said Lawrence. "She is as cool a
+young lady as I have ever seen. I believe she still owes me a
+grudge for hitting Billy so hard." He dipped his fingers
+delicately into his finger bowl.  "No, no more, thanks.  Did I
+tell you that the brute of a Dane bit her?"
+
+"Bit Isabel!"
+
+"Made his teeth pretty nearly meet in her forearm.  She was
+trying to soothe the dear dog.  Mr. Stafford's theories may be
+ethically beautiful, but I object to their being carried to
+extremes.  Frankly, I should describe your young friend as
+idiotically rash," said Lawrence with a wintry smile.  "I
+couldn't prevent her doing it because I hadn't the remotest
+notion she was going to do it.  The Dane was practically mad with
+rage.  I could have cuffed her myself with pleasure.  It was a
+wild thing to do and not at all agreeable for me."
+
+"But, my dear Lawrence, that is one way of looking at it!" Laura
+protested, amused by his cool egoism, though she took it with the
+necessary grain of salt.  "Bitten by that horrible dog?  My poor
+Isabel! she loves dogs--I don't suppose she stopped to consider
+her own feelings or yours."
+
+"She ought to have had more sense."
+
+"Hear, hear!" said Bernard.  "Half the trouble in the world comes
+from women shoving in where they're not wanted.  It's a pleasure
+to talk to you, Lawrence, after lying here to be slobbered over
+by a pack of old women.  I always exclude you, my dear," he
+nodded to Laura, "but the parson twaddles on till he makes me
+sick, and Val's not much better.  What's a woman want with
+courage?  Teach her to buy decent clothes and put 'em on
+properly, and she's learning something useful.  I'll guarantee
+Isabel only got in the way. But you, Lawrence," he measured his
+cousin with an admiring eye, much as a Roman connoisseur might
+have run over the points of a favourite gladiator, "I should have
+liked to see you tackle the Dane.   You're a big chap--deeper in
+the chest than I ever was, and longer in the reach.  What's your
+chest measurement?--  Yes, you look it.  And nothing in your hand
+but a stick?  By Jove, it must have been worth watching!  Hey,
+Laura?"
+
+"Bernard, you are embarrassing!  You will make even Lawrence shy.
+But, yes," Laura laid her hand on Hyde's arm: "I should have
+liked to watch you fight the Dane."
+
+How long was it since any one had spoken to Lawrence in that warm
+tone of affection?  Not since his father died.  From time to time
+Mrs. Cleve or other ladies had flattered his senses or his
+vanity, but none of them had ever looked at him with Laura's kind
+admiring eyes.  Perhaps after all there was something to be said
+for family life!  Tragic wreck as Clowes was, he would have been
+far more to be pitied but for his wife: their marriage, crippled
+and sterilized, was yet--as Lawrence saw it--a beautiful
+relation.  Suppose he stood in that relation to Isabel?  Sitting
+at table in the cool panelled diningroom, his careless pose
+stiffening under Laura's touch, Lawrence for the first time began
+to wonder whether he would not gain more in happiness than he
+would lose in freedom if he were to make the child his wife.
+
+"To make the child his wife." He was not really more of an egoist
+than the average man, but he did assume that if he wanted her he
+could win her.  His mistress was very young: it was her rose of
+youth and her unquelled spirit that charmed him even more than
+her beauty: and she had not sixpence to her name, while he was a
+rich man.  He did not, as Bernard would have done, go on to plume
+himself on his magnanimity, or infer that Isabel's gratitude
+would give him a claim on her fealty over and beyond the Pauline
+duty of wives.  In the immediate personal relation Lawrence was
+visited by a saving humility.  But on the main issue he took, or
+thought he took, a practical view.  A man in love cannot soberly
+analyse his own psychological state, and Lawrence did not know
+that he had fallen in love with Isabel at first sight or that the
+germ of matrimonial intentions had lain all along in his mind.
+Here and now he believed that he first thought of marrying her.
+
+Then he would have to stay on at Wanhope.   And court Isabel
+under the eyes of all Chilmark?  Under Bernard's eyes at all
+events; they were already watching him.  Lawrence was irritated:
+whatever happened, he was not going to be watched by his cousin
+and chaffed and argued over and betted on.  In most points
+indifferently frank, Lawrence was silent as the grave where sex
+came into play.
+
+"Thank you." He touched with his lips the hand that Laura had
+innocently laid on his wrist.  "It can't really be fourteen
+years, Laura, since you were staying at Farringay."
+
+"Flatterer!" said Laura, smiling but startled, and rising from
+her chair.  "This to an old married woman!"
+
+"Ah! when I remember that I knew you before this fellow did--!"
+
+"Here, I say," came Bernard's voice across the table, riotously
+amused, "none o' that! none o' that!"
+
+"Penalty for having a charming wife," laughed Lawrence, in his
+preoccupation blind and deaf to danger signals.  He rose to open
+the door for Laura.  "By the by, if you go to the vicarage this
+afternoon, I'll stroll up with you, if I may.  I suppose I owe
+the young lady that much civility!"
+
+"I can't: I'm busy," said Laura hastily.  "That is, I don't know
+what time I shall get away.  Go by yourself, don't wait for me."
+
+"Rubbish," said Bernard.  "Much pleasanter for both of you to
+have the walk together.  Lawrence doesn't want to go alone, do
+you?" ("Rather not," said Lawrence heartily.) "And I don't want
+you here, my love, if that's the trouble, I can't have you tied
+to the leg of my sofa."
+
+Later, when Lawrence had gone out on the lawn to smoke, Bernard
+recalled Laura.  She came to him.  He took hold of her wrist and lay
+smiling up at her.  "Nice relationship, isn't it, cousins-in-law?
+So free and easy.  You--.  I watched you pawing him about.  So
+affectionate.  He felt it too.  Did you see the start he gave?  He
+twigged fast enough.  Think you can play that game under my nose, do
+you?  So you can.  I don't care what you do. Take yourself off now
+and take him with you."
+
+"Don't pinch my wrist below the cuff, Bernard," said his wife. "I
+can't wear gloves at tea."
+
+"You can stop out all night for all I care," said Clowes.  "I'm
+sick of the sight of you."
+
+Then Laura knew that the Golden Age was over.
+
+Isabel had refused to go to bed.  She had no nerves: she saw life
+in its proper colours without refraction.  The dreadful scene at
+Wancote had made its full impression on her, but she was not
+beset like Hyde by visions of what might have been.  Still she
+was tired and subdued, and when Verney had dressed her arm she
+announced her intention of spending the afternoon in the garden
+out of the way of kind enquiries: and she settled herself on an
+Indian chair behind a thicket of lilac and syringa, while Val and
+Rowsley and Yvonne brought books and cushions and chocolate and
+eau de cologne to comfort beauty in distress.
+
+But she had reckoned without the wicket gate in the garden wall,
+which Lawrence let himself in by.   He caught sight of her as he
+crossed the lawn and came up to her bare-headed.  "How are you?"
+he asked without preface.  "Better now?"
+
+His informality went against the grain of Isabel's taste: he had
+no right to presume on a forced situation: with what fastidious
+modesty Val would have drawn back!  She was tired, and she did
+not want to be reminded of what had happened in the morning.  She
+shut up her book, but kept a finger in the place.  "Thank you.
+I'm sorry the others are all out."
+
+"Mrs. Clowes sent me on ahead."
+
+For the second time she had made Lawrence redden like a girl, and
+his easy manner deserted him.  Isabel unconsciously let the book
+slip from her hand.  The lives of the Forsythe family were less
+absorbing than her own life when this fiery dramatic glow was
+shed over it.  A singular smile flitted over her lips: "Well, you
+may as well sit down now you are here," she observed.  Lawrence
+sat down in a deck chair and Isabel's smile broadened: she was
+laughing at him and teasing him with her eyes, though what she
+said remained conventional to the point of primness.  "Is Laura
+coming to see me?  How sweet of her!  But what a pity she
+couldn't come with you!  Why couldn't she?"
+
+"I believe she stayed to look after my cousin."
+
+"How is Major Clowes?  Did he have a good night and was he in a--
+was he cheerful today?"
+
+"So-so: he's not a great talker, is he?"
+
+Isabel's speaking face expressed dissent.   "Perhaps not when
+he's in a good temper.  Oh, I'm so sorry, I'm always forgetting
+he's your cousin."
+
+"I'm prone to forget it myself.  I've seen so little of him."
+
+ "('Though the blase-man-of-the-world had seen thousands of
+superbly beautiful women in elegant creations by Paquin or Worth,
+his gaze was riveted as by a mesmeric attraction on the innocent
+young girl in her simple little white muslin frock, with her
+lissome ankles and slim, sunburnt hands.')  Laura said you had
+been a great traveller.  Shall you settle down in England?"
+
+"Not unless I marry."
+
+Isabel declined this topic, on which Mrs. Jack Bendish would have
+expatiated.  "Laura says you have a lovely old house in
+Somersetshire.  It must be jolly to have an ancestral house."
+
+"Mine is not ancestral," said Lawrence amused. "My father bought
+it forty years ago at the time of the agricultural depression.
+It belonged to some county people--Sir Frank Fleet--who
+couldn't afford to keep it up.  It is a lovely place, Farringay,
+but it's full of Fleet ghosts and the neighbourhood doesn't let
+me forget that I'm an alien."
+
+"But how absurd! how narrow-minded!" exclaimed Isabel. "Houses
+must change hands now and then, and I dare say your father was a
+better landlord than the Fleets were.  Besides, see how much worse it
+might have been!  There's Wilmerdings, here in Chilmark, that the
+Morleys have taken: his name isn't Morley at all, Yvonne says it's
+Moss in the City: but they foreclosed on the Orr-Matthews' mortgage
+and turned them out, and that darling old place is delivered over to
+a horrid little Jew!"
+
+"Poor Morley!" said Lawrence laughing.  "I am a Jew myself."
+Isabel was stricken dumb.  "I thought I had better tell you than
+let you hear it from some one else.  No, don't apologize! these
+things will happen, and I'm not deeply hurt, for I refuse to call
+sibb with a Moss-Morley. I should never foreclose on any one's
+mortgage.  My mother was an Englishwoman and my father was a
+Levantine--half Jew, half Greek.  Have you never heard of Andrew
+Hyde the big curio dealer in New Bond Street?  He was commonly
+known as old Hyde-and-seek.  The Hyde galleries are famous.  As I
+remember him he was a common-looking little old man with a
+passion for art."
+
+"Well, I'm sorry I said such a stupid thing," said Isabel, still
+very red, "not because of hurting your feelings, for it isn't
+likely that anything I said would do that--but because it was
+stupid in itself, and narrow-minded, and snobbish.  It'll be a
+lesson to me.  All the same, it's interesting."  She had
+forgotten by now that she was an innocent-young-girl and Lawrence
+a blase-man-of-the-world, and had slipped into a vein of intimacy
+which was fast charming Lawrence out of all his caution.  "I
+suppose you take after your father, and that's why you're so
+unlike Major Clowes.  He is a Clowes, but you're a Hyde."
+
+"What does that mean?"
+
+Isabel waited a moment to think it out.  "You're more of a
+cosmopolitan; I expect you have a passion for art too, like your
+father. Major Clowes hasn't.  He doesn't care two pins for the
+beauty of his old swords and daggers, he cares only for getting
+all the different sorts.  You, perhaps, might care almost too
+much." Lawrence dropped his eyes.  "And you vary more, you're
+not always the same,  you have more facets: one can see you've
+done all sorts of things and mixed with all sorts of people. I
+suppose that's why you're so easily bored--I don't mean to be
+rude!"
+
+"At the present moment I am deeply interested.  Go on: it charms
+me to be dissected to my face,  and by such an able hand."
+
+"No: it's absurd and I never meant to begin it.  Of course I
+don't know a bit what you're like."
+
+"God forbid!" Lawrence murmured:--"Guess away and I'll tell you
+if you're right."
+
+"You won't play fair.  You won't own up and you'll get cross if I
+do."
+
+"Not I, I have the most amiable temper in the world."
+
+"Now I wonder if that's true?" said Isabel, scrutinizing him
+closely.  "Perhaps you wouldn't often take the trouble to get in
+a wax.  Oh well," surrendering at indiscretion, "then I guess
+that you care for very few people and for those few very much."
+
+"Missed both barrels.  I like any number of people and I
+shouldn't care if I never saw one of them again."
+
+Isabel laughed. "I said you wouldn't play fair."
+
+"Don't you believe me?"
+
+"No, of course not.  You wouldn't say it if it were true."
+
+Lawrence drew a deep breath and looked away.  Their nook of turf was
+out of sight of the house,  sheltered from it behind a great thicket
+of lilac and syringa, which walled off the lawn from the kitchen
+garden full of sweet-smelling currant bushes and apple-trees laden
+with green fruit.  The sleepy air was alive with gilded wasps, and
+between the stiffly-drooping apple-branches, with their coarse
+foliage, and the pencilled frieze of stonecrop and valerian waving
+along the low stone boundarywall, there was a dim honey-coloured
+expanse that stretched away like an inland sea, where, the afternoon
+sunshine lay in a yellow haze over brown and yellow and blue tracts
+of the Plain.  Nothing was to be heard but the drone of wings near at
+hand and the whirr of a haycutter far down in the valley.  No one was
+near and summer lay heavy on the land.
+
+"I did care once. . I had a bad smash in my life when I was
+little more than a boy." He dragged a heavy gold band from his
+finger.  "That was my wedding ring."
+
+"Oh ... I'm sorry!" faltered Isabel.  She was stunned by the
+extraordinary confidence.
+
+"I married out of my class.  It was when I was at Cambridge.  She
+was a beautiful girl but she was not a lady.  Her father was a
+tobacconist in the Cury, and Lizzie liked to serve in the shop.
+As she didn't want to lose her character nor I my degree, we
+compromised on secret nuptials. I took a house for her in Newham
+where I could go and visit her. I ought not to tell you the rest
+of the story."
+
+"Oh yes, you can," said Isabel simply. "I hear all sorts of
+stories in the village."
+
+So childish in some ways, so mature in others, she saw that
+Lawrence was longing to unbosom himself, and her instinct was to
+listen quietly, for, after all, this, though the strangest, was
+not the first such confidence that had been poured into her ear.
+She and her brother Val were alike in occasionally hearing
+secrets that had never been told to any one else.  Why?  Probably
+because they never gave advice, never moralized, never thought of
+themselves at all but only of the friend in distress. Isabel took
+Hyde's hand and held it closely, palm to palm.  "Tell me all
+about it."
+
+"There was another fellow at Trinity who had been in the Sixth at
+Eton with me, a year older than I was, a very brilliant man and
+as hard as nails: Rendell, his name was: an athlete, a tophole
+centre-forward, with a fascinating Irish manner and blazing blue
+eyes.  To him I told my tale, because we were Damon and Pythias,
+and I couldn't have kept a secret from him to save my life.  I
+was an ingenuous youngster in those days: never was such a pal as
+my pal!  He saw me through my marriage and afterwards I took him
+with me once or twice to Myrtle Villa: it may illuminate the
+situation if I say that it made me all the prouder of Lizzie when
+I saw Rendell admired her: never was such an idyll as my manage a
+trois! Unluckily, one evening when I turned up unexpectedly I
+found them together."
+
+"Oh! . . . What did you do?"
+
+"Nothing.  There was nothing to be done. I wasn't going to ruin
+myself by divorcing her.  Luckily the war broke out and Rendell
+and I both enlisted the next day.  He was killed fighting by my
+side at Neuve Chapelle, and I had the job of breaking the news to
+Lizzie.  She was royally angry, poor Lizzle: told me I had no
+right to be alive when a better man than myself was dead. I
+agreed: Rendell was--the better man, though he didn't behave
+well to me.  He died better than he lived.  Out there it didn't
+seem to matter much.  He died in my arms."
+
+"Did you forgive your wife?"
+
+"I never lived with her again, if that's what you mean.  If I had
+been willing, which I wasn't, she never would have consented.
+She had the rather irrational prejudices of her type and class,
+and persisted in regarding me, or professing to regard me, as
+answerable for Rendell's death.  It wasn't true," said Lawrence,
+turning his eyes on Isabel without any attempt to veil their
+agony.  "If I'd meant to shoot him I should have shot him to his
+face.  But I'd have saved him if I could.  How on earth could any
+one do anything in such a hell as Neuve Chapelle?  That week
+every officer in my company was either killed or wounded.  But
+Lizzie had no imagination.  She couldn't get beyond the fact that
+I was alive and he was dead."
+
+"What became of her?"
+
+"I'm sorry to say she went to the bad.  She had money from both
+of us, but she spent it in public houses--didn't seem to care
+what happened to her after losing Arthur: a wretched life: it
+ended last January with her death from pneumonia after measles.
+That was what brought me back to England; I couldn't stand coming
+home before."
+
+"Was it a relief when she died?"
+
+"No, I was sorry," said Hyde.  His wide black eyes, devil-driven
+beyond reticence, were riveted on Isabel's: apparently she no
+longer existed for him except as the Chorus before whom he could
+strip himself of the last rag of his reserve.  "It brought it all
+back.  I was besotted when I married her, and I remembered all
+that when I saw her dead. I forgot the other men.  It was just as
+it was when Arthur died.  I couldn't do anything for him, and he
+was in agony: he was shot through the stomach: it didn't seem to
+matter then that he had robbed me of Lizzie.  I couldn't even get
+him a drop of water to drink.  He died hard, did Rendell.  It
+wasn't true, what Lizzie said.  I'd have given my life for him.
+But I couldn't even make it easy for him to go."
+
+"Poor Rendell," said Isabel softly, "and poor you!  Oh, I'm so
+sorry--I'm so sorry!"
+
+She was not afraid of Hyde now nor shy of him, she felt only an
+immense pity for him--this man who for no conceivable reason and
+without the slightest warning had flung the weight of his
+terrible past on her young shoulders.  She longed to comfort him.
+But he was inaccessibly far away, isolated, his voice rapid and
+hard and clear, his manner normal: every nerve stripped bare but
+still rigid.  Inexperienced as she was, Isabel had a shrewd idea
+of his immediate need.  She took up the ring that Lawrence had
+wrenched off and slipped it on his finger again.
+
+"Don't do that," said Lawrence starting: "why do you do that?"
+
+"But I shall love to see you wear it," said Isabel. "It's the
+sign that you've forgiven them both."
+
+"Have I?"
+
+"Of course you have.  You loved them too much not to forgive."
+
+"It is true.  But I hate myself for it," said Lawrence.  "I hate
+your etiolated Christian ethics.  I don't believe in the
+forgiveness of sins.  The complaisant husband, O God!  If I'd had
+the spirit of a man, I should have shot Arthur the night--that
+night--. . . .
+
+ "But you loved him," said Isabel, "and your wife too.  You felt
+revenge and hate and passion, but love was stronger: and love is
+nobler than hate.  They betrayed you, but you never betrayed
+them.  It wasn't unmanly of you, it was defeat and dishonour for
+them, not for you, when Rendell, after that great wrong he had
+done you, when you tried to make it easy for him to go."
+
+"May I--?" said Lawrence.
+
+He leaned his face down on her open palms, and she felt the tears
+that she could not see.  He could not control them, and indeed
+after the first racking agony, when he felt as though his will
+were being torn out of him by the roots, he made no effort to
+control them, releasing Isabel and dropping at full length upon
+the turf.  Nothing else, no torment of his own thoughts, not
+Rendell's last pangs nor his wife's beauty young again in death
+had ever made Hyde weep: if Rendell had died hard, Lawrence had
+lived equally hard, locking up his frightful trouble in his own
+breast, escaping from it when he could, cursing it and fighting
+against it when it threatened to overpower him.  But now he
+surrendered to it and acknowledged to himself that it had broken
+his life.  And he felt no shame, not one iota, nothing but a
+profound soulagement: the proud reticent man, too vain to shed
+tears in his own room alone, wept voluntarily before Isabel,
+uncovering for her pity the wounds not only of grief but of rage
+and humiliation.
+
+Such an outbreak would have been impossible in a man of pure
+English blood, and in a pure Oriental it would have manifested
+itself differently, but Isabel had truly said of Hyde that his
+temperament was not homogeneous: the mixed strain in him betrayed
+him into strange incongruities of strength and weakness.  Isabel
+shut her eyes to incongruity.  She gave him without stint the
+pitying gentleness he thirsted for.  She refused now to contrast
+him with her brother.  Certainly Val's judgment would have been
+cutting and curt.  But just?  Hardly.  By instinct Isabel felt
+that her brother's clear, sane, English mind had not all the
+factors necessary for judging this collapse.
+
+Her imagination was at work in the shadow: "'the night--that
+night. . . ." How do men live through such hours?  She saw Lizzie
+as a chocolate-box beauty, but redeemed from hebetude by her
+robust youth: able to attract Hyde by his love of luxury and to
+hold him by main force: uneducated, coarse, and cruel, but not
+weak.  What a disastrous marriage! doomed from the outset, even
+if no Rendell had come on the scene.  Isabel dismissed Rendell
+rather scornfully: in that night at Myrtle Villa she felt pretty
+sure that the duel had been fought out between husband and wife:
+the very staging of it, picturesque for Lizzie Hyde and tragic
+for her husband, must for the entrapped lover have taken a frame
+of ignominious farce. A gleam shot through Isabel's eyes-as she
+imagined Rendell trying to face Hyde, and Hyde sparing him and
+sending him away untouched.  No, no! as between the two men, the
+honours lay with Hyde.
+
+But as between him and Lizzie?  There the reckoning was not so
+easy.  His wife had set scars on him that would never wear out.
+Dimly Isabel guessed that since coming out of her destructive
+hands Hyde himself could be both coarse and cruel: the seed of
+brutality must have been in him all along, but Myrtle Villa had
+fertilized it.  If he married again, what would be required of
+Lizzie's successor?  A strange deep smile gave to Isabel's young
+lips the wisdom of the women of all the ages. Love that gives
+without stint asking for no recompense: love that understands yet
+will not criticize nor listen to criticism: love that dares to
+deny its lover for his own sake.
+
+After collapse came quiescence, and, after a long quiescence,
+revival.  Hyde raised himself on his arm and felt for his
+handkerchief--indifferent to Isabel's observation, or soothed by
+it:  his features were ravaged.  Isabel drenched her own
+handkerchief in Mrs. Bendish's eau-de cologne and gave it him,
+dripping wet.  "Take this, it will do you  good."
+
+"Thank you" said Lawrence, exhausted and subdued.
+
+Becoming gradually rather more composed, he raised his eyes
+again.  "What must you think of me? It is beyond apology.  Will
+you ever forgive me?"
+
+"There's nothing to forgive: I'm not hurt."
+
+"You're rather young to hear such a history as mine."
+
+She blushed.  "Val says it doesn't matter what one knows so long
+as one doesn't think about it in the wrong way." With her sweet
+friendly smile, she touched with her fingertip the lapel of his
+coat: an airy gesture, but there was a fire as well as sweetness
+in Isabel, and for his life Lawrence could not repress a start.
+"You mustn't mind me, Captain Hyde.  You needn't mind, because
+you couldn't help it.  One can keep a secret for twenty years but
+not for ever, and for confessor I suppose any woman will do
+better than a man, won't she?  It's not as though I should ever
+tell any one else: I never will, I promise you that.  You'll go
+away and never see me again, and it'll be as though no one knew
+or as though I were dead."
+
+Touching innocence!  Did she indeed imagine that after such a
+scene . . .?
+
+"But I do not care two straws," said Lawrence, "so spare your
+consolations!  On the contrary, it has been a great relief to me.
+It's as if you had unlocked a door.  The prisoner you have set
+free thanks you.  I was only afraid it might have been too much
+for you, but you're made of strong stuff.  Yet I don't suppose
+you ever saw a man weep before: well, you've seen it now: mon
+Dieu, mon Dieu, but I am tired!  But you've let yourself in for a
+considerable responsibility."
+
+"For what?"
+
+"For me.  Do you think it can ever again be the same between us?"
+On one knee by Isabel's chair, Hyde laughed down at her with his
+brilliant eyes, irreticent and unsparing of timidity in others.
+"Do you think I could have leaned my head on any hands but
+yours?"
+
+He came too near, he touched her.  Isabel had gone through a
+great deal that day, but, with the cruel and sordid history of
+Hyde's married life fresh in her mind, none of the material
+horrors at Wancote had produced in her such a shuddering recoil
+as now.  His wife had not been dead six months!  "Captain Hyde,
+how dare you?"
+
+"I beg your pardon."
+
+Lawrence drew himself up, a good-humoured  smile on his lips: but
+they were pale.  "I--I didn't mean to hurt you," faltered
+Isabel, as the tension of his silence reached her.  What right
+had she, a young girl, to impose her own code of delicacy on a
+man of Hyde's age and standing?--Lawrence looked at her
+searchingly and his eyes changed, the sad irony died out of them,
+and rapidly, imperceptibly, he returned to his normal manner.
+
+"Nor I to frighten you.  Why, what a child it is, after all!
+Yes, your hands are strong, but they aren't practised yet.  Never
+mind, you shall forget or remember anything you like, except this
+one thing which it pleases me and may please you to remember that
+I'm very glad you know the worst and weakest of me--"
+
+"Isabel, are you there?"
+
+Thus daily life revenges itself on those who forget its
+existence.
+
+"That is Val's voice," said Lawrence.  He stood up, no longer
+pale.  "Heavens, I can't face him!"
+
+"Oh dear!" said Isabel in dismay.  She was no more anxious for
+them to meet than Lawrence was,  but Val's footstep on the turf
+was dangerously near.  But he was making for the middle of the
+lilac-hedge, for the red rose archway and the asphalt walk
+between reddening apple trees: and Isabel was sitting near the
+end, close to the garden wall.  She flew out of her chair, held
+up a branch while  Lawrence squeezed between the wall and the
+lilacs,  and flew back and curled up again.  The lilac leaves had
+not finished twinkling and rustling when  Val appeared.
+
+"How are you, invalid?  I came home early on purpose to look
+after you." He was in well-worn grey  riding clothes, booted and
+spurred, his whip in one hand and his gloves in the other: a
+slight,  cool, well-knit figure of low tones and half-lights.
+"Have you had a quiet afternoon?"
+
+"So-so," said Isabel, crimson.
+
+"You look flushed, my darling," said Val tenderly.  He sat down
+at the foot of Isabel's Indian chair and laid a finger on her
+wrist. "You don't  feel feverish, do you?" The light click of the
+wicket gate, which meant that Lawrence was safely off the
+premises, enabled Isabel to say no with a sigh of relief.  "It
+must be the hot weather.  Hallo! what have we here?"
+
+He held up the gold cigarette case which had dropped from Hyde's
+coat when he was lying on the grass.
+
+"Some of Mrs. Bendish's property by the look of it," remarked
+Val. "Diamonds, begad!  I should have thought Yvonne had better
+taste.  But it must be hers, though the cipher doesn't seem to
+have a B in it.  I'll guarantee it isn't Rosy's."   He slipped it
+into his pocket.  "I'll give it to Jack, I shall see him tonight
+at the vestry-meeting."
+
+"It belongs to Captain Hyde."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"He's been here this afternoon."
+
+"How long did he stay?"
+
+"What time is it?--  An hour and twenty minutes."
+
+"What brought him?" said Val, bewildered.
+
+Isabel was mute. . . "I don't know what you're talking about,
+Isabel.  Has he been with you all that time?  Very stupid of him
+when I particularly wanted you to have a quiet afternoon.  When
+did he go?"
+
+"He has only just gone."
+
+"Just gone? I never saw him."
+
+"He went by the wicket gate."
+
+"But I came in by the wicket gate myself!" said Val.  His kind
+serene eyes rested on his sister without a shadow of any thought
+behind surprise.
+
+"I left the mare with Rowsley in the village."
+
+Isabel sat up suddenly and wound her arms round Val's neck. "I
+sent him away when I heard you coming.  He dodged you behind the
+lilacs. I didn't want to tell you he'd been here.  I never should
+have told you if you hadn't found that case."
+
+"You got rid of him--  This minute?  Because I came--?  Isabel!"
+Stafford held her off.  "It is not possible--!  Listen to me: I
+will have an answer.  I know Hyde.  Has he said anything to
+offend you?"
+
+"No! no! oh Val, don't be so angry!"
+
+"Lucky for him," said Val, drawing a long breath and sitting down
+again, his whip across his knee.  "My dear little sister, you
+mustn't make mysteries out of nothing at all!  I'm sorry I
+startled you, but you startled me: I didn't know what to make of
+it. Hyde has not a very good name. . . . In fact I'd rather you
+didn't see too much of him unless Rose or I were there: it was
+cheek of him to come up this afternoon when I was out, considering
+that he scarcely knows you: but I suppose he thinks the Wancote show
+gives him right of entry.  That is the sort of thing a chap like Hyde
+does think.  Now begin again and tell me what it's all about."
+
+"Oh, nothing, Val, nothing!" said Isabel, laughing, though the
+tears were not far from her eyes.  "I didn't know you could get
+in such a wax if you tried!  It's as you say, a little mystery of
+nothing at all.  I'd tell you like a shot if I could, but I can't
+because it would be breaking a promise."
+
+"Hyde had no earthly right to make you promise."
+
+"It was of my own accord."
+
+"It is all wrong," said Val.  "Promises and silly secrets between
+a child like you and a fellow like Hyde!"  He was more grave and
+vexed than Isabel had ever seen him.  "There must be no more of
+it."
+
+"There won't if I can help it!" said Isabel.  "I like Captain
+Hyde--yes, I do: I know you don't, and I can quite see that he's
+what Rose would call a bit of an outsider, but I'm sorry for him
+and there's a great deal I like in him.  But I don't want to see
+him again for years and years." She gave a little shiver of
+distaste: if anything had been wanting to heighten the reaction
+of her youth against Hyde's stained middle age, the evasions in
+which he had involved her would have done it.  "Now don't scold
+me any more!  I'm innocent, and I feel rather sad.  The world
+looks unhomely this afternoon.  All except you!  You stay there
+where I can watch you: you're so comfortably English, so nice and
+cool and quiet!  There's no one like you, no one: the more I see
+of other people the more I like you!  I'm so glad you don't wear
+linen clothes and a Panama hat and rings.  I'd give you away if
+you did with half a pound of tea.  No, it's no use asking me any
+more questions because I shan't answer them: a promise is all the
+more binding if one would rather not keep it.  No, and it's no
+use fishing either, I can keep a secret as well as you can--"
+
+She broke off before the white alteration in Val's face.
+
+"Has--.
+
+"No," said Isabel slowly: "no, he never mentioned your name."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+"Val"
+
+"M'm."
+
+"I say"
+
+"What, then?"
+
+"What's all this about the Etchingham agency?"
+
+Val Stafford, smoking a well-earned pipe some hours later in the
+evening sunlight on the vicarage lawn, looked up at his brother
+over the Chronicle with a faint frown.  "Who?"
+
+"Ah! who?" said Rowsley, squatting cross-legged on the turf.
+
+"Jack began on it this afternoon, and I had to switch him off, for
+I didn't care to own that it was news to me."
+
+"There's nothing in it at present."
+
+"The duke has offered me the management of his Etchingham
+property," said Val unwillingly. "Oh no, not to give up Bernard:
+Etchingham, you see, marches with Wanhope and the two could be
+run together.  He was awfully nice about it: would take what time
+I could give him: quite saw that Wanhope would have to come
+first."
+
+"How much?"
+
+"Four hundred and an allowance for a house.  Five, to be precise,
+which is what he is giving Mills: but of course I couldn't take
+full time pay for a part-time job."
+
+Rowsley whistled.
+
+"Yes, it would be very nice," said Val, always temperate.  "It
+would practically be 300 pounds, for I couldn't go on taking my
+full 300 pounds from Bernard.  I should get him to put on a young
+fellow to work under me."
+
+"It would make a lot of difference to you, even so."
+
+"To us," Val corrected him.  "Another pound a week would oil the
+wheels of Isabel's housekeeping.   And--" he hesitated, but
+having gone so far one might as well go on--"it would enable me
+to do two things I've long set my heart on, only it was no use
+saying so: give you another hundred and fifty a year and insure
+my life in Isabel's favour.  It would lift a weight off my mind
+if I could do that.  Suppose I were to die suddenly--one never
+knows what would become of her?  She'll be able to earn her own
+living after taking her degree in October, but women's posts are
+badly paid and it's uncommonly hard to save.  Oh yes, old boy, I
+know you'd look after her!  But I don't want her to be a drag on
+you: it's bad enough now--you never grumble, but I know what
+it's like never to have a penny to spare.  Times have changed
+since I was in the Army, but nothing alters the fact that it's
+uncommonly unpleasant to be worse off than other fellows. I hate
+it for you--all the more because you don't grumble.  It is a
+constant worry to me not to be able to put you in a better
+position."
+
+Rowsley had been too long inured to this paternal tenderness to
+be sensible of its touching absurdity on the lips of a man not
+much older than himself.  But he was not a selfish youth, and he
+remonstrated with Val, though more like a son than a brother.
+"Yes, I dare say, but where do you come in? A stiff premium for
+Isabel and 50 pounds for Jim and 150 pounds for me doesn't leave
+much change out of 300 pounds!"
+
+"Oh, I've all I want.  Living at home, I don't get the chance of
+spending a lot of pocket money."
+
+"Why don't you close at once?"
+
+"Because I can't get an answer out of Bernard. I've spoken to him
+but he won't decide one way or the other.  And he's my master,
+and I can't take on another job if he objects.  That's why I kept
+it dark at home: what's the good of raising hopes that may be
+disappointed?"
+
+"Pity you can't chuck Bernard and take on Etchingham and the
+five hundred."
+
+"I should never do that," said Val in the rare tone of decision
+which in him was final.  "After all these years I could never
+leave Bernard in the lurch.  I owe him too much."
+
+"As if the boot weren't on the other leg!" Rowsley muttered.  He
+was not mercenary--none of Mr. Stafford's children were: he saw
+eye to eye with Val in Val's calm preference of six to eight
+hundred a year: but when Val carried his financial principles
+into the realm of sentiment Rowsley now and then lost his temper.
+His brother smiled at him, amused by his irritation, unmoved by
+it: other men's opinions rarely had any weight with Val Stafford.
+
+"Pax till it happens, at all events!  Honestly I don't think
+Bernard means to object: he's been all smiles the last day or
+two--Hyde's coming has shaken him up and done him good--"
+
+"Oh!  Hyde!"
+
+Val let fail his paper and looked curiously at Rowsley, whose
+tone was a challenge.  "What is it now?"
+
+"Do you like this chap Hyde?"
+
+"That depends on what you mean by liking him.  He's not a bad
+specimen of his class."
+
+"What is his class?  Do you know anything of his people?"
+
+"Of his family I know little except that he has Jew blood in him
+and is very well off," Val could have told his brother where the
+money came from, but forbore out of consideration for Lawrence,
+who might not care to have his connection with the Hyde Galleries
+known in Chilmark.  "He came here because Lucian Selincourt asked
+him to see if he could do anything for Bernard."
+
+"I can't see Hyde putting himself out of his way to oblige Mr.
+Selincourt."
+
+"If you ask me, Rose, I should say he had only just got back to
+England and was at a loose end.  But there was a dash of good
+nature in it: he's genuinely fond of Mrs. Clowes."
+
+"So I gathered," said Rowsley.  His tone was pregnant.  Val sat
+silent for a moment.
+
+"What rubbish!  He hasn't seen her for eight or ten years."
+
+"Since her marriage." Val shrugged his shoulders.  "Sorry, Val,
+but I cannot see Hyde staying on at Wanhope out of cousinly
+affection for Bernard Clowes.  It must be a beastly uncomfortable
+house to stay in.  Nicely run and all that, and they do you very
+well, but Bernard is distinctly an acquired taste.  Oh, my dear
+chap!" as Val's silence stiffened, "no one suggests that Laura's
+ever looked at the fellow!  But facts are facts, and Hyde is--
+Hyde.  I'm not a bit surprised to hear he has Jew blood in him,"
+Rowsley continued, warming to the discussion: he was a much
+keener judge of character that the tolerant and easy-going Val.
+"That accounts for the arty strain in him.  Yvonne says he's a
+thorough musician, and Jack told me Lord Grantchester took to him
+because he knew such a lot about pictures.  Well, so he ought!
+He's a Londoner.  What does he know of the country?  Only what
+you pick up at a big country-house party or a big shoot!  He's
+not the sort of chap to stay on at Wanhope for the pleasure of
+cheering up across-grained br--a fellow like Bernard.  Yes, he's
+talking of staying on indefinitely: is going to send to town for
+one of his confounded cars. . . .  And what other woman is there
+in Chilmark that he'd walk across the road to look at?"
+
+"I'm not sure you're fair to him."
+
+Rowsley turned up to his brother an amused, rather sweet smile.
+"Val, you'd pray for the devil?"
+
+"Oh, Hyde isn't a devil! I came pretty close to him ten years
+ago.  He has a streak of generosity in him: no one knows that
+better than I do, for I'm in his debt.  What?  Oh! no, not in
+money matters: is that likely?  But he's capable of . . .
+magnanimity, one might call it," Stafford fastidiously felt after
+precision: "no, he wouldn't pursue Laura; he wouldn't make her
+life harder than it is already."
+
+"He might propose to make it easier." Rowsley threw a daisy at a
+cockchafer and missed it.  "You and I are sons of a parsonage.
+We shouldn't run off with a married lady because it would be
+against our principles." His thin brown features were twisted
+into a faint grimace.  Rowsley, like Val, possessed a satirical
+sense of humour, and gave it freer play than Val did.  "It's so
+difficult to shake off early prejudices.  When Fowler and I were
+at the club the other day, we met a horrid little sweep who waxed
+confidential.  I said I couldn't make love to a married woman if
+I tried, and Fowler said he could but held rather not, and we
+walked off, but as I remarked to Fowler afterwards the funny
+thing was that it was true.  I don't see anything romantic in the
+situation.  It strikes me as immoral and disgusting.  But Hyde
+wouldn't take a narrow view like mine.  He has to live up to his
+tailor."
+
+"Oh, really, Rose!" Val gave his unwilling laugh.  "You're like
+Isabel, who can't forgive him for sporting a diamond monogram."
+
+"No, but I'm interested.  I know Jack's limitations, and Jimmy's,
+and yours, but Hyde's I don't know, and he intrigues me," said
+Rowsley, lighting a cigarette with his agile brown fingers.
+"Now I'll tell you the way he really strikes me.  He's not a bad
+sort: I shouldn't wonder if there were more decency in him than
+he'd care to get credit for.  But I should think," he looked up
+at Val with his clear speculative hazel eyes, "that he's never in
+his life taken a thrashing.  He's always had pots of money and
+superb health.  I know nothing, of his private concerns, but at
+all events he isn't married, and from what Jack says he's sought
+safety in numbers.  No wife, no kids, no near relations--that
+means none of the big wrenches.  No: I don't believe Hyde's ever
+taken a licking in his life."
+
+"You sound as if you would like to administer one."
+
+"Only by way of a literary experiment," said Rowsley with his
+mischievous grin.  He was of the new Army, Val of the old: it was
+a constant source of mild surprise to Val that his brother read
+books about philosophy, and psychology, and sociology, of which
+pre-war Sandhurst had never heard: read poetry too, not Tennyson
+or Shakespeare, but slim modern volumes with brown covers and
+wide margins: and wrote verses now and then, and sent them to
+orange-coloured magazines or annual anthologies, at which Val
+gazed from a respectful distance.  "I don't owe him any grudge.
+I'm not Bernard's dry-nurse!"
+
+Val turned a leaf of his paper, but he was not reading it.
+
+"I rather wish you hadn't said all this, Rowsley.  It does no
+good: not even if it were true."
+
+"Val, if it weren't such a warm evening I'd get up and punch your
+head.  You're a little too bright and good, aren't you?  Yvonne
+Bendish says it, and she's Laura's sister."
+
+"Yvonne would say anything. I wish you had given her a hint to
+hold her tongue.  She may do most pestilent mischief if she sets
+this gossip going."
+
+"It'll set itself going," said Rowsley.  "And, though I know the
+Bendishes pretty well, I really shouldn't care to tell Mrs. Jack
+not to gossip about her own sister.  You might see your way to
+it, reverend sir, but I don't."
+
+"If it came to Bernard's ears I wouldn't answer for the
+consequences."
+
+"Won't Bernard see it for himself?"
+
+"If I thought that," said Val, "if I thought that. . . .
+
+"You couldn't interfere, old man," said Rowsley with a shrewd
+glance at his brother.  "Your hands are tied."
+
+"H'm: yes, that's true." It was much truer than Rowsley knew.  "I
+don't care," said Val, involuntarily crushing the paper in his
+hand: "I would not let that stand in my way: I'd speak to Hyde."
+
+"Are you prepared to take high ground? I can't imagine any one
+less likely to be amenable to moral suasion, unless of course
+you're much more intimate with him than you ever let on to me.
+Perhaps you are," Rowsley added.  "He certainly is interested in
+you."
+
+"Hyde is?"
+
+"Watches you like a cat after a mouse.  What's at the root of it,
+Val?  Is it the original obligation you spoke of?  I'm not sure
+that I should care to be under an obligation to Hyde myself.
+Hullo,  are you off?" Val had risen, folding the newspaper,
+laying it carefully down on his chair: in all his ways he was as
+neat as an old maid.
+
+"I have to be at the managers' meeting by half past eight, and
+it's twenty past now."
+
+Watching his brother across the lawn, Rowsley cudgelled his
+brains to account for Val's precipitate departure.  The pretext
+was valid, for Val was always punctual, and yet it looked like a
+retreat--not to say a rout.  But what had he said to put Val to
+flight?
+
+Present at the managers' meeting were Val, still in breeches:
+Jack Bendish in a dinner jacket and black tie: Garrett the
+blacksmith, cursorily washed:  Thurlow, a leading Nonconformist
+tradesman: and Mrs. Verney the doctor's wife.  Agenda: to instruct
+the Correspondent to requisition a new scrubbing brush for the
+Infants' School.  This done and formally entered in the Minutes by
+Mrs. Verney,  the meeting resolved itself into a Committee of Ways
+and Means for getting rid of the boys' headmaster without falling
+foul of the National Union of Teachers; but these proceedings, though
+of extreme interest to all concerned, were recorded in no Minutes.
+
+The meeting broke up in amity and Bendish came out into the
+purple twilight, taking Val's arm.  It was gently withdrawn.
+"Neuritis again?"  said Jack.  "Why don't you try massage?" He
+always asked the same question, and, being born to fifteen
+thousand a year, never read between the lines of Val's vague
+reply.  Val had a touch of neuritis in his injured arm two nights
+out of seven, but he could not find the shillings for his train
+fare to Salisbury, far less the fees of a professional masseuse.
+Bendish, who could have settled that difficulty out of a week's
+cigar bills, would have been shocked and distressed if Val had
+owned to it, but it was beyond the scope of his imagination,
+though he was a thoughtful young man and quietly did his best to
+protect Val from the tax of chauffeurs and gamekeepers.  He
+understood that poor men cannot always find sovereigns.  But he
+really did not know that sometimes they cannot even find
+shillings.  Tonight he said, "I can't think why you don't get a
+woman over to massage you," and then, reverting to the peccant
+master,  "Brown's a nuisance.  He has a rotten influence on the
+elder boys.  He's thick with all that beastly Labour crowd, and I
+believe Thurlow's right about his goings on with Warner's wife,
+though I wasn't going to say so to Thurlow. I do wish he'd do
+something, then we could fire him. But we don't want a row with
+the N.U.T."
+
+"You can't fire a man for his political opinions."
+
+"Why not, if they're wrong?" said Bendish placidly.
+
+His was the creed that Labour men are so slow to understand
+because it is so slow to explain itself: not a blind prejudice,
+but the reasonable faith of one who feels himself to belong to an
+hereditary officer caste for whom privilege and responsibility go
+hand in hand.  And an excellent working rule it is so long as
+practice is not divorced from theory: so long as the average
+member of the governing class acts up to the tradition of
+government, be he sachem or daimio or resident English squire.
+It amused Val: but he admired it.
+
+"Brown is a thorn in Jimmy's side," he remarked, dropping the
+impersonal issue. "I never in my life heard a man make such a
+disagreeable noise on the organ. I tackled him about it last
+Sunday.  He said it ciphered, but organs don't cipher in dry
+weather, so I went to look at it and found three or four keys
+glued together with candle grease."
+
+"Filthy swine!  Are you coming round to Wanhope? I have to call
+in on my way home, my wife's dining there."
+
+Val made no reply.  "Are you coming up or not?  You look fagged,
+Val," said Bendish affectionately. "Anything wrong?"
+
+"No: I was only wondering whether I'd get you to take a message
+for me, but I'd better go myself."
+
+Bendish nodded.  "Just as you like.  Have you settled yet about
+the Etchingham agency?"
+
+"No, I'm waiting for Bernard."
+
+"Hope you'll see your way to accepting.  My only fear is that it
+would throw too much work on you; you're such a conscientious beggar!
+but of course you wouldn't do for us all the odd jobs you do for poor
+Bernard.  Seems to me," Jack ruminated, "the best plan would be for
+you to have a car.  One gets about quicker like that and it wouldn't
+be such a fag.  There's that little green Napier roadster, she'd come
+in handy if we stabled her at Nicholson's."  He added simply, to
+obviate any possible misunderstanding, "Garage bills our show, of
+course."
+
+"Thanks most awfully," said Val, accepting without false pride.
+"I should love it, I do get tired after being in the saddle all
+day.  It would more than make up for the extra work."
+
+They were crossing the Wanhope lawn as he spoke, on their way to
+the open French windows of the parlour, gold-lit with many
+candles against an amethyst evening sky.  Laura, in a plain black
+dress, was at the piano, the cool drenched foliage of Claude
+Debussy's rainwet gardens rustling under her magic fingers.
+Bernard was talking to Mrs. Jack Bendish, for the sufficient
+reason that she disliked him and disliked talking to any one
+while Laura played.  Her defiant sparkle, her gipsy features, her
+slim white shoulders emerging from the brocade and sapphires of a
+sleeveless bodice cut open almost to her waist, produced the
+effect of a Carolus Duran lady come to life and threw Laura back
+into a dimmed and tired middle age.  Jack's eyes glowed as they
+dwelt on her.  His marriage had been a trial to his family, but
+no one could deny that Yvonne had made a success of it, for Jack
+worshipped her.--Lawrence, leaning forward in his chair, his
+forehead on his hand to shield his eyes from the light, looked
+exceedingly tired, and probably was so.
+
+"Queer chap Hyde," said Bendish to Val as they waited on the
+grass for the music to finish.  "Can't think what he's stopping
+on for."
+
+"Oh, Jack, for heaven's sake don't you begin on that subject!"
+
+"Hey?  Oh!  No, by Jove.  Seems a shame, doesn't it?" returned
+Bendish, taking the point with that rapid effortless readiness of
+his class which made him more soothing to Val than many a
+cleverer man.  "It all says itself, so what's the good of saying
+it?  All the same I shan't be sorry when Hyde packs his movin'
+tent a day's march nearer Jerusalem."  And with a casual wink at
+Val he stepped over the threshold.  His judgment, so vague and
+shrewd and sure of itself, represented probably the kindest view
+that would be taken in Chilmark.
+
+Their entrance broke up the gathering.  Jack carried off his
+wife, and Barry appeared to wheel Bernard away to bed.  With a
+word to Laura, Val followed the cripple to his room.  The Duke
+was pressing for an answer, and long experience had taught Val
+that for Bernard one time was as good as another: it was not
+possible to count on his moods.  And there was not much to be
+said; all pros and cons had been thrashed out before; the five
+minutes while Barry was out of the room fetching Bernard's
+indispensable hot-water bottles would give Val ample time to
+secure Bernard's consent.--Laura had scarcely finished putting
+away her music when Val came back, humming under his breath the
+jangled tune that echoes night in the streets of Granada.  Laura
+glanced at Lawrence, who had gone into the garden to smoke and
+was passing and repassing the open window: no, he could not hear.
+"Well, Val?"
+
+"Let me do that for you, shall I?" said Val, lightly smiling, at
+her. "Your ottoman has a heavy lid."
+
+"Have you spoken to Bernard?"
+
+"I have."
+
+"And it's all right?"
+
+"Yes" said Val, deftly flinging diamond-wise a glittering Chinese
+cloth: "is that straight?--that is, for me.  I shan't take the
+agency."
+
+"Val!"
+
+"Bernard agrees with me that the double work would be too heavy.
+Of course I should like the money and I'm awfully sorry to
+disoblige Lord Grantchester and Jack, but one has one's
+limitations, and I don't want to knock up."
+
+"It is too bad--too bad of Bernard,". said Laura, lowering her
+voice as Lawrence lingered near the window.  "He doesn't half
+deserve your goodness to him."
+
+"Bosh!" said Val laughing.  "Where do these candlesticks go?  In
+my heart of hearts I'm grateful to him.  I'm a cowardly beggar,
+Laura, and I was dreading the big financial responsibility.  Oh
+no, Bernard didn't put any pressure on me: simply offered me the
+choice between Etchingham and Wanhope."
+
+"They would pay you twice what you get from Bernard.  Oh, Val, I
+wish you would take it and throw us over!"
+
+"That's very unkind of you."
+
+"Is this definite?"
+
+"Quite: Bernard had thought it well over and made up his mind.  I
+shouldn't speak to him about it if I were you."
+
+"I shan't. I couldn't bear to."
+
+"Bosh again--excuse me.  I must go home. Good-night, dear." He
+held out his hand, wishing, in the repressed way that had become
+a second nature to him, that Laura would not wring it so warmly
+and so long.  In the first bitterness of disappointment--so much
+the keener for his unlucky confidence to Rowsley--Val could not
+stand sympathy.  Not even from Laura?  Least of all from Laura.
+He nodded to her with a bright careless smile and went out into
+the night.
+
+But he had still one more mission to perform before he could go
+home to break the bad news to Rowsley: a trying mission under
+which Val fretted in repressed distaste. He came up to Lawrence
+holding out the gold cigarette case.  "You dropped this at our
+place when you were talking to my sister this afternoon."
+
+"Did I?" Lawrence slipped it into his pocket. His manner was
+perfectly calm.  "Thanks so much.--I hadn't missed it."  He had
+no fear of having been betrayed, in essentials, by Isabel.
+
+"I don't want to offend you," Val continued with his direct
+simplicity of manner, "but perhaps you hardly realize how young
+my sister is."
+
+"Some one said she was nineteen, but why?"
+
+"I don't know what you said to her, probably nothing of the
+slightest consequence, but she's only a child, and you managed to
+upset her.  To be frank, I didn't want her to see any one this
+afternoon.  Oh, she's all right, but her arm has run her up a bit
+of a temperature, and Verney wants her to keep quiet for a few
+days.  It'll give her an excuse to keep clear of the inquest too.
+This sounds ungrateful as well as ungracious, when we owe you so
+much, but there's no ingratitude in it, only common sense."
+
+"Oh, damn your common sense!" exclaimed Lawrence.
+
+It was as laconic a warning-off as civility allowed: and it
+irritated Lawrence beyond bearing to be rebuked by young
+Stafford, whose social life stood in his danger, whom he could at
+pleasure strip to universal crucifying shame.  But there was
+neither defiance nor fear in Val: tranquil and unpretentious, in
+his force of character he reminded Lawrence of Laura Clowes.  She
+too had been attacked once or twice that evening by her husband,
+and Lawrence had admired the way in which she either foiled or
+evaded the rapier point, or took it to her bosom without
+flinching.  This same silken courage, it seemed, Val also
+possessed.  Both would stand up to a blow with the same grave
+dignity and--perhaps--secret scorn.
+
+Minutes passed.  Val waited because he chose not to be the first
+to break silence, Lawrence because he was absorbing fresh
+impressions with that intensity which wipes out time and place.
+He was in the mood to receive them: tired, softened, and
+quickened, from the tears of the afternoon.  After all Val was
+Isabel's brother and possessed Isabel's eyes!  This drew Lawrence
+to him by a double cord: practically, because it is inconvenient
+to be on bad terms with one's brother-in-law, and mystically,
+because in his profound romantic passion he loved whatever was
+associated with her, down to the very sprig of honeysuckle that
+she had pinned into his coat.  But for this cord his relations
+with Stafford would have begun and ended in a casual regret for
+the casual indulgence of a cruel impulse.  But Isabel's brother
+had ex officio a right of entry into Hyde's private life, and,
+the doors once opened, he was dazed by the light that Val let in.
+
+It was after ten o'clock and dews were falling, falling from a
+clear night.  "One faint eternal eventide of gems," beading the
+dark turf underfoot and the pale faces of roses that had bloomed
+all day in sunshine: now prodigal of scent only they hung their
+heads like ghosts of flowers among dark glossy leaves.  Stars
+hung sparkling on the dark field of heaven, stars threw down
+their spears on the dark river fleeting to the star-roofed
+distant Channel.  Stream and grass and leaf-buds were ephemeral
+and eternal, ever passing and ever renewed, old as the stars, or
+the waste ether in which they range: the green, sappy stem, the
+dew-bead that hung on it, the shape of a ripple were the same now
+as when Nineveh was a queen of civilization and men's flesh was
+reddening alive in osier cages over altar fires on Wiltshire
+downs. And all the sweetness, all the romance of an English
+midsummer night seized the heart of Lawrence, a nomad, a returned
+exile, and a man in love--as if he had never known England
+before.
+
+Or her inhabitants either!  Lawrence, without country, creed,
+profession, or territorial obligation, was one of those sons of
+rich men who form, in any social order, its loosest and most
+self-centred class.  In his set, frank egoism was the only motive
+for which one need not apologize.  But in Chilmark it was not
+so. Far other forces were in play in the lives of the Stafford
+family, and Laura Clowes, and Lord Grantchester and his wife and
+Jack Bendish.  What were these forces?  Lawrence thought in
+flashes, by imagery, scene after scene flitting before him out of
+the last forty-eight hours.  Homespun virtues: unselfishness,
+indifference to money values, the constant sense of filial,
+fraternal, social responsibility . . . the glow in Jack's eyes
+when they rested on his wife: Verney's war on cesspools: Leverton
+Morley as scoutmaster: the Chinese lecture: rosebushes in the
+churchyard, by the great stone cross with its list of names
+beginning "George Potts, Wiltshire Rifles, aged 49," and ending
+"Robert Denis Bendish, Grenadier Guards, aged 19: Into Thy Hands,
+O Lord": old, old feudal England, closeknit, no pastoral of easy
+virtues, yet holding together in a fellowship which underlies
+class disunion: whose sons, from days long before the Conquest,
+have always desired to go to sea when the cuckoo sang, and to
+come home again when they were tired of the hail and salt
+showers, because they could not bear to be landless and lordless
+men. . . .
+
+[Footnote]
+
+     "Swylce geac mona geomran reorde, singe sumeres
+     weard, sorge beade bittre in breosthord; pset se
+     beorn ne wat, secg esteadig, hwset pa sume dreoga,
+     pe pa wrseclastas widost lecga! . . . . pince him
+     on mode pset he his monndryhten clyppe and cysse
+     andon cneo lecge honda and heafod; ponne onwsecne,
+     gesihp him beforan fealwe wegas, bapian brimfuglas."
+
+     "Even so the cuckoo warns him with its sad voice,
+     Summer's warden sings foreboding sorrow, bitter grief
+     of heart.  Little knows the prosperous fellow what
+     others are doing who follow far and wide the tracks
+     of exile . . . Then dreams the seafarer that he clasps
+     his lord and kisses him, and on his knee lays hand and
+     head; but he awakes and sees before him the fallow
+     waterways and the sea-fowls bathing."
+
+[End of Footnote]
+
+
+Lawrence flung off the impression with a jerk of his shoulders,
+as if it were a physical weight.  It was too heavy to be endured.
+Not even to marry Isabel was he going to impose on his own
+unbroken egoism the restricting code of a country village.
+
+"You are a dreamer, Val!  Why don't you throw over Bernard and
+take the Etchingham agency?  Yes, I heard every word you said to
+Laura: you made a gallant effort, but the facts speak for
+themselves, and your terminological inexactitudes wouldn't
+deceive a babe at the breast.  Bernard pays you 300 pounds a year
+and orders you about like a groom, Grautchester would give you
+six and behave like a gentleman.  But no, you must needs stick to
+Bernard, though you never get any thanks for it!  You're an
+unpractical dreamer."
+
+"I don't know what on earth you're talking about."
+
+"And you're all in it together, damn you!"  Lawrence broke out
+with an angry laugh.  "It's all equally picturesque--feudal's
+the word!  I never knew anything like it in my life and I
+wouldn't have believed it could continue to exist.  What do you
+do with gipsies?  evict 'em, I suppose."  He flung a second
+question at Val which made the son of a vicarage knit his brows.
+
+"As a matter of fact there's a house in Brook Lane about which
+Bendish and I are a good deal exercised in our minds at the
+present moment . . . and the percentage of children born too soon
+after marriage is disastrous.    You're all out, Hyde.  Nothing
+could be more commonplace than Chilmark, believe me: life is like
+this all over rural England, and it's only from a distance that
+one takes it for Arcadia."
+
+"Folly," said Lawrence.  "Good God, why should you exercise your
+simple minds over the house in Brook Lane?  Ah! because the men
+who go to it are your own men, and the parsonage and the Castle
+are answerable for their souls." Val, irritated, suggested that
+if Hyde's forebears had lived in Chilmark since the time when
+every freeman had to swear fealty, laying his hands between the
+knees of his lord, Hyde might have shared this feeling.  "But
+they didn't," said Lawrence, drily. "My grandfather was a
+pawnbroker in the New Cut."
+
+"Then perhaps you're hardly in a position to judge."
+
+"Judge? I don't judge, my good fellow--I'm lost in admiration!
+In an age of materialism it's refreshing to come across these
+simple, homespun virtues. I didn't know there was a man left in
+England that would exist, for choice, on three hundred a year.
+Are you always content with your rustic ideals, Val?  Haven't you
+any ambition?"
+
+"I?" said Val.
+
+"'Carry me out of the fight,'" quoted Lawrence under his breath.
+"I swear I forgot."
+
+Silence fell again, the silence on Lawrence's part of continual
+conflict and adjustment, and on Val's mainly of irritation.
+Lawrence talked too much and too loosely, and was over-given to
+damning what he disliked--a trick that went with his rings and
+his diamond monogram.  Val was not interested in a townsman's
+amateur satire; in so far as Lawrence was not satirical, he had
+probably drunk one glass more of Bernard's' champagne than was
+good for him!  In the upshot, Val was less disinclined to credit
+Rowsley than half an hour ago.
+
+Lawrence roused himself.  "About your sister: I was sorry
+afterwards to have stayed so long.  She seemed none the worse for
+it at the time, but no doubt she ought to keep quiet for a bit.
+Will you make my excuses to her?"
+
+"I will with pleasure."
+
+"And will you allow me to tackle Bernard about the agency?"
+
+"To--?"
+
+"If you won't resent my interfering? I can generally knock some
+sense into Bernard's head.  It's an iniquitous thing that he
+should take advantage of your generosity, Val."
+
+Stafford was completely taken by surprise.  "I'd rather--it's
+most awfully kind of you," he stammered, "but I couldn't trespass
+on your kindness--"
+
+"Kindness, nonsense!  Bernard's my cousin: if your services are
+worth more in the open market than he pays you, it's up to me to
+see he doesn't fleece you.  Otherwise you might ultimately chuck
+up your job, and where should we be then?  In the soup: for he'd
+never get another man of your class--a gentleman--to put up
+with the rough side of his tongue.  No: he must be brought to
+book: if you'll allow me?"
+
+Val's disposition was to refuse; it was odious to him to accept a
+favour from Hyde.  But pride is one of the luxuries that poor men
+cannot afford. "I should be most grateful.  Thank you very much."
+
+"And now go to bed: you're tired and so am I.  I've had the devil
+of a hard day." He stretched himself, raising his wrists to the
+level of his shoulders, luxuriously tense under the closefitting
+coat. "I shall hope to see your sister again after the inquest."
+
+"Yes," said Val, hesitating: "are you staying on, then?"
+
+"As you advised."
+
+"You'll be very bored."
+
+"No, I've fallen in love." Val gave a perceptible start.  "With
+the country," Lawrence explained with a merry laugh.  "Rustic
+ideals. Don't misjudge me, I beg: I have no designs on Mrs.
+Bendish."
+
+"Hyde . . .
+
+"Well, my dear Val?"
+
+"Give me back my parole."
+
+"Not  I."
+
+"You're unjust and ungenerous," said Val with repressed passion.
+"But I warn you that I shall interfere none the less to protect
+others if necessary.  Good-night."
+
+Lawrence watched him across the lawn with a bewildered
+expression.  But he forgot him in a minute--or remembered him
+only in the association with Isabel which brought Val into the
+radius of his good will.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+"Hadow's bringing out a new play," remarked Lawrence, looking up
+from the Morning Post.  "A Moore comedy, They're clever stuff,
+Moore's comedies: always well written, and well put on when Hadow
+has a hand in it.  You never were a playgoer, Bernard."
+
+"Not I," said Bernard Clowes.  He and his guest were smoking
+together in the hall after breakfast, Lawrence imparting items of
+news from the Morning Post, while Bernard, propped up in a
+sitting attitude on the latest model of invalid couch, turned
+over and sorted on a swing table a quantity of curios mainly in
+copper, steel, and iron.  Both swing-table and couch had been
+bought in London by Lawrence, and to his vigorous protests it was
+also due that the great leaved doors were thrown wide to the
+amber sunshine: while the curios came out of one of his Eastern
+packing-cases, which he had had unpacked by Gaston for Bernard to
+take what he liked.  Lawrence's instincts were acquisitive, not
+to say predatory.  Wherever he went he amassed native treasures
+which seemed to stick to his fingers, and which in nine cases out
+of ten, thanks to his racial tact, would have fetched at
+Christie's more than he gave for them.  Coming fresh from foreign
+soil, they were a godsend to Bernard, who was weary of collecting
+from collectors' catalogues.  "Can I have this flint knife?
+Egyptian, isn't it?  Oh, thanks awfully, I'm taking all the
+best."  This was true.  But Lawrence, like most of his nation,
+gave freely when he gave at all.  "No, I never was one for plays
+except Gilbert and Sullivan and the 'Merry Widow' and things like
+that with catchy tunes in 'em.  Choruses."  He gave a reminiscent
+laugh.
+
+"Legs?" suggested Lawrence.
+
+"Exactly," said Bernard, winking at him.  "Oh damn!"  A mechanical
+jerk of his own legs had tilted the table and sent the knife
+rolling on the floor.  Lawrence picked it up for him, drew his
+feet down, and tucked a rug over his hips.
+
+"Mind that box of Burmese darts, old man, they're poisoned.--  I
+used to be an inveterate first-nighter.  Still am, in fact, when
+I'm in or near town.  I can sit out anything from 'Here We Are
+Again' to 'Samson Agonistes.' To be frank, I rather liked
+'Samson':  it does one's ears good to listen to that austere,
+delicate English."
+
+"How long would these take to polish one off?"
+
+"Ten or twelve hours, chiefly in the form of a hoop.  No, Berns,
+I can't recommend them." He drew from its jewelled sheath and put
+into Bernard's hands a Persian dagger nine inches long, the naked
+blade damascened in wavy ripplings and slightly curved from point
+to hilt.  "That would do your trick better.  Under the fifth rib.
+I bought it of a Greek muleteer, God knows how he got hold of it,
+but he was a bit of a poet: he assured me it would go in 'as soft
+as a kiss.' For its softness I cannot speak, but it is as sharp
+as a knife need be."
+
+"Sharper," said Bernard, his thumb in his mouth.
+
+"You silly ass, I warned you!--  I should rather like to see this
+Moore play.  I suppose Laura never goes, as you don't?"
+
+"I don't stop her going, as you jolly well know.  She's welcome
+to go six nights a week if she likes."
+
+"She couldn't very well go alone," Lawrence ignored the scowl of
+his host.  "Tell you what: suppose I took her tonight?  I could
+run her up and down in my car, or we could get back by the
+midnight train.  Would the feelings of Chilmark be outraged?"
+
+"What business is it of Chilmark's?  If I'm complaisant, that's
+enough," said Bernard, his features relaxing into a broad grin.
+"I may be planked down in a country village for the rest of my
+very unnatural life, but I'll be shot if I'll regulate mine or my
+wife'& behaviour by the twaddle they talk!  I'll have that
+dagger."  Slipping it slowly into its sheath he watched it travel
+home, the supple female curve gliding and yielding as a woman
+yields to a man's caress.  "Voluptuous, I call it.  Under the
+left breast, eh?"  He drew it again and held it poised and
+pointing at his cousin.  "Come, even I could cut your heart out
+with a gem of a blade like that." Lawrence held himself lightly
+erect, his big frame stiffening from head to foot and the pupils
+of his eyes dilating till the irids were blackened.  "Call
+Laura."  Bernard sheathed the dagger again and laid it down.
+"She's out there snipping away at the roses.  Why can't she leave
+'em to Parker?  She's always messing about out there dirtying her
+hands, and then she comes in and paws me.  Call her in."
+
+Lawrence escaped into the sunshine.  He had not liked that moment
+when Bernard had held up the dagger, nor was it the first time
+that Bernard had made him shiver, but these vague apprehensions
+soon faded in the open air.  It was a sallow sunshine, a light
+wind was blowing, and the lawn was spun over with brilliancies of
+gossamer and flecked with yellow leaflets of acacia and lime.
+Little light clouds floated overhead, sun-smitten to a fiery
+whiteness, or curling in gold and silver surf over the grey of
+distant hayfields.  In the borders the velvet bodies of bees hung
+between the velvet petals, ruby-red, of dahlias.  There had been
+no frost, and yet a foreboding of frost was in the air, a
+sparkle, a sting--enough to have braced Lawrence when he went
+down to bathe before breakfast, standing stripped amid long
+river-herbage drenched in dew, a west wind striking cold on his
+wet limbs: sensations exquisite so long as the blood of health
+and manhood glowed under the chilled skin!  It was early autumn.
+
+
+Time slips away fast in a country village, and Lawrence remained
+a welcome guest at Wanhope, where Chilmark said--though with a
+covert smile--that Captain Hyde had done his cousin a great deal
+of good.  Bernard was better behaved with Lawrence than with any
+one else, less surly, less unsociable, less violently coarse:
+since June there had been fewer quarrels with Val and Barry and
+the servants, and less open incivility to Laura.  He had even
+let Laura give a few mild entertainments, arrears of hospitality
+which she was glad to clear off: and he had appeared at them in
+person, polite and well dressed, and on the friendliest terms
+with his cousin and his wife.
+
+Lawrence knew his own mind now.  It was because he knew it that
+he held his hand: meeting Isabel two or three times a week,
+entering into the life of the little place because it was her
+life, fighting Val's battle with Bernard--and winning it--
+because Val was her brother.  When he remembered his collapse he
+was not abashed: shame was an emotion which he rarely felt: but
+he had gone too far and too fast, and was content to mark time in
+a more rational and conventional courtship.
+
+But a courtship under the rose, for before others he hid his love
+like a crime, treating Isabel as good humoured elderly men treat
+pretty children.   Where the astringent memory of Lizzie came
+into play, Lawrence was dumb.  The one aspect of that fiasco
+which he had not fully confessed to Isabel--though only because
+it was not then prominent in his mind--was its scorching, its
+lacerating effect on his pride.  But for it he would probably
+have flung discretion to the winds, confided in Laura, in
+Bernard, in Val, pursued Isabel with a hot and headstrong
+impetuosity: but it had left the entire tract of sex in him one
+seared and branded scar.
+
+Even when they were alone together, which rarely happened--Val
+saw to that--he had as yet made no open love to her: it was
+difficult to do so when one was never secure from interruption
+for ten minutes together.  Of late he had begun to chafe against
+Val's cobweb barriers.  Three months is a long time! and patience
+was not a virtue that came natural to Lawrence Hyde.
+
+He found Laura cutting off dead roses, a sufficiently harmless
+occupation, one would have thought: a trifle thinner, a trifle
+paler than when he came: and were those grey threads in her brown
+hair?
+
+"Berns wants you," said Lawrence.  "I've done such an awful
+thing,  Laura--"
+
+Again that flash of imperfect perception!  What was going on
+under the surface at Wanhope, that Laura should turn as white as
+her handkerchief?   He hurried on as if he had noticed nothing.
+"Bernard and I have been laying our heads together.  Do you know
+what I'm going to do?  Run you up to town to see the new Moore
+play at Hadow's."
+
+"Delightful!" Already Laura had recovered herself: her smile was
+as sweet as ever, and as serene.  "Was it your idea or Bernard's?"
+
+"Mine. . . I say, Laura: Bernard is all right, isn't he?"
+
+"In what way, all right?"
+
+Lawrence reddened, regretting his indiscretion.  "I've fancied
+his manner queer, once or twice."
+
+"There is a close connection, of course, between the spine and
+the brain," said Laura quietly.  "But my husband is perfectly
+sane. . . . Oh my dear Lawrence, of course I forgive you! what is
+there to forgive? I only wish I could come tonight, but I'm
+afraid it can't be managed--"
+
+"She says it can't be managed," said Lawrence,  standing aside
+for Laura to pass in.  "Pitch into her, Bernard.  Hear her talk
+like a woman of sixty!  Are you frightened of the night air,
+Laura?  Or would Chilmark chatter?"
+
+"It might, if you and I went alone," Laura smiled.
+
+"Make up a party then," suggested Lawrence.  "Get the Bendishes
+to come too."
+
+She shook her head.  "They're dining with the Dean."
+
+"And decanal dinner-parties can't be thrown over."  When he made
+the suggestion, Lawrence had known that the Bendishes were dining
+with the Dean.  "Some one else, then."
+
+"Whom could I ask like this at the last moment?   No, I won't
+go--thank you all the same.  I'm not so keen on late hours and
+long train journeys as I used to be.  Go by yourself and you can
+tell us all about it afterwards.  Berns and I shall enjoy that as
+much as seeing it ourselves.  Shan't we, Berns?"  Clowes gave a
+short laugh: he could not have expressed his opinion more clearly
+if he had called his wife a fool to her face.
+
+"You weren't so particular before you married me, my love.  When
+you ran that French flat with Yvonne you jolly well knew how to
+amuse yourself."
+
+"Girls do many things before they're married," said Laura
+vaguely.  "I know better now."
+
+"Oh, you know a lot.  She ought to go, Lawrence. It'll do her
+good.  Now you shall go, my dear, that's flat."
+
+Lawrence began to wish he had held his tongue.  He had his own
+ends to serve, but, to do him justice, he had not meant to serve
+them at Laura's expense.  But he had still his trump card to
+play. "Surely we could find a chaperon?" he said gently, ignoring
+Bernard. "What about the Staffords?  Hardly in Val's line,
+perhaps.  But the child--little Miss Isabel--won't she do?"
+
+To his relief, Laura's eyes lit up with pleasure.  "Isabel? I
+never thought of her!  Yes, she would love to come!--But, if she
+does, she must come as my guest.  You would never have asked her
+of your own accord, and the Staffords are so proud, I'm sure Val
+wouldn't like you to pay for her."  Again Bernard's short,
+sardonic laugh translated the silence of his cousin's constraint
+and dismay.
+
+"Hark to her!  I'll sort her for you, Lawrence.  She shall go,
+and you shall be paymaster.  Yes, and for the Stafford brat too.
+Lawrence and I don't understand these modern manners, my dear.
+When we take a pretty woman out we like to do the treating.  Now
+cut along and see about the tickets, Lawrence.  You can 'phone
+from the post office."
+
+Lawrence had secured a box ten days ago, but he strolled out,
+thinking that the husband and wife might understand each other
+better when alone.  As soon as he was out of earshot Bernard
+turned on Laura and seized her by the wrist, his features
+altering, their sardonic mask recast in deep lines of hate.
+"Why wouldn't you go up alone?  That's what he wanted.  Why have
+you saddled him with the little Stafford girl?  You can't take
+her to dine in a private room."
+
+"It was because I foresaw this that I refused.  Why do you
+torment yourself by forcing me to go?"
+
+"I?  What do I care?  Do you think I should shed many tears if
+you walked out of the house and never came back?  Think I don't
+know he's your lover? you're uncommonly circumspect with your
+stable door! . . . A woman like you! Look here." He picked up the
+Persian dagger.  "See it? That's been used before. I should like
+to use it on you. I should like to cut your tongue out with it.
+Don't be afraid, I'm not going to stab you."
+
+"Afraid?" said his wife with her serene ironical smile.   "My
+dear Bernard, you tempt me to wish you were."
+
+"Oh, not before tonight.  Jolly time you'll have tonight, you and
+Lawrence . . . I can only trust you'll respect the Stafford
+child's innocence."
+
+"Bernard!  Bernard!"
+
+"Don't you Bernard me.  You can't take me in. Stop.  Where are
+you off to now?"
+
+"To tell Lawrence not to get the tickets.  I shan't go with him."
+
+"You will go with him," said Bernard Clowes, his fingers
+tightening on her wrist.  "Stop here: come closer." He locked his
+arm round her waist. "Is he your lover yet, Lally?  Tell me: I
+swear I won't kill you if you do.  Are you on the borderland of
+virtue still, or over it?"
+
+"Let me go," said Laura, panting for breath under his clenched
+grip.  "I will not answer such questions.  You know you don't
+mean one word of them.  Take care, you're tearing my blouse.  Oh,
+that frightful war! what has it done to you, to turn you from the
+man I married into what you are?"
+
+"What am I?"
+
+"A madman, or not far off it.  End this horrible life: send him
+away.  It's killing me, and as for you, if you were sane enough
+to understand what you're doing, you would blow your brains out."
+
+"Likely enough," said Bernard Clowes.
+
+He let her go.  "Come back to me now, Laura."  His wife leant
+over him, unfaltering, though she had known for some time that
+she was dealing with the abnormal.  "Kiss me." Laura touched his
+lips.  "That's better, old girl.  I am a cross-grained devil and
+I make your life a hell to you, don't I?  But don't--don't leave
+me.  Don't chuck me over.  Let me have your love to cling to.  I
+don't believe in God, I don't believe in any other man, often
+enough I don't believe in myself, I feel, I feel unreal . . . ."
+He stopped, shut his eyes, moved his head on the pillow, and felt
+about over his rug with the blind groping hands of a delirious,
+almost of a dying man.  Laura gathered them up and held them to
+her heart.  "That's better," said Bernard, his voice gaining
+strength as he opened his eyes on the beautiful still face bent
+over him.  "Just now and again, in my lucid moments, I do--I do
+believe in you, old girl.  You are just the one thing I have
+left.  You won't forsake me, will you, ever? not whatever I do to
+you."
+
+"Never, my darling."
+
+"Seems a bit one-sided, that bargain," said Bernard.
+
+He lay perfectly still for a little while, his great hands softly
+pressed against his wife's firm breast.
+
+"And now get your hat and trot up to the village with Lawrence.
+Yes, I should like you to go tonight.  It'll do you good.  Give
+you a breath of fresh air after your extra dose of sulphur.  Yes,
+you shall take Isabel.  Then you'll be safe: I can't insult you
+if you and Lawrence weren't alone.   Now run along, I've had
+enough emotions.  But don't forget.  Laura," he spoke thickly and
+with effort, turning his head away as he pushed her from him
+"yes, get out, I've had enough of you for the present--but don't
+forget all the same that you're the one thing on earth that ever
+is real to me."
+
+Isabel was up a ladder in the orchard picking plums.  Waving her
+hand to Laura and Lawrence Hyde, she called out to them to look
+the other way while she came down.  It must be owned that neither
+Laura nor Lawrence obeyed her, and they were rewarded, while she
+felt about for the top rung, with an unimpeded view of two very
+pretty legs.  Lawrence really thought she was going to fall out
+of the tree, but eventually she came safe to earth, and
+approached holding out a basket full of glowing fruit.  "Though
+you don't deserve them," she said reproachfully, "because I could
+feel you looking at me.  I did think I should be safe at this
+hour in the morning!"
+
+"Do I see Val?" said Laura, screwing up her eyes to peer in
+through the slats of the green jalousies.  "I'll go and talk him
+round, while you break the news to Miss Stafford.  Such do's,
+Isabel! You don't know what dissipations are in store for you, if
+only Val will say yes."  She like every one else elevated Val to
+the parental dignity vice Mr. Stafford deposed.
+
+
+"He's come in for some lunch.  He'll love to have you watch him
+eat," said Isabel.  "What's it to be, Captain Hyde?  A picnic?"
+
+Isabel's imagination had never soared beyond a picnic.  When
+Lawrence unfolded the London scheme her eyes grew round with
+astonishment and an awed silence fell on her.  "Oh, it won't
+happen," she said, when she had recovered sufficiently to reply
+at all.  "Nothing so angelically wonderful ever would happen to
+me.  I'm perfectly certain Val will say no.  Now we've settled
+that, you can tell me all about it, because of course you and
+Laura will go in any case."
+
+"But that's precisely what we can't do." Gently and imperceptibly
+Lawrence impelled her through the rose archway into the kitchen
+garden, where they were partly sheltered behind the walls of
+lilacs, a little thinner than they had been in June but still an
+effective screen.  He had not found himself alone with Isabel for
+ten days. Since Val was with Laura, Lawrence drew the rather
+cynical conclusion that he could count on a breathing space, and
+he wondered if Isabel too were glad of it. She was in a brown
+cotton dress, her right sleeve still tucked up high on her bare
+arm: a rounded slender arm not much tanned even at the wrist, for
+her skin was almost impervious to sunburn.  Above the elbow it
+was milk-white with a faint bloom on it, in texture not like
+ivory, which is a dead, cold, and polished material, but like a
+flower petal, one of those flowers that have a downy sheen on
+them,  white hyacinths or tall lilies. Lawrence fixed his eyes on
+it unconsciously but so steadily that Isabel became aware of his
+admiration.  She blushed and was going to pull down her sleeve,
+but checked herself, and turning a little away, so that she could
+pretend not to know that he was looking at her, raised her arm to
+smooth her hair, lifting it and pushing a loosened hairpin into
+place. After all . . . This was Isabel's first venture into
+coquetry.  But it was half unconscious.
+
+"Why can't you? oh, I suppose people would be silly.  Major
+Clowes himself is silly enough for anything.  Oh, I'm so sorry,
+I always forget he's your cousin!  Is that why you want me to
+go?"
+
+"No."
+
+She laughed.  "Never mind, you'll soon find some one else.  What
+play is it?"
+
+"'She Promised to Marry.'"
+
+"Oh ah, yes: that's by Moore, who wrote 'The Milkmaid' and
+'Sheddon, M.P.' I've read some of his things.  I liked them so, I
+made Rowsley give me them for my last birthday.  They're quite
+cheap in brown paper. O! dear, I should love to see one of them
+on the stage!" Isabel gave a great sigh.  "A London stage too!
+I've never been to a theatre except in Salisbury.  And Hadow's is
+the one to go to, isn't it?  Where they play the clever plays
+that aren't tiresome.  Who's acting tonight?"
+
+"Madeleine Wild and Peter Sennet."
+
+"Have you ever seen them?"
+
+ Lawrence laughed outright.  "I was at their wedding.  Madeleine
+is half French: I knew her first when she was singing in a cafe
+chantant on the Champs Elysees.  She is dark and pretty and Peter
+is fair and pretty, and Peter is the deadliest poker player that
+ever scored off an American train crook."
+
+"Oh," said Isabel with a second sigh that nearly blew her away,
+"how I should love to know actors and actresses and people who
+play poker!  It must make Life so intensely interesting!"
+
+Behind her badinage was she half in earnest?  Lawrence's eye
+ranged over the old pale walls of the vicarage, on which the
+climbing roses were already beginning to redden their leaves:
+over the lavender borders: over the dry pale turf underfoot and
+the silver and brown of the Plain, burnt by a hot summer.  The
+fruit that had been green in June was ripe now, and down the
+Painted-Lady apple-trees fell such a cascade of ruby and
+coral-coloured apples, from high sprig to heavy bole, that they
+looked like trees in a Kate Greenaway drawing.  But there was no
+other change.  Life at Chilmark flowed on uneventful from day to
+day.  He did not admonish Isabel to be content with it.  "Should
+you like to live in Chelsea?"
+
+Isabel shut her eyes.  "I should like fifteen thousand a year and
+a yacht.  Don't tell Jimmy, it would break his heart.  He says
+money is a curse. But he's not much of a judge, dear angel,
+because he's never had any.  What's your opinion--you're rich,
+aren't you?  Has it done you any harm?"
+
+"Oh, I am a fairly decent sort of fellow as men go."
+
+"But would you be a nobler character if you were poor?" Isabel
+asked, pillowing her round chin on her palm and examining
+Lawrence apparently in a spirit of scientific enquiry.  "Because
+that is Jimmy's theory, and merely to say that you're noble now
+doesn't meet the case.  Do you do good with your money?"
+
+"No fear! I encourage trade.  I've never touched second rate
+stuff in my life."
+
+"Oh, you are different!" Isabel exclaimed.  They had been using
+words for counters, to mean at once less and more than they said,
+but under his irony she penetrated to a hard material egoism, as
+swiftly as he had detected in her the eternal unrest of youth.
+"Val was right."
+
+"What saith the Gospel according to St. Val?"
+
+"That you were only a bird of passage."
+
+ Lawrence waited a moment before replying.  "Birds of passage
+have their mating seasons."  Once more Isabel, not knowing what
+to make of this remark, let it alone.  "But I should like to
+possess Val's good opinion.  What have I done to offend him?
+Can't you give me any tips?"
+
+"It isn't so much what you do as what you are. Val's very, very
+English."
+
+"But what am I?"
+
+"Foreign," said Isabel simply.
+
+"A Jew?  Yes, I knew I should have that prejudice to live down.
+But I'm not a hall-marked Israelite, am I? After all I'm half
+English by birth and wholly so by breeding." Isabel was betrayed
+into an involuntary and fleeting smile.  "Hallo! what's this?"
+
+"Oh, Captain Hyde--"
+
+"Go on."
+
+"No: it's the tiniest trifle, and besides I've no right."
+
+"Ask me anything you like, I give you the right."
+
+Isabel blushed.  "You must be descended from Jephthah!--  O! dear,
+I didn't mean that!"
+
+"Never mind," said Lawrence, unable to help laughing.  "My
+feelings are not sensitive.  But do finish--you fill me with
+curiosity.  What shibboleth do I fail in?"
+
+Faithful are the wounds of a friend.  "Englishmen don't wear
+jewellery," murmured Isabel apologetic.
+
+"Sac a papier!" said Lawrence.  "My rings?"
+
+ He stretched out his hand, a characteristic hand, strong and
+flexible, but soft from idleness and white from Gaston's daily
+attentions: a diamond richly set in a cluster of diamonds and
+emeralds sparkled on the second finger, and a royal turquoise
+from Iran, an immense stone the colour of the Mediterranean in
+April, on the third.  "Does Val object to them?  Certainly Val
+is very English.  My pocket editions of beauty!  That diamond was
+presented by one of the Rothschilds in gratitude for the help old
+Hyde-and-seek gave him in getting together his collection of
+early English watercolours: as for the other, it never ought to
+have left the Persian treasury, and there'd have been trouble in
+the royal house if my father had worn it at the Court.   Have you
+ever seen such a blue?  On a dull railway journey I can sit and
+watch those stones by the hour together.  But Val would rather
+read the Daily Mail"
+
+"Every one laughs at them: Jack and Lord Grantchester, and even
+Jimmy."
+
+"And you?" said Lawrence, taking off the rings:--not visibly
+nettled, but a trifle regretful.
+
+Isabel knit her brows.  "Can a thing be very beautiful and
+historic, and yet not in good taste?--  It can if it's out of
+harmony: that's what the Greeks never forgot.  Men ought not to
+look effeminate--  Oh! O Captain Hyde, don't!"
+
+Lawrence, standing up, had with one powerful smooth drive of the
+arm sent both rings skimming over the borders, under the apple
+trees, over the garden wall, to scatter and drop on the open
+moor. "And here comes Mrs. Clowes, so now I shall learn my fate.
+I thought Val would not leave us long together.--  Well, Val, what
+is it to be?  May the young lady come?"
+
+Isabel also sprang up, changing from woman to child as Lawrence
+changed from deference to patronage.  Their manner to each other
+when alone was always different from their manner before an
+audience.  But this change, deliberate in Lawrence, had hitherto
+been instinctive and almost unconscious in Isabel.  It was not so
+now, she fled to Val and to her younger self for refuge.  What a
+fanfaronade!  Why couldn't Captain Hyde have put the rings in his
+pocket?  But no, it must all be done with an air--and what an
+air!  Rings worth thousands--historic mementoes--stripped off
+and tossed away to please--!  And at that Isabel, enchanted and
+terrified, bundled the entire dialogue into the cellars of her
+mind and locked the doors on it.  Later,--later,--when one was
+alone!  "Oh, Val, say I may go!" she cried, clasping her hands on
+Val's arm, so cool and firm amid a spinning world.
+
+[Footnote]
+
+What actually happened later that afternoon was that Isabel, who
+had a practical mind, spent three-quarters of an hour on the moor
+hunting for the rings.  The turquoise she found, conspicuous on a
+patch of smooth turf: the other was never recovered.
+
+[End of Footnote]
+
+"You may," said Val laughing.  He disliked the scheme, but was
+incapable of refusing Laura Clowes: he gave her Isabel as he would
+have given her the last drops of his blood, if she had asked for them
+in that low voice of hers, and with those sweet eyes that never
+seemed to anticipate refusal.  There are women--not necessarily the
+most beautiful of their sex--to whom men find it hard to refuse
+anything.  And, consenting, it was not in Val to consent with an ill
+grace.  "Certainly you may, if Captain Hyde is kind enough to take
+you!"  Stafford's lips, finely cut and sensitive, betrayed the
+sarcastic sense of humour which he ruled out of his voice: perhaps
+the less said about kindness the better!  "But do look over her
+wardrobe first, Laura: I'm never sure whether Isabel is grown up or
+not, but she could hardly figure at Hadow's in her present easy-going
+kit--"
+
+He stopped, because Isabel was trying to waltz him round the
+lawn. In her reaction from a deeper excitement, she was as
+excited as a child.  She released Val soon and hugged Laura
+Clowes instead, while Lawrence, looking on with his wintry smile,
+wondered whether she would have extended the same civility to him
+if she had known how much he desired it. . . . There were moments
+when he hated Isabel.  Was she never going to grow up?
+
+Not at present, apparently.  "What must I wear, Laura?  Do people
+wear evening dress?  Where shall we sit?  What time shall we get
+back?  How are you going?  What time must I be ready?  Will you
+have dinner before you go or take sandwiches with you?"--how
+long the patter of questions would have run on it is hard to say,
+if the extreme naivete of the last one had not drowned them in
+universal laughter, and Isabel in crimson.
+
+Mrs. Jack Bendish rode up while they were talking, slipped from
+her saddle, and threw the reins to Val without apology, though
+she knew there was no one but Val to take the mare to the stable.
+Yvonne was the only member of the Castle household who presumed
+on Val's subordinate position.  She treated him like a superior
+servant.  When she heard what was in the wind her eyes were as
+green as a cat's.  "How kind of Captain Hyde!" she drawled, as
+Lawrence, irritated by her manner, went to help Val, while Isabel
+was called indoors by Fanny to listen to a tale of distress,
+unravel a grievance, and prescribe for anemia.  "Some one ought
+to warn the child."
+
+"Warn her of what?"
+
+"Has it never struck you that Isabel is a pretty girl and
+Lawrence a good looking man?"
+
+"But Isabel is too intelligent to have her head turned by the
+first handsome man she meets!"  Yvonne looked as though she found
+her sister rather hopeless.  "Dear, you really must be sensible!"
+Laura pleaded.  "It's not as if poor Lawrence had tried to flirt
+with her.  He never even thought of asking her for tonight till I
+suggested it!" This was the impression left on Laura's memory.
+"She isn't the sort of woman to attract him."
+
+"What sort of woman would attract him, I wonder?" said Mrs. Jack,
+blowing rings of smoke delicately down her thin nostrils.
+
+"Oh, when he marries it will be some one older than Isabel, more
+sophisticated, more a woman of the world. I like Lawrence
+immensely, but there is just that in him: he's one of the men who
+expect their wives to do them credit."
+
+"Some one more like me," suggested Yvonne. "Or you." Her face was
+a study in untroubled innocence.  Laura eyed her rather sharply.
+"But Lawrence isn't a marrying man.  He won't marry till some
+woman raises the price on him."
+
+"You speak as if between men and women life were always a duel."
+
+"So It is."  Laura made a small inarticulate sound of dissent.
+"Sex is a duel.  Don't you know"--an infinitesimal hesitation
+marked the conscious forcing of a barrier: cynically frank as she
+was on most points, Mrs. Bendish had always left her sister's
+married life alone:--"that--that's what's wrong with Bernard?  Oh!
+Laura!  Simpleton that you are. . .  I'm often frightfully sorry
+for Bernard.  It has thrown him clean off the rails.  One can't
+wonder that he's consumed with jealousy."
+
+In the stillness that followed Yvonne occupied herself with her
+cigarette.  Mrs. Clowes was formidable even to her sister in her
+delicately inaccessible dignity.
+
+"Had you any special motive in saying this to me now, Yvonne?"
+
+"This theatre business."
+
+"I don't contemplate running away with Lawrence, if that is what
+you mean."
+
+"Wish you would!" confessed Mrs. Bendish frankly.  "Then Bernard
+could divorce you and you could start fair again.  I'm fed up
+with Bernard.  I'm sorry for him, poor devil, but he never was
+much of a joy as a husband, and he's going from bad to worse.
+Think I'm blind?  Of course he's jealous.  High dresses and lace
+cuffs aren't the fashion now, Lal."
+
+Her sister slowly turned back the frill from her wrist and
+examined the scarlet stain of Bernard's finger-print.  "Does it
+show so plainly?  I hope other people haven't noticed.  Bernard
+doesn't remember how strong his hands still are."
+
+"Doesn't care, you mean."
+
+"Do you want me quite naked?" said Laura. "Well, doesn't care,
+then."
+
+Yvonne was not accustomed to the smart of pity.  She winced under
+it, and her tongue, an edge-tool of intelligence or passion, but
+not naturally prone to express tenderness, became more than ever
+articulate.  "Sorry!" she said with difficulty, and then, "Didn't
+want to rake all this up.  But I'm fond of you.  We've always
+been pals, you and I, Lulu."
+
+"Say whatever you like."
+
+"Then--" she sat up, throwing away her cigarette-"I'm going to
+warn you.  All Chilmark believes Lawrence is your lover."
+
+"And do you?"
+
+"No.  I know you wouldn't run an intrigue."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+"But Jack and I both think, if you don't want to cut and run with
+him, you ought to pack him off.  Mind, if you do want to, you can
+count me in, and Jack too.  I'm not religious: Jack is, but he's
+not narrow.  As for the social bother of it--marriage is a
+useful institution and all that, but it's perfectly obvious that
+one can get--over the rails and back again if one has money.
+There aren't twenty houses (worth going to) in London that would
+cut you if you turned up properly remarried to a rich man."
+
+"Are you . . . recommending this course?"
+
+"I'd like you to be happy."
+
+"And what about Bernard?"
+
+"Put in a couple of good trained nurses who wouldn't give him his
+head as you do, and he'd be a different man by the spring."
+
+"He certainly would," said Laura drily.  "He would be dead."
+
+"Not he.  He's far too strong to die of being made uncomfortable.
+As a matter of fact it would do him all the good in the world,"
+pursued Yvonne calmly.  "He cries out to be bullied.  What's so
+irritating in the present situation is that though you let him
+rack you to pieces you never give him what he wants!  You don't
+shine as a wife, my dear."
+
+"It will end in my sending Lawrence away," said Laura with a subdued
+sigh.  "I didn't want to because in many ways he has done Bernard so
+much good; no one else has ever had the same influence over him;
+besides, I liked having him at Wanhope for my own sake--he freshened
+us up and gave us different things to talk about, outside interests,
+new ideas.  And after all, so far as Bernard himself is concerned,
+one is as good as another.  He always has been jealous and always
+will be.   But if all Chilmark credits us with the rather ignominious
+feat of betraying him, Lawrence will have to go."
+
+"Lawrence may have something to say to that."
+
+"He's not in love with me." Yvonne's eyes widened in genuine
+scepticism.--"Oh dear, as if I shouldn't know!" Laura broke out
+petulantly.  Might not Yvonne have remembered that, in the days
+when they were living together in a French appartement, Laura's
+experience had been pretty nearly as wide as her own?  "He is
+not, I tell you! nor I with him.  But, if we were, I shouldn't
+desert Bernard. I do not believe in your two highly trained
+nurses. I don't think you much believe in them yourself.  They
+might break him in, because nurses are drilled to deal with
+tiresome and unmanageable patients, but it would be worse for
+him, not better.  He rebels fiercely enough now, but if I weren't
+there he would rebel still more fiercely, and all the rage and
+humiliation would have no outlet.  You want me to be happy?  We
+Selincourts are so quick to seize happiness!  Father did it . . .
+and Lucian does it:  dear Lulu!  We both love him, but it's
+difficult to be proud of him.  Yet he has good qualities, good
+abilities.  He's far cleverer than I am, and so are you," Laura's
+tone was diffident, "but oh, you are wrong in thinking so much of
+mere happiness.  There is an immense amount of pain in the world,
+and if one doesn't bear one's own share it falls on some one
+else.  My life with Bernard isn't--always easy," she found a
+momentary difficulty in controlling her voice, "but he's my
+husband and I shall stick to him.  The more so for being deeply
+conscious that a different woman might manage him better.  No I
+don't mind your saying it.  Oh, how often I've felt the truth of
+it!  But, such as I am, I'm all he has."
+
+"You're a thousand times too good for him.  Why are you so good?"
+
+"I'm not good and no more is Lulu."  Mrs. Bendish sighed,
+impressed perhaps by Laura's alien moralities, certainly by her
+determination.  "However, if you won't you won't, and in a way
+I'm glad, selfishly that is, because of Jack's people.  But in
+that case, dear girl, do get rid of Lawrence!  The situation
+strikes me as fraught with danger.  One of those situations where
+every one says something's sure to happen, and then they're all
+flabbergasted when it does."
+
+"Bernard is not a formidable enemy," said Mrs. Clowes drily.
+"But, yes, Lawrence must go.  I'll speak to him tomorrow."
+
+"Why not today?"
+
+"It would spoil our evening."
+
+"Give it up."
+
+"And disappoint Isabel?"
+
+"I don't like it."
+
+"Nor I. But I was forced into it, and I can't break my word to
+Lawrence and the child.  After all, there's no great odds between
+today and tomorrow.  What can happen in twenty-four hours?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+In after life, when Isabel was destined to look back on that day
+as the last day of her youth, she recalled no part of it more
+clearly than wandering up to her own room after an early tea to
+dress, and flinging herself down on her bed instead of dressing.
+She slept next to Val.  But while Val's room, sailor-like in
+its neatness, was bare as any garret and got no sun at all,
+Isabel's was comfortable in a shabby way and faced south and west
+over the garden: an autumn garden now, bathed in westering
+sunshine, fortified from the valley by a carved gold height of
+beech trees, open on every other side over sunburnt moorland pale
+and rough as a stubble-field in its autumn feathering of light
+brown grasses and seedling flowers aflicker in a west wind.
+Tonight however Isabel saw nothing of it, she lay as if asleep,
+her face hidden in her pillow: she, the most active person in the
+house, who was never tired like Val nor lazy like Rowsley!
+Conscience pricked her, but she was muffled so thick in happiness
+that she scarcely felt it: the fancies that floated into her mind
+frightened her, and yet they were too sweet to banish: and then
+after all were they wrong?
+
+Always on clear evenings the sun flung a great ray across her
+wall, turning the faded pale green paper into a liquid gold-green
+like sunlit water, evoking a dusty gleam from her mirror, and
+deepening the shadows in an old mezzo tint of Botticelli's Spring
+which was pinned up where she could gaze at it while she brushed
+her hair.  The room thus illumined was that of a young girl with
+little time to spare and less money, and an ungrown individual
+taste not yet critical enough to throw off early loyalties.
+There were no other pictures, except an engraving of "The Light
+of the World," given her by Val, who admired it.  There was a
+tall bookcase, the top shelves devoted to Sweet's "Anglo-Saxon
+Reader," Lanson's "Histoire de la litterature Francaise," and
+other textbooks that she was reading for her examination in
+October, the lower a ragged regiment of novels and verse--"The
+Three Musketeers," "Typhoon," "Many Inventions," Landor's
+"Hellenics," "with fondest love from Laura," "Une Vie" and "Fort
+comme la Mort" in yellow and initialled "Y.B." There were also a big
+table strewn with papers and books, and a chintz covered box-ottoman
+into which Isabel bundled all those rubbishing treasures that people
+who love their past can never make up their weak minds to throw away.
+She examined them all in the stream of gold sunlight as if she had
+never seen them before.  It was time to get up and arrange her hair
+and change into her lace petticoats. If she did not get up at once
+she would be late and they would lose their train.  And it seemed to
+her that she would die if they lost their train, that she never could
+survive such a disappointment: and yet she could not bring herself to
+get up and give over dreaming.
+
+And what dreams they were, oh! what would Val say to them?--And
+yet again after all were they so wicked?--They were incredibly
+naif and innocent, and so dim that within twenty-four hours
+Isabel was to look back on them as a woman looks back on her
+childhood.  She was not ignorant of the mysteries of birth and
+death.  She had lived all her life among the poor, and knew many
+things which are not included in school curricula, such as the
+gentle art of keeping children's hair clean, how to divide a
+four-roomed cottage between a man and wife and six children and a
+lodger, and what to say when shown "a beautiful corpse": but she
+had never had a lover of her own.  There were no marriageable men
+in Chilmark--there never are in an English village--and she was
+too young for Rowsley's brother officers, or they were too young
+for her.  She had dreamed of fairy princes (blases-men-of-the-world,
+mostly in the Guards or the diplomatic service), but it was never
+precisely Isabel Stafford whom they clasped to their hearts--no, it
+was LaSignora Isabella, the star of Covent Garden, or the Lady Isabel
+de Stafford, a Duke's daughter in disguise.  And Lawrence came to her
+in the mantle of these patrician ghosts.
+
+But--and at this point Isabel hid her face on her arm--he was no
+ghost: he knew what he wanted and he meant to have it: and it was a
+far cry from visionary Heroes to Lawrence Hyde in the flesh, son of a
+Jew, smelling of cigar-smoke, and taking hold of her with his large,
+fair, overmanicured hands.  A far cry even from Val or Jack Bendish:
+from the cool, mannered Englishman to the hot Oriental blood.  When
+people were engaged they often kissed each other . . . but when it
+came to imagining oneself . . . one's head against that thick
+tweed . . . no . . . it must be one of the things that are safe to do
+but dangerous to dream of doing.  Oh, never, never!--But she had been
+trained in sincerity: and was this cry sincere?  Her mind was chaos.
+
+And yet after all why dangerous?  Even Laura, Val's adored Laura,
+had been engaged twice before she married Major Clowes: as for
+Yvonne, Isabel felt sure she had been kissed many times, and not
+by Jack Bendish only.  Such things happen, then! in real life,
+not only in books.  As for the cigars and the valet . . . and
+Val's warnings . . . one can't have all one wants in this world!
+It contains no ideal heroes: what was it Yvonne had once said?
+"Every marriage is either a delusion or a compromise." And Isabel
+had shortcomings enough of her own: she was irritable, lazy,
+selfish: read novels when she ought to have been at her lessons:
+left household jobs undone in the certainty that Val, however
+tired he was, would do them for her: small sins, but then her
+temptations were small!  Take it by and large, she was probably
+no better than Captain Hyde except for want of opportunity.  And
+how he would laugh if he heard her say so!
+
+She liked him for laughing.  She had been brought up in an
+atmosphere of scruple.  Her father overworked his conscience,
+treating a question of taste as a moral issue, and drawing no
+line between great and small--like the man who gave a penny to a
+beggar and implored him not to spend it on debauchery.  Charity
+and a sense of fun saved Val, but if more lenient to others he
+was ruthlessly stern to himself.  Lawrence blew on Isabel like a
+breath of sea air.  In her reaction she liked his external
+characteristics, his manner to servants, his expensive clothes
+and boots, all the signs of money spent freely on himself.
+
+She even liked his politics.  Isabel had been brought up all her
+life to talk politics.  Mr. Stafford was a Christian Socialist, a
+creed which in her private opinion was nicely calculated to
+produce the maximum of human discomfort: and from a conversation
+between Hyde and Jack Bendish she had learnt that Hyde was all of
+her own view.  There was no nonsense about him--none of that
+sweet blind altruism which, as Isabel saw it, only made the
+altruist and his family so bitterly uncomfortable without doing
+any good to the poor. The poor?  She knew intuitively that
+servants and porters and waiters would far rather serve Hyde than
+her father.  Mr. Stafford longed to uplift the working classes,
+but Isabel had never got herself thoroughly convinced that they
+stood in need of uplifting.  Her practical common sense rose in
+arms against Movements that tried to get them to go to picture
+galleries instead of picture palaces. Why shouldn't they do as
+they liked?   Does one reform one's friends?  Captain Hyde would
+live and let live.
+
+And he was rich.  Few girls as cramped as Isabel could have
+remained blind to that wide horizon, and she made no pretence of
+doing so: she was honest with herself and owned that she had
+always longed to be rich.  No one could call her discontented!
+her happy sunny temper took life as it came and enjoyed every
+minute of it, but her tastes were not really simple, though Val
+thought they were.  She had long felt a clear though perfectly
+good-humoured and philosophic impatience of her narrow scope.
+Hyde could give her all and more than all she had ever desired--
+foreign countries and fine clothes, books and paintings, and
+power apparently and the admiration of men . . . Isabel Hyde
+. . . Mrs. Lawrence Hyde . . . .smiling she tried his name under
+her breath . . .and suddenly she found herself standing before
+the mirror, examining her face in its dusky shallows and asking
+of it the question that has perplexed many a young girl as
+beautiful as she--"Am I pretty?" She pulled the pins out of her
+hair and ran a comb through it till it fell this way and that
+like an Indian veil, darkly burnished and sunset-shot with
+threads of bronze.  "Lawrence has never seen it loose," she
+reflected: "surely I am rather pretty?" and then "Oh, oh, I shall
+be late!" and Isabel's dreams were drenched and scattered under
+the shock of cold water.
+
+Dreamlike the run through the warm September landscape: dreamlike
+the slip of country platform, where, while Lawrence took their
+tickets, she and Laura walked up and down and fingered the tall
+hollyhocks flowering upward in quilled rosettes of lemon-yellow
+and coral red, like paper lanterns lit by a fairy lamplighter on
+a spiral stair: and most dreamlike of all the discovery that the
+Exeter express had been flagged for them and that she was
+expected to precede Laura into a reserved first class carriage.
+It was not more than once or twice in a year that Isabel went by
+train, and she had never travelled but third class in her life.
+How smoothly life runs for those who have great possessions!  How
+polite the railway staff were!  The station master himself held
+open the door for the Wanhope party.  Now she knew Mr. Chivers
+very well, but in all previous intercourse one finger to his cap
+had been enough for young Miss Isabel.  Certainly it was
+agreeable, this hothouse atmosphere.  "Shall you feel cold?"
+Lawrence asked, and Isabel, murmuring "No, thank you," blushed in
+response to the touch of formality in his manner.  She felt what
+women often feel in the early stages of a love affair, that he
+had been nearer to her when he was not there, than now when they
+were together in the presence of a third person.  She had grown
+shy and strange before this careless composed man lounging
+opposite her with his light overcoat thrown open and his crush
+hat on his knees, conventionally polite, his long legs stretched
+out sideways to give her and Laura plenty of room.
+
+And Lawrence on the journey neither spoke to her nor watched her,
+though Isabel shone in borrowed plumes.  There had been no time
+to buy clothes, and so Val, though grudgingly, had allowed Laura
+and Yvonne to ransack their shelves and presses for Cinderella's
+adornment.  But one glance had painted her portrait for him, tall
+and slender in a long sealskin coat of Yvonne's which was rulled
+and collared and flounced with fur, her glossy hair parted on one
+side and drawn back into what she called a soup-plate of plaits.
+Once only he directly addressed her, when Laura loosened her own
+sables.  "Do undo your coat, won't you?  It's hot tonight for
+September."
+
+"I'm not hot, thank you," said Isabel stiffly: but slowly, as if
+against her will, she opened the collar of her coat and pushed it
+back from her young neck and the crossed folds of her lace gown.
+The gown was very old, it had indeed belonged to Laura Selincourt: it
+was because Laura loved its soft, graceful, dateless lines that it
+had survived so long. She had seized on it with her unerring tact:
+this was right for Isabel, this dim transparency of rosepoint
+modelling itself over the immature slenderness of nineteen: and she
+and her maid Catherine and Mrs. Bendish had spent patient hours
+trying it on and modifying it to suit the fashion of the day.  Laura
+had refused to impose upon Isabel either her own modish elegance or
+Yvonne's effect of the arresting and bizarre.  "Isn't she almost too
+slight for it?"  Yvonne had asked, and Laura for all answer had
+hummed a little French song--
+
+          'Mignonne allons voir si la rose
+           Qui ce matin avoit desclose
+           Sa robe de pourpre au soleil
+           A point perdu ceste vespree
+           I as plis de sa robe pourpree
+           Et son teint au votre pareil . . .'
+
+She discerned in Isabel that quality of beauty, noble, spirited,
+and yet wistful, which requires a most expensive setting of
+simplicity.  And that was why Isabel opened her coat.  If Captain
+Hyde had admired her in her Chilmark muslin, what would he think
+of flounce and fold of rose-point of Alencon under Yvonne's
+perfumed furs?  And then she blushed again because the yearning
+in his eyes made her wonder if he cared after all whether she
+wore lace or cotton.  Everything was so strange!
+
+Strangest of all it was, to the brink of unreality, that Laura
+evidently remained blind.  But Laura was always blind.  "Why, she
+never even sees Val!" reflected Isabel scornfully.  And yet--
+suppose Isabel were deceiving herself?  What if Captain Hyde were
+not in earnest?  But her older self comforted her child's self:
+careless was he, and composed?  "You were not always so composed,
+Lawrence," in her own mind the elder Isabel mocked him with her
+sparkling eyes.
+
+Waterloo, lamplit and resonant: the pulsing of many lamps, the
+hurry of many steps, the flitting by of many faces under an arch
+of gloom: dark quiet and the scent of violets in a waiting car.
+
+"What a jolly taxi!" Isabel exclaimed.  "I never was in a taxi
+like this before.  Is it a more expensive kind?"
+
+"My dear Lawrence, you certainly have the art of making your life
+run on wheels!" said Laura smiling.  "How many telegrams have you
+sent today?"
+
+"If you do a thing at all you may as well do it in decent
+comfort," Lawrence replied sententiously. "Half past seven;
+that'll give us easy time!  I booked a table at Malvani's, I
+thought you would prefer it to one of the big crowded shows."
+
+"Are we going to have supper--dinner I mean--at a restaurant?"
+asked Isabel awestruck.
+
+Laurance smiled at her with irrepressible tenderness.  "Did you
+think you weren't going to get anything to eat at all?" He
+forbore to remind her of her unfortunate allusion to sandwiches--
+for which Isabel was grateful to him.  "Aren't you hungry?"
+
+"Oh yes: but then I often am.  Is Malvani's a very quiet place?"
+
+Lawrence looked at Laura with a comical expression.  "What an ass
+I was!  Wouldn't the Ritz have been more to the point?"
+
+"Never mind, sweetheart," said Laura.  "Malvani's isn't dowdily
+quiet.  It's the smartest of the smart, and there are always a
+lot of distinguished people in it.  Dear me, how long it is since
+I've dined in town!  Really it's great fun, I feel as if I had
+come out of a tomb--" she checked herself: but she might have
+been as indiscreet as she liked, for her companions were not
+listening.  Laura was faintly, very faintly startled by their
+attitude--Hyde leaning forward in the half-light of the brougham
+to button Isabel's glove--but she was soon smiling at her own
+fancy. "Poor Isabel, poor simple Isabel!" She was only a child
+after all.
+
+A child, but a very gay and winning child, when she came into
+Malvani's with her long swaying step, direct glance, and joyous
+mouth.  A spirit of excitement sparkled in Isabel tonight, and
+every movement was a separate and conscious pleasure to her: the
+physical sensation of walking delicately, the ripple of her skirt
+over her ankles, the poise of her shoulders under their
+transparent veil. . . . Laura saw a dozen men turn to look after
+the Wanhope party, and took no credit for it, though not long ago
+she had been accustomed to be watched when she moved through a
+public room.  But now she was better pleased to see Isabel
+admired than to be admired herself.
+
+As they neared their reserved table a man who had been sitting at
+it rose with an amused smile. "Have you forgotten who I am,
+Laura?"
+
+"One might as well be even numbers," Lawrence explained.  "So, as
+I knew Selincourt was in town, I wired to him to join us."
+
+A worn, fatigued-looking, but not ungentle rake of forty,
+Selincourt had stayed once at Wanhope, but the visit had not been
+a success: indeed Laura had been thankful when it ended before
+host and guest threw the decanters at each other's heads. That
+she was pleased to see him now there could be no doubt: she had
+taken him by both hands and was smiling at him as if she would
+have liked to fling decorum to the winds and kiss him.  Lawrence
+also smiled but with a touch of finesse.  His plan was working.
+Laura was going to enjoy herself: bon! he was truly fond of Laura
+and delighted to give her pleasure.  But by it he would be left
+free to devote himself to Isabel.
+
+It was to this end that he had planned the entire expedition.  At
+Chilmark they met continually in the same setting, and he had no
+means of printing a fresh image of himself on her mind, but here
+he was free of country customs, a rich man among his equals, an
+expert in the art of "doing oneself well"--one of those who rule
+over modern civilization by divine right of a chequebook and a
+trained manner.  Isabel had been brought up by High Churchmen,
+had she?  Let them test what hold they had of her!  Every aspect
+of their journey and of the supper-table at Malvani's, with its
+heady music and smell of rich food and wines, had been calculated
+to produce a certain effect--an intoxication of excitement and
+pleasure.  And he set himself to stamp his own impression on
+Isabel, naming to her, in his soft, isolating undertones, the
+notable men and women in the room, describing their careers,
+their finances, even their scandals--it amused him to watch her
+repress a start.  It amused him still more to stand up and shake
+hands when the immense body and Hebraic nose of an international
+financier went by with two great ladies and a cabinet minister in
+tow.  "One of my countrymen," Hyde turned to Isabel with a
+mocking smile. "I am a citizen of no mean city.  Those--" with an
+imperceptible jerk of the head--"would lick the dust off his
+boots to find out what line the Jew bankers mean to take in the
+Syrian question.  They might as well lick mine."
+
+"Why, do you know?" breathed Isabel.
+
+"Verily, O Gentile maiden." Lawrence grinned at her over his
+champagne.  "I lunched Raphael last time I was in town and he
+told me all about it. But I shouldn't tell them.  It isn't good
+for Gentiles to know too much about Weltpotitik. That's our
+show." He leant back in his chair and his hot eyes challenged her
+to call him a dirty Jew.
+
+Selincourt caught his last remark and looked him up and down with
+a twinkling glance.  He no longer wondered why Lawrence had spent
+his summer in the tents of Kedar--so differently do brothers
+look on their own and other men's sisters.  But he knew men and
+things pretty well, and at a moment when Laura was speaking to
+Isabel he looked straight at Lawrence and touched his glass with
+a murmured, "Go slow, old man." The elder man had seen instantly
+what neither Mrs. Clowes nor Isabel had any notion of, that under
+his easy manner Hyde's nerves were all on edge.  Lawrence started
+and stared at him, half offended: but after a moment his good
+sense extorted a grudging "Thanks." It warned him to be grateful
+for the hint, and he took it: a second glass of champagne that
+night would infallibly have gone to his head.
+
+A darkened theatre, fantastically decorated in scarlet and
+silver: a French orchestra already playing a delicate prelude: a
+lively audience--a typical "Moor" audience--agreeably ready to
+be piqued and scandalized as well as amused.
+
+All the plays Isabel had ever seen were Salisbury matinees of
+"As You Like It" and "Julius Caesar." It was not by chance that
+Hyde introduced her tonight to this filigree comedy, so cynical
+under its glittering dialogue.  He could find no swifter way to
+present to her le monde ou l'on s'amuse in all its refined and
+defiant charm.  He liked to watch her laugh, he laughed himself
+and gave a languid clap or two when Madeleine Wild made one of
+her famous entries, but his main interest was in his plan of
+campaign.
+
+Yet chance can never he counted out.  When the lights went up
+after the first act Lawrence found himself looking directly
+across the rather small and narrow proscenium at a lady in the
+opposite box.  Who the devil was it?--The devil, with a
+vengeance!  It was Mrs. Cleve.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+Conscious to his fingertips that Selincourt was watching him with
+an amused smile, Lawrence returned Mrs. Cleve's nod with less
+than his usual ease.  Her eye ranged on from Selincourt, to whom
+she waved a butterfly salute, over the rather faded elegance of
+Laura Clowes and the extremely youthful charms of Isabel:
+apparently she did not admire Lawrence's ladies: she spoke to her
+cavalier, an elderly, foreign-looking man with a copper complexion
+and curly dark hair, and they laughed together.  What ensued between
+them was not difficult to follow.  She made him a request, he rolled
+plaintive eyeballs at her, the lady carried her point, the gentleman
+left the box.  Then--one saw it coming--she leaned forward till the
+diamonds in her plenitude of fair hair sparkled like a crown of
+flame, and beckoned Lawrence to join her.
+
+He cursed her impertinence.  Apart from leaving Isabel, he did
+not want to talk to Mrs. Cleve: he had forgotten her existence,
+and it was a shock to him to meet her again.  Good heavens, had
+he ever admired her?  That white blanc-mange of a woman in her
+ruby-red French gown, cut open lower than one of Yvonne's without
+the saying of Yvonne's wiry slimness?  Remembering the summerhouse at
+Bingley Lawrence blushed with shame, not for his morals but for his
+taste:  he was thankful to have gone no further and wondered why he
+had gone so far.--He had not yet realized that during three months
+among women of a different stamp his taste had imperceptibly modified
+itself from day to day.
+
+But she had been his hostess.  Impossible to refuse: and with a
+vexed word of apology to Laura he went out.  "Dear me, what an
+opulent lady!" said Laura with lifted eyebrows.  "Who's your
+friend, Lulu?"
+
+Lucian drily named her.  "Queen's Gate, and Sundays at the
+Metropole.  They're shipping people, which is where the diamond
+ta-ra-ras come from.  Oh yes, there's a husband, quite a nice
+fellow, crocked in the Flying Corps. No, I don't know who the
+chap is she's got with her.  Some dusky brother.  Not Cleve." He
+fell silent as Lawrence appeared in the opposite box.
+
+It was an odd scene to watch in dumbshow.  Mrs. Cleve shook
+hands, and Lawrence was held for more than the conventional
+moment. He remained standing till she pointed to her cavalier's
+empty chair: then dropped into it, but sat forward leaning his
+aim along the balcony, while she, drawn back behind her curtain,
+was almost drowned in shadow except for an occasional flash of
+diamonds, or an opaque gleam of white and dimpled neck.  An
+interlude entirely decorous, and yet, so crude was the force of
+Philippa's personality, one would have had to be very young, or
+very innocent, to overlook her drift.
+
+"Well, my darling," said Laura, "and what do you think of
+Madeleine Wild?" She did not wish Isabel to watch Mrs. Cleve.
+"Is she as nice as your Salisbury Rosalind?"
+
+"Angelical!" said Isabel.  "And isn't it luck for me, Royalty
+coming tonight?  I've never seen any one Royal before.  It's one
+of those evenings when nothing goes wrong."
+
+Was not Isabel a trifle too guileless for this wicked world?  She
+prattled on, Selincourt and Laura lending an indulgent ear,
+Selincourt, like any other man of his type, touched by her
+innocence, Laura faintly irritated: and meanwhile Isabel through
+her black lashes watched, not the Duchess of Cumberland's rubies,
+but those two in the opposite box.  Between it and her stretched
+a beautiful woodland drop-scene, the glitter of the stalls, and
+the murmur of violins humming through the rising flames of the
+Feuerzauber . . . presently the Fire Charm eddied away and the
+lights went down, yet still Lawrence sat on though the interval
+was over.  Across the semi-dark of a "Courtyard by Moonlight" it
+was hard to distinguish anything but the silhouette of his hand
+and arm, and Mrs. Cleve's fair hair and immense jewelled fan.
+What were they saying to each other in this public isolation
+where anything might be said so long as decorum was preserved?
+
+Selincourt gave a little laugh as the curtain rose. "An old
+flame," he whispered to Laura, not dreaming that Isabel would
+understand even if she heard.
+
+"What's an old flame?" asked Isabel, examining him with her
+brilliant eyes.
+
+"Feuerzauber," said Selincourt readily.  "It means fire spell.
+It's often played between the acts."
+
+"Lucian, Lucian!" said his sister laughing.
+
+"I don't know much about music," said Isabel. "Was it well
+played?"
+
+"Ah! I know a lot about music," said Selincourt, looking at her
+very kindly.  "No, it was rottenly played.  But some fellers
+can't tell a good tune from a bad one."
+
+Lawrence did not return till the middle of the third act, and
+offered no apology.  He looked fierce and jaded and his eyes were
+strained.  "Past eleven," he said, hurrying Laura into her coat
+while the orchestra played through the National Anthem, for which
+Selincourt stood stiffly to attention.  "No time for supper, our
+train goes at 11:59, I hate first nights, the waits between the
+acts are so infernally long." Laura's eyebrows, faintly arched,
+hinted at derision.  "Oh, it dragged," said Lawrence impatiently.
+"Let's get out of this."
+
+It was a clear autumn night: the air was mild, and stars were
+burning overhead almost as brightly as the lamps in Shaftesbury
+Avenue.  What a chase of lamps, high and low, like fireflies in a
+wood: green as grass, red as blood, or yellow as a naked flame!
+What a sombre city, and what a fleeting crowd!  Isabel had never
+seen midnight London before.  Coming out into the hurrying street
+roofed with stars, she was seized by an impression of a solitude
+lonelier than any desert, and dark, like the terror of an eerie
+sunset or a dry storm on the moor.
+
+"These taxis are waiting for us," Lawrence had come up behind her
+and his hand was on her arm. "Will you bring your sister,
+Selincourt?--  Miss Isabel, will you come with me?"
+
+"Oh but--!" said Laura, startled. She was responsible to Val for
+Isabel, and she was not sure that either Val or Isabel would
+welcome this arrangement.
+
+"Thank you," said Isabel, obediently getting into the second cab.
+
+"Better come, dear," said Selincourt with a shrug, and Laura
+yielded, for it would have been tiresome to make Isabel get out
+again, and after all what signified a twenty minutes' run?  Yet
+after the Cleve incident she did not quite like it.  Nor did
+Selincourt; Hyde's overbearing manner set his teeth on edge; but
+the gentle Lucian would sooner have faced a loaded rifle than a
+dispute.   He agreed with Laura, however, that her fair Arcadian
+was a trifle too innocent for her years.
+
+Alone with Isabel, Lawrence took off his hat and ran his fingers
+through his thick fair hair, so thick that it might have been
+grey, while the deep lines round his mouth began to soften as
+though fatigue and irritation were being wiped away.  "Thank
+heaven that's over."
+
+"I've enjoyed every minute of it," said Isabel smiling.  "Thank
+you, Captain Hyde, for giving me such a delightful treat!  If I
+weren't sleepy I should like to begin again."
+
+"Oh, don't get sleepy yet," said Lawrence.  He pulled up the fur
+collar of her coat and buttoned it under her chin.  "I can't have
+you catching cold, or what will Val say?  You aren't used to
+driving about in evening dress and we've a long run before us.
+And how I have been longing for it all the evening, haven't you?
+I didn't know how to sit through that confounded play.  Yes, you
+can take in Selincourt and Laura but you can't take me in. I know
+you must have hated it as much as I did. But it's all right now."
+Sitting sideways with one knee crossed over the other, his face
+turned towards Isabel, without warning he put his arm round her
+waist.  He had determined not to ask her to marry him till he was
+sure of her answer, but he was sure of it now, intuitively sure
+of it . . . the truth being that under his impassive manner
+impulse was driving him along like a leaf in the wind.  "I love
+you, Isabel, and you love me.  Don't deny it."
+
+"Don't do that," said Isabel: "don't hold me."
+
+"Why not? no one can see us."
+
+"Take your arm away.  I won't have you hold me. No, Captain Hyde,
+I will not.  I am not Mrs. Cleve."
+
+"Isabel!" said Lawrence, turning grey under his bronze.
+
+"O! I oughtn't to have said that," Isabel murmured.  She hid her
+face in her hands.  "Oh Val--  I wish Val were here!"
+
+"My darling," they were among the dark streets now that border
+the river, and he leant forward making no effort to conceal his
+tenderness, "what is there you can't say to me or I to you?
+You're so strange, my Isabel, a child one minute and a woman the
+next, I never know where to have you, but I love the woman more
+than the child, and there's nothing on earth you need be ashamed
+to ask me.  Naturally you want to be sure. . . . But there was
+nothing in it except that I hated leaving you, there never has
+been; I can't discuss it, but there's no tie, no--do you
+understand?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then, dearest darling of the world, what are you crying for?"
+
+"I'm not crying." She tried to face him, but he was too old for
+her, and mingling in his love she discerned indulgence, the
+seasoned judgment and the fixed view.  Struggling in imperfect
+apprehensions of life, she was not yet master of her forces--
+they came near to mastering her.  In his eyes it was natural for
+her to be jealous.  But she was not jealous.  That passion can
+hardly coexist with such sincere and cool contempt as she had
+felt for Mrs. Cleve.  What had pierced her heart and killed her
+childhood in her was terror lest Lawrence should turn out to have
+lowered himself to the same level.  She knew now that she loved
+him, and too much to care whether he was Saxon or Jew or rich or
+poor, but he must--he must be what in her child's vocabulary she
+called "good," or if not that he must at least see good and bad
+with clear eyes: sins one can pardon, but the idea of any
+essential inferiority of taste was torture to her.  And meanwhile
+Lawrence wide of the mark began to coax her. . "My own," his arm
+stole inside her coat again, "there's nothing to get so red
+about! Come, you do like me--confess now--you like me better
+than Val?"
+
+"No, no," Isabel murmured, and slowly, though she had not
+strength to free herself, she turned her head away.  "If you kiss
+me now I never shall forgive you."
+
+"I won't, but why are you so shy?  My Isabel, what is there to be
+afraid of?"
+
+"You," Isabel sighed out.  He was gratified, and betrayed it.  "No,
+Lawrence, you misunderstand. I am not--not shy of you . . ."  Under
+his mocking eyes she gave it up and tried again.  "Well, I am, but
+if that were all I shouldn't refuse . . . I should like you to be
+happy.  Oh! yes, I love you, and I'd so far rather not fight, I'd
+rather--" she waited a moment like a swimmer on the sand's edge, but
+his deep need of her carried her away and with a little sigh she
+flung herself into the open sea--"let you kiss me, because I don't
+want anything so much as to make you happy, and I believe you would
+be, and besides I--I should like it myself.  But I must know more.
+I must know the truth.  She--Mrs. Cleve--"
+
+"I've already given you my word: do you think I would lie to
+you?"
+
+"No, I don't; they say men do, but I'm sure you wouldn't.  I
+don't believe you ever would deceive me. But there have been
+other women, haven't there, since your wife left you?" Lawrence
+assented briefly.  At that moment he would have liked to see Mrs.
+Cleve hanged and drawn and quartered.  "Other women who were--
+who--with whom--"
+
+"Must you distress yourself like this?  Wouldn't it do if I
+promised to lay my record before Val, and let him be judge?"
+
+"Would you do that?"
+
+"If you wish it."
+
+"Wouldn't you hate it?"
+
+Lawrence smiled.
+
+"And I should hate it for you,", said Isabel. "No: no one can
+judge you for me and no one shall try.  I know you better than
+Val ever would. No, if you're to be humiliated it shall be before
+me and me only."  She brought the colour into his face.  "There
+have been others, Lawrence?"
+
+"My dear, I've lived the life of other men."
+
+"Do all men live so?"
+
+"Pretty well all."
+
+"Does Val?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.  "His facilities are limited!"
+
+"He did once--might again?"
+
+"Couldn't we confine the issue to ourselves?"
+
+"Are you afraid of my misjudging Val? I never should: my dearest
+darling Val is a fixed standard for me, and nothing could alter
+the way I think of him."
+
+"Don't challenge luck," Lawrence muttered.
+
+"I'm not, it's true.  I'm surer of Val than I am of myself, or
+you, or the sun's rising tomorrow.  All I want is to cheek you by
+him."
+
+"Val is genuinely religious and a bit of an ascetic.  I have no
+doubt that his life is now and will continue to be spotless.  But
+that it was always so is most unlikely.  Army subalterns during
+the war were given no end of a good time.  And quite right too,
+it was the least that could be done for us: and the most, in nine
+cases out of ten: personally I had no use for munition workers in
+mud-coloured overalls, but I still remember with gratitude the
+nymphs who decorated my week end leaves."
+
+Isabel shivered: the hand that he was holding had grown icy cold.
+
+"There, you see!" said Hyde with his saddened cynicism.  "You
+will have it all out but you can't stand it when it comes.  You
+had better have left it to Val: not but what I'd rather talk to
+you, but I hate to distress you, and you're not old enough yet,
+my darling, to see these trivial things--yes, trivial to nine-tenths
+of the world: it's only the clergy, and unmarried women, and a small
+number of hyper-sensitives like Val, who attach an importance to them
+that they don't deserve.  But you're too young to see them in
+perspective.  Try to do it for my sake.  Try to see me as I am."
+
+"Well, show me then."
+
+But what he showed her was not himself but the aspect of himself
+that he wished her to see--a very different matter.  "I'm too
+old for you.  I'm the son of a Jew, and a Houndsditch Jew at
+that.  But I'm rich--what's called rich in my set--and when I
+marry I shan't keep my wife dependent on me.  Ah! don't
+misunderstand me--yours is a rich manysided nature, and you're
+too intelligent to underrate the value of money.  It means a wide
+life and lots of interests, books, pictures, music, travel,
+mixing with the men and women best worth knowing.  You're
+ambitious, my dear, and as my wife you can build yourself up any
+social position you like.  Farringay's not as big as Wharton, but
+on my soul it's more perfect in its way.  I've never seen such
+panelling in my life, and the gardens are admittedly the most
+beautiful in Dorsetshire.  There are Sevres services more
+precious than gold plate, and if you come to that there's gold
+plate into the bargain.  Can't I see you there as chatelaine,
+entertaining the county!  You'll wear the sapphires my mother
+wore; the old man couldn't have been more happily inspired,
+they're the very colour of your eyes.  And there'll be no price
+to pay, for since I'm a Jew and a cosmopolitan, and not a country
+squire, you'll keep your personal freedom inviolate.  You'll give
+what you will, when you will, as you will.  Any other terms are
+to my mind unthinkable--a brutalizing of what ought to be the
+most delicate of things.  Heavens, how I hate a middleclass
+English marriage!  Ah! but I'm not so accommodating as I sound,
+for you won't be a grudging giver; you're not an ascetic like
+Val, there's passion in you though you've been trained to repress
+it, you'll soon learn what love means as we understand it in the
+sunny countries. . . . Isabel, my Isabel, when we get away from
+these grey English skies you won't refuse to let me kiss
+you. . ."
+
+Isabel had ceased to listen.  Without her own will a scene had sprung
+up before her eyes: an imaginary scene, like one of those romantic
+adventures that she had invented a thousand times before--but this
+was not romantic nor was she precisely the heroine. A foreign hotel
+with long corridors and many rooms: a door thoughtlessly left ajar:
+and through it a glimpse of Lawrence--her husband--holding another
+woman in his arms.  It was lifelike, she could have counted the buds
+embroidered on the girl's blouse, their rose-pink reflected in the
+hot flush on Hyde's cheek and the glow in his eyes as he stooped over
+her.  And then the imaginary Isabel with a pain at her heart like the
+stab of a knife, and a smile of inexpressible self-contempt on her
+lips, noiselessly closed the door so that no one else might see what
+she had seen, and left him. . . . It would all happen one day, if not
+that way, some other way; and he would come to her by and by without
+explanation--she was convinced that he would not lie to her--smiling,
+the hot glow still on his face, a subdued air of well-being diffused
+over him from head to foot--and then?  The vision faded; her
+clairvoyance, which had already carried her far beyond her
+experience, broke down in sheer anguish.  But reason took it up and
+told her that she would speak to him, and that he would apologize and
+she would forgive him--and that it would all happen again the next
+time temptation met him in a weak hour.
+
+Faithful? it was not in him to be faithful: with so much that was
+generous and gallant, there was this vice of taste in him which
+had offended her that first morning on the moor and again at
+night in Laura's garden, and which now led him to make love to
+her when she was under his protection and while the scent of Mrs.
+Cleve's flowers still clung to his coat.  And what love! if he
+had simply spoken to her out of his need of her, one would not
+have known how to resist, but it was he who was to be the giver,
+and what he offered was the measure of what he desired--a lesson
+in passion and a liberal allowance. . . .
+
+"O no, no, no, I can't!" Isabel cried out, turning from him.
+"Yes, I love you, but I don't trust you, and I won't marry you.
+I'm too much afraid."
+
+"Afraid of me?"
+
+"Afraid of the pain."
+
+"What pain?"
+
+"And the--wickedness of it." Lawrence, frozen with astonishment--he
+had foreseen resistance,  but not of this quality--let fall her hand.
+"Yes, we'll part now.  We can part now.  I love you, but not too much
+to get over it in a year or so; and you?  you'll forget sooner,
+because I'm not worth remembering."
+
+"Forget you?"
+
+"Oh! yes, it's not as if you really cared for me; you wouldn't
+talk to me of money if you did.  But I suppose you've known so
+many. . . . Val warned me long ago that you had not a good name
+with women."
+
+"Val said that?  Val!"
+
+"And now you're angry with Val; I repeat what I oughtn't to
+repeat, and make mischief.  Lawrence, this isn't Val's doing; it
+isn't even Mrs. Cleve's: it's my own cowardice.  I daren't marry
+you."
+
+"But why not?"
+
+"You're not trying to be good."
+
+"The language of the nursery defeats me, Isabel."
+
+She flushed.  "That means I've hurt you."
+
+"Naturally."
+
+"I can't help it." That was truer than he realized, for she could
+hardly help crying. She could not soften her refusal, because she
+was so shaken and exhausted by the strain of it that she dared
+not venture on more than one sentence at a time.
+
+"I'm very sorry."
+
+"But as my wife you could be as 'good' as you liked?"
+
+"You would not leave me strength for it."
+
+"I should corrupt you?"
+
+"Yes, I think you would deliberately tempt me. . . . I think you
+have tonight."
+
+"Do you care for no one but yourself?" he flung at her in his
+vertigo of humiliation and anger.
+
+"No: I care for God."
+
+"For God!" Lawrence repeated stupidly: "what has that to do with
+your marrying me?"
+
+He heard his own betise as it left his lips, and felt the
+immeasurable depth of it, but he had not time to retract before
+every personal consideration was wiped from his mind by a cry
+from Isabel in a very different accent--"Lawrence! oh! look at
+the time!"
+
+She pointed to the dial of an illuminated clock, hanging high in
+the soft September night.  It was eight minutes to twelve.  "What
+time did you say our train went?"
+
+They were in Whitehall.  Lawrence caught up the speaking tube.
+"Waterloo main entrance--and drive like the devil, please, we're
+late."
+
+"I thought we had plenty of time?"
+
+"So we had: so much so that I told the man to drive round and
+round for a bit."
+
+"And have we still time?"
+
+"No."
+
+"We shan't lose the train?"
+
+"Unless it's delayed in starting, which isn't likely."
+
+"Will the others go on and leave us?"
+
+"Hardly!"
+
+"You don't mean that Laura won't get home till tomorrow?  Oh!"
+
+"No.  But don't look so frightened, no one will blame you--the
+responsibility is mine entirely."
+
+Isabel's lip curled.  It was for Laura that she felt afraid and
+not for herself, and surely he might have guessed as much as
+that!  "Did you do it on purpose?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I beg your pardon.  That was stupid of me."
+
+"Very," said Lawrence with his keen sarcastic smile.
+
+At Waterloo he sprang out, tossed a sovereign to the driver, and
+made Isabel catch up her skirts and run like a deer.  But before
+they reached the platform it was after twelve and the rails
+beyond were empty.  Selincourt and Laura were waiting by the
+barrier, Selincourt red with impatience, Laura very pale.
+
+"Are you aware you've lost the last train down?" said the elder
+man with ill-concealed anger, as Lawrence, shortening his step,
+strolled up in apparent tranquillity with Isabel on his arm.
+"What on earth has become of you?  We've been waiting here for
+half an hour!"
+
+"We were held up in the traffic," said Lawrence deliberately.
+Isabel turned scarlet.  The truth would have been insupportable,
+but so was the lie.  "Although it was no fault of mine, Laura,
+I'm more sorry than I can say.  Will you let me telephone for my
+own car and motor you down? I could get you to Chilmark in the
+small hours--long before the first morning train."
+
+Laura hesitated: but Selincourt's brow was dark. The streets that
+night had not been unusually crowded, ample time had been allowed
+to cover any ordinary delay, and Isabel was cruelly confused. In
+his simple code Hyde had committed at least one if not two
+unpardonable sins--he had neglected one of the ladies in his
+care if he had not affronted the other.
+
+"That wouldn't do at all," he said with decision. "You've been
+either careless or unlucky once, Lawrence.  It might happen
+again."
+
+It was a direct challenge, and cost him an effort, but it was not
+resented.  "It would not.  From my soul I regret this contretemps,
+Lucian.  Do you settle what's to be done: you're Laura's brother, I
+put myself unreservedly in your hands."
+
+"My dear fellow!" the gentle Lucian was instantly disarmed.
+"After all we needn't make a mountain out of a molehill--they'll
+know we're all right, four of us together!"
+
+"At all events it can't be helped," said Mrs. Clowes, smiling at
+Lawrence with her kind trustful eyes, "so don't distress
+yourself.  My sweet Isabel too, so tired!" she took Isabel's cold
+hand. "Never mind, Val won't let your father worry, and we shall
+be home by ten or eleven in the morning. It is only to go to an
+hotel for a few hours.  Come, dear Lawrence, don't look so
+subdued! It wasn't your fault, so you mustn't trouble even if--"
+
+"Even if what?"
+
+"Even if Bernard locks the door in my face," she finished
+laughing.  "He'll be fearfully cross! but I dare say Val will go
+down and smooth his ruffled plumage."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+"I do not like all this running about to places of amusement,"
+said Mr. Stafford, rumpling up his curls till they stood on end
+in a plume.  "If you or Rowsley were to visit a theatre I should
+say nothing.  You're men and must judge for yourselves.  But
+Isabel is different. I have a good mind to put my foot down once
+and for all.  An atmosphere of luxury is not good for a young
+girl."
+
+He stretched himself out in his shabby chair; a shabby, slight
+man, whose delicate foot, the toes poking out of a shabby
+slipper, looked as if it were too small to make much impression
+however firmly put down.  Val, smoking his temperate pipe on the
+other side of the diningroom hearth, temperately suggested that
+the amount of luxury in Isabel's life wouldn't hurt a fly.
+
+"One grain of strychnine will destroy a life: and one hour of
+temptation may destroy a soul for ever."  Val bowed his head in
+assent.  "Why are we all so fond of Isabel?  Because she hasn't a
+particle of self-consciousness in her.  A single evening's
+flattery may infect her with that detestable vice."
+
+"She must grow up some time."
+
+"More's the pity," retorted the vicar.  "Another point: I'm not
+by any means sure I approve of that fellow Hyde.  I doubt if he's
+a religious man."  Val brushed away a smile.  "He comes to church
+with Laura pretty regularly, but would he come if her influence
+were removed?  I greatly doubt it."  So did Val, therefore he
+prudently held his tongue. "I hate to be uncharitable," continued
+Mr. Stafford "but I doubt if he is even what one narrowly calls a
+moral man.  Take Jack Bendish, now one can see at a glance that
+he's a good fellow, right-living and clean-minded.  But Hyde
+doesn't inspire me with any such confidence. I know nothing of
+his private life--"
+
+"Nor do I," said Val rather wearily.  "But what does any man know
+of another man's private life?  If you come to that, Jim, what do
+you know of Rowsley's--or mine?"
+
+"Pouf, nonsense!" said Mr. Stafford.
+
+At his feet lay a small black cat, curled up in the attitude of a
+comma.  Before going on he inserted one toe under her waist,
+rapidly turned her upside down, and chucked her under her ruffled
+and indignant chin.
+
+"Val, my boy, has any one repeated to you a nasty bit of gossip
+that's going about the village?"
+
+"This violence to a lady!" Val held out his hand and made small
+coaxing noises with his lips.  But Amelia after a cold stare
+walked away and sat down in the middle of the floor, turning
+her back and sticking out a refined but implacable tail.  "There
+now! you've hurt her feelings."
+
+"Of course there's nothing in it--on one side at least.  But I
+can't help wondering whether Hyde . . . . our dear Laura would
+naturally be the last to hear of it.  But Hyde's a man of the
+world and knows how quickly tongues begin to wag.  In Laura's
+unprotected position he ought to be doubly careful."
+
+"He ought."
+
+"But he is not.  Now is that designed or accidental?  We'll allow
+him the benefit of the doubt and call it an error of judgment.
+Then some one ought to give him a hint."
+
+"Some one would be knocked down for his pains."
+
+"D'you think he'd knock me down?" asked Mr. Stafford, casting a
+comical glance over his slender elderly frame.
+
+"Hardly," said Val laughing.  "But--no, Jim, it wouldn't do.
+Too formal, too official."  His real objection was that Mr.
+Stafford would base his appeal on ethical and spiritual grounds,
+which were not likely to influence Lawrence, as Val read him.
+"But if you like I'll give him a hint myself.  I can do it
+informally; and I very nearly did it as long ago as last June.
+Hyde is amenable to treatment if he's taken quietly."
+
+Mr. Stafford, by temperament and training a member of the Church
+Militant, clearly felt a trifle disappointed, but he had little
+petty vanity and accepted Val's amendment without a murmur. "Very
+well, if you think you can do it better!  I don't care who does
+it so long as it's done." The clock struck.  "Half past eleven is
+that?  Isabel can't be home before four.  Dear me, how I hate
+these ridiculous hours, turning night into day!"  As some
+correspondents put the point of a letter into a postscript, so
+the vicar in returning to his Church Times revealed the peculiar
+sting that was working in his mind.  "And I don't--  I do not like
+Isabel to make one of that trio--in view of what's being said."
+
+"She is with Mrs. Clowes," said Val shortly, and colouring all
+over his face.  Fling enough mud and some of it is sure to stick!
+If his unworldly father could think Laura, though innocent, so
+far compromised that Isabel was not safe in her care, what were
+other people saying?  Val got up.  "I shall walk down and smoke a
+pipe with Clowes.  He won't go to bed till they come in."
+
+The beechen way was dark and steep; roosting birds blundered out
+from overhead with a sleepy clamour of alarm-notes and a great
+rustle of leaf-brushed wings; one could have tracked Val's course
+by the commotion they made.  On the footbridge dark in alder-shadow
+he lingered to enjoy the cool woodland air and lulling ripple
+underfoot.  Not a star pierced to that black water, it might have
+been unfathomably deep; and though the village street was only a
+quarter of a mile away the night was intensely quiet, for all
+Chilmark went to bed after closing time.  It was not often that Val,
+overworked and popular, tasted such a profound solitude.  Not a leaf
+stirred: no one was near: under golden stars it was chilling towards
+one of the first faint frosts of the year: and insensibly Val relaxed
+his guard: a heavy sigh broke from him, and he moved restlessly,
+indulging himself in recollection as a man who habitually endures
+pain without wincing will now and then allow himself the relief of
+defeat.
+
+For it is a relief not to pretend any more nor fight: to let pain
+take its way, like a slow tide invading every nerve and flooding
+every recess of thought, till one is pierced and penetrated by
+it, married to it, indifferent so long as one can drop the mask
+of that cruel courage which exacts so many sacrifices.  Val was
+still only twenty-nine.  Forty years more of a life like
+this! . . . Lawrence had once compared him to a man on the rack.
+But, though Lawrence knew all, Val had never relaxed the strain
+before him: was incapable of relaxing it before any spectator.
+He needed to be not only alone, but in the dark, hidden even from
+himself: and even so no open expression was possible to him, not
+a movement after the first deep sigh: it was relief enough for
+him to be sincere with himself and own that he was unhappy.  But
+why specially unhappy now?
+
+Midnight: the church clock had begun to strike in a deep whirring
+chime, muffled among the million leaves of the wood.
+
+That trio were in the train now, Isabel probably fast falling
+asleep, Hyde and Laura virtually alone for the run from Waterloo
+to Chilmark.
+
+A handsome man, Hyde, and attractive to women, or so rumour and
+Yvonne Bendish affirmed. If even Yvonne, who was Laura's own
+sister, was afraid of Hyde! ... Well, Hyde was to be given the
+hint to take himself off, and surely no more than such a hint
+would be necessary?  Val smiled, the prospect was not without a
+wry humour.  If he had been Hyde's brother, what he had to say
+would not have said itself easily.  "Let us hope he won't knock
+me down," Val reflected, "or the situation will really become
+strained; but he won't--that's not his way."  What was his way?
+The worst of it was that Val was not at all sure what way Hyde
+would take, nor whether he would consent to go alone.  A handsome
+man, confound him, and a picked specimen of his type: one of
+those high-geared and smoothly running physical machines that are
+all grace in a lady's drawingroom and all steel under their
+skins.  What a contrast between him and poor Bernard! the one so
+impotent and devil-ridden, the other so virile, unscrupulous, and
+serene.
+
+Val stirred restlessly and gripped the rail of the bridge between
+his clenched hands.  His mind was a chaos of loose ends and he
+dared not follow any one of them to its logical conclusion.  What
+was he letting himself think of Laura?  Such fears were an insult
+to her clear chastity and strength of will.  Or, in any event,
+what was it to him?  He was Bernard's friend, and Laura's but he
+was not the keeper of Bernard's honour. . . . But Hyde and
+Laura . . . alone . . . the train with its plume of fire rushing
+on through the dark sleeping night. . . .
+
+"In manus tuas . . ."  Val raised his head, and shivered, the
+wind struck chill: he was tired out.  Yet only a second or so had
+gone by while he was indulging himself in useless regrets for
+what could never be undone, and still more useless anxiety for a
+future which was not only beyond his control but outside his
+province as Bernard's agent.  That after all was his status at
+Wanhope, he had no other.  It was still striking twelve: the last
+echo of the last chime trembled away on a faint, fresh sough of
+wind. . . . A lolloping splash off the bank into the water--what
+was that?  A dark blot among ripples on a flat and steely
+glimmer, the sketch of a whiskered feline mask . . . Val made a
+mental note to speak to Jack Bendish about it: otters are bad
+housekeepers in a trout stream.
+
+"Hallo!  Good man!" Major Clowes was on his back in the
+drawingroom, in evening dress, and playing patience.  "I've tried
+Kings, Queens and Knaves, and Little Demon, and Fair Lucy, and
+brought every one of 'em out first round.  Something must be
+going to happen." With a sweep of his arm he flung all the cards
+on the floor. "What do you want?"
+
+"A pipe," said Val, going on one knee to pick up the scattered
+pack.  "I looked in to see how you were getting on.  Aren't you
+going to bed?"
+
+"Not before they come in."
+
+"Nor will Jimmy, I left him sitting up for Isabel.  You're both
+of you very silly, you'll be dead tired tomorrow, and what's the
+object of it?"
+
+"To make sure they do come in," Bernard explained with a broad
+grin.  Val sprang up: intolerable, this reflection of his own
+fear in Bernard's distorting mirror!  "Ha ha!  Suppose they
+didn't?  Laura was rather fond of larks before she married me.
+She was, I give you my word--she and the other girl.  You
+wouldn't think it of Laura, would you?  Butter wouldn't melt in
+her mouth.  But she might like a fling for a change.  Who'd blame
+her?  I'm no good as a husband, and Lawrence is a picked
+specimen.  Quelle type, eh?"
+
+"Very good-looking."
+
+"'Very good-looking!'" Bernard mocked at him. "You and your Army
+vocabulary!  And I'm a nice chap, and Laura's quite a pretty
+woman, and this is a topping knife, isn't it, and life's a jolly
+old beano--  Pity I can't get out of it, by the by: if physiology
+is the basis of marriage, those two would run well in harness."
+
+"There's an otter in the river," remarked Val, examining the
+little dagger, the same that Lawrence had given Bernard.  "I
+heard him from the bridge.  They come down from the upper
+reaches.  Remind me to tell Jack, he's always charmed to get a
+day's sport with his hounds." He laid the dagger on a side-table.
+
+"Have one of my cigars?  You can't afford cigars, can you? poor
+devil!  They're on that shelf.  Not those: they're Hyde's." Val
+put back the box as if it had burnt his fingers.  "Leaves his
+things about as if the place were a hotel!" grumbled Major
+Clowes. "That's one of his books.  Pick it up. What is it?" Val
+read out the title.  "Poetry?  Good Lord deliver us!  Do you read
+poetry, Val?"
+
+"I occasionally dip into Tennyson," Val replied, settling himself
+in an easy chair.  "I can't understand modern verse as a rule,
+it's too clever for me, and the fellows who write it always seem
+to go in for such gloomy subjects.  I don't like gloomy books, I
+like stuff that rests and refreshes you.  There are enough sad
+things in life without writing stories about them. I can read the
+'Idylls of the King,' but I can't read Bernard Shaw."
+
+"Nor anybody else," said Bernard.  He fixed his eyes on Val: eyes
+like his cousin's in form and colour, large, and so black under
+their black lashes that the pupil was almost indistinguishable
+from the iris, but smouldering in a perpetual glow, while Hyde's
+were clear and indifferent.  "You're a good sort to have come
+down to look after me.  I don't feel very brash tonight.  Oh Val!
+oh Val! I know I'm a brute, a coarse-minded, foul-mouthed brute.
+I usedn't to be.  When I was twenty-five, if any man had said
+before me what I say of Laura, I'd have kicked him out of his own
+house.  Why don't you kick me?"
+
+"I am not violent."
+
+"Ain't you?  I am." He flung out his arm. "Give me your hand."
+Val complied, amused or touched: as often happened when they were
+alone,  he remained on the borderline.  But it was taken in no
+affectionate clasp.  Bernard's grip closed on him, tighter and
+tighter, till the nails were driven into his palm.  "Is that
+painful?" Clowes asked with his Satanic grin.  "Glad of it.  I'm
+in pain too.  I've got neuritis in my spine and I can't sleep for
+it.  I haven't had any proper sleep for a week.--Oh my God, my
+God, my God! do you think I'd grumble if that were all?  I can't,
+I can't lie on my back all my life playing patience or fiddling
+over secondhand penknives!  I was born for action.  Action, Val!
+I'm not a curate.  I'd like to smash something--crush it to a
+jelly."  Val mincingly pointed out that such a consummation was
+not far off, but he was ignored.  "Oh damn the war! and damn
+England too--what did we go to fight for?  What asses we were!
+Did we ever believe in a reason?  Give me these ten years over
+again and I wouldn't be such a fool.  Who cares whether we lick
+Germany or Germany licks England?  I don't."
+
+"I do."
+
+Bernard stared at him, incredulous.  "What--'freedom and
+honour' and all the rest of it?"
+
+"In a defensive war--"
+
+"Oh for God's sake!  I've just had my supper."
+
+"--any man who won't fight for his country deserves to be shot."
+
+"You combine the brains of a rabbit with the morals of a eunuch."
+
+Val crossed his legs and withdrew his cigar to laugh.
+
+"Ah! I apologize." Clowes shrugged his shoulders. "'Eunuch' is
+the wrong word for you--as a breed they're a cowardly lot.  But
+I used the term in the sense of a Palace favourite who swallows
+all the slop that's pumped into him.  'Lloyd George for ever and
+Britannia rules the waves.' Dare say I should sing it myself if
+I'd come out covered with glory like you did."
+
+"I met Gainsford today.  He says the longacre fences ought to be
+renewed before winter.  Parts of them are so rotten that the
+first gale will bring them down."
+
+"Damn Gainsford and damn the fences and damn you."
+
+"Really, really!" Val stretched himself out and put his feet up.
+"You're very monotonous tonight."
+
+"And you, you're tired: I wear you both out, you and Laura--and
+yet you're the only people on earth. . . . Why can't I die?
+Sometimes I wonder if it's anything but cowardice that prevents
+me from cutting my throat.  But my life is infernally strong in
+me, I don't want to die: what I want is to get on my legs again
+and kick that fellow Hyde down the steps.  What does he stop on
+here for?"
+
+"Well, you're always pressing him to stay, aren't you?  Why do
+you do it, if this is the way you feel towards him?"
+
+"Because I've always sworn I'd give Laura all the rope she
+wanted," said Clowes between his teeth.  "If she wants to hang
+herself, let her.  I should score in the long run.  Hyde would
+chuck her away like an old shoe when he got sick of her."   There
+was a fire not far from madness burning now in the wide, dilated
+eyes.  "Afterwards she'd have to come back, because those
+Selincourts haven't got twopence between the lot of them, and if
+she did she'd be mine for good and all.  Hyde would break her in
+for me."
+
+"You don't realize what you're saying, Berns, old man.  You
+can't," said Val gently, "or you wouldn't say it.  It is too
+unutterably beastly."
+
+"Ah! perhaps the point of view is a bit warped," Bernard returned
+carelessly to sanity.  "It shocks you, does it?  But the fact is
+Laura has the whip hand of me and I can't forgive her for it.
+She's the saint and I'm the sinner.  She's a bit too good. If
+Hyde broke her in and sent her home on her knees, I should have
+the whip hand of her, and I'd like to reverse the positions.  Can
+you follow that?  Yes! A bit warped, I own. But I am warped--
+bound to be.  Give the body such a wrench as the Saxons gave mine
+and you're bound to get some corresponding wrench in the mind."
+
+"That's rank materialism."
+
+"Bosh! it's common sense.  Look at your own case!  Do you never
+analyze your own behaviour?  You would if you lay on your back
+year in year out like me.  You're maimed too."
+
+"No, am I?" Val reached for a fourth cushion. "Think o' that,
+now."
+
+"Or you wouldn't be content to hang on in Chilmark, riding over
+another man's property and squiring another man's wife.  The shot
+that broke your arm broke your life.  You had the makings of a
+fine soldier in you, but you were knocked out of your profession
+and you don't care for any other.  With all your ability you'll
+never be worth more than six or seven hundred a year, for you've
+no initiative and you're as nervous as a cat.  You're not married
+and you'll never marry: you're too passive, too continent, too
+much of a monk to attract a healthy woman.  No: don't you flatter
+yourself that you've escaped any more than I have. The only
+difference is that the Saxons mucked up my life and you've mucked
+up your own.  You fool! you high-minded, over-scrupulous
+fool! . . . You and I are wreckage of war, Val: cursed, senseless
+devilry of war.--  Go and play a tune, I'm sick of talking."
+
+Val was not any less sick of listening.  He went to the piano,
+but not to play a tune.  Impossible to insult that crippled
+tempest on the sofa with the sweet eternal placidities of Mozart
+or Bach.  His fingers wandered over the lower register,
+improvising, modulating from one minor key to another in a cobweb
+of silver harmony spun pale and low from a minimum of technical
+attention.  For once Bernard had struck home.  "The shot that
+broke your arm broke your life." Stripped of Bernard's rhetoric,
+was it true?
+
+Val could not remember the time when his ambition had not been
+set on soldiering: regiments of Hussars and Dragoons had deployed
+on his earliest Land of Counterpane: he had never cared for any
+other toys.  But as soon as war was over he had resigned his
+commission, a high sense of duty driving him from a field in
+which he felt unfit to serve.  He had pitilessly executed his own
+judgment: no man can do more.  But what if in judgement itself
+had been unhinged--warped--deflected by the interaction of
+splintered bone and cut sinew and dazed, ghost-ridden mind?  Have
+not psychologists said that few fighting men were strictly normal
+in or for some time after the war?
+
+If that were true, Val had wasted the best years of his life on a
+delusion.  It was a disturbing thought, but it brought a sparkle
+to his eyes and an electric force to his fingertips: he raised
+his head and looked out into the September night as if there was
+stirring in him the restless sap of spring.  After all he was
+still a young man.  Forty years more!  If these grey ten years
+since the war could be taken as finite, not endless: if after
+them one were to break the chain, tear off the hair shirt, come
+out of one's cell into the warm sun--then, oh then--Val's
+shoulders remembered their military set--life might be life
+again and not life in death.
+
+"What the devil are you strumming now?"
+
+"Tipperary."
+
+"That's not much in your line."
+
+"Oh! I was in the Army once," said Val. "You go to sleep."
+
+He had his wish.  The heavy eyelids closed, the great chest rose
+and fell evenly, and some--not all--of the deep lines of pain
+were smoothed away from Bernard's lips.  Even in sleep it was a
+restless, suffering head, but it was no longer so devil-ridden as
+when he was talking of his wife.  Val played on softly: once when
+he desisted Bernard stirred and muttered something which sounded
+like "Go on, damn you," a proof that his mind was not far from
+his body, only the thinnest of veils lying over its terrible
+activity.  David would have played the clock round, if Saul would
+have slept on.
+
+Saul did not. He woke--with a tremendous start, sure sign of
+broken nerves: a start that shook him like a fall and shook the
+couch too.  "Hallo!" he came instantly into full possession of
+his faculties: "you still here?  What's the time? I feel as if
+I'd been asleep for years.  Why, it's daylight!" He dragged out
+his watch.  "What the devil is the time?"
+
+Val rose and pulled back a curtain.  The morning sky was full of
+grey light, and long pale shadows fell over frost-silvered turf:
+mists were steaming up like pale smoke from the river, over whose
+surface they swept in fantastic shapes like ghosts taking hands
+in an evanescent arabesque: the clouds, the birds, the flowers
+were all awake.  The house was awake too, and in fact it was the
+clatter of a housemaid's brush on the staircase that had roused
+Bernard. "It's nearly six o'clock," said Val.  "You've had a long
+sleep, Berns.  I'm afraid the others have missed their train."
+
+"Missed their train!"
+
+"First night performances are often slow, and they mayn't have
+been able to get a cab at once.  It's tiresome, but there's no
+cause for anxiety."
+
+"Missed their train!"
+
+"Well, they can't all have been swallowed up by an earthquake!
+Of course fire or a railway smash is on the cards, but the less
+thrilling explanation is more probable, don't you think, old
+man?"
+
+"Missed the last train and were obliged to stay in town?"
+
+"And a rotten time they'll have of it.  It's no joke, trying to
+get rooms in a London hotel when you've ladies with you and no
+luggage."
+
+"You think Laura would let Hyde take her to an hotel?"
+
+"Well, Berns, what else are they to do?" said Val impatiently.
+"They can't very well sit in a Waterloo waitingroom!"
+
+"No, no," said Clowes.  "Much better pass the night at an hotel.
+Is that what you call a rotten time?  If I were Lawrence I should
+call it a jolly one."
+
+Val turned round from the window.  "If I were Hyde," he said
+stiffly, "I should take the ladies to some decent place and go to
+a club myself.  You might give your cousin credit for common
+sense if not for common decency!  You seem to forget the
+existence of Isabel."
+
+"Oh, all right," said Bernard after a moment.  "I was only
+joking.  No offence to your sister, Val, I'm sure Laura will look
+after her all right.  But it is a bit awkward in a gossippy hole
+like Chilmark. When does the next train get in?"
+
+No man knows offhand the trains that leave London in the small
+hours, but Val hunted up a timetable--its date of eighteen
+mouths ago a pregnant commentary on life at Wanhope--and came
+back with the information that if they left at seven-fifteen they
+could be at Countisford by ten.  "Too late to keep it quiet," he
+owned.  "The servants are a nuisance.  But thank heaven Isabel's
+with them."
+
+"Thank heaven indeed," Bernard assented.  "Not that I care two
+straws for gossip myself, but Laura would hate to be talked
+about.  Well, well!  Here's a pretty kettle of fish.  How would
+it be if you were to meet them at the station?  I suppose they're
+safe to come by that train?  Or will they wait for a second one?
+Getting up early is not Laura's strong point at the best of
+times, and she'll be extra tired after the varied excitements of
+the night."
+
+Val examined him narrowly.  His manner was natural if a trifle
+subdued; the unhealthy glow had died down and his black eyes were
+frank and clear.  Nevertheless Val was not at ease, this natural
+way of taking the mishap was for Bernard Clowes so unnatural and
+extraordinary: if he had stormed and sworn Val would have felt
+more tranquil.  But perhaps after the fireworks of last night the
+devil had gone out of him for a season?  Yet Val knew from
+painful experience that Bernard's devil was tenacious and wiry,
+not soon tired.
+
+"They might," he said cautiously, "but I shouldn't think they
+will.  Laura knows you, old fellow.  She'll be prepared for a
+terrific wigging, and she'll want to get home and get it over."
+A dim gleam of mirth relieved Val's mind a trifle: when the devil
+of jealousy was in possession he always cast out Bernard's sense
+of humour, a subordinate imp at the best of times and not of a
+healthy breed.  "Besides, there's Isabel to consider.  She'll be
+in a great state of mind, poor child, though it probably isn't in
+the least her fault.  By the bye, if there's no more I can do for
+you, I ought to go home and see after Jim.  He expressed his
+intention of sitting up for Isabel, and I only wonder he hasn't
+been down here before now.  Probably he went to sleep over his
+Church Times, or else buried himself in some venerable volume of
+patristic literature and forgot about her.  But when Fanny gets
+down he'll be tearing his hair."
+
+"Go by all means," said Bernard.  "You must be fagged out, Val;
+have you been at the piano all these hours?  How you spoil me,
+you and Laura!  Get some breakfast, lie down for a nap, and after
+that you can go on to Countisford and meet them in the car."
+
+"All right!" In face of Bernard's thoughtful and practical good
+humour Val's suspicions had faded.  "Shall I come back or will
+you send the car up for me?" Neither he nor Clowes saw anything
+unusual in these demands on his time and energy: it was
+understood that the duties of the agency comprised doing anything
+Bernard wanted done at any hour of day or night.
+
+"I'll send her up.  Stop a bit." Clowes knit his brows and looked
+down, evidently deep in thought.  "Yes, that's the ticket.  You
+take Isabel home and send Lawrence and Laura on alone.  Drop them
+at the lodge before you drive her up.  She'll be tired out and
+it's a good step up the hill.  And you must apologize for me to
+your father for giving him so much anxiety.  Lawrence must have
+been abominably careless to let them lose their train: they ought
+to have had half an hour to spare."
+
+"He is casual."
+
+"Oh very: thinks of nothing but himself.  Pity you and he can't
+strike a balance!  Good-bye.  Mind you take your sister straight
+home and apologize to your father for Hyde's antics.  Say I'm
+sorry, very sorry to mix her up in such a pickle, and I wouldn't
+have let her in for it if it could have been avoided.  Touch the
+bell for me before you go, will you?  I want Barry."
+
+Val let himself out by the window and the impassive valet
+entered.  But it was some time before Bernard spoke to him.
+
+"Is that you, Barry? I didn't hear you come in."
+
+"Now what's in the wind?" speculated Barry behind his
+professional mask.  "Up all night and civil in the morning?  Oh
+no, I don't think."
+
+"Shall I wheel you to your room, sir?"
+
+"Not yet," said Clowes.  He waited to collect his strength.
+"Shut all those windows." Barry obeyed.  "Turn on the electric
+light . . . .Put up the shutters and fasten them securely . . . .
+Now I want you to go all over the house and shut and fasten all
+the other ground floor windows: then come back to me."
+
+"Am I to turn on the electric light everywhere, sir?" Barry asked
+after a pause.
+
+"Where necessary.  Not in the billiard room; nor in Mrs. Clowes'
+parlour."   Barry had executed too many equally singular orders
+to raise any demur.  He came back in ten minutes with the news
+that it was done.
+
+"Now wheel me into the hall," said Clowes. Barry obeyed.  "Shut
+the front doors. . . . Lock them and put up the chain."
+
+This time Barry did hesitate.  "Sir, if I do that no one won't be
+able to get in or out except by the back way: and it's close on
+seven o'clock."
+
+"You do what you're told."
+
+Barry obeyed.
+
+"Now wheel my couch in front of the doors."
+
+"Mad as a March hare!" was Barry's private comment.  "Lord, I
+wish Mr. Stafford was here."
+
+"That will do," said Clowes.
+
+He settled his great shoulders square and comfortable on his
+pillow and folded his arms over his breast.
+
+"I want you to take an important message from me to the other
+servants.  Tell them that if Mrs. Clowes or Captain Hyde come to
+the house they're not to be let in.  Mrs. Clowes has left me and
+I do not intend her to return.  If they force their way in I'll
+deal with them, but any one who opens the door will leave my
+service today.  Now get me some breakfast.  I'll have some coffee
+and eggs and bacon.  Tell Fryar to see that the boiled milk's
+properly hot."
+
+Barry, stupefied, went out without a word, leaving the big couch,
+and the big helpless body stretched out upon it, drawn like a bar
+across the door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+It was a fatigued and jaded party that got out on the platform at
+Countisford.  The mere wearing of evening dress when other people
+are at breakfast will damp the spirits of the most hardened, and
+even Lawrence had an up-all-night expression which reddened his
+eyelids and brought out the lines about his mouth.  Isabel's hair
+was rumpled and her fresh bloom all dimmed.  Laura Clowes had
+suffered least: there was not a thread astray in her satin waves,
+and the finished grace of her aspect had survived a night in a
+chair.  But even she was very pale, though she contrived to smile
+at Val.
+
+"How's Bernard?" were her first words.
+
+"All serene. He slept most of the time. I was with him, luckily.
+We guessed what had happened.  You missed your train?" In this
+question Val included Lawrence.
+
+"It was my fault," said Lawrence shortly.  It was what he would
+have said if it had not been his fault.
+
+"It was nobody's fault!" cried Laura.  "We were held up in the
+traffic.  But Lawrence is one of those people who will feel
+responsible if they have ladies with them on the Day of Judgment,
+won't you, Lawrence?"
+
+"I ought to have left more time," said Lawrence impatiently.
+"Let's get home."
+
+In the car Val heard from Laura the details of their
+misadventure.  Selincourt had waited with the women while
+Lawrence secured rooms for them in a Waterloo hotel: when they
+were safe, Lawrence had gone to Lucian's rooms in Victoria
+Street, where the men had passed what remained of the night in a
+mild game of cards.  They had all breakfasted together by
+lamplight at the hotel, and Selincourt had seen his sister into
+the Chilmark train.  Nothing could have been more circumspect--
+comically circumspect! between Selincourt and Isabel and the
+chambermaid, malice itself was put to silence. But Lawrence was
+fever-fretted by the secret sense of guilt.
+
+At the lodge gates Val drew up.  "It's preposterous, but I'm
+under Bernard's express orders to drive Isabel straight home. I
+don't know how to apologize for turning you and Hyde out of your
+own car, Laura!"  No apology was needed, Laura and Lawrence knew
+too well how direct Bernard's orders commonly were to Val.
+Lawrence silently offered his hand to Mrs. Clowes.  The morning
+air was fresh, fog was still hanging over the river, and the sun
+had not yet thrown off an autumn quilting of cloud.  Touched by
+the chill of dawn, some leaves had fallen and lay in the dust,
+their ribs beaded with dark dew: others, yellow and shrivelling,
+where shaken down by the wind of the car and fluttered slowly in
+the eddying air. Laura drew her sable scarf close over her bare
+neck.
+
+"What I should like best, Lawrence, would be for you to go home
+with Isabel and make our excuses to Mr. Stafford.  Would you
+mind?  Or is it too much to ask before you get out of your
+evening dress?"
+
+"I should be delighted," said Lawrence, feeling and indeed
+looking entirely the reverse.  "But Miss Isabel has her brother
+to take care of her, she doesn't want me." Isabel gave that
+indefinable start which is the prelude of candour, but remained
+dumb.  "I don't like to leave you to walk up to Wanhope alone."
+This, was as near as in civilized life he could go to saying
+"to face Clowes alone."
+
+"The length of the drive?" said Laura smiling. "I should prefer
+it.  You know what Berns is."  This was what Lawrence had never
+known. "If he's put out I'd rather you weren't there."
+
+"Why, you can't imagine I should care what Bernard said?"
+
+Laura struck her hands together.-"There! There!" she turned to
+Val, "can you wonder Bernard feels it?"
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Lawrence from his heart.
+
+"No, the contrast is poignant,'' said Val coldly.
+
+"Dear Val, you always agree with me," said Laura.  "Take Captain
+Hyde home and give him some breakfast.  I'd rather go alone,
+Lawrence: it will be easier that way, believe me."
+
+It was impossible to argue with her.  But while Val wheeled and
+turned in the wide cross, before they took their upward bend
+under the climbing beechwood, Lawrence glanced over his shoulder
+and saw Mrs. Clowes still standing by the gate of Wanhope,
+solitary, a wan gleam of sunlight striking down over her gold
+embroideries and ivory coat, a russet leaf or two whirling slowly
+round her drooping head: like a butterfly in winter, delicate,
+fantastic, and astray.
+
+Breakfast at the vicarage was not a genial meal.  Val was anxious
+and preoccupied, Isabel in eclipse, even Mr. Stafford out of
+humour--vexed with Lawrence, and with Val for bringing Lawrence
+in under the immunities of a guest.  Lawrence himself was in a
+frozen mood.  As soon as they had finished he rose: "If you'll
+excuse my rushing off I'll go down to Wanhope now."
+
+"By all means," said Mr. Stafford drily.
+
+"Good-bye," said Isabel, casting about for a form of consolation,
+and evolving one which, in the circumstances, was possibly
+unique:  "You'll feel better when you've had a bath."
+
+"I'll walk down with you to Wanhope" said Val.
+
+"You?  Oh! no, don't bother," said Lawrence very curtly.  "I can
+manage my cousin, thanks."
+
+But Val's only reply was to open the door for him and stroll with
+him across the lawn.  At the wicket gate Hyde turned: "Excuse my
+saying so, but I prefer to go alone."
+
+"I'm not coming in at Wanhope.  But I've ten words to say to you
+before you go there."
+
+"Oh?" said Lawrence.  He swung through leaving Val to follow or
+not as he liked.
+
+"Stop, Hyde, you must listen.  You're going into a house full of
+the materials for an explosion.  You don't know your own danger."
+
+"I dislike hints.  What are you driving at?"
+
+"Laura."
+
+"Mrs.  Clowes?"
+
+"Naturally," said Val with a faint smile.  "You know as well as I
+do how pointless that correction is.  You imply by it that as I'm
+not her brother I've no right to meddle.  But I told you in June
+that I should interfere if it became necessary to protect
+others."
+
+"And since when, my dear Val, has it become necessary?  Last
+night?"
+
+"Well, not that only: all Chilmark has been talking for weeks and
+weeks."
+
+"Chilmark--"
+
+"Oh," Val interrupted, flinging out his delicate hands, "what's
+the good of that?  Who would ever suggest that you care what
+Chilmark says?  But she has to live in it."
+
+The scene had to be faced, and a secret vein of cruelty in
+Lawrence was not averse from facing it. This storm had been
+brewing all summer.--They were alone, for the beechen way was
+used only as a short cut to the vicarage.  Above them the garden
+wall lifted its feathery fringe of grass into great golden boughs
+that drooped over it: all round them the beech forest ran down
+into the valley, the eye losing itself among clear glades at the
+end of which perhaps a thicket of hollies twinkled darkly or a
+marbled gleam of blue shone in from overhead; the steep dark path
+was illumined by the golden lamplight of millions on millions of
+pointed leaves, hanging motionless in the sunny autumnal morning
+air which smelt of dry moss and wood smoke.
+
+"And what's the rumour?  That I'm going to prevail or that I've
+prevailed already?"
+
+"The worst of it is," Val kept his point and his temper, "that
+it's not only Chilmark.  One could afford to ignore village
+gossip, but this has reached Wharton, my father--Mrs. Clowes
+herself.  You wouldn't willingly do anything to make her unhappy:
+indeed it's because of your consistent and delicate kindness both
+to her and to Bernard that I've refrained from giving you a hint
+before.  You've done Bernard an immense amount of good.  But the
+good doesn't any longer counterbalance the involuntary mischief:
+hasn't for some time past: can't you see it for yourself?  One
+has only to watch the change coming over her, to look into her
+eyes--"
+
+"Really, if you'll excuse my saying so, you seem to have looked
+into them a little too often yourself."
+
+Val waited to take out his case and light a cigarette.  He
+offered one to Hyde--"Won't you?"
+
+"No, thanks: if you've done I'll be moving on."
+
+"Why I haven't really begun yet.  You make me nervous--it's a
+rotten thing to say to any man, and doubly difficult from me to
+you--and I express myself badly, But I must chance being called
+impertinent.  The trouble is with your cousin.  If you had heard
+him last night. . . .  He's madly jealous."
+
+"Of me?  Last night?" Lawrence gave a short laugh: this time he
+really was amused.
+
+"Dangerously jealous."
+
+"There's not room for a shadow of suspicion.  Go and interview
+Selincourt's servant if you like,  or nose around the Continental."
+
+"Well," said Val, coaxing a lucifer between his cupped palms,
+"I dare say it'll come to that.  I've done a good deal of
+Bernard's dirty work.  Some one has to do it for the sake of a
+quiet life.  His suspicions aren't rational, you know."
+
+"I should think you put them into his head."
+
+"I?" the serene eyes widened slightly, irritating Lawrence by
+their effect of a delicacy too fastidious for contempt.  For this
+courtesy, of finer grain than his own sarcasm, made him itch to
+violate and soil it, as mobs will destroy what they never can
+possess.  "Need we drag in personalities?  He was jealous of you
+before you came to Wanhope.  He fancies or pretends to fancy that
+you were in love with Mrs. Clowes when you were boy and girl.
+We're not dealing with a sane or normal nature:  he was
+practically mad last night--he frightened me.  May I give you,
+word for word, what he said?  That he let you stay on because he
+meant to give his wife rope enough to hang herself."
+
+"What do you want me to do?" said Lawrence after a pause.
+
+"To leave Wanhope."
+
+More at his ease than Val, in spite of the disadvantage of his
+evening dress, Lawrence stood looking down at him with brilliant
+inexpressive eyes.  "Is it your own idea that I stayed on at
+Wanhope to make love to Laura?"
+
+"If I answer that, you'll tell me that I'm meddling with what is
+none of my business, and this time you'll be right."
+
+"No: after going so far, you owe me a reply."
+
+"Well then, I've never been able to see any other reason."
+
+"Oh?  Bernard's my cousin."
+
+"Since you will have it, Hyde, I can't see you burying yourself
+in a country village out of cousinly affection.  You said you'd
+stay as long as you were comfortable.  Well, it won't be
+comfortable now!  I'm not presuming to judge you.  I've no idea
+what your ethical or social standards are.  Quite likely you
+would consider yourself justified in taking away your cousin's
+wife.  Some modern professors and people who write about social
+questions would say, wouldn't they, that she ought to be able to
+divorce him: that a marriage which can't be fruitful ought not to
+be a binding tie?  I've never got up the subject because for me
+it's settled out of hand on religious grounds, but they may not
+influence you, nor perhaps would the other possible deterrent,
+pity for the weak--if one can call Bernard weak.  It would be an
+impertinence for me to judge you by my code, when perhaps your
+own is pure social expediency--which would certainly be better
+served if Mrs. Clowes went to you."
+
+"Assuming that you've correctly defined my standard--why should
+I go?"
+
+Val shrugged his shoulders.  "You know well enough.  Because Mrs.
+Clowes is old-fashioned; her duty to Bernard is the ruling force
+in her life, and you could never make her give him up.  Or if you
+did she wouldn't live long enough for you to grow tired of her--
+it would break her heart."
+
+"Really?" said Lawrence.  "Before I grew tired of her?"
+
+He had never been so angry in his life.  To be brought to book at
+all was bad enough, but what rankled worst was the nature of the
+charge.  Sometimes it takes a false accusation to make a man
+realize the esteem in which he is held, the opinions which others
+attribute to him and which perhaps, without examining them too
+closely, he has allowed to pass for his own.  Lawrence had
+indulged in plenty of loose talk about Nietzschean ethics and the
+danger of altruism and the social inexpediency of sacrificing the
+strong for the weak, but when it came to his own honour not Val
+himself could have held a more conservative view.  He, take
+advantage of a cripple?  He commit a breach of hospitality?  He
+sneak into Wanhope as his cousin's friend to corrupt his cousin's
+wife?  What has been called the pickpocket form of adultery had
+never been to his taste.  Had Bernard been on his feet, a strong
+man armed, Lawrence might, if he had fallen in love with Laura,
+have gloried in carrying her off openly; but of the baseness of
+which Val accused him he knew himself to be incapable.
+
+"Really?" he said, looking down at Val out of his wide black
+eyes, so like Bernard's except that they concealed all that
+Bernard revealed.  "So now we understand each other.  I know why
+you want me to go and you know why I want to stay."
+
+"If I've done you an injustice I'm sorry for it."
+
+"Oh, don't apologize," said Lawrence laughing. His manner
+bewildered Val, who could make nothing of it except that it was
+incompatible with any sense of guilt.
+
+"But, then," the question broke from Val involuntarily, "why did
+you stay?"
+
+"Why do you?"
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes, you.  Did it never strike you that I might retort with a tu
+quoque?"
+
+"How on earth--?"
+
+"You were perhaps a little preoccupied," said Lawrence with his
+deadly smile. "I suggest, Val, that whether Clowes was jealous or
+not--you were."
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes, my dear fellow:" the Jew laughed: it gave him precisely the
+same satisfaction to violate Val's reticence, as it might have
+given one of his ancestors to cut Christian flesh to ribbons in
+the markets of the East: "and who's to blame you?  Thrown so much
+into the society of a very pretty and very unhappy woman, what
+more natural than for you to--how shall I put it?--constitute
+yourself her protector?  Set your mind at rest.  You have only
+one rival, Val--her husband."
+
+He enjoyed his triumph for a few moments, during which Stafford
+was slowly taking account with himself.
+
+"I'm not such a cautious moralist as you are," Lawrence pursued,
+"and so I don't hold a pistol to your head and give you ten
+minutes to clear out of Wanhope, as you did to mine.  On the
+contrary, I hope you'll long continue to act as Bernard's agent.
+I'm sure he'll never get a better one.  As for Laura, she won't
+discover your passion unless you proclaim it, which I'm sure
+you'll never do.  She looks on you as a brother--an affectionate
+younger brother invaluable for running errands.  And you'll
+continue to fetch and carry, enduring all things from her and
+Bernard much as you do from me.  When I do go--which won't be
+just yet--I shan't feel the faintest compunction about leaving
+you behind.  I'm sure Bernard's honour will be as safe in your
+hands as it is in mine."
+
+And thus one paved the way to pleasant relations with ones
+brother-in-law.  The civilized second self, always a dismayed and
+cynical spectator of Hyde's lapses into savagery, raised its
+voice in vain.
+
+"You seem a little confused, Val--you always were a modest chap.
+But surely you of all men can trust my discretion--?"
+
+"That's enough," said Val.  He touched Hyde's coat with his
+finger-tips, an airy movement, almost a caress, which seemed to
+come from a long way off.  "Lawrence, you're hurting yourself
+more than me."
+
+It was enough and more than enough: an arrest instant and final.
+Later Lawrence wondered whether Val knew what he had done, or
+whether it was only a thought unconsciously made visible; it was
+so unlike all he had seen of Val, so like much that he had felt.
+
+It put him to silence.  Not only so, but it flung a light cloud
+of mystery over what had seemed noonday clear.  Since that first
+night when he had watched in a mirror the disentangling of
+Laura's scarf, Lawrence had entertained no doubt of Val's
+sentiments, but now he was left uncertain.  Val had translated
+himself into a country to which Lawrence could not follow him,
+and the light of an unknown sun was on his way.
+
+Lawrence drew back with an impatient gesture.  "Oh, let's drop
+all this!" The civilized second self was in revolt alike against
+his own morbid cruelty and Val's escape into heaven: he would
+admit nothing except that he had gone through one trying scene
+after another in the last eighteen hours, and that Val had paid
+for the irritation produced successively by Mrs. Cleve, Isabel, a
+white night, and a distressed anxious consciousness of unavowed
+guilt.  "We shall be at each other's throats in a minute, which
+wouldn't suit either your book or mine--you've no idea, Val, how
+little it would suit mine!  I'm sorry I was so offensive.  But
+you wrong me, you do indeed; I'm not in love with Laura, and, if
+I were, the notion of picking poor Bernard's pocket is absolutely
+repugnant to me.  Social expediency be hanged!  What! as his
+guest?--  But let's drop recrimination; I had no right to resent
+what you said after forcing you to say it, nor, in any case, to
+taunt you . . . I beg your pardon: there! for heaven's sake let's
+leave it at that."
+
+"Will you release me from my parole?"
+
+"Yes, and wish to heaven I'd never extracted it. I had no right
+to impose it on you or to hold you to it.  But don't give
+yourself away, Val, I can't bear to think of what you'll have to
+face.  It will be what you once called it--crucifixion."
+
+"No, freedom," said Val.  "After all these years in prison." He
+put up his hand to his head. "The brand--the--What's the
+matter?" Lawrence had seized his arm.  "Am I--am I talking
+rubbish?  I feel half asleep.  But one night's sitting up
+aughtn't to--  Oh, this is absurd! . . ."
+
+Lawrence waited in the patience of dismay.  It was no excuse to
+plead that till then he had not known all the harm he had done;
+men should not set racks to work in ignorance of their effect on
+trembling human nerves.
+
+"That's over," said Val, wiping his forehead.  "Sorry to make a
+fuss, but it came rather suddenly.  Things always happen so
+simply when they do happen."
+
+"Are you going to confess?"
+
+"Oh yes.  I ought to have done it long ago.  In fact last night I
+made up my mind to break my parole if you wouldn't let me off,
+but I'd rather have it this way.  Remains only to choose time and
+place: that'll need care, for I mustn't hurt others more than I
+can help.  But I wouldn't mind betting it'll all be as simple as
+shelling peas.  The odds are that people won't believe half I
+say.  They'll have forgotten all about the war by now, and
+they'll make far too much allowance for my being only nineteen."
+
+"And for a voluntary confession: that always carries great
+weight. They would judge you very differently if it had come out
+by chance.  Rightly, too: if you're going to make such a
+confession at your time of life, it will be difficult for any one
+to call you a coward."
+
+"Thank you!" Val shrugged his shoulders with the old indolent
+irony.  "But moral courage was always my long suit."
+
+"How young you still are!" said Lawrence smiling at him, "young
+enough to be bitter.  But you're under a delusion.  No, let me
+finish--  I'm an older man than you are, I've seen a good deal of
+life, and I had four years out there instead of six weeks like
+you.  So far as I can judge you never were a coward.  Thousands
+and hundreds of thousands of men broke down like you, but they
+were lucky and it wasn't known, or at all events it wasn't
+critical.  Their failure of nerve didn't coincide with the
+special call to action.  You would have redeemed yourself if you
+had been able to stick to your profession.  You have redeemed
+yourself: and you'd prove it fast enough if you got the chance,
+only of course in these piping times of peace unluckily you
+won't." He coloured suddenly to his temples.  "Good God, Val! if
+there were any weakness left in you, could you have mastered me
+like this?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+The quickest way to Wanhope was by High Street and field path.
+But Lawrence to avoid the village entered the drive by the lodge,
+through iron gates over which Bernard had set up the arms and
+motto of his family: FORTIS ET FIDELIS, faithful and strong.
+Winding between dense shrubs of rhododendron under darker
+deodars, the road was long and gloomy, but Lawrence was thankful
+to be out of sight of Chilmark.  He hurried on with his light
+swinging step--light for his build--his tired mind vacant or
+intent only on a bath and a change of clothes, till in the last
+bend, within a hundred yards of Wanhope he came on Mrs. Clowes.
+
+He never could clearly remember his first sight of her, the shock
+was too great, but as he came up she put out her hands to him and
+he took them in his own.  She was still in her evening dress but
+without cloak or fur, which had probably slipped off her
+shoulders: they were bare, and her beautiful bodice was torn.
+"Oh, here you are," she said with her faint smile.  "I was afraid
+you would come by the field." She looked down at herself and made
+a weak and ineffective effort to gather her loosened laces
+together.  "I'm--I'm not very tidy, am I?"
+
+Lawrence was carrying an overcoat on his arm.  He put her into
+it, and, as she did not seem able to cope with it, buttoned it
+for her.  "What has happened, dear?"
+
+"Bernard has turned me out," said Laura with the same piteous,
+bewildered smile.  "Indeed he never let me in.  I went home soon
+after you left me. The door was shut, I tried the window, but
+that was shut too, so I had to go back to the door.  I couldn't
+open it and I rang.  He answered me through the door, 'Who's
+there?'"  She ended as if the motive power of speech had died
+down in her.
+
+"And you--?"
+
+"Oh, I said, 'It's I--Laura.'"
+
+"Go on, dear," Lawrence gently prompted her.
+
+"I said 'I'm your wife.' He said 'I have no wife.' And he called
+me--coarse names, words I couldn't repeat to any one. I couldn't
+answer him.  Then he said 'Where's Hyde?  Are you there, Hyde?'
+and that you were a coward or you wouldn't stand by and hear him
+calling me a--what he had called me. So I told him you weren't
+there, that you had gone back with Isabel and Val.  He said:
+after you had had all you wanted out of me--I beg your pardon?"
+
+"Nothing.  Go on, dear: tell me all about it."
+
+"But ought I to?" said Laura, raising her dimmed eyes to his
+face.  "It's such a horrible story to tell a man, especially the
+very man who--I feel so queer, Lawrence: don't let me say
+anything I ought not!"
+
+"Laura dear, whatever you say is sacred to me. Besides, I'm your
+cousin by marriage, and it's my business to think and act for
+you: let me help you into this alley." A little further on there
+was a by-path through the shrubberies, and Lawrence drew her
+towards it, but her limbs were giving way under her, and after a
+momentary hesitation he carried her into it in his arms.  "There:
+sit on this bank.  Lean on me," he sat down by her.  "Is that
+better?"
+
+"Oh yes: thank you: I'm so glad to be out of the drive," said
+Laura, letting her head fall, like a child, on his shoulder.  "I
+seem to have been there such a long while. I didn't know where to
+go.  Once a tradesman's cart drove by, the butcher's it was: you
+know Bernard gets so cross because they will drive this way to
+save the long round by the stables.  He stared at me, but I
+didn't know what to do."  Lawrence repressed a groan: it would be
+all over the village then, there was no help for it.  "Where was
+I to go in these clothes?  I did wish you would come, I always
+feel so safe with you."
+
+Lawrence silently stroked her hair.  His heart was riven.  "So
+safe?" and this was all his doing.
+
+"Was the door locked?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And he refused to open it?"
+
+"No, he did open it."
+
+"He did open it, do you say?"
+
+"Yes, because--oh, my head."
+
+"You aren't hurt anywhere, are you?" asked Lawrence, feeling cold
+to his fingertips.
+
+"No, no," she roused herself, dimly sensible of his anxiety,
+"it's only that I feel faint, but it's passing off.  No, I don't
+want any water!  I'd far rather you stayed with me.  It's such a
+comfort to have you here." Lawrence was speechless.  Her hands
+went to her hair.  "Oh dear, I wish I weren't so untidy!  Never
+mind, I shall be all right directly: it does me more good than
+anything else just to tell you about it."
+
+"Well, tell me then."
+
+"The door was locked," she continued languidly but a thought more
+clearly, "and the chain was up and Bernard's couch was drawn
+across inside.  He must have got Barry to wheel it over.  When I
+begged him to let me in he unlocked the door but left it on the
+chain so that it would only open a few inches. I tried to push my
+way in, but he held me back."
+
+"Laura, did he strike you?"
+
+"No, no," said Laura with greater energy than she had yet shown.
+Lawrence drew a breath of relief.  He had felt a horrible fear
+that her faintness might be the result of a blow or a fall.  "Oh,
+how could you think that?  All he did was to put his hand out
+flat against my chest and push me back."
+
+"But your dress is torn" said Lawrence, sickening over the
+question yet feeling that he must know all.
+
+"His ring caught in it.  These crepe de chine dresses tear if you
+look at them."
+
+"Well, did you give it up after that?"
+
+"No, oh no: I never can be angry with Berns because it--it isn't
+Berns really," she glanced up at Lawrence with her pleading eyes.
+"It's a possession of the devil.  He suffers so frightfully,
+Lawrence: he never ceases to rebel, and no one can soothe him but
+me.  So that I hadn't the heart to leave him.  You'll think it
+poor-spirited of me, but I--I can't help loving the real
+Bernard, a Bernard you've never seen.  So I waited because--I
+never can make Yvonne understand--I am so sorry for him: he
+hurts himself more than me--"
+
+Lawrence started.  The echo struck strangely on his ear. "I
+understand."
+
+"You always understand.  So I tried again; I said: would he at
+least let me go to my room and change my clothes and get some
+money.  But he said it was your turn to buy my clothes now.  When
+I'd convinced myself that he was unapproachable, I thought of
+trying to get in by a side door or through the kitchen.  It would
+have been ignominious, but anything was better than standing on
+the steps; Bernard was talking at the top of his voice, and the
+maids were at the bedroom windows overhead.  I didn't look up but
+I saw the curtains flutter."
+
+"Servants don't matter much.  But you did quite right.  What
+happened?"
+
+"He held me by the arm as I turned to go, and told me that all
+the doors and windows were locked and that he had given orders
+not to admit me: not to admit either of us."
+
+"Either you or--?"
+
+"Yourself.  If we liked to stay out all night together we could
+stay out for ever."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Don't ask me." She shuddered and drooped, and the colour came up
+into her face, a rose-pink patch of fever.  "I can't remember any
+more."
+
+"He must have gone raving mad."
+
+"He is not mad, Lawrence.  But he has indulged his imagination
+too long and now it has the mastery of him," said Laura slowly.
+"It's fatal to do that.  'Withstand the beginning: after-remedies
+come too late.' Ever since you came he's been nursing an
+imaginary jealousy of you: though he knew it was imaginary, he
+indulged it as though it were genuine: and now it has turned on
+him and got him by the throat.  Oh, he is so unhappy?  But what
+can I do?"
+
+What, indeed?  Lawrence, recalling Val's warning, subdued a curse
+or a groan.  "A house full of the materials for an explosion."
+And he had lived in that house--blind fool!--week after week
+and had noticed nothing!  "Why--why did no one warn me before?"
+he stammered.  "My poor Laura!  Why didn't you send me away?"
+
+"But if it hadn't been you it would have been someone else!" said
+Mrs. Clowes simply.  "At one time it was Val: then it was Dr.
+Verney's junior partner, who attended me for influenza while Dr.
+Verney was away: and once it was a young chauffeur we had, who
+happened to be a University man.  I did get rid of him, because
+he found out, and that made everything so awkward.  But I
+couldn't get rid of Val, and in many ways I was most unwilling to
+let you go,--you did him so much good.  But I'd made up my mind
+to turn you out: Yvonne was at me--" she paused--"yes, it
+really was only yesterday!  I promised her to speak to you this
+morning.  Well, I've done it!"
+
+"Did you explain to Bernard that Selincourt and Isabel were with
+us all the time?"
+
+"He talked me down."
+
+"He must be made to listen to reason."
+
+"He won't: not yet.  Later, perhaps, but not in time to save the
+situation.  Never mind, you're not married, and if he does
+divorce me people will only say 'Another Selincourt gone wrong.'"
+A dreary and rather cynical gleam of humour played over Laura's
+lips. "I'm sorry mainly for Yvonne, Jack's people are so
+particular; they hated the marriage, and now, when she's lived it
+all down and made them fond of her, I must needs go and
+compromise myself and drag our wretched family into the mud
+again!"
+
+"Good heavens! he can't propose to divorce you?"
+
+"He said he would."
+
+Bit by bit it was all coming out, the cruel and sordid drama
+played before an audience of housemaids, as one admission led to
+another and her strength revived for the ordeal.  Lawrence
+shuddered and sat silent, trying to gauge the extent of the
+mischief.  "What can I do?" said Laura.  She looked down at
+herself and blushed again.  "I do feel so--so disreputable in
+these clothes. I haven't even been able to wash my face and hands
+or tidy my hair since I left the hotel."
+
+"Have you been wandering about in the drive all this time?"
+
+"I suppose so.  I was afraid to go into the road in such a
+pickle."
+
+"These infernal clothes!" Lawrence burst out exasperated.  Their
+wretched plight was reduced to farce by the fact that they were
+locked out of their bedrooms, unable to get at their wardrobes,
+their soaps and sponges and brushes, his collars, her hairpins,
+all those trifles of the toilette without which civilized man can
+scarcely feel himself civilized.  Most of these wants the
+vicarage could supply; but to reach the vicarage they had to
+cross the road.  Lawrence got up and stood looking down at Laura.
+"Can you trust your maid?"
+
+"Trust her? I can't trust her not to gossip.  She's a nice girl
+and a very good maid, but I've only had her a year."
+
+"Silly question!  One doesn't trust servants nowadays.  My man's
+a scamp, but I can depend on him up to a certain point because I
+pay him well.  Anyhow we must make the best of a bad job.  If I
+cut straight down from here I shall get into the tradesmen's
+drive, shan't I?"
+
+"But you can't go to the back door!"
+
+"Apparently I can't go to the front," said Lawrence with his
+wintry smile.  He promised himself to go to the front by and by,
+but not while Laura was shivering in torn clothes under a bush.
+
+"But what are you going to do?"
+
+"Simply to get us a few necessaries of life.  You can't be seen
+like this, and you can't stand here forever, catching cold with
+next to nothing on: besides, you've had no food since five
+o'clock this morning--and not much then."
+
+"But the servants--if they have orders--"
+
+"Servants!" He laughed.
+
+"But you don't mean to force your way in?"
+
+"Not past Bernard, dear.  Don't be afraid: I shall skulk in by
+the rear."
+
+It was easy to say "Don't be afraid": doubly easy for Lawrence,
+who had never known Bernard's darker temper.  But there was no
+coward blood in Mrs. Clowes, and she steadied herself under the
+rallying influence of Hyde's firm look and tone.
+
+"Go, then, but don't be long.  And, Lawrence promise me. . ."
+
+"Anything, dear."
+
+"You won't touch Bernard, will you?"  Lawrence was dumb, from wonder,
+not from indecision.  "No one can do that," said Laura under her
+breath.  "Oh, I know you wouldn't dream of it.  But yet--if he
+insulted you, if he struck you . . . if he insulted me. . . ?"
+
+"No, on my honour."
+
+He touched her hand with his lips--a ceremony performed by
+Lawrence only once beforehand in what different circumstances!--
+and left her: more like a winter butterfly than ever, with her
+shining hair, pale face, and gallant eyes, and the silver threads
+of her embroidered skirt flowing round her over the sunburnt
+turf.
+
+Wanhope was an old-fashioned house, and the domestic premises
+were much the same as they had been in the eighteenth century, except
+that Clowes had turned one wing of the stables into a garage and
+rooms for the chauffeur.  He kept no indoor menservants except Barry,
+the groom and gardener living in the village, while three or four
+maids were ample to wait on that quiet family.  Pursuing the
+tradesman's drive between coach-house, tool shed, coal shed, and
+miscellaneous outbuildings, Lawrence emerged on a brick yard, ducked
+under a clothes-line, made for an open doorway, and found himself in
+the scullery.  It was empty, and he went on into a big old-fashioned
+kitchen, draughty enough with its high roof and blue plastered walls.
+Here, too, there was not a soul to be seen: a kettle was furiously
+boiling over on the hob, a gas ring was running to waste near by,
+turned on but left unlit and volleying evil fumes.  His next
+researches carried him into a flagged passage, on his right a sunlit
+pantry, on his left a dingy alcove evidently dedicated to the
+trimming of lamps and the cleaning of boots.  He began to wonder if
+every one had run away.  But no: a sharp turn, a couple of steps, and
+he came on an inner door, comfortably covered with green baize,
+through which issued a perfect hubbub of voices all talking at once.
+He listened long enough to hear himself characterized by a baritone
+as a stinking Jew, and by a treble as not her style and a bit too gay
+but quite the gentleman, before he raised the latch and stepped in.
+
+His appearance produced a perfect hush.  Except Barry and his own
+valet they were all there, the entire domestic staff of Wanhope:
+and to face them was not the least courageous act that Lawrence
+had ever performed.  It was a large, comfortable room, lit by
+large windows overlooking the kitchen garden; a cheerful fire
+burnt in the grate this autumn morning, and in a big chair before
+it sat a cheerful, comely person in a print gown, in whom he
+recognized Mrs. Fryar the cook.  Gordon the chauffeur, a
+pragmatic young man from the Clyde, in this levelling hour was
+sitting on the edge of the table with a glass of beer in his
+hand.  Caroline, the Baptist housemaid, held the floor: she was
+declaiming, when Lawrence entered, that it was a shame of Major
+Clowes and she didn't care who heard her say so, but apparently
+Lawrence was an exception, for like all the rest she was
+instantly stricken dumb as the grave.
+
+Lawrence remained standing in the open doorway.  He would have
+given a thousand pounds to be in morning attire, but no
+constraint was perceptible in the big, careless, impassive figure
+framed against the sunlit yard.
+
+"Are you Mrs. Clowes's maid?" he singled out a tall, rather
+stiff, quiet-looking girl in the plain black dress of her
+calling.  "Is your name Catherine? I want to speak to you."
+
+She stood up--they were all standing by now except Gordon--but
+she looked at him very oddly, as if she were half frightened and
+half inclined to be familiar. "I suppose you can tell me where
+my lady is, sir?"
+
+"She is waiting for you," said Lawrence. "I say that I want to
+speak to you by yourself.  Come in here, please." Catherine
+continued to look as if she felt inclined to flounce and toss her
+head, but under his cold and steady eyes she thought better of it
+and followed him into the pantry. Lawrence shut the door.
+
+"I'd have gone to my lady, sir, if I'd known where she was."
+
+"You're going to her now," said Lawrence.  "I want you, please,
+to run up to her room and fetch some clothes, the sort of clothes
+she would wear to go out walking: you understand what I mean?  A
+jacket and dress and hat, walking boots, a veil--" Catherine
+intimated that she did understand: much better than any
+gentleman, her smile implied.
+
+"Perhaps," she suggested, "what you would like is for me to pack
+a small box for her, sir?  My lady will want a lot of things that
+gentlemen don't think of: underskirts and--"
+
+"Good God, what do I care?" said Lawrence impatiently.  "No,
+nothing of that sort: take just what she wants to change out of
+evening dress into morning dress.  It'll be only for a few hours.
+Go and get them, and be as quick and quiet as you can.  Say
+nothing to Major Clowes." He laid his hand on her shoulder.
+"Are you a decent girl, I wonder?"
+
+She drew up and for the first time looked him straight in the
+eyes. "If you mean, sir, that you're going to take my poor lady
+away, why, I think it's high time too.  I was always brought up
+respectable, but when it comes to a gentleman calling his own
+married wife such names, why, it's time some one did interfere.
+I heard him with my own ears call her a--"
+
+"That'll do," said Lawrence.
+
+"And struck her, that he did, which you ought to know," Catherine
+persisted eagerly: "put his arm out through the door and gave her
+a great blow! and it's not the first time neither.  Many's the
+night when I've undressed my lady but perhaps you've seen for
+yourself--"
+
+She stopped short and put her hand over her mouth.
+
+"Go and get the things," said Lawrence, "then wait for me in the
+yard."
+
+Catherine retired in disorder and Lawrence followed her out.  He
+found Barry waiting to speak to him.  "Where's my man?" Lawrence
+asked. "Send him to me, will you?"
+
+"Beg pardon, sir, but are you going to speak to Major Clowes?"
+
+"Why?"
+
+Barry looked down.  "His orders was that you weren't to be
+admitted, sir."
+
+"How is Major Clowes?"
+
+"Very queer.  I took it on myself to send for the doctor, but he
+was out: but they sent word that he'd step round as soon as he
+came in.  I'd have liked to catch Mr. Val, but he slipped off
+while I was waiting on the Major."
+
+"But Major Clowes isn't ill?"
+
+"Oh no, sir.  But I don't care for so much responsibility."
+
+"Shall I have a look at him?"
+
+"Oh no," a much more decided negative. "I wouldn't go near the
+Major, sir, not if I was you."
+
+"Why, what's the matter with him?" Lawrence asked curiously.  But
+Barry refused to commit himself beyond repeating that the Major
+was very queer, and after promising to send Val to the rescue
+Lawrence dismissed him, as Gaston came hurrying up.  Something
+suspiciously like a grin twinkled over the little Frenchman's
+face when he found his master waiting for him on the sill of
+Caroline's pantry, silhouetted against row on row of shining
+glass and silver, and wearing at noon-day the purple and fine
+linen, the white waistcoat and thin boots of last night.  But his
+French breeding triumphed and he remained, except for that one
+furtive twinkle, the conscientious valet, nescient and urbane.
+Lawrence did not give him even so much explanation as he had
+given Catherine.  "Is there a back staircase?" he asked, and
+then, "Take me up by it.  I'm going to my room."
+
+Gaston led the way through the servants' hall. Lawrence,
+following, had to fight down a nausea of humiliation that was
+almost physical: he had never before done anything that so
+sickened him as this sneaking progress through the kitchen
+quarters in another man's house.  At length Gaston, holding up a
+finger to enjoin silence, brought him out on the main landing
+overlooking the hall.
+
+There was no carpet on the polished floor but Lawrence when he
+chose could tread like a cat.  He stepped to the balustrade.  It
+was as dark as a dark evening, for the great doors were still
+fast shut, and what scanty light filtered through the painted
+panes was absorbed, not reflected, by raftered roof, panelled
+walls, and Jacobean stair.  But as he grew used to the gloom he
+could distinguish Bernard's couch and the powerful prostrate
+figure stretched out on it like a living bar.  Bernard's arms
+were crossed over his breast: his features were the colour of
+stone: he might have been dead.
+
+Lawrence was startled.  But he could do no good now, and the
+Frenchman was fidgeting at his bedroom door.  Later . . .
+
+Secure of privacy Gaston's decorum relaxed a trifle, for it was
+clear to him that confidences must be at least tacitly exchanged:
+M'sieur le captaine could not hope to keep him in the dark, there
+never was an elopement yet of which valet and lady's maid were
+not cognizant. Like Catherine, "You wish I pack for you, Sare?"
+he asked in his lively imperfect English.  He was naturally a
+chatterbox and brimful of a Parisian's salted malice, even after
+six years in the service of Captain Hyde, who did not encourage
+his attendants to be communicative.
+
+Lawrence was tearing off his accursed evening clothes. (All day
+it had been the one drop of sweetness in his bitter cup that he
+had borrowed Lucian's razor and shaved in Lucian's rooms.) "Get
+me a tweed suit and boots."
+
+Gaston frowned, wrinkling his nose: if M'sieur imagined that that
+nose had no scent for an affair of gallantry--!  But still he
+persisted, even he, though the snub was a bitter pill: himself a
+gallant man, could allow for jaded nerves.  "You wish I pack,
+yes?" he deprecated reticence by his insinuatingly sympathetic
+tone.
+
+"No," said Lawrence, tying his tie before a mirror.  "I'm coming
+back."
+
+"'Ere?  Back--so--'ere, m'sieur?"
+
+"Yes, before tonight."
+
+It was more than flesh and blood could stand. "Sir Clowes 'e say
+no," remarked Gaston in a detached and nonchalant tone, as he
+gathered up the garments which his master had strewn over the
+floor. "'E verree angree.  'E say 'Zut! m'sieur le captaine est
+parti!--il ne revient plus.'"
+
+"Gaston." The Frenchman turned from the press in which he was
+hanging up Lawrence's coat.  "You're a perfect scamp, my man,"
+Lawrence spoke over his shoulder as he ran through the contents
+of a pocketbook, "and I should be sorry to think you were
+attached to me.  But your billet is comfortable, I believe: I pay
+you jolly good wages, you steal pretty much what you like, and
+you have the additional pleasure of reading all my letters.  Now
+listen: I'm coming back to Wanhope before tonight and so is Mrs.
+Clowes.  I'm not going to run away with her, as Major Clowes gave
+you all to understand.  What you think is of no importance
+whatever to any one, what you say is equally trilling, but I
+don't choose to have my servant say it: so, if you continue to
+drop these interesting hints, I shall not only boot you out, but"
+--he turned "I shall give you such a thrashing in the rear,
+Gaston--in this direction, Gaston--that you won't be able to
+sit down comfortably for a month."
+
+"M'sieur is so droll," murmured Gaston, removing himself with
+dignified agility and an unabashed grimace.
+
+Lawrence let himself out by the back stairs again and the kitchen
+--now in a state of great activity, the gas ring lit and
+preparations for lunch going on apace--and forth into the yard.
+Out in the open air he drew a long breath: safe in tweeds and a
+felt hat, he was his own man again, but he felt as though he had
+been wading in mud.  The mystified Catherine followed him at a
+sign into the drive. There Hyde stood still.  "Take that path to
+the left.  You'll find your mistress waiting for you.  Help her
+to dress, and tell her I shall be at the lodge gates when she's
+ready.  And, Catherine--"
+
+He paused, feeling an almost insuperable distaste for his job.
+But it had to be done, the girl must not find him tight with his
+money: that she would hold her tongue was beyond expectation, but
+if well tipped at least she might not invent lies.  It went
+against the grain of his temper to bribe one of Bernard's maids,
+but fate was not now consulting his likes or dislikes.  He thrust
+his hand into his pocket--"Look after your mistress, will you?"
+
+The respectably brought up Catherine turned scarlet. She put her
+hand behind her back. "I'm sure, sir, I don't want your money to
+make me do that!"
+
+"If you prick us shall we not bleed?" It was the first time that
+Lawrence had ever discovered a servant to be a human being: and
+his philosophical musings were chequered, till he moved out of
+earshot, by the clamour of Catherine's irrepressible dismay.
+"Oh madam!"  he heard, and, "Well, if I ever-!" and then in a
+tone suddenly softened from horror to sympathy, "there now,
+there, let me get your dress off . . . ."  From Mrs. Clowes came
+no answer, or none audible to him.
+
+Laura joined him in ten minutes' time, neatly dressed, gloved,
+and veiled, her hair smoothed--it had never been rough so far as
+Lawrence could observe--her complexion regulated by Catherine's
+powder puff.  "Are you better?" said Lawrence, examining her
+anxiously: "able to walk as far as the vicarage?"
+
+"The vicarage?"
+
+"Wharton's too far off.  You're dead tired:  You'll have to lie
+down and keep quiet.  Isabel will look after you." It speaks to
+the complete overthrow of Lawrence's ideas that for the last hour
+he had not recollected Isabel's existence. "And we shall have to
+wait till Bernard raises the siege: one can't bawl explanations
+through a keyhole.  Besides, I must wire to Lucian." He slipped
+his hand under her arm.  "Would you like this good girl of yours
+to come with you?"
+
+"I will come, madam, directly I've fetched my hat," said
+Catherine eagerly.  "You must have some one to look after you,
+and your hair never brushed and all."
+
+But Laura shook her head, Catherine must not defy her master.
+"If you want to please me," she said not without humour "--I
+can't help it, Lawrence--try to look after Major Clowes.  You
+had better not go near him yourself, because as you know he isn't
+very pleased with me just now, but see that Mrs. Fryar sends him
+in a nice lunch and ask Barry to try to get him to eat it. I
+ordered some oysters to come this morning, and Major Clowes will
+enjoy those when he won't touch anything else."
+
+Catherine watched her lady up the road with a disappointed eye.
+It was a tame conclusion to a promising adventure.  Although
+respectably brought up, her sympathies were all with Captain Hyde:
+she had foreseen herself, the image of regretful discretion,
+sacrificing her lifelong principles to escort Mrs. Clowes to
+Brighton, or Switzerland, or that place where they had the little
+horses that Mr. Duval made such a 'mysterious joke about--it would
+have been amusing to do foreign parts with Mr. Duval.  But when Laura
+took the turning to the vicarage Catherine was invaded by a creeping
+chill of doubt.  Was it possible that Captain Hyde was not Mrs.
+Clowes's lover after all?
+
+"I know which I'd choose," she said to Gordon. "I've no patience
+with the Major.  Such a way to behave! and my poor lady with the
+patience of an angel, putting up and putting up--  No man's worth
+it, that's what I say."
+
+"Well, it is a bit thick," said Gordon: "calling his own wife a--"
+
+"Mr.  Gordon!"
+
+The son of the Clyde was a contentious young man, and a jealous
+one.  "You didn't seem to mind when the French chap was talking
+about a fille de joy.  What d'ye suppose a fille de joy is in
+English? but there's some of us can do no wrong."
+
+"French sounds so much more refined," said Catherine firmly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+Inaction was hard on Lawrence.  He hated it: and he was not used
+to it: his impulse was to go direct to Wanhope and break down the
+door: but it was not to be done.  When he reached the vicarage
+Mr. Stafford had gone out after an early lunch to take a wedding
+in Countisford, while Val had been obliged to ride over to a
+neighbouring farm.  Leaving Laura to Isabel, who startled him by
+her cool "So Major Clowes has done it at last?" he hurried down
+to the post office to telephone to Selincourt (aware on his way
+that every eye was staring at him: no doubt the tale was already
+on every lip), but Selincourt too was out, and he had to be
+content with despatching colourless duplicate telegrams to his
+rooms and club.  From a hint let fall during the night he was
+aware that no more than the most laconic wire would be needed,
+but he fretted under the delay, which meant that Selincourt could
+not arrive before six o'clock.  After that he would have liked to
+go to Wharton, but dared not, for, though Jack's grandfather was
+what Yvonne called a Romantic, the Grantchesters were old-fashioned
+straightlaced people who had better not hear of the scandal till it
+was over.  No, till Selincourt and Val appeared there was no more to
+be done, and Lawrence, returned to the vicarage and flung himself
+into a chair to wait. He dreaded inaction: inaction meant thought:
+and thought meant such bitter realities as he knew not how to stand
+up against: but what he liked or disliked was no longer to the point.
+
+In that easy-going household, where comfort was obtained at the
+expense of appearances, there was always a diningroom fire in
+cold weather, and on this September morning the glow of the
+flames had a lulling effect.  Dead tired, he dropped asleep, to
+be roused by the feeling that there was some one in the room.
+There was, it was Isabel; and in the drugged heaviness that
+follows daylight slumber Hyde simply held out his arms to her in
+oblivion of last night.  "Oh, oh!" said Isabel smiling at him
+and touching his palms with the tips of her fingers, "were you
+dreaming of me?"  Hyde drew back, a deep flush covering his face.
+What had changed Isabel? she was pure fascination.  "I've been
+watching you a long time while you were asleep. I thought you
+would never wake.  You're so, so tired!  Here's a cup of coffee
+for you."
+
+"Thank you," said Lawrence, entirely subdued.
+
+He still felt half dazed: confused and shy, emotions the harder
+to disguise because they were so unfamiliar: and restless under
+Isabel's merry eyes.  How near she was to him, the leaping flames
+flinging a dance of light and shadow over her silk shirt, and the
+bloom on her cheek, and the dark hair parted on one side (a
+boyish fashion which he had always disliked) and waved over her
+head! So near that without rising he could have pressed his lips
+to that white throat of hers. . . . Last night it had been beauty
+clouded, beauty averse, but this morning it was beauty in the
+most delicate and derisive and fleeting sunlight of pleasure; and
+the temperament of his race delivered Lawrence hand and foot into
+its power.  The deep waters went over him and he ceased to
+struggle--"Isabel," he heard himself saying in a level voice but
+without his own volition, "should you mind if I were to kiss
+you?"
+
+What a banality to ask of a woman, his second self scoffed at
+him: a woman who should be kissed or left alone, but never asked
+for a kiss!
+
+"Not very much," said Isabel, presenting her smooth cheek.  "Not
+if it would do you any good."
+
+Oh irony, oh disenchantment!  "Thank you."  He curbed his passion
+and sat still.  "I am not Val."
+
+"Shut your eyes then."
+
+He held his breath: the thick beating of his heart was like a
+muffled hammer.
+
+"This isn't the way I kiss Val."
+
+"Isabel!" exclaimed Lawrence.  He held out his arms again but
+they closed on the empty firelight: she had gone dancing off, the
+most fugitive, the most insubstantial of mistresses, nothing left
+of her to him but the memory of that moth's wing touch.
+
+"Isabel,  come here!" He, sprang to his feet.  From the other end
+of the room Isabel turned round, wistful, her head bent, glancing
+up at him under her eyelashes.
+
+"Oh must you have me?--all of me?  Oh Lawrence!--well then--"
+
+She advanced step by step, slowly.  Lawrence waited, convinced
+that if he tried to seize her she would be gone, such a vague
+thistledown grace there was in her slender immaturity.  He waited
+and Isabel came to him, drifted into his arms, was lying for a
+moment on his breast, and then, "Let me go: dearest, don't hold
+me!"
+
+He kept her long enough to ask "But are you mine?"
+
+"Yes," said Isabel, sighing.
+
+"This is a grudging gift, Isabel."
+
+"Oh no," she whispered, "not grudging.  All my heart: all of me.
+Only don't hold me, I'm still afraid."
+
+"Of me?"
+
+"Yes: now are you triumphant?" She escaped.
+
+"Will you sit down in a chair, you sprite, and let me kneel at
+your ladyship's feet?"
+
+"No--yes--No, you too sit down." Then as Lawrence, enchained,
+relapsed into the deep easy chair by the fire, she came behind
+and leant over him, wreathing her arms over his shoulders.
+"There: now lie still: so: is that cosy for you?  Now will you go
+to sleep?"
+
+"Circe . . ."
+
+"You don't feel as though you were going to sleep."
+
+"Mon Dieu!" Lawrence murmured under his breath.
+
+"Don't say that," her voice was so soft that it was like the
+voice of his own heart speaking to him, "it isn't a proper reply
+to make when a lady says she loves you."
+
+"Oh! provided that you do love me--!"
+
+She took his temples between her fingertips and again her
+enchanting caress brushed his lips. Lawrence lay helpless.  It
+was like receiving the caresses of a fairy: a delight and a
+torment, a serenity and a flame.  "I love you.  I will marry you.
+I shall be a most exacting wife, 'December when I wed.' Very soon
+you'll wish you had never set eyes on me.  You'll have to marry
+Val too and all the family." Her long lashes were fluttering
+against his cheek. "As you're thirty-six and I'm only nineteen,
+you'll have to be very docile or I shall tell you you're
+ungenerous."
+
+"Presuming on my income, as you said--was it last night?"
+
+"When you were free.  Does it seem so long ago?" She gave a
+little laugh, airy and sweet. "Oh poor Benedict!  Would you like
+to cry off?  Let me see: you may scratch any time before I tell
+Val, which will be when he comes in at five o'clock.  Now then?"
+
+This mention of Val was like a dash of cold water, and Lawrence
+tried to rouse himself.  "Will you be serious for half a second,
+you incarnation of mischief?"
+
+"No--yes--no, I don't want to be serious," she turned in his
+arms and the Isabel of last night pierced him with her dark,
+humid, brilliant eyes.  "I want to forget.  Make me forget!"
+
+"Forget what?"
+
+"Other women."
+
+"There are no other women, Isabel."
+
+"There have been.--Lawrence!" the scent of the honeysuckle
+pinned into her blouse seemed to narcotize all his senses with
+its irresistible sweetness, "you will be true to me, won't you?
+You won't love other women now?  Say you never wanted to kiss any
+of them so much as--  Oh!" Drunk with her Circean cup, Hyde was
+more than willing to convince her, but in a fashion of his own.
+Isabel gave a little sigh and faded out of his clasp: he tried to
+seize her but she was gone, leaving only the scent of bruised
+petals and the memory of a silken contact.  "You're so--so
+stormy," the gossamer voice mocked him with its magic of youth
+and gaiety. "Val says--"
+
+"Isabel, I'm sick of that formula.  You're going to marry me, not
+Val."
+
+"--You're not one-third English."
+
+"I've lived in countries where they knew how to manage women,"
+Lawrence muttered.
+
+"With a whip?"
+
+"No."
+
+"What a pity!"
+
+"No, the other method is more effective."
+
+"You terrify me," her eyes were sparkling now like a diamond.
+"Don't fling any more of those dark threats at me or I shall
+never marry you at all.  Some day you'll be madly jealous of me like
+Major Clowes--you are like him: you could be just as brutal: and I'm
+not like Laura--and you'll lure me out of England and wreak a
+mysterious vengeance."
+
+"I wish we were out of England now."
+
+"So do I.  Oh Lawrence, I'd sell my soul to go to Egypt!"
+
+"Red-hot days and blue sands in the moonlight.  Shall I take you
+there for our honeymoon?"
+
+"Or Spain: or Sicily: or what about Majorea?--  Let's slip off
+alone in a nom de plume and an aeroplane to some place where no
+one ever goes, all roses and lemon thyme and honey-coloured
+cliffs and a bay of blue sea--"
+
+"Should you like to be alone with me?"
+
+"Yes ... why not?"
+
+"Good!" said Hyde laughing.  "I see no reason if you don't." He
+put his hand before his eyes, which were throbbing as though he
+had looked too long at a bright light.  But Isabel pulled down
+his wrist.  "Don't do that.  I like to watch your eyes.  I allow
+no reserves, Lawrence.  And isn't it rather too late to lock the
+door?  I've seen you--"
+
+"Isabel!" He freed himself and stood up. "I beg your pardon, but
+you must not--  I can't stand--" His face was burning.  Isabel had
+not realized--it is difficult for a young girl to realize,
+convinced of her own insignificance--how deeply his pride had
+been cut overnight, but she was under no delusion now.  He was
+hot with shame and anger, and had to wait to fight them down
+before he could go on.  "Nineteen are you--or nine?  I can't
+play with you today.  Make allowance for me, dearest!  I'm in a
+most difficult position.  I've done incalculable mischief, and,
+to tell you the truth, I shouldn't have chosen to raise this
+subject again till I'm clear of it.  Your people may very fairly
+object.  My cousin is threatening a divorce action.  He's mad:
+and no decent lawyer would take his case into court: but the fact
+remains that poor Laura has been turned out of doors, and for
+that I am, in myself-centred carelessness, to blame.  You won't
+misunderstand me, will you, if I say that while this abominable
+business is hanging over me we can't be formally engaged?  Val
+must be told--nothing would induce me to keep him in the dark
+for an hour.  But for all that I shan't know how to face him.
+What! ask him for you, and in the same breath tell him that Laura
+has been turned adrift because I've compromised her?  If I were Val
+there'd be the devil and all to pay.  In the meantime I must--I
+must be sure of you.  But you change like the wind: last night you
+refused me, and to-day . . ."  He walked over to the window and stood
+looking out into the garden, fighting down one of those tremendous
+storms of memory which swept over him from time to time and made the
+present seem absolutely one with the past.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+He turned, but his voice was thick.  "Last time I trusted a woman
+she betrayed me."
+
+"You're thinking of your wife."
+
+"I often think of her," Hyde said savagely, "and wonder if all
+women are tarred with the same brush."
+
+"Oh, that is brutal," said Isabel, paling: "but you're tired
+out."
+
+It was true, he was too tired to rest: heartsick and ashamed,
+painfully aware of the immense harm he had done and uncertain how
+to mend it.  This sense of guilt was the more harassing because
+he was not in the habit of regretting his actions, good or bad:
+but now he could no longer fling off responsibility: it was
+riveted on him by all the other emotions which Wanhope had
+evoked, pity for Bernard, and affection for Laura, and humility
+before Val.
+
+Among the lilacs a robin was singing his delicate and bold
+welcome to autumn, and over the window a branch of red roses
+nodded persistently and rhythmically in a draught of wind.
+Lawrence stood looking out into the garden of which he saw
+nothing, and Isabel, watching him, felt tears coming into her own
+eyes, the tears of that unnerving pity which a woman feels for
+the man she loves, when she has never before seen him in defeat
+or depression.  No wonder he thought her fickle!  How could he
+read what was dark to her?
+
+Isabel had not deliberately altered her mind in the night.  She
+had lain down free and risen up bond, waking from sound sleep,
+the sleep of a child, to find that the silent inner Court of
+Appeal had reversed her verdict while she slept.  Her first
+thought had been, "I'm going to marry Lawrence!" For he needed
+her: that was what she had forgotten last night: by his parade of
+wealth he had defeated his own ends, but, her first anger over,
+she had realized that one should no more refuse a man for being
+rich, than accept him.  Far other were the grounds on which that
+decision had to be made.  It had been pity that carried Isabel
+away.  Perhaps in any case she could not have held out for long.
+
+Did she expect to be happy?  Scarcely, for she did not trust him
+enough to be frank with him.  Sophisticated men soon tire of candid
+women: it was in this faith that Isabel had clouded herself in such
+an iridescence of mystery and coquetry, laughing when she felt more
+inclined to cry, eluding Lawrence when she would rather have rested
+in his arms.  Roses and steel: innocence in a saffron scarf:
+ascendancy won and held only by surrender: such was to be the life of
+the woman who married Lawrence Hyde, as she had seen it long ago on a
+June evening, and as, with some necessary failings for human
+weakness, she carried it out to the end. If any moralities at all
+were to be fulfilled in their union, it was for her to impose them,
+for Hyde had none.  Within the limits of his code of honour he would
+simply do as he liked.  And with nine-tenths of her nature Isabel
+would have liked nothing better than to shut her eyes and yield to
+him as all her life she had yielded to Val, for she too loved red
+roses and sunshine and the pleasure of the senses: but her innermost
+self, the warder of her will, would rather have died than yield, she
+the child of an ascetic and trained in Val's simple code of duty.
+
+But there should be compromise: one must not--one need not--cheat
+him of the pride of his manhood.  Isabel's heart ached for
+her lover.  She could not defend herself against him any longer,
+and in her yielding the warder of her will whispered, "You may
+yield now.  Not to be frank with him now would be unfair as well
+as unkind."
+
+She came softly to him in the window, and instantly by some
+change of tension Lawrence discovered to his delight that Circe
+had vanished.  His mistress was his own now, a girl of nineteen
+who had promised to be his wife, and he was carried beyond doubt
+or anger by the rush of tenderness which went over him when he
+began to taste the sweetness of his victory.  "Have I won you?"
+he whispered, his voice as unsteady as a boy's in his first
+passion. "You won't fail me?"
+
+"Oh never! never!"
+
+"You have the most beautiful eyes in the world.  I believe one
+reason why I always secretly liked Val was that his eyes reminded
+me of yours.  I can't stand it when he looks at me under your
+eyelashes.  I always want to say 'Here take it Val.'"
+
+"Take what?"
+
+"Anything he wants.  I'm going to extend a protecting wing over
+my young brother-in-law.  He shall not, no, I swear he shall not
+come to grief. I can't stand it, he's too like you.  When did you
+first fall in love with me?"
+
+"When did you?"
+
+"The night you went to sleep in the garden at Wanhope."
+
+"Oh! when you kissed me?"
+
+"When I--?"
+
+Isabel was speechless.
+
+"How do you know I kissed you, Isabel? I thought you were
+asleep."
+
+"So I was," said Isabel, blushing deeply. "Oh! Captain Hyde, I
+wasn't pretending!  But I woke up directly after, and heard a
+rustling in the wood, and I--I knew, don't ask me: I could feel
+-"
+
+"This?"
+
+"Yes," Isabel murmured, resigning herself.
+
+"How strange!" said Lawrence under his breath. "You were asleep
+and you felt me kiss you?"
+
+She looked up at him through her eyelashes. "Is that so strange?"
+
+"Rather: because I never did kiss you."
+
+"Not?"
+
+"No: I bent over you to do it, but you were so defenceless and so
+young, I didn't dare.--  Isabel! my darling! what have I done?"
+
+The first days of love are supposed to be blind days, but too
+often they are days of overstrained criticism, when from very
+fear each sees slips and imperfections even where they do not
+exist.  The discovery that she had misjudged Hyde was an
+exquisite joy to Isabel.  This trivial, crucial scruple, of
+morality or taste, whichever one liked to call it, was the sign
+of a chastity of mind which could coexist, it seemed, with the
+coarse and careless sins that he had never denied.  After all no
+marriage on earth is perfect, and husbands as well as wives have
+to make allowances; but as years go on, and affection does its
+daily work, the rubs are less and less felt, till the time comes
+when deeper wisdom can look back smiling on the fears of youth.
+Isabel at nineteen did not possess this wisdom but she had youth
+itself.
+
+The flames crackled low on the hearth: the wind, a small autumn
+wind, piped weakly round white wall and high chimneypot: outside
+in the garden late roses were shedding their petals loosened by a
+touch of frost in the night.  "Tears because you mistrusted me?"
+said Hyde in his soft voice.  "But why should the Gentile maiden
+trust a Jew?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+Riding back from Liddiard St. Agnes in the low September
+sunshine, Val became aware of something pleasantly pictorial in
+the landscape.  It was a day when the hills looked higher than
+usual, the tilt of the Plain sharper, the shadows a darker umber,
+the light clearer under a softly-quilted autumn sky.  When he
+crossed a reaped cornfield, the pale golden stalks of stubble to
+westward were tipped each with a spark of light, so that all the
+upland flashed away from him toward the declining sun.
+
+In his own mind there was a lull which corresponded with this
+clear quietness of Nature: a pleasant vacancy and a suspension of
+personal interest, so that even his anxiety about Laura was put
+at a little distance, and he could see her and Bernard, and
+Lawrence himself, like figures in a picture, hazed over by a kind
+of moral sunlight--the Grace of God, say, which from Val's point
+of view shapes all our ends:
+
+          I do not ask to see
+          The distant scene: one step enough for me,
+
+this courage came to Val now without effort, and not for himself
+only, which would have been easy at any time, but for Laura in
+her difficult married life, and for those other beloved heads on
+which he was fated to bring disgrace--his father, Rowsley,
+Isabel: come what might, sorrow could not harm them, nor fear
+annoy.  How quiet it was! the quieter for the wrangling of rooks
+in the border elms, and for the low autumn wind that rustled in
+the hedgerows: and how full of light the sky, in spite of the
+soft bloomy clouds that had hung about all day, imbrowning the
+sunshine! far off in the valley doves were grieving, and over the
+reaped and glittering cornstalks curlews were flying and calling
+with their melancholy--shrill wail, an echo from the sea, while
+small birds in flocks flew away twittering as he rode up, and
+settled again further on, and rose and settled again, always with
+a clatter of tiny wings.  Evening coming on: and winter coming
+on: and light, light everywhere, and calm, over the harvest
+fields and the darkened copses, and the far blue headlands that
+seemed to lift themselves up into immeasurable serenities of sky.
+
+It was lucky for Val that he was able to enjoy this quiet hour,
+for it was soon over.  When he crossed the turf to the diningroom
+window, the fire had burnt down into red embers and not much
+light came in from out of doors under that low ceiling, but there
+was enough to show him Isabel in Lawrence's arms.  Fatality!  He
+had not foreseen it, not for a moment: and yet directly he saw it
+he seemed to have known it all along.  After a momentary
+suspension of his faculties, during which his ideas shifted much
+as they do when an unfamiliar turns into a familiar road, Val
+tapped on the glass and strolled in, giving his young sister one
+of his light teasing smiles.  "Am I to bestow my consent,
+Isabel?"
+
+"Oh Val!--  Don't be angry, or not with Lawrence anyhow, it wasn't
+his fault."
+
+Isabel disengaged herself but without confusion. Her brother
+watched her in increasing surprise. Rosy and sparkling, she
+seemed to have grown from child to woman in an hour, as after a
+late spring the first hot day brings a million buds into leaf.
+
+"Are you startled?" she asked, holding up her cheek for a kiss.
+
+"Not so much so as I should have been twenty-four hours ago.  No,
+I didn't guess--not a bit; I suppose brothers never expect
+people to want to marry their sisters.  We know too much about
+you."
+
+"Better run off to the nursery, Isabel," said Lawrence.  Isabel
+made him a little smiling curtsey eloquent of her disdain--it
+was so like Captain Hyde to be saucy before Val!--and slipped
+away. When Lawrence returned after holding open the door for her,
+he found a certain difficulty in meeting Val's eyes.
+
+"And this then is the mysterious attraction that has kept you at
+Wanhope all the summer?  Wonderful!  What will Mrs. Jack say?
+But I suppose nineteen, for forty, has a charm of its own."
+
+Lawrence was not forty.  But he refused to be drawn.  "She is
+very beautiful."
+
+"Oh, very," Val was nothing if not cordial.  "But her face is her
+fortune. I needn't ask if you can keep her in the state to which
+she's accustomed," his eye wandered over the dilapidated vicarage
+furniture, "or whether your attentions are disinterested.
+Evidently you're one of those men who like their wives to be
+dependent on them--  Dear me!"
+
+"Damn the money!" said Lawrence at white heat.  "Jew I may be,
+but it's you and Isabel that harp on it, not I."
+
+"Come, come!" Val arched his eyebrows.  "So sorry to ruffle you,
+but these questions are in all the etiquette books and some one
+has to ask them.  If you could look on me as Isabel's father--?"
+
+It was too much.  Angry as he was, Lawrence began to laugh.  "No,
+I won't look on you as Isabel's father," he had regained the
+advantage of age and position, neutralized till now by Val's
+cooler self-restraint. "I won't look on you as anything but a
+brother-in-law; a younger brother of my own, Val, if you can
+support the relation.  Won't you start fresh with me?  I've not
+given you much cause to think well of me up to now, but I love
+Isabel, and I'll do my best to make her happy.  I might find
+forgiveness difficult if I were you, but then," for his life he
+could not have said whether he was in earnest or chaffing Val,
+"I'm a Jew of Shylock's breed and you're a Christian."
+
+"But, my dear fellow, what is there to forgive?  We're only too
+delighted and grateful for the honour done us: it's a brilliant
+match, of course, far better than she could expect to make." A
+duller man than Lawrence could not have missed the secret silken
+mischief.  "And to me, to all of us, you're more than kind; it's
+nice to feel that instead of losing a sister I shall gain a
+brother."
+
+"You are an infernal prig, Val!"
+
+"Oh," said Val, this time without irony, "It's easy for you to
+come with an apology in one hand and a cheque in the other."
+
+He turned away and stood looking out into the garden.  In the
+lilac bushes over the lawn Isabel's robin was still singing his
+winter carol, and the atmosphere was saturated with the smell of
+wet, dead leaves, the poignant, fatal smell of autumn. "There's
+winter in the air tonight," said Val half aloud.
+
+"What?" said Lawrence startled.
+
+"I say that life's too short for quarrelling." He held out his
+hand.  "But be gentle with her, she is very young.--  Yes, what is
+it, Fanny?"
+
+"Major Clowes's compliments, sir, and he would be glad to see
+Captain Hyde as soon as convenient."
+
+At Wanhope half an hour later the sun had gone down behind a bank
+of purple fog, and cloud after cloud had put off its vermilion
+glow and faded into a vague dimness of twilight: house and garden
+were quiet, except for the silver rippling of the river which
+went on and on, ceaselessly fleeting over shallows or washing
+along through faded sedge.  These river murmurs haunted Wanhope
+all day and night, and so did the low river-mists: in autumn by
+six o'clock the grass was already ankle deep and white as a field
+of lilies.
+
+The tall doors were wide open now: no lamps were lit, but a big
+log fire blazed on the hearth, and through the empurpled evening
+air the house streamed with flame-light, flinging a ruddy glow
+over leafless acacia and misty turf.  Stretched on his couch in a
+warm and dark angle by the staircase, Clowes was busy with his
+collection, examining and sorting a number of small objects which
+were laid out on his tray: sparks of light winked between his
+fingers as iron or gold or steel turned up a reflecting edge. His
+face as white as his hands, the wide eyes blackened by the
+expansion of their pupils, he looked like a ghost, but a ghost of
+normal habits, washed and shaved and dressed in ordinary tweeds.
+
+"Hullo, Bernard."
+
+"Good evening, Lawrence.  Oh, you've brought Val and--
+Selincourt, is it?  What years since we've met, Selincourt!  Very
+good of you to come down, and I'm delighted to see you, one can't
+have too many witnesses.  Mild evening, isn't it?  Leave the
+doors open, Val, Barry has made up an immense fire, big enough
+for January.  Now sit down all of you, will you?  I shan't keep
+you long."
+
+Propped high on cushions, he lay like a statue, his huge
+shoulders squared against them as boldly as if he were in the
+saddle.  Lawrence, so like him in frame and colouring, stood with
+his back to the hearth: Selincourt with his tired eyes and grey
+hair sat near the door, one hand slipped between his crossed
+knees: Val preferred to stay in the background, a spectator,
+interested and deeply sympathetic, but a trifle shadowy.  They
+were three to one, but the dominant personality was that of the
+cripple.
+
+"It's with you, Lawrence, that I have to do business.  You passed
+last night with my wife."
+
+The heavy voice was deadened out of all heat except grossness.
+How had Clowes spent the last twelve hours?  In reliving over and
+over again his wife's fall: defiling her image and poisoning his
+own soul with emanations of a diseased mind, from which
+Selincourt, a straightforward sinner, would have turned in
+disgust.  Men of strong passions like Bernard need greater
+control than Bernard possessed to curb what they cannot indulge:
+and a mind full of gross imagery was nature's revenge on him for
+a love that had been to him "hungry, and barren, and sharp as the
+sea." But for the friend, the brother, and the lover it was
+difficult to grant him such allowances as would have been made by
+a physician.
+
+"That'll do," said Lawrence, raising his hand.  "Your wife is
+innocent.  Send any one you like to the hotel--private detective
+if you like--and find out what rooms Miss Stafford and Laura
+had, or whether Selincourt and I stayed five minutes in the place
+after the ladies went upstairs."
+
+"So Laura said this morning."
+
+"There's no loophole for suspicion. I went back with Selincourt
+to his rooms and we sat up the rest of the night smoking and
+playing auction piquet.  He won about five pounds off me.  Ask
+him: he'll confirm it."
+
+"That's what he came for, isn't it?" Bernard smiled.  "My good
+chap, think I don't know that if you gave him a five pound note
+to do it Selincourt would hold the door for you?"
+
+Selincourt's pale face was scarlet.  "I say she shall not return
+to him!" he broke out loudly.  "If this is a specimen of what
+he'll say to us, what does he say to her?"
+
+"No offence, no offence,'' Bernard bore him down, insolent and
+jovial. "'The Lord commended the unjust steward.' I foresaw that
+Lawrence would lie through thick and thin, and if I'd given it a
+thought either way I should have known you'd be brought down to
+back him up.  And quite right too to stand by your sister--the
+more so that all you Selincourts are as poor as Church rats and
+naturally don't want your damaged goods back on your hands.  But
+don't get huffy, keep calm like me.  You deny everything,
+Lawrence. Quite right: a man's not worth his salt if he won't lie
+to protect a woman.  Laura also denies everything.  Quite right
+again: a woman's bound to lie to save her reputation.  But the
+husband also has his natural function, which is to exercise a
+decent incredulity.  Perhaps it's a bit difficult for you to
+enter into my feelings.  You're none of you married men and you
+don't know how it stings a man up when his wife makes him a--
+Hallo!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"What's the matter with you?"
+
+"Go on," said Lawrence, flinging himself into a chair: "if you
+have a point, come to it.  I'm pretty well sick of this."
+
+"So it seems," said Bernard staring at him.  "Is it the good
+old-fashioned English word that you can't stomach?  All right, after
+tonight I shan't offend again.  That's my point and I'm coming to
+it as fast as I can.  I won't have any one of the lot of you near
+me again except Val: I acquit him of complicity: he probably
+believes Laura innocent.  Don't you, Val?"
+
+"There's no evidence whatever against her, outside your
+imagination, old man."
+
+"You're in love with her yourself," Bernard retorted brutally.
+Val started, it was the second time in twelve hours.  "Oh! think
+I haven't seen that?  There's not much I don't see, that goes on
+around me.  Cheer up, I'm not really jealous of you.  Laura never
+cared that for you.  She was my wife for ten days, after all: it
+takes a man to master her."
+
+"What he wants is a medical man," said Lawrence to Selincourt in
+a low voice.  He dared not look at Val.
+
+"After tonight neither Selincourt nor you, Lawrence nor your lady
+friend will darken my doors again.  Try it on and I'll have you
+warned off by the police."
+
+"Bernard, you over-rate the attractions of your society."
+
+"Pass to my second point. I don't propose to divorce Laura."
+
+"You couldn't get a divorce, you ass: you've no case."
+
+"But equally I don't propose to take her back. If she lives alone
+and conducts herself decently I'll make her an allowance--say
+four or five hundred a year.  If she lives with a lover or tries
+to force her way in here I won't give her a stiver.  Now,
+Selincourt, you had better use your influence or you'll have her
+planted on you directly Lawrence gets sick of her.  If she goes
+from me to Lawrence she can go from Lawrence on the streets for
+all I--shut that door, Val!--Keep her out!"
+
+"Laura! go away!" cried Selincourt. The scene was rising into a
+nightmare and his nerves shivered under it.  But he was too late.
+The wide doorway had filled with people: Laura with her satin
+hair, her flying veil, her ineffaceable French grace of air and
+dress: Isabel bare-headed, very pale and reluctant: and Mr.
+Stafford, who had come down to exercise a moderating influence in
+the direction of compromise.  Isabel edged round towards
+Lawrence, while Mr. Stafford stood glancing from one to another
+with keen authoritative eyes, waiting a chance to strike in.  But
+Laura after her long sleep had recovered her fighting temper and
+was no longer content to remain a cipher in her own house.  She
+smiled and shook her head at Lucian, reddening under her dark
+skin.
+
+"Bernard, have they told you the truth yet?  No, I thought not,
+Lawrence was too shy." High spirited, for all her sensitiveness,
+she laid her slight hand on her husband's wrist.  "Did you think
+if Lawrence stayed on at Wanhope it must be because he admired
+me?  You forget that there are younger and prettier women in
+Chilmark than I am.  Lawrence is going to marry Isabel.  It's a
+romantic tale," was there a touch of pique in Laura's charming
+voice? "and I'm afraid they both of them took some pains to throw
+dust in our eyes.  I've only this moment learnt it from Isabel."
+Yes, undeniably a trace of pique.  Women like Laura, used to the
+admiration of men however innocent, cannot forego it without a
+sigh.  She did not grudge Isabel her happiness or even envy it,
+and she had never believed Lawrence to be in love with herself,
+and yet this courtship that had gone on under her blind eyes
+produced in her a faint sense of irritation, of male defection
+that had made her look a little silly.  She was aware of it
+herself and faintly amused and faintly ashamed.  "My time for
+romantic adventure has gone by.  Oh my poor Berns, you forget
+that I'm thirty-six!"
+
+Here was the authentic accent of truth.  Clowes heard it, but he
+had got beyond the point where a man is capable of saying "I was
+wrong, forgive me."  At that moment he no longer desired Laura to
+be innocent, he would have preferred to justify himself by
+proving her guilty.  "Take your damned face out of this," he
+said, enveloping her in an intensity of hate before which Laura's
+delicate personality seemed to shrivel like a scorched leaf.
+"Take it away before I kill you." He struck her hand from his
+wrist and dashed himself down on the pillow, his great arms and
+shoulders writhing above the marble waist like some fierce animal
+trapped by the loins.  "Oh, I can't stand it, I can't stand
+it . . ."
+
+"Oh dear, this is awful," said Selincourt weakly.  He got up and
+stood in the doorway.  Despair is a terrible thing to watch.  Not
+even Lawrence dared go near Bernard.  It was the priest, inured
+to scenes of grief and rebellion, who came forward with the cold
+strong common sense of the Christian stoic.  "But you will have
+to stand it," said Mr. Stafford sternly, "it is the Will of God
+and rebellion only makes it worse.  After all, thousands of men
+of all ranks have had to bear the same trial and with much less
+alleviation.  You know now that your wife is innocent and is
+prepared to forgive you." It did not strike Mr. Stafford that men
+like Bernard Clowes do not care to be forgiven by their wives.
+There was no confessional box in Chilmark church.  "You have
+plenty of interests left and plenty of friends: so long as you
+don't alienate them by behaving in such an unmanly way.  Lift
+him, Val.--  Come, Major Clowes, you're torturing your wife.  This
+is cowardice--"
+
+"Like Val's, eh?"
+
+"Like--?"
+
+"Like your precious Val behaved ten years ago."   Clowes raised
+himself on his elbows.  "Aha! how's that for a smack in the eye?"
+
+"Val, my darling lad," said Mr. Stafford, stumbling a little in
+his speech, "what--what is this?"
+
+"Poor chap!" Clowes gave his curt "Ha ha!" as he reached out a
+long arm to turn on all the lights.  "Who was that chap, Hercules
+was it, that pulled the temple on his own head?  By God, if my
+life's gone to pieces, I'll take some of you with me.  You, Val,
+I was always fond of you: tell your daddy, or shall I, what you
+did in the Great War?"
+
+"Bernard. . . ."
+
+"Can't stand it, eh?  But, like me, you'll have to stand it.
+Come, come, Val, this is cowardice--"
+
+"Lawrence, don't touch him: let it come."
+
+But no one dared touch Clowes.  "Before his sister!" Selincourt
+muttered.  He had no idea what was coming but Val's grey pallor
+frightened him.  "And the old man!" Lawrence added with clenched
+hands.  Clowes ignored them both.  He held the entire group in
+subjection by sheer savage force of personality.
+
+"Simple little anecdote of war.  Dale, you remember, was a
+brother officer of mine.  He was shot in a raid and left hanging
+on the German wire. In the night when he was dying another chap
+in our regiment, that had been lying up all day between the lines
+with a bullet in his ribs, crawled across for him.  The Boches
+opened fire but he got Dale off and started back.  Three quarters
+of the way over they found a third casualty, a subaltern in the
+Dorchesters.  This chap wasn't hurt but he was weeping with fear.
+He had gone to ground in a shellhole during the advance and
+stayed there too frightened to move.  The Winchester man was by
+now done to the world.  He kicked the Dorchester to his feet and
+ordered him to carry on with Dale.  The Dorchester pointed out
+that if he turned up without a scratch on him, he would probably
+be shot by court martial, so the other fellow by way of pretext
+put a shot through his arm. 'Now you can tell 'em it was you who
+fetched Dale.' 'Oh I can't, I'm frightened,' says the Dorchester
+boy.  'By God you shall,' says the other, 'or I'll put a second
+bullet through your brains.' Now, Val, you finish telling us how
+you did the return trip in tears with Dale on your shoulders and
+Lawrence at your heels chivying you with a revolver."
+
+"You unutterable devil," said Lawrence under his breath, "who
+told you that?"
+
+Bernard grinned at him almost amicably.  He had got one blow home
+at last and felt better. "Why, I've always known it.  Dale told
+me himself.  He lived twenty minutes after you got him in."
+
+"Val," said Mr. Stafford, "this isn't true?"
+
+"Perfectly true, sir."
+
+Undefended, unreserved, stripped even of pride, Val stood up
+before them all as if before a firing party, for the others had
+involuntarily fallen back leaving him alone. . . . To Lawrence
+the silence seemed endless, it went on and on, while through the
+open doorway grey shadows crept in, the leafy smell of night and
+the liquid river-murmur so much louder than it could have been
+heard by day.  Suddenly, as if he could not stand the strain any
+longer, Val covered his eyes with his hands.  The movement, full
+of shame galvanized Lawrence into activity.  But he had not the
+courage to approach Val.  He had but one desire which was to get
+out of the house.
+
+"Bernard, if you weren't a cripple I'd put the fear of God into
+you with a stick"  He stood near the door eyeing his cousin with
+a cold dislike more cutting than anger.  "You're as safe as a
+woman. But I'm through with you.  I'll never forgive you this,
+never.  I'm going: and I shall take your wife with me." He
+turned.  "Come, Laura--"
+
+"Take care, Lawrence!" cried Isabel.
+
+She spoke too late.  Bernard's hand was already raised and a
+glint of steel shone between his fingers.  No one was near enough
+to disarm him.  Unable to move without exposing Laura, Lawrence
+mechanically threw up his wrist on guard, but the trick of
+Bernard's left-handed throw was difficult to counter, and
+Lawrence was bracing himself for a shock when Val stepped into
+the line of fire.  Selincourt uttered an exclamation of horror,
+and Val reeled heavily.  "For me!" said Lawrence under his
+breath.  He was by Val in a moment, bending over him, tender and
+protecting, an arm round his shoulders.  "Are you hurt, Val?
+What is it, old man?"
+
+Stafford had one hand pressed to his side.  "He meant it for
+you," he said, grimacing over the words as if he had not perfect
+control of his facial muscles.  "Take care.  Ah! that's better."
+Selincourt with a sweep of his arm had sent the remaining
+contents of the swing-tray flying across the floor.  There was no
+need of such violence, however, for the devil had gone out of
+Bernard Clowes now.  Deathly pale, his eyes blank with startled
+fear, his great frame seemed to break and collapse and he turned
+like a lost child to his wife: Laura--Laura . . ."
+
+"I'm here, my darling." In panic, as if the police were already
+at the door, Laura fell on her knees by the low couch.  Come what
+might he was still her husband, still the man she loved, to be
+defended against the consequences of his own acts irrespective of
+his deserts.  There was much of the wife but more of the mother
+in the way she covered him with her arms and breast.  "No one
+shall touch you, no one.  It was only an accident, you never
+meant it, and besides Val's only a little hurt--"
+
+Val, still with that wrenched grimace of pain, turned round and
+leant against Lawrence.  "Get me out of this," he said weakly.
+"Invent some story.  Anything, but spare her.  Get me out, I'm
+going to faint."
+
+Between them, Lawrence and Selincourt carried him out and laid
+him on the steps.  No one else paid any attention.  Laura was
+taken up with Bernard.  Mr. Stafford had shuffled over to the
+fire and was stooping down to warm his fingers while Isabel tried
+brokenly to soothe the anguish from which old and tired hearts
+rarely recover.  She was more frightened for him than for Val,
+and the grief she felt for him was a grief outside herself, which
+could be pitied and comforted, whereas the blow that had fallen
+on Val seemed to have fallen on her own life also, withering
+where it struck.  She suffered for her father but with Val, and
+this intensity of communion hardened her into steel, for it
+seemed as weak and vain to pity him as it would have been to pity
+herself if she like him had fallen under the stress of war.  The
+weak must first be served--later, later there would be time to
+pity the strong.
+
+She did not realize that for Val, whom instinctively she still
+classed among the strong, time and opportunity were over.  He
+fainted before they got him out into the air, and his hand fell
+away from his side, and then they saw what was wrong.  He had
+been stabbed: stabbed with the Persian dagger that Lawrence
+himself had given Bernard.  Val had taken it under his left
+breast, and it was buried to its delicate hilt.  When Lawrence
+opened his coat and shirt there was scarcely any blood flowing:
+scarcely any sign of mischief except his leaden pallor and the
+all-but-cessation of his pulse.  "Internal haemorrhage," said
+Lawrence.  He drew out the weapon, which came forth with a slow
+sidelong wrench of its curved blade: a gush of blood followed,
+running down over Val's shirt, over his shabby coat, over the
+steps of Wanhope and the dry autumn turf.  Lawrence held the lips
+of the wound together with his hand.  "Go and find Verney, will
+you?  Mind, it was an accident.  Don't be drawn into giving any
+details.  We must all stick to the same story."
+
+"But--but" Selincourt could not frame a coherent question with
+his pale frightened lips: "you don't--you can't think--"
+
+"That he's dying?  He won't see another sun rise."
+
+"But do they--do they--in there--understand?"
+
+"Oh for them," said Lawrence with his bitter ironical smile, "he
+died five minutes ago."
+
+This then was the end.  Waiting in the autumn twilight with Val's
+head on his arm Lawrence tried to retrace the steps by which it
+had been reached.  Bernard's revenge had struck blind and wild as
+revenge is apt to strike, but it had helped to bring the wheel
+full circle.  Val's expiation was complete.  In his heart
+Lawrence knew that his own was complete also.  In breaking Val's
+life he had permanently scarred his own.
+
+And the night when it had all begun came back to him, a March
+night, quiet and dark but for the periodical fanbeam of an enemy
+searchlight from the slope of an opposite hill: a mild rain had
+been falling, falling, ceaselessly, plashingly, over muddy
+ploughland or sere grass, over the intricacy of trenchwork behind
+the firing lines and the dreary expanse of no man's land between
+them: falling over wire entanglements from which dangled rags of
+uniform and rags of flesh: falling on faces of the unburied dead
+that it was helping to dissolve into, their primal pulp of clay.
+War! always war! and no theatre of scarlet and gold and cavalry
+charges, but a rat's war of mud and cold and fleas and unutterable,
+nerve-dissolving fatigue.  Not far off occasionally the rustle of
+clothes or the tinkle of an entrenching tool, as a sleeper turned
+over or the group sentry shifted arms on the parapet; and always in a
+lulling undertone the plash of rain on grass or wire, and the heavy
+breathing of tired men.  For four years these nocturnal sounds of war
+had been familiar in the ears of Lawrence Hyde.  He could hear them
+now, the river-murmur repeated them.  And then as now he had taken
+young Stafford's head on his arm, the boy lying as he had lain for
+eighteen hours, immovable, the rain running down over his face and
+through his short fair hair.
+
+He had failed . . . Lawrence recalled his own first near glimpse
+of death, a fellow subaltern hideously killed at his side: he had
+turned faint as the nightmare shape fell and rose and fell again,
+spouting blood over his clothes: contact with elder men had
+steadied him.  By night and alone?  Well: even by night and alone
+Lawrence knew that he would have recovered himself and gone on.
+It was no more than they all had to fight through, thousands of
+officers, millions of men.  Val had failed. . . . Yet how vast
+the disproportion between the crime and the punishment!  Endurance
+is at a low ebb at nineteen when one's eyelids are dropping and one's
+head nodding with fatigue.  Oh to sleep--sleep for twelve hours on a
+bed between clean sheets, and wake with a mind wiped clear of bloody
+memories! . . . memories above all . . . incommunicable things that
+even years later, even to men who have shared them, cannot be
+recalled except by a half-averted glance and a low "Do you
+remember--?" like frightened children holding hands in the dark of
+the world. . . . Had any one of them kept sane that night--those
+many nights? . . . But how should a civilian understand?
+
+He felt Val's heart.  It was beating slower and slower.  If one
+could only have one's life over again! but the gods themselves
+cannot recall their gifts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+It was one March evening six mouths later, one of those warm,
+still, sunshot-and-grey March evenings when elm-root are blue
+with violets and the air is full of the faint indeterminate scent
+of tree flowers, that Lawrence brought his bride home to
+Farringay.  March weather is uncertain, and he preferred to go
+where he could be sure of comfort, while Isabel, having once
+consented to be married, left all arrangements to him.  It was
+eight o'clock before they reached the house, and Isabel never
+forgot the impression which it made on her when she came in out
+of the bloomy twilight; warm and dim and smelling of violets that
+were set about in bowls on bookcase and cabinet, while the flames
+of an immense wood fire on an open hearth flickered over the blue
+and rose of porcelain or the oakleaf and gold of morocco.  She
+stood in the middle of an ocean of polished floor and looked
+round her as if she had lost her way in it, till Lawrence came to
+her and kissed her hands.  "Isabel, do you like the look of your
+new home?"
+
+"Very much.  Thank you."
+
+"May I take off your furs for you?" Getting no answer he took
+them off.  Framed in the sable cap and scarf that Yvonne had
+given her Isabel still parted her hair on one side, a fashion
+which Lawrence had grown to admire immensely, but her young
+throat and the fine straight masque of her features were thin and
+she had lost much of her colour since the autumn.  Lawrence held
+her by the wrists and stood looking down at her, compelling her
+to raise her eyes, though they soon fell again with a flutter of
+the sensitive eyelids.  "Are you tired, sweetheart?"
+
+"Oh no, thank you."
+
+"Cold?"
+
+"Not now."
+
+"Frightened?"
+
+"A little."
+
+"You wouldn't rather I left you for a little while?"
+
+Isabel almost imperceptibly shook her head, but with a shade of
+mockery in her smile which prevented Lawrence from taking her in
+his arms.  "Am I an unsatisfactory wife?  Will you soon be tired
+of me?  No, not yet," she said, moving away from him to put down
+her gloves and muff.  "I've hardly had time to thank you for my
+presents yet.  Oh Lawrence, how you spoil me!"  She held up her
+watch to admire the lettering on its Roman enamel.  "'I.H.' Does
+that stand for me--am I really Isabel Hyde?  And are those
+sapphires mine, and can I drink my tea out of this roseleaf
+Dresden cup?  It does seem strange that saying a few words and
+writing one's name in a book should make so much difference."
+
+"Regretful?"
+
+"A little oppressed, that's all.  I shall soon get used to it.
+If you were not you I should hate it.  But there's something
+essentially generous and careless in you, Lawrence, that makes it
+easy to take from you.  Come here." He came to her.  "Oh, I've
+made you blush!" said Isabel, naively surprised.  Under her rare
+and unexpected praise he had coloured against his will.  "Oh
+foolish one!"  She kissed him sweetly.  "Lawrence, are you sorry
+Val died?"  Lawrence freed himself and turned away.  It was six
+months since Val's death, but he still could not bear to think of
+it and he had scarcely spoken of it to Isabel.
+
+There had been no protracted farewell for Val.  He had died in
+Lawrence's arms on the steps of Wanhope without recovering
+consciousness, while Verney stood by helpless, and Isabel, by a
+stroke of irony, tried to convince poor agonized Laura Clowes
+that the law should not touch her husband.  It had not done so.
+He had been saved mainly by the unscrupulous concerted perjury of
+Lawrence and Selincourt, who swore that Val had stumbled and
+fallen by accident with the dagger in his hand, while Verney
+confined himself to drily agreeing that the wound might have been
+self-inflicted. In the absence of any contrary evidence the lie
+was allowed to pass, but perhaps it would hardly have done so if
+it had not been universally taken for a half-truth.  The day
+before the inquest there appeared in the Gazette a laconic notice
+that Second Lieutenant Valentine Ormsby Stafford, late of the
+Dorchester Regiment, had been deprived of his distinction on
+account of circumstances recently brought to light.  After that,
+no need to ask why Val should have had a dagger in his hand!  A
+jury who had known Val and his father before him were not anxious
+to press the case; and perhaps even the coroner was secretly
+grateful for evidence which spared him the pain of calling Mr.
+Stafford.
+
+Except in Chilmark, the scandal scarcely ran its nine days, but
+there of course it raged like a fire, and no one was much
+surprised when the vicar resigned his living and crept away to a
+bed-sittingroom in Museum Street, a broken old man, to spend the
+brief remainder of his life among black letter texts and
+incunabula.  He could have borne any sin in the Decalogue less
+hardly than a breach of the military oath.  He stopped Isabel,
+Rowsley, Lawrence himself when they tried to plead for Val. "I
+am not angry," he said feebly.  "If my son were alive I wouldn't
+shut my door on him.  But it's better as it is." He even tried to
+persuade Isabel to break with Lawrence.  "Captain Hyde is an
+honourable man and no doubt considers himself bound to you, so
+you mustn't wait for him to release himself.  It is very sad for
+you, my dear, but you belong to a disgraced family now and you
+must suffer with the rest of us."  Isabel agreed, and returned
+her engagement ring.  Followed a rather fiery scene, in which
+Lawrence lost his temper, and Isabel wept: and finally Mr.
+Stafford, finding Lawrence obdurate, broke down and owned that
+his one last wish was to see his daughter happily married.  He
+refused to take her to Bloomsbury.  She stayed with Rowsley or at
+the Castle till Lawrence brought her to Farringay.
+
+So there were changes at Chilmark, for the parish went to a
+hot-tempered Welshman with a wife and six children, and Wanhope was
+let to an American steel magnate, and Mrs. Jack Bendish, always
+mischievous when she was unhappy, embroiled them with each other
+first and then quarrelled with both.  Yes, Wanhope was let: a
+fortnight after Val's death Major Clowes went by car to Cornwall
+with his wife for a change of air after the shock. He was
+reported to have stood the journey very well, but Laura's letters
+were not expansive.
+
+Nor was Isabel: nor any other of those who had been eyewitnesses
+of the tragedy at Wanhope.  The memory of it cast a shadow and a
+silence.  Lawrence had never discussed it with Isabel; nor with
+Selincourt, except in a hurried whispered interchange of notes to
+avoid discrepancy in their evidence; nor with Bernard . . . the
+murderer.  Since the night when he carried Val dead over the
+vicarage threshold Lawrence had not seen his cousin.  He had seen
+Laura and tried to comfort her, but what could one say?  It was
+murder.  Had it not been for Laura he would have left Clowes to
+stand his trial.  Even for her sake he would not have kept the
+secret if Rowsley, to whom alone it was revealed, had not given
+his leave, in the dim blinded room where revenge and anger seemed
+small things, and Val's last words, almost unremarked at the
+time, took on the solemn force of a dying injunction.  The grey
+placidity of Val's closed eyelids and crossed hands was the last
+memory that Lawrence would have chosen to evoke on his wedding
+night.
+
+"Come and get warm," said Isabel.  She saw that she had startled
+and distressed her husband, and she drew him down into an immense
+armchair by the fire, a man's chair, spacious and soft.  "Is
+there room for me too?"  She slipped into it beside him and threw
+her arms round his neck.  Lawrence held her lightly and
+passively. Not once during their engagement had she so
+surrendered herself to him for more than a moment, and he dared
+not take advantage of his opportunities for fear of losing her
+again.  But Isabel smiled at him with shut eyes.  "All my heart,"
+she murmured; "don't be afraid, I'm not going to slip through
+your fingers now . . . I love you too, too much . . . Val would
+say it was wrong to care so much for any one."
+
+Val again!  Lawrence lifted her eyelashes with his finger.
+"Isabel, why are you haunted by Val now?  I don't want you to
+think of any one but me."
+
+"Are you jealous of the dead?"
+
+"Not I!" his voice rang out harsh with passion: "with you in my
+arms why should I be jealous of any one in heaven or earth?"
+
+"Val would say that was wrong too. . . . Lawrence, do you
+remember your first wedding night?"
+
+"Well enough."
+
+"Was Lizzie beautiful?"
+
+"I thought so then. She was a tall, well-made piece: black hair,
+blue eyes, buxom and plenty of colour. I was shy of her because--
+it's a curious fact--she was my first experience of your sex:
+but she was not shy with me, though I believe she too was--
+technically--innocent.  Even at the time I was conscious of
+something wanting--some grace, some reserve, some economy of
+effect.  She was of a coming-on disposition, very amorous and
+towardly."
+
+"Val would call that coarse."
+
+"Probably.  Do you object?  You asked for it."
+
+"Not a bit.  I don't mind your telling me any thing that's a
+fact.  Bad thoughts are different, but facts, good or bad, coarse
+or refined, are the stuff the world's made of, and why should we
+shut our eyes to them? I like to take life as it comes without
+expurgation.  Lawrence, Lizzie never had any children, did she?"
+
+"By me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"No, our married life didn't last long. I should have warned you,
+my dear, if I had had any responsibilities of that description."
+
+"So you would--I forgot that." Isabel lay silent a moment,
+nestling her closed eyelids against his throat.  "Lawrence, my
+darling, I don't want to hurt you; but tell me, did she have any
+children after she left you?"
+
+"Yes--one, a boy: Rendell's."
+
+"What became of him after Rendell died?"
+
+"When it became impossible to leave him with Lizzie I sent him to
+school.  He spends his holidays with my agent here at Farringay.
+He's quite a nice little chap, and good looking, like Arther, and
+by the gossip of the neighbourhood I'm supposed to be his father.
+Do you mind leaving it at that?  It's no worse for him and less
+ignominious for me."
+
+"Nothing in what I've heard of your married life is ignominious
+for you.  So you brought up Rendell's child?  Essentially generous
+. . . . Kiss me."  Isabel's pale beauty glowed like a flame.  A
+Christian malagre lui and very much ashamed of it, Lawrence gave
+her the lightest of butterfly kisses, one on either eyelid.  "Oh,
+I suppose you'll say I am--what was it?--towardly too,"
+murmured Isabel.  "Don't you want to kiss me?" He shook his head.
+Isabel, a trifle startled, opened her eyes, but was apparently
+satisfied, for she shut them again hurriedly and let her arm fall
+across them.  "We'll go and see Rendell's boy tomorrow.  You
+shall take me. I can say what I like to you now, can't I? . . .
+Shall you like to have one of our own?"
+
+"Isabel, Isabel!"
+
+"But it's perfectly proper now we're married!  Oh Lawrence, it'll
+so soon come to seem commonplace--  I want to taste the
+strangeness of it while I'm still near enough to Isabel Stafford
+to realize what a miracle it'll be.  Our own! it seems so strange
+to say 'ours.'"
+
+"I don't want any brats to come between you and me."
+
+"Aren't you always in your secret soul afraid of life?"
+
+"Afraid of life--I?"
+
+"You have no faith . . . Everything we possess--your happiness,
+our love, the children you'll give me--don't you hold it all at
+the sword's point?  You're afraid of death or change?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How frank you are!" Isabel smiled fleetingly. "Aren't there any
+locked doors?--no?--I may go wherever I like ?--Lawrence, are
+you sorry Val's dead?"
+
+"Oh, for heaven's sake, not Val again!"
+
+"One locked door after all?"
+
+"I was fond of him," said Lawrence with difficult passion.  "He
+told me once that I broke his life, it was no one's doing but
+mine that he had to go through the crucifixion of that last hour
+at Wanhope, and he was killed for me." He left her and went to
+the window, flung it up and stood looking out into the night.
+"I'd have given my life to save him.  I'd give it now--now."
+
+"I heard from Laura this morning."
+
+"I wonder she dared write to you."
+
+"Major Clowes is wonderfully better.  He drives out with her
+every day and mixes with other people in the sanatorium and makes
+friends with them.  He's been sleeping better than he has ever
+done since his accident."
+
+"Good God!"
+
+"He has been having a new massage treatment, and there's just a
+faint hope that some day he may be able to get about on
+crutches."
+
+Lawrence had an inclination to laugh.  "That's enough," he said,
+shuddering.  "I don't want to hear any more."
+
+"She sent a message to you."
+
+"Well, give it to me, then."
+
+"'Don't let Lawrence suppose that Bernard has gone unpunished.'"
+
+"He should have stood his trial," said Lawrence thickly.  "It was
+murder."
+
+He understood all that Laura's laconic message implied.  Bernard
+reformed was Bernard broken by remorse: if he had shot himself--
+which was what Lawrence had anticipated--he would have deserved
+less pity.  Yet Lawrence would have liked some swifter and less
+subtle form of punishment.
+
+Out of doors in the garden an owl was hooting and the night air
+breathed on him its perfume of lilac and violets.  How quiet it
+was and how fragrant and dim! one could scarcely distinguish
+between the dewy glimmer of turf and the dark island-like
+thickets of guelder-rose and other flowering shrubs.  It was one
+of those late spring nights that are full of the promise of
+summer; but for Val there were no summers to come.  His death had
+been as quiet as his life and without any struggle; his head on
+Lawrence's arm, he had stretched himself out with a little sigh,
+and was gone.  Lawrence with his keen physical memory could still
+feel that light burden leaning on him.  Isabel too had memories
+she was afraid of, the watch ticking on the dead man's wrist was
+one of them.  Many tears had been shed for Val, some very bitter
+ones by Yvonne Bendish, but none by Lawrence or by Isabel.  It
+was murder: a flash of devil's lightning, that withered where it
+struck.
+
+Isabel turned in her chair to watch her husband.  He had brought
+her straight into the drawingroom without staying to remove his
+leathern driving coat, which set off his big frame and the
+drilled flatness of his shoulders; everything he wore or used was
+expensive and fashionable.  There came on her suddenly the
+impression of being shut up alone with a stranger, a man of whom
+she knew nothing except that in upbringing and outlook he was
+entirely different from her and her family.  The room seemed
+immense and Hyde was at the other end of it.  Suddenly he turned
+and came striding back to Isabel.  Her instinct was to defend
+herself.  She checked it and kept still, her arms and hands
+thrown out motionless along the arms of the chair in which her
+slight figure was lying in perfect repose.  Lawrence tenderly
+took her head between his finger-tips and kissed her mouth.
+"Why did you raise a ghost you can't lay?" he said.  "My cousin
+killed your brother." Isabel smiled at him without moving.  Her
+eyes were mysteriously full of light.  Lawrence knelt down and
+threw his arms round her waist and let his head fall against her
+bosom.  What strength there was in this immature personality
+neither yielded nor withdrawn!  Lawrence was entirely disarmed
+and subdued.  He uttered a deep sigh and gave up to Isabel with
+the simplicity of a child the secret of his tormented restlessness.
+"I am unhappy, Isabel."
+
+"I know you are, my darling, and that's why I raised the ghost.
+What is it troubles you?"
+
+"My own guilt.  I never knew what remorse meant before, but your
+Christian ethics have mastered me this time. I had no right to
+extract that promise from Val."
+
+"No.  Why did you?  It seems so motiveless."
+
+"Because it amused me to get a man into my power." Isabel felt
+him shuddering.  "Is this what you call the sense of sin?  I used
+to hear it described as a theological fiction.  But it tears
+one's heart out.  Bernard killed him: but who put the weapon into
+Bernard's hand?"
+
+"Val did."
+
+"I don't understand you."
+
+"The original fault was Val's, and you and Major Clowes were
+entangled in the consequences of it. Let us two face the truth
+once and for all!  Val can stand it--can't you, Val? . . . He
+broke his military oath.  He deserved a sharp stinging punishment,
+and if you had reported him he would have had it; perhaps a worse one
+than you exacted, except for that last awful hour at Wanhope, and for
+that Major Clowes, not you, was responsible.  Oh, I won't say he
+deserved precisely what he got! because judgment ought to be
+dispassionate, and in yours there was an element of cruelty for
+cruelty's sake; wasn't there?  You half enjoyed it and half shivered
+under it . . ."
+
+"More than half enjoyed it," said Hyde under his breath.
+
+"But I do not believe that was your only motive.  I think you
+were sorry for Val.  Haven't I seen you watching him at Wanhope?
+with such a strange half-unwilling pity, as if you hated yourself
+for it.  Oh Lawrence, it's for that I love you!"  Lawrence shook
+his head. He had never been able to analyse the complex of
+feelings that had determined his attitude to Val.  "Well, in any
+case it was not your fault only.  A coward is an irresistible
+temptation to a bully."
+
+"Do you call Val a coward?  Nervous collapses were not so
+uncommon as you may have gathered from the Daily Mail."
+
+"Did Major Clowes describe the scene truthfully?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did you ever break down like Val?"
+
+"I was older."
+
+"There were plenty of boys of nineteen, officers and men.  Did
+you ever know such another case so complete, so prolonged?"
+
+"I've commanded a firing party."
+
+"For cowardice?"
+
+"For cowardice."
+
+"A worse exhibition than Val's?"
+
+"Isabel, you are pitiless!"
+
+"Because Val deserves justice not mercy.  It's his due: he died
+to earn it."
+
+Hyde was silent, not thoroughly understanding her.
+
+"He wasn't a coward when he died," said Isabel with her sweet
+half melancholy smile.  "He fought under a heavy handicap, and
+won: he paid his debt, paid it to the last farthing; and now do
+you grudge him his sleep?  'He hates him, that would upon the
+rack of this tough world stretch him out longer. . . .'"  Her
+beautiful voice dropped to a murmur which was almost lost in the
+rustling of flames on the hearth and the stir of wind among
+budded branches in the garden.
+
+The clock struck ten and Lawrence raised his head.  "It's growing
+late, Isabel.  Aren't you tired?"
+
+"A little. I got up at five to say good-bye to all the animals."
+
+"All the--?"
+
+"My cocks and hens and Val's mare and Dodor and Zou-zou and
+Rowsley's old rabbits.  They're at the Castle, don't you
+remember?  Jack Bendish offered to take charge of them when we
+turned out of the vicarage."
+
+"I hope you put your pinafore on," said her husband.
+
+He took her by the hands and raised her to her feet, and Isabel
+with irreproachable docility began to collect her scattered
+belongings, her sable scarf and mull and veil.  Lawrence
+forestalled her. "Mayn't I even carry my own gloves?" Isabel
+pleaded.  "No, you're so slow," said Lawrence laughing down at
+her. Isabel's cheeks flew their scarlet flag before the invading
+enemy.  "Isabel," Lawrence murmured, "are you shy of me?"
+
+"A little.  I'm only twenty," Isabel excused herself.
+
+"And I'm not gentle. I shall brush the bloom off. . . . Yet I
+love the bloom."
+
+He went to close the window.  A breath of night wind shook
+through the bushes on the lawn and blew off a snow of petals
+through the soft air.  He was not a believer in the immortality
+of the soul, but tonight he would have given much to know that
+Val was near him, a spirit of smiling tenderness.  But no: the
+night was empty of everything except moonlight and petals and the
+sighing of wind over diapered turf. Youth passes, and beauty, and
+bloom: it is of the essence of their sweetness that they cannot
+last.  Yet, while they last, how sweet they are!
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 14489 ***
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #14489 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14489)
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Nightfall, by Anthony Pryde
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Nightfall
+
+
+Author: Anthony Pryde
+
+
+
+Release Date: June 30, 2005  [eBook #14489]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NIGHTFALL***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Harry Graham Liston
+
+
+
+NIGHTFALL
+
+by
+
+ANTHONY PRYDE
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+"Tea is ready, Bernard," said Laura Clowes, coming in from the
+garden.
+
+It was five o'clock on a June afternoon, but the hall was so dark
+that she had to grope her way.  Wanhope was a large, old-fashioned
+manor-house, a plain brick front unbroken except in the middle, where
+its corniced roof was carried down by steps to an immense gateway of
+weathered stone, carved with the escutcheon of the family and their
+Motto: FORTIS ET FIDELIS. Wistarias rambled over both sides,
+wreathing the stone window-frames in their grape-like clusters of
+lilac bloom, and flagstones running from end to end, shallow, and so
+worn that a delicate growth of stonecrop fringed them, shelved down
+to a lawn.
+
+Indoors in the great hall it was dark because floor and staircase
+and wall and ceiling were all lined with Spanish chestnut-wood,
+while the windows were full of Flemish glass in purple and sepia
+and blue.  There was nothing to reflect a glint of light except a
+collection of weapons of all ages which occupied the wall behind
+a bare stone hearth; suits of inlaid armour, coats of chainmail
+as flexible as silk, assegais and blowpipes, Bornean parangs and
+Gurkha kukris, Abyssinian shotels with their double blades,
+Mexican knives in chert and chalcedony, damascened swords and
+automatic pistols, a Chinese bronze drum, a Persian mace of the
+date of Rustum, and an Austrian cavalry helmet marked with a
+bullet-hole and a stain.
+
+Gradually, as her eyes grew used to the gloom Laura found her way
+to her husband's couch.  She would have liked to kiss him, but
+dared not: the narrow mocking smile, habitual on his lips, showed
+no disposition to respond to advances.  Dressed in an ordinary
+suit of Irish tweed, Bernard Clowes lay at full length in an easy
+attitude, his hands in his pockets and his legs decently extended
+as Barry, his male nurse, had left them twenty minutes ago: a
+big, powerful man, well over six feet in height, permanently
+bronze and darkly handsome, his immense shoulders still held back
+so flat that his coat fitted without a wrinkle--but a cripple
+since the war.
+
+Laura Clowes too was tall and slightly sunburnt,  but thin for
+her height, and rather plain except for her sweet eyes, her silky
+brown hair, and--rarer gift!--the vague elegance which was a
+prerogative of Selincourt women.  She rarely wore expensive
+clothes, her maid Catherine made most of her indoor dresses,
+and yet she could still hold her own, as in old days, among
+women who shopped in the Rue de la Paix.  This afternoon, in her
+silk muslin of the same shade as the trail of wistaria tucked
+in where the frills crossed over her breast, she might have gone
+astray out of the seventeenth century.
+
+"Tea is in the parlour," said Mrs. Clowes. "Shall I wheel you
+round through the garden?  It's a lovely day and the roses are
+in their perfection, I counted eighty blooms on the old Frau
+Karl.  I should like you to see her."
+
+"I shouldn't.  But you can drag me into the parlour if you like,"
+said Bernard Clowes--a grudging concession: more often than not
+he ate his food in the hall.  His wife pushed his couch, which
+ran on cycle wheels and so lightly that a child could propel it,
+into her sitting-room and as near as she dared to the French
+windows that opened without step or ledge on the terrace
+flagstones and the verdure of the lawn.  Out of doors, for some
+obscure reason, he refused to go, though the garden was sweet
+with the scent of clover and the gold sunlight was screened by
+the milky branches of a great acacia.  Still he was in the fresh
+air, and Laura hastily busied herself with her flowered Dresden
+teacups, pretending unconsciousness because if she had shown the
+slightest satisfaction he would probably have demanded to be
+taken back. Her mild duplicity was of course mere make believe:
+the two understood each other only too well: but it was wiser to
+keep a veil drawn in case Bernard Clowes should suddenly return
+to his senses.  For this reason Laura always spoke as if his
+choice of a coffined life were only a day or two old.  Had he
+said--as he might say at any moment--"Laura, I should like to
+go for a drive," Laura would have been able without inconsistency
+to reply, "Yes, dear: what time shall I order the car?" as though
+they had been driving together every evening of their married
+life.
+
+"What have you been doing today?" Clowes  asked, sipping his tea
+and looking out of the window.  He had shut himself up in his
+bedroom with a headache and his wife had not seen him since the
+night before.
+
+"This morning I motored into Amesbury to change the library
+books and to enquire after Canon Bodington. I saw Mrs. Bodington
+and Phoebe and George--,"
+
+"Who's George?"
+
+"Their son in the Navy, don't you remember?  The Sapphire is in
+dry dock--"
+
+"How old is he?"
+
+"Nineteen," said Mrs. Clowes.
+
+"Oh.  Go on."
+
+"I don't remember doing anything else except get some stamps at
+the post office.  Stay, now I come to think of it, I met Mr.
+Maturin, but I didn't  speak to him.  He only took off his hat to
+me, Bernard. He is seventy-four."
+
+"Dull sort of morning you seem to have had," said Bernard Clowes.
+
+"What did you do after lunch?"
+
+"With a great want of intelligence, I strolled down to Wharton to
+see Yvonne, but she was out. They had all gone over to the big
+garden party at Temple Brading.  I forgot about it--"
+
+"Why weren't you asked?"
+
+"I was asked but I didn't care to go.  Now that I am no longer in
+my first youth these expensive crushes cease to amuse me."
+Bernard gave an incredulous sniff but said nothing.  "On my way
+home I looked in at the vicarage to settle the day for the school
+treat.  Isabel has made Jack Bendish promise to help with the
+cricket, and she seems to be under the impression that Yvonne
+will join in the games.  I can hardly believe that anything will
+induce Yvonne to play Nuts and May, but if it is to be done that
+energetic child will do it.  No, I didn't see Val or Mr.
+Stafford.  Val was over at Red Springs and Mr. Stafford was
+preparing his sermon."
+
+"Have you written any letters?"
+
+"I wrote to father and sent him fifty pounds.  It was out of my
+own allowance. He seems even harder up than usual.  I'm afraid
+the latest system is not profitable."
+
+"I should not think it would be, for Mr. Selincourt," replied
+Bernard Clowes politely. "Monte Carlo never does pay unless one's
+pretty sharp, and your father hasn't the brains of a flea.  Was
+that the only letter you wrote?"
+
+"Yes--will you have some more bread and butter?"
+
+"And what letters did you get?"  Clowes pursued his leisured
+catechism while he helped himself daintily to a fragile sandwich.
+This was all part of the daily routine, and Laura, if she felt
+any resentment, had long since grown out of showing it.
+
+"One from Lucian.  He's in Paris--"
+
+"With--?"
+
+"No one, so far as I know," Laura replied, not affecting to
+misunderstand his jibe.  Lucian Selincourt was her only brother
+and very dear to her, but there was no denying that his career
+had its seamy side.  He was not, like her father, a family
+skeleton--he had never been warned off the Turf: but he was
+rarely solitary and never out of debt. "Poor Lucian, he's hard
+up too. I wish I could send him fifty pounds, but if I did he'd
+send it back."
+
+"What other letters did you have?"
+
+Mrs. Clowes had had a sheaf of unimportant notes, which she was
+made to describe in detail, her husband listening in his hard
+patience.  When they were exhausted Laura went on in a hesitating
+voice, "And there was one more that I want to consult you about.
+I know you'll say we can't have him, but I hardly liked to refuse
+on my own imitative, as he's your cousin, not mine.  It was from
+Lawrence Hyde, offering to come here for a day or two."
+
+"Lawrence Hyde?  Why, I haven't seen or heard of him for years,"
+Clowes raised his head with a gleam of interest.  "I remember him
+well enough though.  Good-looking chap, six foot two or three and
+as strong as a horse.  Well-built chap, too.  Women ran after
+him.  I haven't seen him since we were in the trenches together."
+
+"Yes, Bernard.  Don't you recollect his going to see you in
+hospital?"
+
+"So he did, by Jove!  I'd forgotten that.  He'd ten days' leave
+and he chucked one of them away to look me up.  Not such a bad
+sort, old Lawrence."
+
+"I liked him very much," said Laura quietly.
+
+"Wants to come to us, does he?  Why?  Where does he write from?"
+
+"Paris.  It seems he ran across Lucian at Auteuil--"
+
+"Let me see the letter."
+
+Laura give it over.  "Calls you Laura, does he?" Clowes read it
+aloud with a running commentary of his own.  "H'm: pleasant
+relationship, cousins-in-law. . . 'Met Lucian . . . chat about
+old times'--is he a bird of Lucian's feather, I wonder?  He
+wasn't keen on women in the old days, but people change a lot
+in ten years . . . 'Like to come and see us while he's in
+England . . . run over for the day'--bosh, he knows we should
+have to put him up for a couple of nights! . . . 'Sorry to hear
+such a bad account of Bernard'--Very kind of him, does he want
+a cheque?  Hallo!  'Lucian says he is leading you a deuce of a
+life.' Upon my word!"  He lowered the letter and burst out
+laughing--the first hearty laugh she had heard from him for many
+a long day.  Laura, who had given him the letter in fear and
+trembling and only because she could not help herself, was
+exceedingly relieved and joined in merrily.  But while she was
+laughing she had to wink a sudden moisture from her eyelashes:
+this glimpse of the natural self of the man she had married went
+to her heart.  "Is it true?" he said, still with that friendly
+twinkle in his eyes.  "Do I lead you the deuce of a life, poor
+old Laura?"
+
+"I don't mind," said Laura, smiling back at him.  She could have
+been more eloquent, but she dared not.  Bernard's moods required
+delicate handling.
+
+"He's a cool hand anyhow to write like that to a woman about her
+husband.  But Lawrence always was a cool hand. I remember the
+turn-up we had in the Farringay woods when I was twelve and he
+was fourteen.  He nearly murdered me. But I paid him out," said
+Bernard in a glow of pleasurable reminiscence.  "He was too
+heavy for me. Old Andrew Hyde came and dragged him off.  But
+I marked him: he was banished from his mother's drawingroom for
+a week--not that he minded that much . . . Aunt Helen was a
+pretty woman.  Gertrude and I never could think why she married
+Uncle Andrew, but I believe they got on all right, though she was
+a big handsome woman--a Clowes all over--while old Andrew
+looked like any little scrub out of Houndsditch.  Never can tell
+why people marry each other, can you?" Bernard was becoming
+philosophical.  I suppose if you go to the bottom it's Nature
+that takes them by the scruff of the neck and gives them a gentle
+shove and says 'More babies, please.' She doesn't always bring it
+off though, witness you and me, my love.--  But I say, Laura, I
+like the way you handed over that letter!  Thought it would do me
+good, didn't you?  Look here, I can't have my character taken
+away behind my back!  You tell him to come and judge for
+himself."
+
+"You'll get very tired of him, Berns," said Laura doubtfully.
+"You always say you get sick of people in twenty-four hours: and
+I can't take him entirely off your hands--you'll have to do your
+share of entertaining him.  He's your cousin, not mine, and it'll
+be you he comes to see."
+
+"I shan't see any more of him than I want to, my dear, on that
+you may depend," said Bernard with easy emphasis.  "If he
+invites himself he'll have to put with what he can get.  But
+I can stand a good deal of him.  Regimental shop is always
+amusing, and Lawrence will know heaps of fellows I used to know,
+and tell me what's become of them all.  Besides, I'm sick to
+death of the local gang and Lawrence will be a change.  He's got
+more brains than Jack Bendish, and from the style of his letter
+he can't be so much like a curate as Val is."  Val Stafford was
+agent for the Wanhope property.  "Oh,  by George!"
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+Bernard threw back his head and grinned broadly with half shut
+eyes.  "Ha, ha! by Gad, that's funny--that's very funny.  Why,
+Val knows him!"
+
+"Knows Lawrence?  I never heard Val mention his name."
+
+"No, my love, but one can't get Val to open his lips on that
+subject. Lawrence and I were in the same battalion.  He was there
+when Val got his ribbon."
+
+"Really?  That will be nice for Val, meeting him again."
+
+"Oh rather!" said Bernard Clowes. "On my word it's a shame and
+I've half a mind . . .. No, let him come: let him come and be
+damned to the pair of them!  Straighten me out, will you?" He was
+liable like most paralytics to mechanical jerks and convulsions
+which drove him mad with impatience.  Laura drew down the
+helplessly twitching knee, and ran one firm hand over him from
+thigh to ankle.  Her touch had a mesmeric effect on his nerves
+when he could endure it, but nine times out of ten he struck it
+away. He did so now. "Go to the devil!  How often have I told
+you not to paw me about?  I wish you'd do as you're told.  What
+do you call him Lawrence for?"
+
+"I always did.  But I'll call him Captain Hyde if you like--"
+
+"'Mr.,' you mean: he's probably dropped the 'Captain.' He was
+only a 'temporary.'"
+
+"For all that, he has stuck to his prefix," said Laura smiling.
+"Lucian chaffed him about it. But Lawrence was always rather a
+baby in some ways: clocked socks to match his ties, and
+astonishing adventures in jewellery, and so on.  Oh yes, I knew
+him very well indeed when I was a girl.  Mr. and Mrs. Hyde were
+among the last of the old set who kept up with us after father
+was turned out of his clubs.  I've stayed at Farringay."
+
+"You never told me that!"
+
+"I never thought of telling you. Lawrence hasn't been near us
+since we came to Wanhope and I don't recollect your ever
+mentioning his name.  You see I tell you now."
+
+"How old were you when you stayed at Farringay?"
+
+"Twenty-two.  Lawrence and I are the same age."
+
+"And you knew him well, did you?"
+
+"We were great friends," said Mrs. Clowes, tossing a lump of
+sugar out of the window to a lame jackdaw. She had many such
+pensioners, alike in a community of misfortune.  "And, yes,
+Berns, you're right, we flirted a little--only a little: wasn't
+it natural?  It was only for fun, because we were both young and
+it was such heavenly weather--it was the Easter before war broke
+out.  No, he didn't ask me to marry him!  Nothing was farther
+from his mind."
+
+"Did he kiss you?"
+
+Laura slowly and smilingly shook her head. "Am I, Yvonne?"
+
+"But you liked the fellow?"
+
+"Oh yes, he was charming.  A little too much one of a class,
+perhaps: there's a strong family likeness, isn't there, between
+Cambridge undergraduates?  But he was more cultivated than a good
+many of his class.  We used to go up the river together and read
+--what did one read in the spring of 1914?  Masefield, I suppose,
+or was it Maeterlinck?  Rupert Brooks came with the war.  Imagine
+reading 'Pelleas et Melisande' in a Canadian canoe!  It makes one
+want to be twenty-two again, so young and so delightfully
+serious."  It was hard to run on while the glow faded out of
+Bernard's face and a cold gloom again came over it, but sad
+experience had taught Laura that at all costs, under whatever
+temptation, it was wiser to be frank.  It would have been easier
+for the moment to paint the boy and girl friendship in neutral
+tints, but if its details came out later, trivial and innocent
+as they were, the economy of today would cost her dear tomorrow,
+Her own impression was that Clowes had never been jealous of her
+in his life.  But the pretence of jealousy was one of his few
+diversions.
+
+"I dare say you do wish you were twenty-two again," he said,
+delicately setting down his tea cup on the tray--all his
+movements, so far as he could control them, were delicate and
+fastidious. "I dare say you would like a chance to play your
+cards differently.  Can't be done, my, girl, but what a good
+fellow I am to ask Lawrence to Wanhope, ain't I? No one can say
+I'm not an obliging husband.  Lawrence isn't a jumping doll. He's
+six and thirty and as strong as a horse.  You'll have no end of a
+good time knitting up your severed friendship .. 'Pon my word,
+I've a good mind to put him off. . I shouldn't care to fall foul
+of the King's Proctor."
+
+"Will you have another cup of tea before I ring"
+
+"No, thanks . . . Do I lead you the deuce of a life, Lally?"
+
+"You do now and then," said his wife, smiling with pale lips.
+
+"It isn't that I'm sensitive for myself, because I know you don't
+mean a word of it, but I rather hate it for your own sake.  It
+isn't worthy of you, old boy.  It's so--so ungentlemanly."
+
+"So it is.  But I do it because I'm bored.  I am bored, you know.
+Desperately!" He stretched out his hand to her with such haggard,
+hunted eyes that Laura, reckless, threw herself down by him and
+kissed the heavy eyelids.  Clowes put his arm round her neck,
+fondling her hair, and for a little while peace, the peace of
+perfect mutual tenderness, fell on this hard-driven pair.  But
+soon, a great sigh bursting from his breast, Clowes pushed her
+away, his features settling back into their old harsh lines of
+savage pain and scorn.
+
+"Get away! get up! do you want Parker to see you through the
+window?  If there's a thing on earth I hate it's a dishevelled
+crying woman.  Write to Lawrence.  Say I shall be delighted to
+see him and that I hope he'll give us at least a week. Stop.
+Warn him that I shan't be able to see much of him because of
+my invalid habits, and that I shall depute you to entertain
+him.  That ought to fetch him if he remembers you when you were
+twenty-two."
+
+Laura was neither dishevelled nor in tears: perhaps such scenes
+were no novelty to her.  She leant against the frame of the open
+window, looking out over the sunlit garden full of flowers, over
+the wide expanse of turf that sloped down to a wide, shallow
+river all sparkling in western light, and over airy fields on
+the other side of it to the roofs of the distant village strung
+out under a break of woody hill.
+
+"Are you sure you want him?  He used to have a hot temper when he
+was a young man, and you know, Berns, it would be tiresome if
+there were any open scandal."
+
+"Scandal be hanged,"  said Bernard Clowes. "You do as you're
+told."  His wife gave an almost imperceptible shrug of the
+shoulders as if to disclaim further responsibility.  She was
+breathing rather hurriedly as if she had been running, and her
+neck was so white that the shadow of her sunlit wistaria threw a
+faint lilac stain on the warm, fine grain of her skin.  And the
+haggard look returned to Bernard's eyes as he watched her, and
+with it a wistfulness, a weariness of desire, "hungry, and
+barren, and sharp as the sea."  Laura never saw that hunger in
+his eyes.  If he spared her nothing else he spared her that.
+
+"You do as I tell you, old girl," his harsh voice had softened
+again. "There won't be any row.  Honestly I'd like to have old
+Lawrence here for a bit, I'm not rotting now.  He had almost four
+years of it--almost as long as I had.  I'll guarantee it put a
+mark on him.  It scarred us all. It'll amuse me to dine him and
+Val together, and make them talk shop, our own old shop, and see
+what the war's done for each of us: three retired veterans,
+that's what we shall be, putting our legs under the same
+mahogany: three old comrades in arms." He gave his strange,
+jarring laugh. "Wonder which of us is scarred deepest?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+WANHOPE and Castle Wharton--or, to give them their due order,
+Wharton and Wanhope, for Major Clowes' place would have gone
+inside the Castle three times over--were the only country
+houses in the Reverend James Stafford's parish.  The village
+of Chilmark--a stone bridge, crossroads, a church with Norman
+tower and frondlike Renaissance tracery, and an irregular line
+of school, shops, and cottages strung out between the stream and
+chalky beech-crested hillside occupied one of those long, winding,
+sheltered crannies that mark the beds of watercourses along the
+folds of Salisbury Plain.  Uplands rose steeply all along it
+except on the south, where it widened away into the flats of
+Dorsetshire.  Wharton overlooked this expanse of hunting country:
+a formidable Norman keep, round which, by gradual accretion, a
+dwelling-place had grown up, a history of English architecture
+and English gardening written in stone and brick and grass and
+flowers.  One sunny square there was, enclosed between arched
+hedges set upon pillars of carpenters' work, which still kept the
+design of old Verulam: and Yvonne of the Castle loved its little
+turrets and cages of singing birds, and its alleys paved with
+burnet, wild thyme, and watermints, which perfume the air most
+delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but being trodden upon
+and crushed.
+
+Wanhope also, though modest by comparison, had a good deal of
+land attached to it, but the Clowes property lay north up the
+Plain, where they sowed the headlands with red wheat still as
+in the days of Justice Shallow.  The shining Mere, a tributary
+of the Avon, came dancing down out of these hills: strange
+pastoral cliffs of chalk covered with fine sward, and worked by
+the hands of prehistoric man into bastions and ramparts that
+imitated in verdure the bold sweep of masonry.
+
+Mr. Stafford was a man of sixty, white-haired and of sensitive,
+intelligent features.  He was a High Churchman, but wore a felt
+wideawake in winter because when he bought it wideawakes were
+the fashion for High Churchmen.  In the summer he usually roved
+about his parish without any hat at all, his white curls flying
+in the wind.  He was of gentle birth, which tended to ease his
+intercourse with the Castle.  He had a hundred a year of his own,
+and the living of Chilmark was worth 175 pounds net.  So it may
+have been partly from necessity that he went about in clothes at
+which any respectable tramp would have turned his nose up: but
+idiosyncrasy alone can have inspired him to get the village tailor
+to line his short blue pilot jacket with pink flannelette.  "It's
+very warm and comfortable, my dear," he said apologetically to his
+wife, who sat and gazed at him aghast, "so much more cosy than
+Italian cloth."
+
+On that occasion Mrs. Stafford was too late to interfere, but as
+a rule she exercised a restraining influence, and while she lived
+the vicar was not allowed to go about with holes in his trousers.
+After her death Mr. Stafford mourned her sincerely and cherished
+her memory, but all the same he was glad to be able to wear his
+old boots.  However, he had a cold bath every morning and kept
+his hands irreproachable, not from vanity but from an inbred
+instinct of personal care.  Yvonne of the Castle, who spoke her
+mind as Yvonne's of the Castle commonly do, said that the fewer
+clothes Mr. Stafford wore the better she liked him, because he
+was always clean and they were not.
+
+Mr. Stafford had three children; Val, late of the Dorchester
+Regiment, Rowsley an Artillery lieutenant two years younger,
+and Isabel the curate, a tall slip of a girl of nineteen.  They
+were all beloved, but Val was the prop of the family and the
+pride of his father's heart.  Invalided out of the Army after
+six weeks' fighting, with an honourable distinction and an
+irremediably shattered arm, he had been given the agency of the
+Wanhope property, and lived at home, where the greater part of
+his three hundred a year went to pay the family bills.  Most of
+these were for what Mr. Stafford gave away, for the vicar had no
+idea of the value of money, and was equally generous with Val's
+income and his own.
+
+Altogether Mr. Stafford was a contented and happy man, and his
+only worry was the thought, which crossed his mind now and then,
+that Chilmark for a young man of Val's age was dull, and that the
+Wanhope agency led nowhere.  If Val had been an ambitious man!
+But Val was not ambitious, and Mr Stafford thanked heaven that
+this pattern son of his had never been infected by the vulgar
+modern craze for money making. His salary would not have kept him
+in luxury in a cottage of his own, but it was enough to make the
+vicarage a comfortable home for him; and, so long as he remained
+unmarried, what could he want more, after all, than the society
+of his own family and his kind country neighbours?
+
+Rowsley, cheerfully making both ends meet in the Artillery on an
+allowance from his godmother, was off his father's hands.
+Isabel?  Mr. Stafford did not trouble much about Isabel, who was
+only a little girl.  She was a happy, healthy young thing, and
+Mr. Stafford was giving her a thoroughly good education.  She
+would be able to earn her own living when he died, if she were
+not married, as every woman ought to be.  (There was no one for
+Isabel to marry, but Mr. Stafford's principles rose superior to
+facts.)  Meantime it was not as if she were running wild: that
+sweet woman Laura Clowes and the charming minx at the Castle
+between them could safely be left to form her manners and see
+after her clothes.
+
+One summer afternoon Isabel was coming back from an afternoon's
+tennis at Wharton.  Mrs. Clowes brought her in the Wanhope car as
+far as the Wanhope footpath, and would have sent her home, but
+Isabel declined, ostensibly because she wanted to stretch her
+legs, actually because she couldn't afford to tip the Wanhope
+chauffeur.  So she tumbled out of the car and walked away at a
+great rate, waving Laura farewell with her tennis racquet.
+Isabel was a tall girl of nineteen, but she still plaited her
+hair in a pigtail which swung, thick and dark and glossy, well
+below her waist.  She wore a holland blouse and skirt, a sailor
+hat trimmed with a band of Rowsley's ribbon, brown cotton
+stockings, and brown sandshoes bought for 5/11-3/4 of Chapman,
+the leading draper in Chilmark High Street.  Isabel made her own
+clothes and made them badly.  Her skirt was short in front and
+narrow below the waist, and her sailor blouse was comfortably but
+inelegantly loose round the armholes.  Laura Clowes, who had a
+French instinct of dress, and would have clad Isabel as Guinevere
+clad Enid, if Isabel had not been prouder than Enid, looked after
+her with a smile and a sigh: it was a grief to her to see her
+young friend so shabby, but, bless the child! how little she
+cared--and how little it signified after all!  Isabel's poverty
+sat as light on her spirits as the sailor hat, never straight,
+sat on her upflung head.
+
+Isabel knew every one in Chilmark parish.  Pausing before a knot
+of boys playing marbles: "Herbert," she said sternly, "why
+weren't you at school on Sunday?" Old Hewett, propped like a
+wheezy mummy against the oak tree that shaded the Prince of
+Wales's Feathers, brought up his stiff arm slowly in a salute to
+the vicar's daughter. "'Evening," said Isabel cheerfully, "what a
+night for rheumatics isn't it?"  Hewitt chuckled mightily at this
+subtle joke. "'Evening, Isabel," called out Dr. Verney, putting
+up one finger to his cap: he considered one finger enough for a
+young lady whom he had brought into the world.  Isabel knew every
+one in Chilmark and every one knew her.  Such a range of
+intensive acquaintance is not so narrow as people who have never
+lived in a country village are apt to suppose.
+
+Past the schoolhouse, past the wide stone bridge where Isabel
+loved to hang over the parapet watching for trout--but not
+tonight, for it was late, and Isabel after a "company tea" wanted
+her supper: by a footpath through the churchyard, closely mown
+and planted with rosebushes: and so into the church, where, after
+dropping a hurried professional curtsey to the altar, she set
+about her evening duties. Isabel called herself the curate, but
+she did a good deal which is not expected of a curate, such as
+shutting windows and changing lesson-markers, propping up the
+trebles when they went astray in the pointing of the Psalms,
+altering the numbers on the hymn-board, writing out choir papers,
+putting flowers in the vases and candles in the benediction
+lights, playing the organ as required and occasionally blowing
+it. . . . Before leaving the church she fell on her knees, in
+deference to Mr. Stafford and the text by the door, and said a
+prayer.  What did she pray?  "O Lord bless this church and all
+who worship in it and make father preach a good sermon next
+Sunday. I wish I'd been playing with Val instead of Jack, we
+should have won that last set if Jack hadn't muffed his
+services. . . .  Well, this curate was only nineteen."
+
+And then, coming out into the fading light, she locked the north
+door behind her and went off whistling like a blackbird, if a
+blackbird could whistle the alto of Calkin's Magnificat in B
+flat. . . . Five minutes climbing of the steep brown floor of
+the beechwood, and she was out on uplands in the dying fires of
+day.  It had been twilight in the valley, but here the wide plain
+was sunlit and the air was fresh and dry: in the valley even the
+river-aspens were almost quiet, but here there was still a sough
+of wind coming and going, through the dry grass thick set with
+lemon thyme and lady's slipper, or along the low garden wall
+where red valerian sprouted out of yellow stonecrop.
+
+A wishing gate led into the garden, and Isabel made for an open
+window, but halfway over the sill she paused, gazing with all her
+soul in her eyes across the vicarage gooseberry bushes.  That
+grey suit was Val's of course, but who was inside the belted coat
+and riding breeches?  "Rows-lee!" sang out Isabel, tumbling back
+into the garden with a generous display of leg.  The raiders rose
+up each holding a handful of large red strawberries melting ripe,
+and Isabel, pitching in her racquet on a sofa, ran across the
+grass and enfolded her brother in her arms.  Rowsley, dark and
+slight and shrewd, returned her hug with one arm, while carefully
+guarding his strawberries with the other--"You pig, you perfect
+pig!" wailed Isabel.  "I was saving them for tea tomorrow,
+Laura's coming and I can't afford a cake.  Oh joy, you can buy me
+one!  How long can you stay?"
+
+"Over the week end: but I didn't come to buy you cakes, Baby. I
+haven't any money either. I came because I wanted you to buy me
+cakes."
+
+"O well never mind, I'll make one," Isabel joyously slipped her
+hand through Rowsley's arm. "Then I can get the flour from the
+baker and it won't cost anything at all--it'll go down in the
+bill. Well give me one anyhow, now they're picked it would be a
+pity to waste them." She helped herself liberally out of Val's
+hand.  "Now stop both of you, you can't have any more."
+
+She linked her other arm in Val's and dragged her brothers out of
+the dangerous proximity of the strawberry beds.  Val sat down on
+a deck chair, one leg thrown over the other, Rowsley dropped at
+full length on the turf, and Isabel doubled herself up between
+them, her arms clasped round her knees.  "How's the Old Man?" she
+asked in friendly reference to Rowsley's commanding officer.
+"Oh Rose, I knew there was something I wanted to ask you.  Will
+Spillsby be able to play on the Fourth?"  Spillsby, a brother
+subaltern and a famous bat, had twisted his ankle at the nets,
+and Rowsley in his last letter had been uncertain whether he
+would be well enough to play the Sappers at the annual fixture.
+
+Happily Rowsley was able to reassure his young sister: the ankle
+was much better and Spillsby was already allowed to walk on it.
+Isabel then turned her large velvet eyes--gazelle eyes with a
+world of pathos in their velvet gloom on her elder brother.
+"Coruscate, Val," she commanded.  "You haven't said anything at
+all yet.  We should all try to be bright in the home circle.  We
+cannot all be witty, but-Ow!  Rowsley, if you pull my hair I
+shall hit you in the--in the place where the Gauls fined their
+soldiers if they stuck out on parade.  Oh, Val, that really isn't
+vulgar, I found it in Matthew Arnold!  Their stomachs, you know.
+They wouldn't have fined you anyhow.  You look fagged, darling--
+are you?"
+
+"Not so much fagged as hungry," said Val in his soft voice. "It's
+getting on for nine o'clock and I was done out of my tea. I went
+in to Wanhope, but Laura was out, and Clowes was drinking whisky
+and soda. I cannot stand whisky at four in the afternoon, and
+Irish whisky at that.  There'll be some supper going before long,
+won't there?"
+
+"Not until half past nine because Jimmy has his Bible class
+tonight."  Jimmy was Mr. Stafford: and perhaps a purist might
+have objected that Mrs. Clowes and Yvonne Bendish had not done
+all they might have done to form Isabel's manners. "I'm so sorry,
+darling," she continued, preparing to leap to her feet.  "Shall I
+get you a biscuit?  There are oatmeals in the sideboard, the kind
+you like, I won't be a minute--"
+
+"Thanks very much, I'd rather wait.  Did you see Mrs. Clowes
+today? Clowes said she was at the Castle."
+
+"So she was, sitting with Mrs. Morley in an angelic striped
+cotton.  Mrs. Morley was in mauve ninon and a Gainsborough hat.
+Yvonne says Mr. Morley is a Jew and made his money in I. D. B.'s,
+which I suppose are some sort of stocks?" Neither of her brothers
+offered to enlighten her, Rowsley because he was feeling
+indolent, Val because he never said an unkind word to any one.
+Isabel, who was enamoured of her own voice flowed on with little
+delay: "If he really is a Jew, I can't think how she could marry
+him; I wouldn't. Mrs. Morley can't be very happy or Laura
+wouldn't go and talk to her.  Laura is so sweet, she always sits
+with people that other people run away from.  Oh Val, did Major
+Clowes tell you their news?" Isabel might refer to her father as
+Jimmy and to Rowsley's commander as the Old Man, but she rarely
+failed to give Bernard Clowes his correct prefix.
+
+"No--is there any?"
+
+"Only that they have some one coming to stay with them.  Won't he
+have a deadly time?" Isabel glanced from Val to Rowsley in the
+certainty of a common response. "Imagine staying at Wanhope!
+However, he invited himself, so it's at his own risk.  Perhaps
+he's embarrassed like you, Rose, and wants Laura to feed him.
+It's rather fun for Laura, though--that is, it will be, if Major
+Clowes isn't too hopeless."
+
+Strange freemasonry of the generations!  Mr. Stafford's children
+loved him dearly and he was wont to say that there were no
+secrets at the vicarage, yet they lived in a conspiracy of
+silence, and even Val, who was mentally nearer to his father's
+age, would have been loth to let Mr. Stafford know as much as
+Isabel knew about Wanhope.  It was assumed that Val's job was the
+very job Val wanted.  Mr. Stafford had indeed a suspicion that it
+was not all plain sailing:  Bernard Clowes retained just so much
+of the decently bred man as to be courteous to his wife before a
+mere acquaintance, but the vicar came and went at odd hours, and
+he observed now and then vague intimations--undertones from
+Bernard himself, an uncontrollable shrinking on Laura's part, an
+occasional hesitation or reluctance in Val--which hinted at
+flying storms.  But Val, the father supposed, could make
+allowance for a cripple: Bernard was so much to be pitied that no
+man would resent an occasional burst of temper!  And there his
+children left him. The younger generation can trust one another
+not to interfere, but when the seniors strike in, with their cut
+and dry precedents and rule of thumb moralities, who knows what
+mischief may follow?  Elder people are so indiscreet!
+
+"It's a cousin of Major Clowes,"  Isabel continued, "but they
+haven't met for years and years--not since the war.  Laura knows
+him too, she met him before she was married and liked him very
+much indeed.  She's looking forward to it--that is, she would be
+if she had spirit enough to look forward to anything."
+
+"Clowes never said a word to me about it," remarked Val.
+
+"Didn't he?" Isabel unfolded herself and stood up. "That means he
+is going to be tiresome.  I must run now, it's five past nine.
+Which will you both have, cold beef or eggs?"
+
+"Oh, anything that's going," said Val.
+
+"Eggs," said Rowsley, "not less than four.  Without prejudice to
+the cold beef if it's underdone.  Hallo!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"What's the matter with your skirt?"
+
+"Nothing," said Isabel shortly.  She screwed her head over her
+shoulder in a vain endeavour to see her own back.  "It's
+perfectly all right."
+
+"It would be, on a scarecrow." Isabel stuck her chin up.  "Have
+you been over to the Castle in that kit, Baby?  Well, if Yvonne
+won't give you some of her old clothes, you might ask the
+kitchenmaid."
+
+"The kitchenmaid has more money than I have," said Isabel
+cheerfully.  "Is it so very bad?  It's clean anyway, I washed and
+ironed it myself."
+
+"It looks very nice and so do you," said Val. Isabel eyed him
+with a softened glance: one could rely on Val to salve one's
+wounded vanity, but, alas!  Val did not know home-made from
+tailor-made. Reluctantly she owned to herself that she had more
+faith in Rowsley's judgment.  "It seems rather short though," Val
+added. "I suppose you will have to go into long frocks pretty
+soon, won't you, and put your hair up?"
+
+"Oh bother my hair and my dresses!" said Isabel with a great
+sigh.  "I will pin my hair up when I get some new clothes, but
+how can I when I haven't any money and Jim hasn't any money and
+neither of you have any money?  Don't you see, idiot," this was
+exclusively to Rowsley, "when I pin my hair up I shall turn into
+a grown up lady?  And then I shall have to wear proper clothes.
+At present I'm only a little girl and it doesn't signify what I
+wear. If any one will give me five pounds I'll pin my hair up
+like a shot.  Oh dear, I wonder what Yvonne would say if Jack
+expected her to outfit herself for five pounds? I do wish some
+one would leave me 10,000 pounds a year.  Get up now, you lazy
+beggar, come and help me lay the supper.  It's Fanny's evening
+out."
+
+She pulled Rowsley to his feet and they went off together leaving
+Val alone on the lawn: good comrades those two, and apparently
+more of an age, in spite of the long gap between them, than
+Rowsley and Val, who was the eldest by only eighteen months.  And
+Val sat on alone, while stains of coral and amber faded out of
+the lavender sky, and a rack of sea clouds, which half an hour
+ago had shone like fiery ripples, dwindled away into smoke--mist
+--a mere shadow on the breast of the night. Stars began to
+sparkle, moths and humming cockchafers sailed by him, a chase of
+bats overhead endlessly fell down airy precipices and rose in
+long loops of darkling flight: honeysuckle and night-scented
+stock tinged with their sweet garden perfume the cool airs from
+the moor.
+
+Val lit a cigarette, a rare indulgence.  If cigarettes grew on
+gooseberry bushes Val would have been an inveterate smoker, but
+good Egyptians were a luxury which he could not often afford
+The Wanhope agency was ample for his needs, though underpaid as
+agencies go: but there was Rowsley, always hard up, uncomplaining,
+but sensitive, as a young fellow in his position is sure to be, and
+secretly fretting because he could not do as other men did: and there
+was Isabel, for whom Val felt the anxiety Mr. Stafford ought to have
+felt, and was trying to make the provision Mr. Stafford ought to have
+made: and then there was the vicar himself, who laid out a great deal
+of money in those investments for which we are promised cent per cent
+interest, but upon a system of deferred payment.
+
+Tonight however Val lit a cigarette, and then a second, to the
+surprise of Isabel, who saw the red spark on the lawn.  She
+thought her brother must be tired, and perhaps it really was the
+long day without food that made him so restless in mind and so
+uneasy.  Bernard Clowes had been more than usually cranky that
+afternoon.  Even the patient Val had had thoughts of throwing up
+his job when the cripple made him go through his week's accounts,
+scrutinizing every entry and cross-examining him on every
+transaction in such a tone as the head of a firm might employ to
+a junior clerk suspected of dishonesty.  It was Bernard's way:
+it meant nothing: but it was irksome to Val, especially when he
+could not soothe himself by dropping into Laura's quiet parlour
+for a cup of tea.  Yet his irritation would not have lingered
+through a cigarette if Isabel's news had not revived it.  This
+cousin of Bernard's!  Val had not much faith in any cousin of
+Bernard Clowes: nor in the kindness of life.
+
+Val was a slight, fair, pleasant-looking man of eight or nine and
+twenty, quiet of movement, friendly-mannered and as inconspicuous
+as his own rather worn grey tweeds: one of a class, till he
+raised his eyes: and then?  There was something strange in Val's eyes
+when they were fully raised, an indrawn arresting brilliance
+difficult to analyse: imaginative and sympathetic, as if he were at
+home in dark places: the quality of acceptance of pain.
+
+Adepts in old days knew by his eyes a man who had been on the
+rack.  Stafford had been racked: and by the pain that is half
+shame, the keenest, the most lacerating and destructive of
+wounds.  He had suffered till he could suffer no more, and
+tonight in the starlit garden he, suffered still, without hope,
+or rebellion, or defence.
+
+Indoors Rowsley and Isabel, with the rapidity of long use, laid
+the cloth, and Isabel fetched cold beef from the larder and
+butter and eggs from the dairy, while Rowsley went down the
+cellar with a jug and a candle and drew from the cask a generous
+allowance of beer.  "Come along in, old Val," said Isabel,
+reappearing at the open window, "You and Rose are both famishing
+and I'm not," this was a pious fiction, "so you can begin and
+I'll wait for Jimmy.  I dare say he's gone wandering off
+somewhere and won't be in till ten."
+
+Val came across the dark, cool lawn and climbed over the window
+sill.  A shabby room, large and low: a faded paper, grey toning
+to blue: a carpet of faded roses on a grey ground: the shaded
+Dresden lamp and roselit supper table shining like an island in
+a pool of shadow, and those two beloved heads, both so dark and
+smooth and young, tam cara capita!  Neither of them suspected
+that Val was unhappy.  His feeling for them was more fatherly
+than fraternal, and Rowsley, strange to say, fell in with Val's
+attitude, coming to his brother for money as naturally as most
+young men go to their parents.  Val sat at the head of the table
+because Mr. Stafford could not carve.  "There!" said Isabel,
+giving him his plate.  "Mustard?  I've just made it so you
+needn't look to see if it's fresh.  Watercress: I picked it
+myself.  Lettuce.  Cream and vinegar and sugar.  Beer.  Now do
+you feel happy?  Lord love you, dear, I like to see you eat."
+
+She sat on the arm of Mr. Stafford's mahogany chair.  "What time
+do you want breakfast? Seven o'clock?  Major Clowes wouldn't come
+down at seven if he were your agent.  Can you get back to tea
+tomorrow?  Laura may bring the cousin up to tea with her and she
+wants him to meet you."
+
+"Very good of her.  Why?"
+
+"Oh, because he was in the Army too and all through the war.  He
+went out with the first hundred thousand.  He's much older than
+you are--the same age as Laura.  Oh, wait a minute!" exclaimed
+Isabel in the tone in which a Frenchwoman says Tenez. I forgot.
+She thinks you must have met him, Val."
+
+"Possibly," said Val.
+
+"Was he in the Dorchesters?" asked Rowsley--much more
+interested than his brother,  no doubt because he was not so
+hungry as Val, who was giving all his attention to his supper.
+
+"No, in the Winchesters," said Isabel.  "Do I mean the
+Winchesters,   Val?  What was Major Clowes' old regiment?"
+
+"Clowes was in the Wintons."
+
+Isabel nodded. "Then so was the cousin.  And Laura says he was
+out there when the Wintons were in the next bit of trench north
+of the Dorchesters.  He was there when--when you were wounded."
+Such was Val Stafford's modesty that in the family circle it was
+not in etiquette to refer in other terms to that famous occasion.
+
+"I don't remember any fellow named Clowes and I never knew
+Bernard Clowes had a cousin out there," said Val, mixing himself
+a salad.
+
+"Oh, his name isn't Clowes.  It's Ryde or Pride or something like
+that.  I'm sorry to be so vague, but Jack Bendish and Yvonne and
+Mrs. Morley were all talking at once.  Lawrence Pied--Fried--"
+
+"Lawrence Hyde?"
+
+"Yes, that's it!  Then you really do remember him?"
+
+"Er--yes.   Is that lamp smoking, Rowsley?  You might turn it
+down a trifle, I can't reach."
+
+"Let me, let me?--  What was he like?"
+
+"Who--Hyde?  Oh," said Val vaguely, "he was like the rest of us
+--very tired."
+
+"Tired?" echoed Isabel with a blank face, "but, Val darling, he
+couldn't have been only tired!  What should you think he was like
+when he wasn't tired?"
+
+"That is a question I have occasionally asked myself," Val
+answered with his faint indecipherable smile.  "My dear child,
+I only saw him once or twice.  He was a senior captain and
+commanded his company. I was a very junior lieutenant."
+
+"Still he was there at the time," reflected Isabel. "O Rose! if
+he's anything like nice, which is almost past praying for in
+Major Clowes' cousin, let's beguile him into the gooseberry
+bushes and make him tell us all about it!  Val is very dear to
+his family, but no one, however tenderly attached to him, could
+call him a brilliant raconteur.  Now Mr. Hyde won't have any
+modest scruples.  Val, if there is a slug in that lettuce I wish
+you would say so. It would hurt my feelings less than for you to
+sit looking at it in a stony silence.  Was he good-looking?"
+
+"Possibly he might be," said Val, "when he scraped the dirt off."
+ After a moment he added, "He was very decent to me."
+
+"Was he?  Then he was nice?"
+
+"Gnat,"  said Rowsley from the middle of his third egg.  Isabel
+rounded him indignantly.
+
+"I'm not gnatting!  I'm not asking Val anything about himself, am
+I? Val can't possibly mind telling me about another man in
+another regiment.  You eat your eggs, there's a good boy, before
+they get cold.--  Laura says the Dorchesters dined the Winchesters
+once when they were in billets.  Was that when you and Mr. Hyde
+were there?"
+
+"Captain Hyde," Val corrected his young sister.  "Yes, we both
+graced the festive board.  It was too festive for me.  We had
+Buszard's soup and curried chicken and real cream, and more
+champagne than was good for us.  But it was not on that occasion
+that Hyde was so decent to me.  The day I--the day Dale went
+down--" Rowsley nodded to him as he raised his glass of beer to
+his lips--"thank you, Rose.--  As I was saying, that evening I
+ran across Hyde between the lines.  The Dorsets and Wintons had
+gone over the top together, and he had been left behind with a
+bullet in his chest.  I was done to the world, but he had some
+brandy left and shared it with me.  If it had not been for Hyde I
+should never have brought Dale in."
+
+"Well, I've never heard that before," said Rowsley to his fourth
+egg.
+
+Isabel was silent, and her eyes in the shadow of a momentary
+gravity were the eyes of a woman and not of a child.  She raised
+them to look out at the evening sky, indigo blue against the
+lamplit interior, or faintly primrose in the west, and wondered
+for the thousandth time why it was still such an effort to Val to
+refer to his brief military experience.  Soft country noises came
+in, peaceful and soothing: the short shrill shriek of a bat, the
+rustle of a branch of rose-leaves moving like a hand over the
+window panes, a faint breathing of wind from the moor.  Surely
+the scar of war ought to be healed by now!  Isabel kept these
+thoughts to herself: young as she was, her solitary life--for
+a woman alone among men is always to some extent solitary--had
+trained her to a clear perception of what had better not be said.
+
+"When is Hyde coming?" asked Val, going on with his salad.
+
+"Tomorrow, didn't you hear me say Laura is going to bring him
+here to tea?  He's staying at his own place, Farringay--I think
+from the way Laura spoke it is what one calls a place--and they
+expect him by the morning train.  Laura's to meet him in the
+car."
+
+"Did you ask her to bring him in to tea,"  said Rowsley, frowning
+over the marmalade jar, "when Val is safe to be out and you
+didn't know I should be here?"
+
+"Yes: oughtn't I to have?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Is there anything else you would like to speak to me about?"
+said Isabel after a pregnant silence. "Dear Rowsley, you seem
+determined to look after my manners and morals!  I asked him to
+please Laura. She's nervous of Major Clowes.  Jack and Yvonne
+are coming too."
+
+"Oh I don't see that it signifies," said Val.  Mrs. Clowes
+wouldn't have accepted if it weren't all right. I don't see that
+you or I need worry if she doesn't.  Isabel is old enough to pour
+out tea for herself.  In any case, as it happens, you'll be here
+if I'm not, and I dare say Jimmy will look in for ten minutes."
+
+"You are sweet, Val," said Isabel gratefully.
+
+"Oh I don't say Rowsley's not right!  Prigs generally are: and
+besides now I come to think of it, Laura did look faintly amused
+when I asked her. But these stupid things never occur to me till
+afterwards!  After all, what am I to do?  I can't manufacture a
+chaperon, and it would be very bad for the parish if the vicar
+never entertained.  And it's not as if Captain Hyde were a young
+man; he's thirty-six if he's a day."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+When the sea retreats after a storm one finds on the beach all
+sorts of strange flotsam.  Bernard Clowes was a bit of human
+wreckage left on the sands of society by the storm of the war.
+When it broke out he was a second lieutenant in the Winchester
+Regiment, a keen polo player and first class batsman who rarely
+opened a book.  He was sent out with the First Division and
+carried himself with his usual phlegmatic good humour through
+almost four years of fighting from Mons to Cambrai.
+
+In the March break-through he had his wrist broken by a rifle-bullet
+and was invalided home, where he took advantage of his leave to get
+married, partly because most of the men he knew were already married,
+and partly to please his sister. There were no other brothers, and
+Mrs. Morrison, a practical lady, but always a little regretful of her
+own marriage with Morrison's Boot and Shoe Company, recommended him
+with the family bluntness to arrange for an olive branch before the
+Huns got him.
+
+Laura, a penniless woman two years his senior and handicapped by
+her disreputable belongings, was not the wife Gertrude Morrison
+would have chosen for him: still it might have been worse, for
+Laura was well-born and personally irreproachable, while Clowes,
+hot-blooded and casual, was as likely as not to have married a
+chorus-girl.  If any disappointment lingered, Gertrude soothed
+it by trying over in her own mind the irritation that she would
+be able to produce in Morrison circles: "Where he met her?
+Oh, when she was staying with her married sister at Castle
+Wharton . . . .Yvonne, the elder Selincourt girl, married into
+the Bendish family."
+
+Bernard did not care a straw either for the paternal handicap or
+for the glories of the Wharton connection.  He took his
+love-affair as simply as his cricket and with the same bold
+confidence. Laura was what he wanted; she would fit into her
+surroundings at Wanhope as delicately as an old picture fits
+into an old frame, and one could leave her about--so he put
+it to himself--without fear of her getting damaged.  When Tom
+Morrison, shrewd business man, dropped a hint about the rashness
+of marrying the daughter of a scamp like Ferdinand Selincourt,
+Bernard merely stared at him and let the indiscretion go in
+silence.  He can scarcely be said to have loved his bride, for
+up to the time of the wedding his nature was not much more
+developed than that of a prize bull, but he considered her a
+very pretty woman, and his faith in her was a religion.
+
+So they were married, and went to Eastbourne for their honeymoon:
+an average match, not marked by passion on either side, but
+destined apparently to an average amount of comfort and good
+will.  They had ten gay days before Laura was left on a victoria
+platform, gallantly smiling with pale lips and waving her
+handkerchief after the train that carried Bernard back to the
+front.
+
+Five months later on the eve of the Armistice he was flung out
+of the service, a broken man, paralysed below the waist, cursing
+every one who came near him and chiefly the surgeons for not
+letting him die.  No one ever desired life more passionately than
+Bernard desired death.  For some time he clung to the hope that
+his mind would wear his body out.  But his body was too young,
+too strong, too tenacious of earth to be betrayed by the renegade
+mind.
+
+There came a day when Clowes felt his youth welling up in him
+like sap in a fallen tree: new energy throbbed in his veins, his
+heart beat strong and even, it was hard to believe that he could
+not get off his bed if he liked and go down to the playing fields
+or throw his leg over a horse.  This mood fastened on him without
+warning in a Surbiton hospital after a calm night without a
+sleeping draught, when through his open window he could see green
+branches waving in sunlight, and hear the cries of men playing
+cricket and the smack of the driven ball: and it was torture.
+Tears forced their way suddenly into Bernard's eyes.  His nurse,
+who had watched not a few reluctant recoveries, went out of the
+room.  Then his great chest heaved, and he sobbed aloud, lying
+on his back with face unhidden, his wide black eyes blinking at
+the sweet pale June sky.  No chance of death for him: he was good
+for ten, twenty, fifty years more:  he could not bear it, but it
+had to be borne.  He tried to pull himself up: if he could only
+have reached the window!  But the arms that felt so strong were
+as weak as an infant's, while the dead weight of his helpless
+legs dragged on him like lead.  The only result of his struggle
+was a dreadful access of pain.  Reaction followed, for he had
+learnt in his A B C days not to whimper when he was hurt, and by
+the time the nurse returned Clowes had scourged himself back to
+his usual savage tranquillity.  "Can I have that window shut,
+please?" he asked, cynically frank. "I used to play cricket
+myself."
+
+Laura Clowes in this period went through an experience almost
+equally formative. Two years older than Bernard, she was also
+more mature for her years and had developed more evenly, and from
+the outset her engagement and marriage had meant more to her then
+to Bernard, because her girlhood had been unhappy and they provided
+a way of escape.  Her sister Yvonne had met Jack Bendish at a
+race-meeting and he had fallen madly in love with her and married
+her in a month in the teeth of opposition.  That was luck--heaven-sent
+luck, for Yvonne on the night before her marriage had broken down
+utterly and confessed that if Jack had not saved her she would have
+gone off with the first man who asked her on any terms, because she
+was twenty-nine and sick to death of wandering with her father on the
+outskirts of society.  Subsequently Yvonne had after a hard fight won
+a footing at Wharton for herself and her sister, and there Laura had
+met Clowes, not such a social prize as Jack, but rich and able to
+give his wife an assured position.  She was shrewd and realized that
+in himself he had little to offer beyond a handsome and highly
+trained physique and a mind that worked lucidly within the limits of
+a narrow imagination but she was beyond all words grateful to him,
+and he fascinated her more than she realized.
+
+The ten days at Eastbourne opened her eyes.  Bernard enjoyed
+every minute of them and was exceedingly pleased with himself
+and proud of his wife, but for Laura they were a time of heavy
+strain.  Innocent and shy, she had feared her husband, only to
+discover that she loved him better than he was capable of loving
+her.  Laura was not blind.  She understood Bernard and all his
+limitations, the dangerous grip that his passions had of him,
+his boyish impatience, his wild-bull courage, and his inability
+to distinguish between a wife and a mistress: she was happiest
+when he slept, always holding her in his arms, exacting even in
+sleep, but so naively youthful in the bloom of his four and
+twenty summers, and, for the moment, all her own.  She loved him
+"because I am I--because you are you," and her tenderness was
+edged with the profound pity that women felt in those days for
+the men who came to them under the shadow of death.  It was her
+hope that the strong half-developed nature would grow to meet her
+need.  It grew swiftly enough: in the forcing-house of pain he
+soon learned to think and to feel: but the change did not lead
+him to his wife's heart.
+
+Laura had married a man of a class and apparently normal to a
+fault: she found herself united now to incarnate storm and
+tempest.  The first time she saw him at Surbiton, he drove her
+out in five minutes with curses and insult.  Why?  Laura,
+wandering about half-stunned in the visitors' room, had no idea
+why.  She stumbled against the furniture: she looked at the
+photographs of Windermere and King's College Chapel and the
+Nursing Staff on the walls: she took up Punch and began to read
+it.  Laura was no dreamer, she had never doubted that her husband
+would rather have the use of his legs again than all the feminine
+devotion in the world, but she had hoped to soothe him, perhaps
+for a little while to make him forget:  it had not crossed her
+mind that her anguish of love and service would be rejected.
+Enlightenment was like folding a sword to her breast.
+
+By and by his nurse came down to her, a young hard-looking woman
+with tired eyes.  She had little comfort to give, but what she
+gave Laura never forgot, because it was the truth without any
+conventional or sentimental gloss.  "You're having a bad time
+with him, aren't you?" she said, coldly sympathetic.  "It won't
+last.  Nothing lasts.  You mustn't think he's left off caring for
+you.  I expect he was very fond of you, wasn't he?  That's the
+trouble. Some men take invalid life nicely and let their wives
+fuss over them to their hearts' content, but Major Clowes is one
+of those tremendously strong masculine men that always want to be
+top dog.  Besides, you're young and pretty, if you don't mind my
+saying so, and you remind him of what he's done out of . . .
+Twenty-four, isn't he?  Don't give way, Mrs. Clowes,  you've a
+long road before you; these paralysis cases are a frightful
+worry, almost as bad for the friends as they are for the patient;
+but if you play up it'll get better instead of worse.  He'll get
+used to it and so will you.  One gets used to anything."
+
+Even so: time goes on and storms subside.  Bernard Clowes came
+out of the hospital and he and his wife settled down on friendly
+terms after all. "It's not what you bargained for when you
+married me," said the cripple with his hard smile. "However, it's
+no good crying over spilt milk, and you must console yourself
+with the fact that there's still plenty of money going.  But I
+wish we'd had a little more time together first." He pierced her
+with his black eyes, restless and fiery.  "I dare say you would
+have liked a boy.  So should I.  Nevermind, my girl, you shan't
+miss much else."
+
+Wanhope, the family property, was buried deep in Wiltshire, three
+or four miles from a station.  Laura liked the country: Wanhope
+let it be, then: and Wanhope it was, with the additional
+advantage that Yvonne was at Castle Wharton within a stroll.
+Laura liked a wide house and airy rooms, a wide garden, plenty of
+land, privacy from her neighbours: all this Wanhope gave her, no
+slight relief to a girl who had been brought up between Brighton
+and Monte Carlo. The place was too big to be run without an
+agent?  No drawback, the agent: on the contrary, Clowes looked
+out for a fellow who would be useful to Laura, a gentleman, an
+unmarried man, who would be available to ride with her or make a
+fourth at bridge--and there by good luck was Val Stafford ready
+to hand.  Born and reared in the country, though young and
+untrained, Val brought to his job a wide casual knowledge of
+local conditions and a natural head for business, and was only
+too glad to squire Laura in the hunting field.  For Laura must
+hunt: as Laura Selincourt she had hunted whenever she was offered
+a mount, and she was to go on doing as she had always done.
+Laura would rather not have hunted, for the freshness of her
+youth was gone and the strain of her life left her permanently
+tired, and she pleaded first expense, then propriety.  "Don't be
+a damned fool," replied Bernard Clowes.  So Laura went riding
+with Val Stafford.
+
+"Come in," said Major Clowes in a rasping snarl, and Laura came
+into her husband's room and stumbled over a chair.  The windows
+were shuttered and the room was still dark at eleven o'clock of a
+fine June morning.  Laura, irrepressibly annoyed, groped her way
+through a disorder of furniture, which seemed, as furniture
+always does in the dark, to be out of place and malevolently full
+of corners, and without asking leave flung down a shutter and
+flung up a window.  In a field across the river they were cutting
+hay, and the dry summer smell of it breathed in, and with it the
+long rolling whirr of a haymaking machine and its periodical
+clash, most familiar of summer noises.  And the June daylight lit
+up the gaunt body of Bernard Clowes stretched out on a water
+mattress, his silk jacket unbuttoned over his strong, haggard
+throat.  "Really, Berns," said Laura, flinging down a second
+shutter, "I don't wonder you sleep badly.  The room is positively
+stuffy!  I should have a racking headache if I slept in it."
+
+"Well, you don't, you see," Bernard replied politely.  "Stop
+pulling those blinds about.  Come over here." Laura came to him.
+"Kiss me," said Clowes, and she laid her cool lips on his cheek.
+Clowes received her kiss passively: even Laura,  though she
+understood him pretty well, never was sure whether he made her
+kiss him because he liked it or because he thought she did not
+like it.
+
+"Where are you off to now?" asked Clowes, pushing her away: "you
+look very smart. I like that cotton dress.  It is cotton, isn't
+it?" he rubbed the fabric gingerly between his finger and thumb.
+"Did Catherine make it?  That girl is a jewel. I like that gipsy
+hat too, it's a pretty shape and it shades your eyes.  I call
+that sensible, which can't often be said for a woman's clothes.
+You have good eyes, Laura, well worth shading, though your figure
+is your trump card.  I like these fitting bodices that give a
+woman a chance to show what shape she is.  All you Selincourt
+women score in evening gowns.  Yvonne has a topping figure,
+though she's an ugly little devil.  She has an American
+complexion and her eyes aren't as good as yours.  Where did you
+say you were going?"
+
+"To the station to meet Lawrence. I promised to fetch him in the
+car."
+
+"Lawrence?  So he's due today, is he?  I'd forgotten all about
+him.  And you're meeting him?  Oh yes, that explains the dress
+and hat,  I thought you wouldn't have put them on for my
+benefit."
+
+"Dear, it's only one of the cotton frocks I wear every day, and I
+couldn't go driving without a hat, could I?"
+
+"Can't conceive why you want to go at all."  Laura was silent.
+"If Lawrence must be met, why can't Miller go alone?" Miller was
+the chauffeur.  "Undignified, I call it, the way you women run
+after a man nowadays.  You think men like it but they don't."
+
+Laura wondered if she dared tell him not to be silly.  He might
+take it with a grin, in which case he would probably relent and
+let her go: or--?  The field of alternative conjecture was wide.
+In the end Laura, whose knee was still aching from her adventure
+with the chair, decided to chance it.  But--perhaps because they
+were suffused with irritation--the words had no sooner left her
+lips than she regretted them.
+
+"I won't have it." Bernard's heavy jaw was clenched like a
+bloodhound's. "It's not decent running after Hyde while I'm tied
+here by the leg. I won't have you set all the village talking.
+There's the Times on my table.  Stop. Where are you going?"
+
+"To ring the bell.  It's time Miller started. You don't want your
+cousin to find no one there to meet him--not even a cart for his
+luggage."
+
+"He can walk.  Do him good: and Miller can fetch the luggage
+afterwards.  You do as I tell you.  Take the Times.  Sit down in
+that chair with your face to the light and read me the leading
+articles and the rest of the news on Page 7. Don't gabble: read
+distinctly if you can--you're supposed to be an educated woman,
+aren't you?"
+
+Poor Laura had been looking forward to her drive.  She had taken
+some innocent pleasure in choosing the prettiest of her morning
+dresses, a gingham that fell into soft folds the colour of a
+periwinkle, and in rearranging the liberty scarf on her drooping
+gipsy straw, and in putting on her long fringed gauntlets and
+little country shoes.  Her husband's compliments made her wince,
+Jack Bendish had eyes only for his wife, Val Stafford's
+admiration was sweet but indiscriminate: but she remembered
+Lawrence as a connoisseur.  And worse than the sting of her own
+small disappointment were the breaking of her promise to
+Lawrence, the failure in hospitality, in common courtesy.
+
+And for the thousandth time Laura wondered whether it would not
+have been better for Bernard, in the long run, to defy his
+senseless tyranny.  He was at her mercy: it would have been easy
+to defy him.  Easy, but how cruel!  A trained nurse would have
+made short work of Bernard's whims, he would have been washed and
+brushed and fed and exercised and disregarded--till he died
+under it?   Perhaps.  It was safer at all events to let him go
+his own way.  He could never hope to command his regiment now:
+let him get what satisfaction he could out of commanding his
+wife!  She would have preferred a form of sacrifice which looked
+less like fear, but there was little sentiment in Bernard, and
+love must not pick and choose.  For it was love still, the old
+inexplicable fascination: in the middle of one of his tirades,
+when he was at his most wayward, she would lose herself in the
+contemplation of some small physical trait, the scar of a burn on
+his wrist or the tiny trefoil-shaped birthmark on his temple, as
+if that summed up for her the essence of his personality, and
+were more truly Bernard Clowes then his intemperate insignificance
+of speech. . . . Even when others suffered for it she yielded to
+Bernard, because she loved him and because he suffered so infinitely
+worse than they.
+
+For denial maddened him.  He raised himself on his arm, crimson
+with anger, his chest heaving under the thin silken jacket which
+defined his gaunt ribs--"Sit down, will you, damn you?" Because
+Laura believed that she and she only stood between  her husband
+and despair, she yielded and began to read out the Times leader
+in a voice that was perfectly gentle and placid.
+
+Bernard sank back and watched her like a cat after a mouse.  He
+was under no delusion: he knew she was not cowed or nervous, but
+that the spring of her devotion was pity--pity ever fed anew by
+his dreadful helplessness: and it was this knowledge that drove
+him into brutality.  The instincts of possession and domination
+were strong in him, and but for the accident that wrenched his
+mind awry he would probably have made himself a king to Laura,
+for, once her master, he would have grown more gentle and more
+tender as the years went by, while Laura was one of those women
+who find happiness in love and duty: not a weak woman, not a
+coward, but a humble-minded woman with no great opinion of her
+own judgment, who would have liked to look up to father, brother,
+sister, husband, as better and wiser than herself. But in his
+present avatar he could not master her: and Clowes, feeling as
+she felt, seeing himself as she saw him, came sometimes as near
+madness as any man out of an asylum.  He was not far off it now,
+though he lay quiet enough, with not one grain of expression in
+his cold black eyes.
+
+The 11:39 pulled up at Countisford station, and Lawrence Hyde got
+out of a first class smoking carriage and stood at ease, waiting
+for his servant to come and look after him.  "There'll be a car
+waiting from Wanhope, Gaston--"
+
+"Zere no car 'ere, M'sieu--ze man say."
+
+"What, no one to meet me?" Evidently no one: there were not half
+a dozen people on the flower-bordered platform, and those few
+were country folk with bundles and bags.  Lawrence strolled out
+into the yard, hoping that his servant's incorrigibly lame
+English might have led to a misunderstanding.  But there was no
+vehicle of any kind, and the station master could not recommend a
+cab.  Countisford was a small village, smaller even than
+Chilmark, and owed the distinction of the railway solely to its
+being in the flat country under the Plain.  "But you don't mean
+to say," said Lawrence incredulous, "that I shall have to walk?"
+
+But it seemed there was no help for it, unless he preferred to
+sit in the station while a small boy on a bicycle was despatched
+to Chilmark for the fly from the Prince of Wales's Feathers; and
+in the end Lawrence went afoot, though his expression when faced
+with four miles of dusty road would have moved pity in any heart
+but that of his little valet.  Hyde was one of those men who
+change their habits when they change their clothes.  He did not
+care what happened to him when he was out of England, following
+the Alaskan trail in eighty degrees of frost, or thrashing round
+the Horn in a tramp steamer, but when he shaved off his beard,
+and put on silk underclothing and the tweeds of Sackville Street,
+he grew as lazy as any flaneur of the pavement.  Gaston however
+was not sympathetic. He was always glad when anything unpleasant
+happened to his master.
+
+Leaving Gaston to sit on the luggage, Lawrence swung off with his
+long even stride, flicking with his stick at the bachelor's
+buttons in the hedge.  He could not miss his way, said the
+station master: straight down the main road for a couple of
+miles, then the first turning on the left and the first on the
+left again.  Some half a mile out of Countisford however Lawrence
+came on a signpost and with the traveller's instinct stopped to
+read it:
+
+              WINCANTON              8 M.
+              CASTLE WHARTON         3 1/2 M.
+              CHILMARK               3 M.
+
+So ran the clear lettering on the southern arm.  Eastwards a much
+more weatherbeaten arm, pointing crookedly up a stony cart track,
+said in dim brown characters: "CHILMARK 2 M." Plainly a short cut
+over the moor!  Better stones underfoot than padded dust: and
+Lawrence struck uphill swiftly, glad to escape from the traffic
+of the London road.  But he knew too much about short cuts to be
+surprised when, after climbing five hundred feet in twice as many
+yards--for the gradients off the Plain are steep--he found
+himself adrift on the open moor, his track going five ways at
+once in the light dry grass.
+
+He halted, leaning on his stick.  He was on the edge of the
+Plain: below him stretched away a great half-ring of cultivated
+country, its saliencies the square tower of a church jutting over
+a group of elms, or the glint of light on a stream, or pale
+haystacks dotted round the disorderly yard of a grange--the
+tillage and the quiet dwellings of close on a thousand years.
+On all this Lawrence Hyde looked with the reflective smile of an
+alien.  It touched him, but to revolt.  More than a child of the
+soil he felt the charm of its tranquillity, but he felt it also
+as an oppression, a limitation: an ordered littleness from which
+world-interests were excluded.  He was a lover of art and a
+cosmopolitan, and though the lowland landscape was itself a piece
+of art, and perfect in its way, Hyde's mind found no home in it.
+Yet, he reflected with his tolerant smile, he had fought for it,
+and was ready any day to fight for it again--for stability and
+tradition, the Game Laws, the Established Church, and the
+rotation of crops.  He was the son of an English mother and had
+received the training of an Englishman.  A rather cynical smile,
+now and then, at the random and diffident ways of England was the
+only freedom he allowed to the foreign strain within him.
+
+And when he looked the other way even this faint feeling of
+irritation passed off, blown away by the wind that always blows
+across a moor, thin and sweet now, and sunlit as the light curled
+clouds that it carried overhead through the profound June blue.
+Acres upon acres of pale sward, sown all over with the blue of
+scabious and the lemon-yellow of hawkweed, stretched away in
+rolling undulations like the plain of the sea; dense woods hung
+massed on the far horizon, beech-woods, sapphire blue beyond the
+pale silver and amber, of the middle distance, and under them a
+puff of white smoke from a passing train, or was it the white
+scar of a quarry?  He could not be sure across so many miles of
+sunlit air, but it must have been smoke, for it dissolved slowly
+away till there was no gleam left under the brown hillside.  Here
+too was stability, permanence: the wind ruffling the grass as it
+had done when the Normans crossed their not far distant Channel,
+or rattling over hilltops through leather-coated oak groves which
+had kept their symmetry since their progenitors were planted by
+the Druids.  Here was nothing to cramp the mind: here was the
+England that has absorbed Celt, Saxon, Fleming, Norman,
+generation after generation, each with its passing form of
+political faith: the England of traditional eld, the beloved
+country.
+
+In the meanwhile Lawrence had to find Chilmark.  He had neither
+map nor compass and was unfamiliar with the lie of the land, but,
+mindful of the station master's directions to go south and turn
+twice to the left, he shaped a course south-east and looked for a
+shepherd to ask his way of.  At present there were no shepherds
+to be seen and no houses; here and there a trail of smoke marked
+some hidden hamlet, sunk deep in cup or cranny, but which was
+Chilmark he could not tell.  Down went the track, plunging
+towards a stream that brawled in a wild bottom: up over a rough
+hillside ruby-red with willowherb: then down again to a pool
+shaded by two willows and a silver birch, and lying so cool and
+solitary in its own cloven nook, bounded in every direction by
+half a furlong of chalky hillside, that Lawrence was seized with
+a desire to strip and bathe, and sun himself dry on the brilliant
+mossy lawn at its brink.  But out of regard for the Wanhope lunch
+hour he walked on, following a trickle of water between reeds and
+knotgrafis, till in the next winding of the glen he came on a
+house: only a labourer's cot, two rooms below and one above, but
+inhabited, for smoke was coming out of the chimney.  Lawrence
+turned up a worn thread of path and knocked with his stick at the
+open door.
+
+It was answered by a tall young girl with a dirty face, wearing a
+serge skirt pinned up under a dirty apron.  The house was dirty
+too: the smell of an unwashed, unswept interior came out of it,
+together with the wailing of a fretful baby.  "I've missed my
+way on the moor," said Lawrence, inobtrusively holding his
+handkerchief to his nose. "Can you direct me to Chilmark?"
+
+"Do you mean Chilmark or Castle Wharton?  Oh Dorrie, don't cry!"
+She lifted the babe on her arm and stood gazing at Lawrence in a
+leisured and friendly manner, as if she wondered who he were. "It
+isn't far, but it's a long rambling village and there are any
+number of paths down.  And if you want the Bendishes--" Evidently
+she thought he must want the Bendishes, and perhaps Lawrence's
+judgment was a little bribed by her artless compliment, for at
+this point he began to think her pretty in an undeveloped way:
+certainly she had lovely eyes, dark blue under black lashes,
+which reminded him of other eyes that he had seen long ago--but
+when?  He could not remember those wistful eyes in any other
+woman's face.
+
+"I'm making for Wanhope--Major Clowe's house."
+
+"Oh, but then you must be Captain Hyde," exclaimed Miss
+Stafford:  "aren't you? that Mrs. Clowes was expecting."
+
+"My name is Hyde.  No one met me at the station" in spite of
+himself Lawrence could not keep his grievance out of his voice
+"so, as there are no cabs at Countisford, I had to walk."
+
+"Oh! dear, how sad: and on such a hot day too!  You'll be so
+tired." Was this satire?  Pert little thing!  Lawrence was
+faintly amused--not irritated, because she was certainly very
+pretty: what a swan's throat she had under her holland blouse,
+and what a smooth slope of neck!  But for all that she ought to
+have sirred him.
+
+"So you know Mrs. Clowes, do you?" He said with as much
+politeness as a little girl deserves who has lovely eyes and a
+dirty face.  It had crossed his mind that she might be one of the
+servants at Wanhope: he knew next to nothing of the English
+labouring classes, but was not without experience of lady's
+maids.
+
+"Yes, I know her," said Isabel.  She hung on the brink of
+introducing herself--was not Captain Hyde coming to tea with her
+that afternoon?--but was deterred by a very unusual feeling of
+constraint.  She was not accustomed to be watched as Hyde was
+watching her, and she felt shy and restless, though she knew not
+why.  It never entered her head that he had taken her for Dorrie
+Drury's sister.  She was dressed like a servant, but what of
+that?  In Chilmark she would have remained "Miss Isabel" if she
+had gone about in rags, and it would have wounded her bitterly to
+learn that she owed the deference of the parish rather to her
+rank as the vicar's daughter, who visited at Wanhope and Wharton,
+than to any dignity of her own.  In all her young life no one had
+ever taken a liberty with Isabel.  And, for that matter, why
+should any one take a liberty with Dorrie Drury's sister?
+Isabel's father would not have done so, nor her brothers, nor
+indeed Jack Bendish, and she was too ignorant of other men to
+know what it was that made her so hot under Hyde's eyes.  "But
+you'll be late for lunch. Wait half a minute and I'll run up with
+you to the top of the glen."
+
+Lawrence watched her wrap her charge carefully in a shawl, and
+fetch milk from the dresser, and coax till Dorrie turned her
+small head, heavy with the cares of neglected babyhood, sideways
+on the old plaid maud and began to suck.  Apparently he had
+interrupted the scrubbing of the kitchen floor,  for the tiles
+were wet three quarters of the way over, and on a dry oasis stood
+a pail, a scrubbing brush, and a morsel of soap.  Among less
+honourable odours he was glad to distinguish a good strong whiff
+of carbolic.
+
+Isabel meanwhile had recovered from her little fit of shyness.
+She pulled off her apron and pulled down her skirt (it had been
+kilted to the knee), rinsed her hands under a tap, wiped her face
+with a wet handkerchief, and came out into the June sunshine
+bareheaded, her long pigtail swinging between drilled and slender
+shoulders.  "Yours are London boots," she remarked as she
+buttoned her cuff.  "Do you mind going over the marsh?"
+
+"Not at all."
+
+"Not if you get your feet wet?" Lawrence laughed outright.  "But
+it's a real marsh!" said Isabel offended: "and you're not used to
+mud, are you?  You don't look as if you were." She pointed down
+the glen, and Lawrence saw that some high spring, dammed at its
+exit and turned back on itself, had filled the wide bottom with a
+sponge of moss thickset with flowering rush and silken fluff of
+cotton grass.  "There's no danger in summertime, the shepherds
+often cross it and so do I.  Still if you're afraid--"
+
+"I assure you I'm not afraid," said Lawrence, looking at her so
+oddly that Isabel was not sure whether he was angry or amused.
+Nor was Lawrence.  She had struck out of his male vanity a
+resentment so crude that he was ashamed of it, ashamed or even
+shocked?  He was not readily shocked.  A pure cynic, he let into
+his mind, on an easy footing, primitive desires that the average
+man admits only behind a screen.  Yet when these libertine
+fancies played over Isabel's innocent head they were distasteful
+to him:  as he remembered once, in a Barbizon studio, to have
+knocked a man down for a Gallic jest on the Queen of Heaven
+although Luke's Evangel meant no more to him than the legend of
+Eros and Psyche.  But one can't knock oneself down--more's the
+pity!
+
+"Oh, all right," said Isabel impatiently.  He was watching her
+again!  "But do look where you're going, this isn't Piccadilly.
+You had better hold my hand."
+
+Lawrence was six and thirty.  At eighteen he would have snatched
+her up and carried her over: at thirty-six he said: "Thanks very
+much," touched the tips of her fingers, let them fall. . . .
+Unfortunately however he weighed more than Isabel or the
+shepherds, and, half way across, the green floor quietly gave way
+under him: first one foot immersed itself with a gentle splash
+and then the other--"Oh dear" said Isabel, seized with a great
+disposition to laugh. Lawrence was not amused.  His boots were
+full of mud and water and he had an aching sense of injured
+dignity.  The bog was not even dangerous: and ankle-deep,
+calf-deep, knee-deep he waded through it and got out on the
+opposite bank, bringing up a cloud of little marsh-bubbles on his
+heels.  Isabel would have given all the money she had in the
+world--about five shillings to go away and laugh, but she had
+been well brought up and she remained grave, though she grew very
+red.
+
+"I am so sorry!" she faltered, looking up at Lawrence with her
+beautiful sympathetic eyes (one must never say I told you so).
+"I never thought you really would go in.  You must be very heavy!
+Oh! dear, I'm afraid you've spoilt your trousers, and it was all
+my fault.  Oh! dear, I hope you won't catch cold.  Do you catch
+cold easily?"
+
+"Oh no, thanks.  Do you mind showing me the way to Wanhope?"
+
+Isabel without another word took the steep hillside at a run. In
+her decalogue of manners to refuse an apology was an unpardonable
+sin.  How differently Val would have behaved!  Val never lost his
+temper over trifles, and if anything happened to make him look
+ridiculous he was the first to laugh at himself.  At this time in
+her life Isabel compared Val with all the other men she met and
+much to his advantage.  She forgot that Lawrence was not her
+brother and that no man cares to be made ridiculous before a
+woman, or rather she never thought of herself as a woman at all.
+
+She pointed east by south across the Plain.  "Do you see that
+hawk hovering?  Carry your eye down to the patch of smoke right
+under him, in the trees: those are the Wanhope chimneys.  If you
+go straight over there till you strike the road, it will bring
+you into Chilmark High Street.  Go on past Chapman the draper's
+shop, turn sharp down a footpath opposite the Prince of Wales's
+Feathers, cross the stream by a footbridge, and you'll be in the
+grounds of Wanhope."
+
+"Thank you," said Lawrence, "your directions are most precise."
+He had one hand in his pocket feeling among his loose silver:
+tips are more easily given than thanks, especially when one is
+not feeling grateful, and he was accustomed to pay his way
+through the world with the facile profusion of a rich man.  Still
+he hesitated: if he had not the refined intuition that would have
+made such a blunder impossible to Val Stafford, he had at all
+events enough intelligence to hesitate.  There is a coinage that
+is safer than silver, and Lawrence thought it might well pass
+current (now that she had washed her face) with this fair
+schoolgirl of sixteen, ruffled by sun and wind and unaware of her
+beauty.  He would not confess to himself that the prospect of
+Isabel's confusion pleased him.
+
+He bent his head, smiling into Isabel's eyes. "You're a very kind
+little girl.  May I--?"
+
+"No," said Isabel.
+
+The blood sprang to her cheek, but she did not budge, not by a
+hair's breadth.  "I beg your pardon," said Lawrence, standing
+erect. He had measured in that moment the extent of his error,
+and he cursed, not for the first time, his want of perception,
+which his ever-candid father had once called a streak of
+vulgarity. Defrauded of the pleasure he had promised himself
+from the contact of Isabel's smooth cheek, he grew suddenly very
+tired of her.  Young girls with their trick of attaching
+importance to trifles are a nuisance!
+
+He forced a smile.  "I beg your pardon, I had no idea--  I see
+you're ever so much older than I thought you were.  Some day I
+shall find my way up here again and you must let me make my peace
+with a box of chocolates." He raised his hat--he had not done so
+when she opened the door--and swung off across the moor, leaving
+the vicar's daughter to go back and scrub Mrs. Drury's floor as
+it had never been scrubbed before in its life.  The honours of
+the day lay with Isabel, but she was not proud of them, and her
+face flamed for the rest of the morning.  "You're worse than
+Major Clowes!" she said violently to the kitchen tap.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+"How do?" Bernard Clowes was saying an hour later.  "So good of
+you to look us up."
+
+Lawrence, coming down from his own room after brushing his muddy
+clothes, met his cousin with a good humoured smile which covered
+dismay.  Heavens, what a wreck of manhood!  And how chill it
+struck indoors, and how dark, after the June sunshine on the
+moor! Delicately he took the hand that Clowes held out to him--
+but seized in a grip that made him wince.  Clowes gave his curt
+"Ha ha!"
+
+"I can still use my arms, Lawrence.  Don't be so timid, I shan't
+break to pieces if I'm touched.  It's only these legs of mine
+that won't work.  Awkward, isn't it?  But never mind that now,
+it's an old story.  You had a mishap on the moor, the servants
+tell me?  Ah! while I think of it, let me apologize for leaving
+you to walk from the station.  Laura, my wife, you know, forgot
+to send the car.  By the by, you know her, don't you?  She says
+she met you once or twice before she married me."
+
+Like most men who surrender to their temperaments, Lawrence was
+as a rule well served by his intuitions.  Now and again they
+failed him as with Isabel, but when his mind was alert it was a
+sensitive medium.  He dropped with crossed knees into his chair
+and glanced reflectively at Bernard Clowes, heu quantum
+mutatus. . . . When the body was wrecked, was there not nine
+times out of ten some corresponding mental warp?  Bernard's
+fluent geniality struck him as too good to be true--it was not
+in Bernard's line: and why translate a close friendship into
+"meeting once or twice"? Was Bernard misled or mistaken, or was
+he laying a trap?--Not misled: the Laura Selincourt of Hyde's
+recollection was not one to stoop to petty shifts.
+
+"'Once or twice?'"  Lawrence echoed: "Oh, much oftener than that!
+Mrs. Clowes and I are old friends, at least I hoped we were.  She
+can't be so ungracious as to have forgotten me?"
+
+"She seems to have, doesn't she?"  Bernard with his inscrutable
+smile let the question drop.  "Just touch that bell, will you,
+there's a good fellow? So sorry to make you dance attendance--
+Hallo, here she is!"
+
+Laura had been waiting in the parlour, under orders not to enter
+till the bell rang.  She had heard all, and wondered whether it
+was innocence or subtlety that had walked in and out of Bernard's
+trap.  She remembered Hyde was much like other fourth-year
+University men except that he was not egotistical and not shy:
+he had altered away from his class, but in what direction it was
+difficult to tell: there was no deciphering the pleasant
+blankness of his features or the conventional smile in his black
+eyes.
+
+"I haven't seen you for fourteen years," she said, giving him her
+hand.  "Oh Lawrence, how old you make me feel!"
+
+"Shall I swear you haven't changed?  It would be a poor
+compliment."
+
+"And one I couldn't return.  I shouldn't have known you, unless
+it were by your likeness to Bernard."
+
+"Am I like Bernard?" said Lawrence, startled.
+
+"That's a good joke, isn't it?" said Clowes. "But my wife is
+right.  If I were not paralysed, we should be a good bit alike."
+
+Under the casual manner, it was in that moment that Hyde saw his
+cousin for what he was: a rebel in agony.  There was a tragedy at
+Wanhope then, Lucian Selincourt had not exaggerated.  Though
+Lawrence was not naturally sympathetic, he felt an unpleasant
+twinge of pity, much the same as when his dog was run over in the
+street: a pain in the region of the heart, as well defined as
+rheumatism.  In Sally's case, after convincing himself that she
+would never get on her legs again, he had eased it by carrying
+her to the nearest chemist's: the loving little thing had licked
+his hand with her last breath, but when the brightness faded out
+of her brown eyes, in his quality of Epicurean, Lawrence had not
+let himself grieve over her.  Unluckily one could not pay a
+chemist to put Bernard Clowes out of his pain!  "This is going to
+be deuced uncomfortable," was the reflection that crossed his
+mind in its naked selfishness.  "I wish I had never come near the
+place. I'll get away as soon as I can."
+
+Then he saw that Bernard was struggling to turn over on his side,
+flapping about with his slow uncouth gestures like a bird with a
+broken wing. "Let me--!" Laura's "No, Lawrence!" came too late.
+Hyde had taken the cripple in his arms, lifting him like a child:
+"You're light for your height," he said softly.  He was as strong
+as Barry and as gentle as Val Stafford.  Laura had turned
+perfectly white.  She fully expected Clowes to strike his cousin.
+She could hardly believe her eyes when with a great gasp of
+relief he flung his arm round Hyde's neck and lay back on Hyde's
+shoulder.  "Thanks, that's damned comfortable--first easy moment
+I've had since last night," he murmured: then, to Laura, "we must
+persuade this fellow to stop on a bit.  You're not in a hurry to
+get off, are you, Lawrence?"
+
+"Not I. I'll stay as long as you and Laura care to keep me."
+
+"I and Laura, hey?"
+
+Bernard's flush faded: he slipped from Hyde's arm.
+
+"H'm, yes, you're old friends, aren't you?  Met at Farringay?
+I'd forgotten that." He shut his eyes.  "And Laura's dying to
+renew the intimacy.  It's dull for her down here. Take him into
+the garden,  Lally.  You'll excuse me now, Lawrence, I can't talk
+long without getting fagged.  Wretched state of things, isn't it?
+I'm a vile bad host but I can't help it.  At the present moment
+for example I'm undergoing grinding torments and it doesn't amuse
+me to make conversation, so you two can cut along and disport
+yourselves in any way you like. Give Lawrence a drink, will you,
+my love? . . . . Oh no, thanks, you've done a lot but you can't
+do any more, no one can, I just have to grin and bear it. Laura,
+would you mind ringing for Barry?   I'm not sure I shall show up
+again before dinner-time.  It's no end good of you, old chap, to
+come to such a beastly house. . ."
+
+He pursued them with banal gratitude till they were out of
+earshot, when Lawrence drew a deep breath as if to throw off
+some physical oppression.  Under the weathered archway, down the
+flagged steps and over the lawn. . . . How still it was, and how
+sweet!  The milk-blooms in the spire of the acacia were beginning
+to turn faintly brown, but its perfume still hung in the valley
+air, mixed with the honey-heavy breath of a great white double
+lime tree on the edge of the stream.  There were no dense woods
+at Wanhope, the trees were set apart with an airy and graceful
+effect, so that one could trace the course of their branches; and
+between them were visible hayfields from which the hay had
+recently been carried, and the headlands of the Plain--fair
+sunny distances, the lowlands bloomed over with summer mist, the
+uplands delicately clear like those blue landscapes that in early
+Italian pictures lie behind the wheel of Saint Catherine or the
+turrets of Saint Barbara.
+
+"A sweet pretty place you have here. I was in China nine weeks
+ago.  Everlasting mud huts and millet fields.  I must say there's
+nothing  to beat an English June."
+
+"Or a French June?" suggested Laura, her accent faintly sly.
+"Lucian said he met you at Auteuil."
+
+"Dear old Lucian!  He seemed very fit, but rather worried about
+you, Laura--may I call you Laura?  We're cousins by marriage,
+which constitutes a sort of tie.  Besides, you let me at
+Farringay."
+
+"Farringay. . . . What a long while ago it seems!  I can't keep
+up any pretence of juvenility with you, can I?  We were the same
+age then so we're both thirty-six now.  Isn't it strange to think
+that half one's life is over?  Mine doesn't seem ever to have
+begun.  But you wouldn't feel that: a man's life is so much
+fuller than a woman's.  You've been half over the world while
+Berns and I have been patiently cultivating our cabbage patch.
+I envy you: it would be jolly to have one's mind stored full of
+queer foreign adventures and foreign landscapes to think about in
+odd moments, even if it were only millet fields."
+
+"I've no ties, you see, nothing to keep me in England.  Come to
+think of it, Bernard is my nearest male relative, since my father
+died five years ago."
+
+"I heard of that and wanted to write to you, but I wasn't sure of
+your address"
+
+"I was in Peru.  They cabled to me to come home when he was taken
+ill, but I was up country and missed it.  The first news I had
+was a second cable announcing his death.  It was unlucky."
+
+"For both of you," said Laura gently, "if it meant that he was alone
+when he died." Sincere herself, Mrs. Clowes exacted from her friends
+either sincerity or silence, and her sweet half-melancholy smile
+pierced through Hyde's conventional regrets. He was silent, a little
+confused.
+
+They were near the river now, and in the pale shadow of the lime
+tree Laura sat down on a bench, while Hyde threw himself on a
+patch of sunlit turf at her feet.  Most men of his age would have
+looked clumsy in such an unbuttoned attitude, but Hyde was an
+athlete still, and Laura, who was fond of sketching, admired his
+vigorous grace.  She felt intimate with him already: she was not
+shy nor was Lawrence, but this was an intimacy of sympathy that
+went deeper than the mere trained ease of social intercourse: she
+could be herself with him: she could say whatever she liked.
+And, looking back on the old days which she had half forgotten,
+Laura remembered that she had always felt the same freedom from
+constraint in Hyde's company: she had found it pleasant fourteen
+years ago, when she was young and had no reserves except a
+natural delicacy of mind, and it was pleasant still, but strange,
+after the isolating adventure of her marriage.  Perhaps she would
+not now have felt it so strongly, if he had not been her
+husband's cousin as well as her friend.
+
+She sat with folded hands watching Lawrence with a vague, observant
+smile.  Drilled to a stately ease and worn down to a lean hardihood
+by his life of war and wandering, he was, like his cousin, a big,
+handsome man, but distinguished by the singular combination of black
+eyes and fair hair.  Was there a corresponding anomaly in his
+temperament?  He looked as though he had lived through many
+experiences and had come out of them fortified with philosophy--that
+easy negative philosophy of a man of the world, for which death is
+only the last incident in life and not the most important. Of
+Bernard's hot passions there was not a sign.  Amiable?  Laura fancied
+that so far as she was concerned she could count on a personal
+amiability: he liked her, she was sure of that, his eyes softened
+when he spoke to her.  But the ruck of people?  She doubted whether
+Lawrence would have lost his appetite for lunch if they had all been
+drowned.
+
+The pleasant, selfish man of the world is a common type, but she
+could not confine Lawrence to his type.  He basked in the sun:
+with every nerve of his thinly-clad body he relinquished himself
+to the contact of the warm grass: deliberately and consciously he
+was savouring the honied air, the babble of running water, the
+caress of the tiny green blades fresh against his cheek and hand,
+the swell of earth that supported his broad, powerful limbs.
+This sensuous acceptance of the physical joy of life pleased
+Laura, born a Selincourt, bred in France, and temperamentally out
+of touch with middle-class England.
+
+Whether one could rely on him for any serviceable friendship
+Laura was uncertain.  As a youth he had inclined to idealize
+women, but she was suspicious of his later record.  Good or bad
+it had left no mark on him.  Probably he had not much principle
+where women were concerned.  Few of the men Laura had known in
+early life had had any principles of any sort except a common
+spirit of kindliness and fair play.  Her brother was always
+drifting in and out of amatory entanglements--the hunter or the
+hunted--and he was not much the worse for it so far as Laura
+could see.  Perhaps Hyde was of the game stamp, in which case
+there might well be no lines round his mouth, since lines are
+drawn by conflict: or perhaps a wandering life had kept him out
+of harm's way.  It made no great odds to Laura--she had not the
+shrinking abhorrence which most women feel for that special form
+of evil: it was on the same footing in her mind as other errors
+to which male human nature is more prone than female, a little
+worse than drunkenness but not so bad as cruelty.  From her own
+life of serene married maidenhood such sins of the flesh seemed
+as remote as murder.
+
+The strong southern light broke in splinters on the dancing
+water, and was mirrored in reflected ripplings, silver-pale,
+tremulous, over the shadowy understems of grass and loosestrife
+on the opposite bank.  "And I never gave you anything to drink
+after all!" said Laura after a long, companionable silence.  "Why
+didn't you remind me?"
+
+"Because I didn't want it.  Don't you worry: I'll look after
+myself. I always do.  I'm a charming guest, no trouble to any
+one."
+
+"At least have a cigarette while you're waiting for lunch!  I'm
+sorry to have none to offer you."
+
+"Don't you smoke now?  You did at Farringay."
+
+"No, I've given it up. I never much cared for it, and Bernard
+does so hate to see a woman smoking. He is very old-fashioned in
+some ways."
+
+"And do you always do as Bernard likes?" Lawrence asked with an
+impertinence so airy that it left Laura no time to be offended.
+"--It was a great shock to me to find him so helpless.  Is he
+always like that?"
+
+"He can never get about, if that's what you mean." It was not all
+Hyde meant, but Laura had not the heart to repress him; she felt
+that thrill of guilty joy which we all feel when some one says
+for us what we are too magnanimous to say for ourselves.  "He
+lies indoors all day smoking and reading quantities of novels."
+
+"Fearfully sad.  Very galling to the temper.  But there are a lot
+of modern mechanical appliances, aren't there, that ought to make
+him fairly independent?"
+
+"He won't touch any of them."
+
+"Sick men have their whims.  But can't you drag him out into the
+sun?  He ought not to lie in that mausoleum of a hall."
+
+"He has never been in the garden in all our years at Wanhope."
+
+Lawrence took off his straw hat to fan himself with.  It was not
+only the heat of the day that oppressed him.  "Poor, wretched
+Bernard!  But I dare say I should be equally mulish if I were in
+his shoes.  By the by, was he really in pain just now?"
+
+"Really in pain?" Laura echoed.  "Why--why should you say that?"
+She no longer doubted Lawrence Hyde's subtlety.  "'He's
+constantly in pain and he scarcely ever complains."
+
+"Oh? I didn't know one suffered, with paralysis."
+
+"He has racking neuritis in his shoulders and back."
+
+"That's bad.  I'm afraid he can't be much up to entertaining
+visitors.  Does he hate having me here?"
+
+"No! oh no!  I know he sometimes seems a little odd," said poor
+Laura, wishing her guest were less clear-sighted: and yet before
+he came she had been hoping that Lawrence would divine the less
+obvious aspects of the situation, and perhaps, since a man can do
+more with a man like Bernard than any woman can, succeed in
+easing it.  "But can you wonder?  Struck down like this at five
+and twenty! and he never was keen on indoor interests--sport and
+his profession were all he cared about.  Please, Lawrence, make
+allowances for him--he had been looking forward so much to your
+coming here!  A man's society always does him good, and you know
+how few men there are in this country: we have only the vicar,
+and the doctor, and Jack Bendish and people who stay at the
+Castle.  And if you only realized how different he was with you
+from what he is with most people, you would be flattered!  He
+won't let any one touch him as a rule, except Barry,  whom he
+treats like a machine.  But he was quite grateful to you--he
+seemed to lean on you."
+
+"Did he?"
+
+She had made Lawrence feel uncomfortable again in the region of
+the heart, but he was deliberately stifling pity, as five years
+ago, in a Peruvian fonda, he had subdued his filial tenderness
+and grief.  He was not callous: if he had had the earlier cable
+he would have sailed for home without delay.  But since Andrew
+Hyde was dead and would never know whether his son wept for him
+or not, Lawrence set himself to repress not only tears but the
+fount of human feeling that fed them.  He had dabbled enough in
+psychology to know that natural emotions, if not indulged, may
+only be driven down under the surface, there to work havoc among
+the roots of nerve life.  Lawrence however had no nerves and no
+fear of Nemesis, and no inclination to sacrifice himself for
+Bernard, and he determined, if Wanhope continued to inspire these
+oppressive sensations to send himself a telegram calling him
+away.
+
+He changed the subject.  "It's a long while since I've heard
+stockdoves cooing.  And, yes, that's a nightingale.  Oh, you
+jolly little beggar!" His face fell into boyish creases when he
+smiled. "Do you remember the nightingales at Farringay?  Laura--
+may I say it?--while rusticating in Arden you haven't forgotten
+certain talents you used to possess.  The dress is delightful,
+but where the masterhand appears is in the way it's worn.  That
+carries me back to Auteull."
+
+"Nonsense!" said Laura, changing her attitude, but not visibly
+displeased.
+
+"Oh I shan't say don't move"  Lawrence murmured.  "The slippers
+also. . . . Are there many trout in this river, I wonder?  Hallo!
+there's a big fellow rubbing along by that black stone!   Must
+weigh a cool pound and a half. I suppose the angling rights go
+with the property?"
+
+"You can fish all day long if you like: the water is ours, both
+sides of it, as far south as the mill above Wharton and a good
+half-mile upstream.  The banks are kept clear on principle,
+though none of us ever touch a line.  The Castle people come
+over now and then: Jack Bendish is keen, and he says our sport
+is better than theirs because they fish theirs down too much.
+Val put some stock in this spring."
+
+"Val?"
+
+"You seem to fit in so naturally," Laura smiled, "that I forget
+you've only just come.  Val is Bernard's agent, and I ought not
+to have omitted him from our list of country neighbours, but he's
+like one of the family.  Bernard wants you, to meet him because
+he was near you in the war.  But I don't know that you'll have
+much in common: Val was very junior to you, and he's not keen on
+talking about it in any case.  So many men have that shrinking.
+Have you, I wonder?"
+
+"I'm afraid I don't take impressions easily. Didn't your friend
+enjoy it?"
+
+"He had no chance.  He had only six or seven weeks at the front;
+he was barely nineteen, poor boy, when he was invalided out.
+That was why Bernard offered him the agency--he was delighted to
+lend a helping hand to one of his old brother officers."
+
+"Wounded?"
+
+"Yes, he had his right arm smashed by a revolver bullet.  Then
+rheumatic fever set in, and the trouble went to the heart, and he
+was very ill for a long time.  I don't suppose he ever has been
+so strong as he was before.  What made it so sad was the splendid
+way he had just distinguished himself," Laura continued.  She
+gave a little sketch of the rescue of Dale, far more vivid than
+Val had ever given to his family.  "Perhaps you can imagine what
+a fuss Chilmark made over its solitary hero!  We're still proud
+of him.  Val is always in request at local shows: he appears on
+the platform looking very shy and bored.  Poor boy!  I believe he
+sometimes wishes he had never won that embarrassing decoration."
+
+"What's his name?"
+
+"Val Stafford.  Why--do you remember him?"
+
+"Er--yes, I do," said Lawrence.  He took out his cigar case and
+turned from Laura to light a cigar.  "I knew a lot of the
+Dorchesters. . . Amiable-looking, fair boy, wasn't he?"
+
+"Middle height, and rather sunburnt.  But that description fits
+such dozens!  However, I'm taking you up to tea there this
+afternoon, if the prospect doesn't bore you, so you'll be able to
+judge for yourself.  He has a young sister who threatens to be
+very pretty.  Are you still interested in pretty girls, M. le
+capitaine?"
+
+"Immensely." Hyde lay back on one arm, smoking rather fast. "I
+see no immediate prospect of my being bored, thanks.  Rather fun
+running into Stafford again after all these years! I shall love a
+chat over old times."  He raised his black eyes, and Laura
+started.  Was it her fancy, or a trick of the sunlight, that
+conjured up in them that sparkle of smiling cruelty, gone before
+she could fix it?  "You say he doesn't care to talk about his
+military exploits?  He always was a modest youth, I should love
+to see him on a recruiting platform.  Wait till I get him to
+myself, he won't be shy with me.  Did you tell him I was coming?"
+
+"I told his sister Isabel, who probably told him. I haven't seen
+him since, he hasn't happened to come in; I suppose the hay
+harvest has kept him extra busy--Dear me! why, there he is!"
+
+In the field across the stream a young man on horseback had come
+into view.  Catching sight of Laura he slipped across a low
+boundary wall, his brown mare, a thoroughbred, changing her feet
+in a ladylike way on the worn stones, and trotted down to the
+riverbank, raising his cap.
+
+"Coming in to lunch, Val?" Laura called across the water.
+
+"Thank you very much, I'm afraid I shan't have time."
+
+"But you haven't been in since Sunday!"  Laura's accent was
+reproachful.  "Why are you forsaking us?  We need you more than
+the farm does!"
+
+Val's pleasant laugh was the avoidance of an answer.  "So sorry!
+But I can't come in now, Laura: I have to go over to Countisford
+to talk to Bishop about the new tractor, and I want to get back
+by teatime.  Isabel tells me you're bringing Captain Hyde up to
+see us." He raised his cap again, smiling directly at Lawrence,
+who returned the salute with such gay good humour that Laura was
+able to dismiss that first fleeting impression from her mind.
+So this was Val Stafford, was it?  And a very personable fellow
+too! Hyde had not foreseen that ten years would work as great a
+change in Val as in himself, or greater.
+
+"I was going to call on you in due form, sir, but my young
+sister hasn't left me the chance.  You haven't forgotten me, have
+you?"
+
+"No, I remember you most distinctly.  Delighted to meet you
+again."
+
+"Thank you.  The pleasure is mutual.  Now I must push on or I
+shall be late."
+
+"He can use his arm, then," said Lawrence, as Val rode away,
+jumping his mare over a fence into the road.  "Shaves himself and
+all that, I suppose?  He rides well."
+
+"A great deal too well! and rides to hounds too, but he ought not
+to do it, and I'm always scolding him.  He can't straighten his
+right arm, and has very little power in it.  He was badly thrown
+last winter, but directly he got up he was out again on Kitty."
+
+"Living up to his reputation." Lawrence flicked the ash from his
+cigar.  "I should have known him anywhere by his eyes."
+
+"He has kept very young, hasn't he?  An uneventful life without
+much anxiety does keep people young," philosophized Laura.  "I
+feel like a mother to him.  But you'll see more of him this
+afternoon."
+
+"So I shall," said Lawrence, "if he isn't detained at
+Countisford."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+The reason why Lawrence found Isabel scrubbing Mrs. Drury's
+floor was that Dorrie's pretty, sluttish little mother had been
+whisked off to the Cottage Hospital with appendicitis an hour
+earlier.  She was in great distress about Dorrie when Isabel,
+coming in with the parish magazine, offered to stay while Drury
+went to fetch an aunt from Winterbourne Stoke.  When Drury drove
+up in a borrowed farm cart, Isabel without expecting or receiving
+many thanks dragged her bicycle to the top of the glen and pelted
+off across the moor.  Her Sunbeam was worn and old, so old that
+it had a fixed wheel, but what was that to Isabel?  She put her
+feet up and rattled down the hill, first on the turf and then on
+the road, in a happy reliance on her one serviceable brake.
+
+Her father was locked in his study writing a sermon: Isabel
+however tumbled in by the window.  She sidled up to Mr. Stafford,
+sat on his knee, and wound one arm round his neck.  "Jim
+darling," she murmured in his ear, "have you any money?"
+
+"Isabel," said Mr. Stafford, "how often have I told you that I
+will  not be interrupted in the middle of my morning's work?  You
+come in like a whirlwind, with holes in your stockings--"
+
+Isabel giggled suddenly.  "Never mind, darling, I'll help you
+with your sermon.  Whereabouts are you?  Oh!--'I need not tell
+you, my friends, the story we all know so well'--Jim, that's
+what my tutor calls 'Redundancy and repetition.' You know quite
+well you're going to tell us every word of it.  Darling take its
+little pen and cross it out--so--with its own nasty little
+cross-nibbed J--"
+
+"What do you mean by saying you want money,"  Mr. Stafford
+hurriedly changed the subject, "and how much do you want?  The
+butcher's bill came to half a sovereign this week, and I must
+keep five shillings to take to old Hewitt--"
+
+"I want pounds and pounds."
+
+"My dear!" said Mr. Stafford aghast.  He took off his spectacles
+to polish them, and then as he put them on again, "If it's for
+that Appleton boy I really can't allow it.  There's nothing
+whatever wrong with him but laziness"
+
+"It isn't for Appleton.  It's for me myself."  Isabel sat up
+straight, a little flushed.  "I'm growing up.  Isn't it a
+nuisance? I want a new dress!  I did think I could carry on till
+the winter, but I can't.  Could you let me have enough to buy one
+ready-made?  Chapman's have one in their window that would fit me
+pretty well.  It's rather dear, but somehow when I make my own
+they never come right.  And Rowsley says I look like a scarecrow,
+and even Val's been telling me to put my hair up!"
+
+"Put your hair up, my child?  Why, how old are you? I don't like
+little girls to be in a hurry to turn into big ones"
+
+"I'm not a little girl," said Isabel shortly.  "I'm nineteen."
+
+"Nineteen? no, surely not!"
+
+"Twenty next December."
+
+"Dear me!" said Mr. Stafford, quite overcome. "How time flies!"
+He set her down from his knee and went to his cash box.  "If Val
+tells you to put your hair up, no doubt you had better do it." He
+paused.  "I don't know whether Val said you ought to have a new
+frock, though?  I can't bear spending money on fripperies when
+even in our own parish so many people--" Some glimmering
+perception reached him of the repressed anguish in Isabel's eyes.
+"But of course you must have what you need.  How much is it?"
+
+"1. 11. 6."
+
+"Oh, my dear!  That seems a great deal."
+
+"It isn't really much for a best dress," said poor Isabel.
+
+"But you mustn't be extravagant, darling," said Mr. Stafford
+tenderly.  "I see other girls running about in little cotton
+dresses or bits of muslin or what not that look very nice--much
+nicer on a young girl than 'silksand fine array.' Last time
+Yvonne came to tea she wore a little frock as simple as a
+child's"
+
+"She did," said Isabel.  "She picked it up in a French sale.  It
+was very cheap--only 275 francs."
+
+"Eleven pounds!" Mr. Stafford held up his hands.  "My dear, are
+you sure?"
+
+"Quite," said Isabel. Mr. Stafford sighed. "I must speak to
+Yvonne.  'How hardly shall they...'"  He took a note out of his
+cash box. "Can't you make that do--?" he was beginning when a
+qualm of compunction came upon him.  After all it was a long time
+since he had given Isabel any money for herself, and there must
+be many little odds and ends about a young girl's clothing that
+an elderly man wouldn't understand.  He took out a second note
+and pressed them both hurriedly into Isabel's palm.  "There! now
+run off and don't ask me for another penny for the next
+twelvemonth!" he exclaimed, beaming over his generosity though
+more than half ashamed of it.  "You extravagant puss, you! dear,
+dear, who'd have a daughter?"
+
+Isabel gave him a rather hasty though warm embrace (she was
+terribly afraid that his conscience would prick him and that he
+would take the second note away again), and flew out of the
+window faster than she had come in.  The clock was striking a
+quarter past one, and she had to scamper down to Chapman's to buy
+the dress, and a length of lilac ribbon for a sash, and a packet
+of bronze hairpins, and be back in time to lay the cloth for two
+o'clock lunch.  If it is only for idle hands that Satan finds
+mischief, he could not have had much satisfaction out of Isabel
+Stafford.
+
+Soon after four Mrs. Clowes stepped from her car, shook out her
+soft flounces, and led the way across the lawn, Lawrence Hyde in
+attendance.  The vicarage was an old-fashioned house too large
+for the living, its long front, dotted with rosebushes, rising up
+honey-coloured against the clear green of a beech grove.  There
+are grand houses that one sees at once will never be comfortable,
+and there are unpretentious houses that promise to be cool in
+summer and warm in winter and restful all the year round: of such
+was Chilmark vicarage, sunning itself in the afternoon clearness,
+while faded green sunblinds filled the interior with verdant
+shadow, and the smell of sweetbrier and Japanese honeysuckle
+breathed round the rough-cast walls.
+
+Isabel had laid tea on the lawn, and Mrs. Clowes smiled to herself
+when she saw seven worn deck chairs drawn up round the table; she was
+always secretly amused at Isabel in her character of hostess, at the
+naive natural confidence with which the young lady scattered
+invitations and dispensed hospitality.  But when Isabel came forward
+Laura's covert smile passed into irrepressible surprise.  She raised
+her eyebrows at Isabel, who replied by an almost imperceptible but
+triumphant nod.  In her white and mauve embroidered muslin, her dark
+hair accurately parted at the side of her head and drawn back into
+what she called a soup plate of plaits, Isabel no longer threatened
+to be pretty.  Impelled by that singularly pure benevolence which a
+woman who has ceased to hope for happiness feels for the eager
+innocence of youth, Laura drew her close and kissed her.  "My sweet,
+I'm so glad," she whispered. A bright blush was Isabel's only answer.
+Then Mrs. Clowes stepped back and indicated her cavalier, very big
+and handsome in white clothes and a Panama hat: "May I introduce--
+Captain Hyde, Miss Stafford," with a delicate formality which
+thrilled Isabel to her finger-tips.  Let him see if he would call her
+a little girl now!
+
+Lawrence recognized Isabel at a glance, but he was not abashed.
+He scarcely gave her a second thought till he had satisfied
+himself that Val Stafford was not present.  Lawrence smiled, not
+at all surprised: he had had a presentiment that Val, the modest
+easy-going Val of his recollections, would be detained at
+Countisford: too modest by half, if he was shy of meeting an old
+friend!  Rowsley Stafford was doing the honours and came forward
+to be introduced to Lawrence, a ceremony remarkable only because
+they both took an instantaneous dislike to each other.  Lawrence
+disliked Rowsley because he was young and well-meaning and the
+child of a parsonage, and Rowsley disliked Lawrence because a
+manner which owed some of its serenity to his physical advantages,
+and his tailor, and his income, irritated the susceptibilities of
+the poor man's son.
+
+Poor men's sons were often annoyed by Lawrence Hyde's manner.
+Not so Jack Bendish, sprawling in a deck chair which had no
+sound pair of notches: not so his wife, Laura's sister, Yvonne of
+the Castle, curled up on a moth-eaten tigerskin rug, and clad in
+raiment of brown and silver which even Mr. Stafford would not
+have credited to Chapman's General Drapery and Grocery Stores.
+Isabel was innocently surprised when the Bendishes found they had
+met Captain Hyde in town.  Laura's smile was very faintly tinged
+with bitterness: she knew of that small world where every one
+meets every one, though she had been barred out of it most of her
+life, first by her disreputable father and then by the tragedy of
+her marriage: Rowsley pulled his tooth-brush moustache and said
+nothing.  He was young, but not so young as Isabel, and there
+were moments when he felt his own footing at the Castle to be
+vaguely anomalous.
+
+However, the talk ran easily.  Lawrence, as was inevitable, sat
+down by Yvonne Bendish: she did not raise an eyelash to summon
+him, but it seemed to be a natural law that the rich unmarried
+man should sit beside her and talk cosmopolitan scandal, and show
+a discreet appreciation of her clothing and her eyes.  Meanwhile
+the other four conversed with much greater simplicity upon such
+homely subjects as the coming school treat and the way Isabel had
+done her hair, Rowsley's regimental doings, and a recent turn-up
+between Jack Bendish as deputy M. F. H. and Mr. Morley the Jew.
+
+Bernard Clowes had described Mrs. Jack Bendish as a plain little
+devil, but as a rule the devilry was more conspicuous than the
+plainness.  She was a tall and extremely slight woman, her
+features insignificant and her complexion sallow, but her figure
+indecorously beautiful under its close French draperies.  And yet
+if she had let Lawrence alone he would have gone over to the
+other camp. How they laughed, three out of the four of them, and
+what marvellous good tea they put away!  The little Stafford girl
+had a particularly infectious laugh, a real child's giggle which
+doubled her up in her chair.  Lawrence had no desire to join in
+the school treat and barnyard conversation, but he would have
+liked to sit and listen.
+
+"If no one will have any more tea," said Isabel, jumping up and
+shaking the crumbs out of her lap, "will you all come and eat
+strawberries?"
+
+"Isn't Val coming in?" asked Laura.
+
+"Not till after five.  He said we weren't to wait for him: he was
+delayed in getting off.  He sent his love to you, Laura, and he
+was very sorry."
+
+"His love!" said Yvonne Bendish.
+
+"My dear Isabel, I'm sure he didn't," said Laura laughing.
+
+"Kind regards then," said Isabel: "not that it signifies, because
+we all do love you, darling.  Val's always telling me that if I
+want to be a lady when I grow up I must model my manners on yours.
+Not yours, Yvonne."
+
+"After that the least I can do is to wait and give him his tea
+when he does appear," said Laura. "It's very hot among the
+strawberry beds, and I'm a little tired: and I haven't seen Val
+for days."
+
+"No more have I," said Yvonne in her odd drawl, "and I'm tired
+too."  Mrs. Jack Bendish was made of whipcord: she had been
+brought up to ride Irish horses over Irish fences and to dance all
+night, after tramping the moors all day with a gun.  "I'll stay with
+you and rest.  Jack, you run on.  Bring me some big ones in a cabbage
+leaf.  And, Captain Hyde, you'll find them excellent with bread and
+butter." By which Lawrence perceived that his interest in the other
+camp had not gone unobserved, and that was the worst of Yvonne:
+but--and that was the best of Yvonne: there was no tinge of spite in
+her jeering eyes.
+
+So the sisters remained on the lawn, and Jack Bendish, a
+perfectly simple young man, walked off with Rowsley to pick a
+cabbage leaf.  Isabel was demureness itself as she followed with
+Captain Hyde. The embroidered muslin gave her courage, more
+courage perhaps than if she could have heard his frank opinion of
+it.  "The trailing skirt of the young girl," said Miss Stafford
+to herself, "made a gentle frou-frou as she swept over the velvet
+lawn." A quoi revent les junes filles?  Very innocent was the
+vanity of Isabel's dreams.  She was not strictly pretty, but she
+was young and fresh, and the spotless muslin fell in graceful
+folds round her tall, lissome figure.  To the jaded man of the
+world at her side . . . .  Alas for Isabel!  The jaded man of
+the world was a trifle bored: he was easily bored.  He liked
+listening to Miss Stafford's artless merriment but he had no
+desire to share in it; what had he to say to a promoted
+schoolgirl in her Sunday best?
+
+He began politely making conversation.  "What a pretty place this
+is!" It seemed wiser not to refer even by way of apology to the
+indiscretion of the morning.  "You have a beautiful view over the
+Plain.  Rather dreary in winter though, isn't it?"
+
+"I like it best then," said Isabel briefly.  "Don't you want any
+strawberries?" She indicated the netted furrows among which
+little could be seen of Rowsley and Jack Bendish except their
+stern ends.
+
+"No, thanks, I had too much tea." Isabel checked herself on the
+brink of reminding him that he had eaten only two cucumber
+sandwiches and a macaroon.  In Lawrence Hyde's society her
+conversation had not its usual happy flow, she felt tonguetied
+and missish.  "How close you are to the Downs here!" They were
+following a flagged path between espalier pear trees, and beds of
+broccoli and carrots and onions, and borders full of old standard
+roses and lavender and sweet herbs and tall lilies; at the end
+appeared a wishing gate in a low stone wall, and beyond it,
+pathless and sunshiny, the southern stretches of the Plain.  "Are
+you a great gardener, Miss Isabel?"
+
+"Some," said Isabel. "I look after my pet vegetables.  The
+flowers have to look after themselves.  My father has eruptions
+of industry."  She overflowed into a little laugh.  "We don't
+encourage him in it.  He had a bad attack of weeding last spring,
+and pulled up all my little salads by mistake."  Now that small
+tale, she reflected, would have tickled Jack Bendish, but Captain
+Hyde, though he smiled at it dutifully, did not seem to be
+amused.
+
+"Oh bother you!" Isabel apostrophised him mentally.  "You're not
+the grandson of a duke anyhow. I expect you would be nicer if you
+were."
+
+She folded her arms on the gate and gazed across the Plain.  The
+village below was not far off, but they could see nothing of it,
+buried as it was in the river-valley and behind a green arras of
+beech leaves: in every other direction, far as the eye could see,
+leagues of feathery pale grass besprinkled with blue and yellow
+flowers went away in ribbed undulations, occasionally rolling up
+into a crest on which a company of fir trees hung like men on
+march.  The sun was pale and smudged, the sky veiled: on its
+silken pallor floated, here and there, a blot of dark low cloud,
+and the clear distances presaged rain.
+
+"May I--?" Lawrence took out his cigarettes. Isabel gave a
+grudging assent.  She could not understand how any one could be
+willing to taint the sweet summering air that had blown over so
+many leagues of grass and flowers.  "Dare I offer you one?"
+Lawrence asked, tendering his case.  It was of gold, and bore his
+monogram in diamonds. Isabel eyed it scornfully.  Jack Bendish's
+was only silver and much scratched and dinted into the bargain.
+Now Jack Bendish was the grandson of a duke.
+
+"'No thank you," said Miss Stafford.  "I detest smoking."
+
+ To this Lawrence made no reply at all, no doubt, thought Isabel,
+because he did not consider it worth one.  She was proportionally
+surprised and a trifle flattered when he replaced the cigarette
+to which he had just helped himself. "'The young girl had not
+realized her own power.  She was only just coming into her
+woman's kingdom.  Her heart beat faster and a vermilion blush
+dyed her pale cheek."' Isabel's favourite authors were Stevenson
+and Mr. Kipling, but her mental rubric insisted on clothing itself
+in the softer style of Molly Bawn.
+
+"I don't detest other people's smoking," she explained in a
+rather penitent tone.
+
+"Let's get out on the downs," said Lawrence.  He swung the gate
+to and fro for her, then took off his hat and strolled slowly by
+her side through the rustling grass.  "Really," he said, more to
+himself than to her, "there are places in England that are very
+well worth while."
+
+"Worth while what?"
+
+"Er--worth coming to see.  I suppose there isn't much shooting
+to be had except rabbits." He swung an imaginary gun to his
+shoulder and sighted it at a quarry which seemed to Isabel to be
+equally imaginary.  "See him?  Under that heap of stones left of
+the beech ring." Isabel's vision was both keen and practised, but
+she saw nothing till the rabbit showed his white scut in a
+flickering leap to earth.
+
+"You have jolly good eyes," she conceded, still rather
+grudgingly.
+
+"So have bunnies, unluckily.  Major Clowes tells me there's
+pretty good shooting over Wanhope. I suppose your brother looks
+after it, for of course Clowes can do nothing.  It was a great
+stroke of luck for my cousin, getting hold of a fellow like Val."
+
+"I don't know about that.  It was a great stroke of luck for
+Val."
+
+"I want so much to meet him.  I'm disappointed at missing him this
+afternoon. I remember him perfectly in the army, though he was
+only a boy then and I wasn't much more myself.  He must be close
+on thirty now.  But when I met him this morning it struck me he
+hadn't altered much."  Isabel, looking up eager-eyed, felt
+faintly and mysteriously chilled.  Was there a point of cruelty
+in Hyde's smile? as there was now and then in his cousin's: she
+had seen Bernard Clowes watching his wife with the same secret
+glow.
+
+"Val is old for his age," she said.  "He always seems much older
+than my other brother, although there are only two or three years
+between them."
+
+"Probably his spell in the army aged him.  It must have been a
+formative experience."
+
+This time Isabel had no doubt about it, there was certainly a
+touch of cruel irony in Hyde's soft voice.  Her breath came fast.
+"Why do you say that": she cried--"say it like that?"
+
+The smile faded: Lawrence turned, startled out of his self-possession.
+"Like what?"
+
+"As if you we're sneering at Val!"
+
+"I?--  My dear Miss Isabel, aren't you a little fanciful?"
+
+Isabel supposed so too, on second thoughts: how could any man
+sneer at a record like Val's: unless indeed it were with that
+peculiarly graceless sneer which springs from jealousy?  And,
+little as she liked Captain Hyde, she could not think him weak
+enough for that. She blushed again, this time without any rubric,
+and hung her head.  "I'm sorry! But you did say it as if you
+didn't mean it.  Perhaps you think we make too much fuss over
+Val?  But in these sleepy country villages exciting things don't
+happen every day.  I dare say you've had scores of adventures
+since that time you met Val.  But Chilmark hasn't had any.  That
+makes us remember."
+
+"My dear child," said Lawrence with an earnest gentleness foreign
+to his ordinary manner, "you misunderstood me altogether.  I
+liked your brother very much.  Remember, I was there when he won
+his decoration--" He broke off.  An intensely visual memory had
+flashed over him.  Now he knew of whom Isabel had reminded him
+that morning:  she had her brother's eyes.
+
+"At the very time?  Were you really?  Do, do, do tell me about
+it!  Major Clowes never will--he pretends he can't remember."
+
+"Has Val never told you?"
+
+"Hardly any more than was in the official account--that he was
+left between the lines after one of our raids, and went back in
+spite of his wound to bring in Mr. Dale.  He had to wait till
+after dark?"  Lawrence nodded.. "And 'under particularly trying
+conditions.' Why was that?"
+
+"Because Dale was so close to the German lines. He was entangled
+in their wire."
+
+Isabel shuddered.  "It seems so long ago.  One can't understand
+why such cruelties were ever allowed.  Of course they will never
+be again." This naive voice of the younger generation made
+Lawrence smile.  "And Val had to cut their wire?"
+
+"To peel it off Dale, or peel Dale off it--what was left of him.
+He didn't live more than twenty minutes after he was brought in."
+
+"Did you know Dale?"
+
+"Not well: he was in my cousin's company, not in mine."
+
+"And was Val under fire at the time?"
+
+"Under heavy fire.  The Boches were sending up starshells that
+made the place as light as day."
+
+"I can't understand how Val could do it with his broken arm."
+
+"His arm wasn't broken when he cut their wires."
+
+"Oh!  When was it then?"
+
+Hyde flicked with his stick at the airy heads of grass that rose
+up thin-sown out of a burnished carpet of lady's slipper.  His
+manner was even but his face was dark.  "He had it splintered by
+a revolver--shot on his way home, near our lines."
+
+"Oh!  But the Army doctors said the shot must have been fired at
+close quarters?"
+
+"There, you see I'm not much of an authority,  am I?  No doubt,
+if they said so, they were right.  The fact is I was knocked out
+myself that afternoon with a rifle bullet in the ribs.  It was a
+hot corner for the Wintons and Dorsets."
+
+"Were you?  I'm sorry." Isabel ran her eyes with a touch of
+whimsical solicitude over Hyde's tall easy figure and the
+exquisite keeping of his white clothes.  Difficult to connect him
+with the bloody disarray of war!  "Were you too left lying
+between the lines?"
+
+"With a good many others, English and German.
+
+"There was a fellow near me that hadn't a scratch.  He was
+frightened--mad with fear: he lay up in the long grass and wept
+most of the day.  I never hated any one so much in my life.  I
+could have shot him with pleasure."
+
+"German, of course?"
+
+Hyde smiled.  "German, of course."
+
+"If he had been English he would have deserved to be shot," said
+Isabel briefly: then, reverting to a subject in which she was far
+more deeply interested, "Rowsley--my second brother--said I
+wasn't to cross-examine you: but it was a great temptation,
+because one never can get anything out of Val.  And after all
+we've the right to be proud of him!  Even then, when every one
+was so brave, you would say, wouldn't you, that Val earned his
+distinction? It really was what the Gazette called it, 'conspicuous
+gallantry'?"
+
+"It was a daring piece of work," said Lawrence, reddening to his
+hair.  He fought down a sensation so unfamiliar that he could
+scarcely put a name to it, and forced himself on: "We were all proud
+of him and we none of us forget it.  Don't tell him I said so,
+though.  It isn't etiquette.  You won't think I'm trying to minimize
+what Val did, will you, if I say that we who were through the
+fighting saw so many horrible and ghastly things . . ."  Again his
+voice failed.  He was aware of Isabel's bewilderment, but he was
+seeing more ghosts than he had seen in all the intervening years of
+peace, and they came between him and the sunlit landscape and
+Isabel's young eyes.  War! always war! human bodies torn to rags in a
+moment, and the flowers of the field wet with a darker moisture than
+rain: the very smell of the trenches was in his nostrils, their odour
+of blood and decay.  What in heaven's name had brought it all back,
+and, stranger still, what had moved him to speak of it and to betray
+feelings whose very existence was unknown to him and which he had
+never betrayed before?
+
+The silence was brief though to Lawrence it seemed endless.  He
+drove the ghosts back to quarters and finished quietly: "Well, we
+won't talk about that, it's not a pleasant subject.  Only give
+Val my love and tell him if he doesn't look me up soon I shall
+come and call on him.  We're much too old friends to stand on
+ceremony."
+
+"All right, I will," said Isabel.
+
+There was a shrub of juniper close by, and she felt under its
+sharp branches.  "Do you like honeysuckle?" She held up a fresh
+sprig fragrant with its pale horns, which she had tracked to
+covert by its scent.  Lawrence was not given to wearing
+buttonholes, but he understood the friendly and apologetic
+intention and inclined his broad shoulder for Miss Stafford to
+pass the stem through the lapel of his coat.  Isabel had not
+intended to pin it in for  him, but she was generally willing to
+do what was expected of her.  She took a pin from her own dress
+(there were plenty in it), and fastened the flower deftly on the
+breast of Captain Hyde's white jacket.
+
+And so standing before him, her head bent over her task, she
+unwittingly left Lawrence free to observe the texture of her
+skin, bloomed over with down like a peach, and the curves of her
+young shoulders, a little inclined to stoop, as young backs often
+are in the strain of growth, but so firm, so fresh, so white
+under the thin stuff of her bodice:  below her silken plaits, on
+the nape of her neck, a curl or two of hair grew in close rings,
+so fine that it was almost indistinguishable from its own shadow.
+Swiftly, without warning, Lawrence was aware of a pleasurable
+commotion in his veins, a thrill that shook through him like a
+burst of gay music.  This experience was not novel, he had felt
+it three or four times before in his life, and on the spot, while
+it was sending gentle electric currents to his finger-tips, he
+was able to analyse its origin--item, to warm weather and
+laziness after the strain of his Chinese journey, so much: item,
+to Isabel's promise of beauty, so much: item, to the disparity
+between her age and his own, to her ignorance and immaturity, the
+bloom on the untouched fruit, so much more.  But there was this
+difference between the present and previous occasions when he had
+fallen or thought of falling in love, that he desired no victory:
+no, it was he and not Isabel who was to capitulate, leaning his
+forehead upon her young hand. . . . And he had never seen her
+till that morning, and the child was nineteen, the daughter of a
+country vicarage, brought up to wear calico and to say her
+prayers!  more, she was Val Stafford's sister, and she loved her
+brother.  Lawrence gave himself a gentle shake.  At six and
+thirty it is time to put away childish things. "Thank you very
+much.  Is that Mrs. Clowes calling us?"
+
+It was Laura Clowes and Yvonne Bendish, and Lawrence, as he
+strolled back with Isabel to the garden gate, had an uneasy
+suspicion that the episode of the honeysuckle had been overseen.
+Laura was graver than usual, while Yvonne had a sardonic spark in
+her eye.  "I'm afraid it's no use waiting any longer, Isabel,"
+said Laura.
+
+"What do you think, Lawrence?  It's after six o'clock."
+
+"Hasn't Val come?" said Isabel.
+
+"No, he must have been kept at Countisford.  It's a long ride for
+him on such a hot day.  Perhaps Mrs. Bishop made him stay to
+tea."
+
+"As if he would stay with any old Mrs. Bishop when he knew you were
+coming here!" said Isabel scornfully.  "Poor old Val, I shan't tell
+him how you misjudged him, he'd be so hurt.  But I'll send him down,
+shall I, to see you and Captain Hyde after supper?--Tired?  Oh no,
+he's never too tired to go to Wanhope."
+
+She kissed Laura, gave Lawrence her sweetest friendly smile, and
+returned to the lawn, where Yvonne had apparently taken root upon
+her tigerskin.  Isabel heard Rowsley say, "Make her shut up,
+Jack," but before she could ask why Yvonne was to be shut up the
+daughter of Lilith had opened fire on the daughter of Eve.  "And
+what did you think of Lawrence Hyde?" Mrs. Bendish asked,
+stretching herself out like a snake and examining Isabel out of
+her pale eyes, much the colour of an unripe gooseberry.  "Was he
+very attractive?  Oh Isabel! oh Isabel!  I should not have
+thought this of one so young."
+
+Isabel considered the point. "I can't understand him," she said
+honestly. "I liked parts of him.  He isn't so--so homogeneous as
+most people are.
+
+"Did he ask you for the honeysuckle?"
+
+"No, I gave it to him for a peace offering.  I hurt his feelings,
+and afterwards I was sorry and wanted to make it up with him.
+But would you have thought he had any feelings? any, that is,
+that anything I said would hurt?"
+
+"Certainly not," from Rowsley.
+
+"Any woman can hurt any man," said Yvonne.  "But, of course, you
+aren't a woman, Isabel.  What was the trouble?"
+
+"Oh, something about the war."
+
+"No, my child, it wasn't about the war.  It was something that
+stung up his vanity or his self-love.  Lawrence isn't a
+sentimentalist like Jack or Val."  Here Jack Bendish got as far
+as an artless "Oh, I say!" but his wife paid no attention.
+"Lawrence never took the war seriously."
+
+"But he did," insisted Isabel.  "He coloured all over his face--"
+
+She paused, realizing that Mrs. Bendish, under her mask of
+scepticism, was agog with curiosity.  Isabel was not fond of
+being drawn out.  Lawrence had given her his confidence, and she
+valued it, for with all her ignorance of society she had seen too
+much of plain human nature to suppose that he was often taken off
+his guard as he had been by her: and was she going to expose him
+to Yvonne's lacerating raillery?  A thousand times no!  "I
+misunderstood something he said about Val," she continued with
+scarcely a break, and falling back on one of those explanations
+that deceive the sceptical by their economy of truth.  "It was
+stupid of me, and awkward for him, so I had to apologize."
+
+"I see.  Come, Jack." Yvonne rose to her feet,  more like a snake
+than ever in her flexibility and swiftness, and held Isabel to
+her for a moment, her arm round her young friend's waist.  "But
+if you pin any more buttonholes into Captain Hyde's coat," the
+last low murmur was only for Isabel's ear, "he will infallibly
+kiss you: so now you are forewarned and can choose whether or no
+you will continue to pay him these little attentions."
+
+Isabel was not disturbed.  She had early formed the habit of not
+attending to Mrs. Bendish, and she unwound herself without even
+changing colour.
+
+"You always remind me of Nettie Hills at the Clowes's lodge," she
+retorted.  "Mrs. Hills says she's that flighty in the way she
+carries on, no one would believe what a good sensible girl she is
+under all her nonsense, and walks out with her own young man as
+regular as clockwork."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+And that evening Val Stafford came to pay his respects to his old
+comrade in arms.  Lawrence had travelled so much that it never
+took him long to settle down.  Even at Wanhope he managed within
+a few hours to make himself at home.  A trap sent over to
+Countisford brought back his manservant and an effeminate
+quantity of luggage, and by teatime his room was strewn from end
+to end with a litter of expensive trifles more proper to a pretty
+woman than to a man.  Mrs. Clowes, slipping in to cast a
+housewifely glance to his comfort, held up her hands in mock
+dismay.  "You must give yourself plenty of time to dust all this
+tomorrow morning, Caroline," she said to the house-maid.  She
+laughed at the gold brushes and gold manicure set, the polished
+array of boots, the fine silk and linen laid out on his bed, the
+perfume of sandalwood and Russian leather and eau de cologne.
+"And I hope you will be able to make Captain Hyde's valet
+comfortable.  Did he say whether he liked his room?"
+
+"I reelly don't know, ma'am,"  replied the truthful Caroline.
+"You see he's a foreigner, and most of what he says, well, it
+reelly sounds like swearing.
+
+"Madame." It was Gaston himself, appearing from nowhere at
+Laura's elbow, and saluting her with an empressement that was
+due, if Laura had only known it, to the harmony of her flounces.
+Laura eyed the little Gaston kindly.  "You are of the South,
+are you not?" she said in her soft French, the French of a
+Frenchwoman but for a slight stiffness of disuse: "and are you
+comfortable here, Gaston?  You must tell me if there is anything
+you want."
+
+Gaston was grateful less for her solicitude than for the sound
+of his own language.  When she had left the room he caught up a
+photograph, thrust it back into his master's dressingcase, and
+spat through the open window--"C'est fini avec toi, vieille
+biche," said he: "allons donc! j'aime mieux celle-ci par
+exemple."
+
+But, though Laura laughed, it was with indulgence.  While Isabel
+and Lawrence were conversing among the juniper bushes, the
+Bendishes had given Mrs. Clowes a sketch of Hyde which had
+confirmed her own impressions.  Although he liked good food and
+wine and cigars, he liked sport and travel too, and music and
+painting and books.  His eighty-guinea breechloaders were dearer
+to him than the lady of the ivory frame.  Who was the lady of the
+ivory frame?  Gaston would have been happy to define with the
+leer of the boulevards the relations between his master and
+Philippa Cleve.  Gaston had no doubt of them, nor had Frederick
+Cleve; Philippa had high hopes; Lawrence alone hung fire.  If he
+continued to meet her and she to offer him lavish opportunities
+the situation might develop, for Lawrence was not sufficiently
+in earnest in any direction to play what has been called the
+ill-favoured part of a Joseph, but in his heart of hearts, this
+Joseph wished Potiphar would keep his wife in order.  And,
+strange to say, Yvonne was not far wide of the mark.  She
+believed that Joseph was a sinner but not a willing one: and Jack
+Bendish, a little astray among these feminine subtleties,
+assented after his fashion--"Hyde's rather an ass in some
+ways," he said simply, "but he's an all-round sportsman."
+
+Thus primed, Laura was able to draw out her guest, and dinner
+passed off gaily, for Bernard Clowes was no dog in the manger,
+and listened with sparkling eyes to adventures that ranged from
+Atlantic sailing in a thirty-ton yacht to a Nigerian rhinoceros
+shoot.  Nor was Lawrence the focus of the lime-light-he was
+unaffectedly modest; but when, in expatiating on a favourite
+rifle, he confessed to having held fire till a charging
+rhinoceros bull was within eight and twenty yards of him, Bernard
+could supply the footnotes for himself. "I knew she wouldn't let
+me down," said Lawrence apologetically.  "Ah! she was a bonnie
+thing, that old gun of mine.  Ever shoot with a cordite rifle?"
+Bernard shook his head.  "I'd like you to see my guns," Lawrence
+continued, too shrewd to be tactful. "I'll have them sent down,
+shall I? Or Gaston shall run up and fetch 'em. He loves a day in
+town."
+
+Under this bracing treatment Bernard became more natural than
+Laura had seen him for a long time, and he stayed in the
+drawingroom after dinner, chatting with Lawrence and listening to
+his wife at the piano, till Laura thought the Golden Age had come
+again.  How long would it last?  Philosophers like Laura never
+ask that question.  At all events it lasted till half past nine,
+when the sick man was honestly tired and the lines of no
+fictitious pain were drawn deep about his mouth and eyes.
+
+Mrs. Clowes went away with her husband, who liked to have her at
+hand while Barry was getting him to bed, and Lawrence had
+strolled out on the lawn, when a shutter was thrown down in
+Bernard's room and Laura reappeared at the open window.
+"Lawrence, are you there?" she asked, shading her eyes between
+her hands.
+
+"Here," said Lawrence removing his cigar.
+
+"Will you be so very kind as to unlock the gate over the
+footbridge?  If Val does look us up tonight he's sure to scramble
+over it, which is awkward for him with his stiff arm."
+
+She dropped a key down to Lawrence.  A voice--Bernard's called
+from within, "Good night, old fellow, thanks for a pleasant
+evening.  I'm being washed now."
+
+The night was overcast, warm, quiet, and very dark under the
+trees: there was husbandry in heaven, their candles were all out.
+And by the bridge under the pleated and tasselled branches of an
+alder coppice the river ran quiet as the night, only uttering an
+occasional murmur or a deep sucking gurgle when a rotten stick,
+framed in foam, span down the silken whirl of an eddy: but
+down-stream, where waifs of mist curled like smoke off a grey mirror,
+there was a continual talking of open water, small cold river voices
+that chattered over a pebbly channel, or heaped themselves up and
+died down again in the harsh distant murmur of the weir.  The
+quantity of water that passed through the lock gates should have been
+constant from minute to minute, but the roar of it was not constant,
+nor the pitch of its note, which fell when Lawrence stood erect, but
+rose to a shrill overtone when he bent his head: sometimes one would
+have thought the river was going down in spate, and then the volume
+of sound dwindled to a mere thread, a lisp in the air.  Lawrence was
+observing these phenomena with a mind vacant of thought when he heard
+footsteps brushing through the grass by the field path from the
+village.  Val had come, then, after all!
+
+Val had naturally no idea that any one was near him.  He had
+reached the gate and was preparing to vault it when out of the
+dense alder-shadow a hand seized his arm.  "So sorry if I
+startled you."  But Val was not visibly startled.  "Mrs. Clowes
+sent me, down to let you in."
+
+"Did she?  Very good of her, and of you," returned Val's voice,
+pleasant and friendly.  "She always expects me to walk into the
+river.  But, after all, I shouldn't be drowned if I did.  Is
+Clowes gone to bed?"
+
+"He's on his way there.  Did you want to see him?"
+
+"I'll look in for five minutes after Barry has tucked him up.
+Have you been introduced to Barry yet?  He's quite a character."
+
+"So I should imagine.  He came in to cart Bernard off, and did
+something clumsy, or Bernard said he did, and Bernard cuffed his
+head for him.  Barry didn't seem to mind much.  Why does he stay?
+Is it devotion?"
+
+"He stays because your cousin pays him twice what he would get
+anywhere else.  No, I shouldn't call Barry devoted.  But he does
+his work well, and it isn't anybody's job."
+
+"I believe you," Lawrence muttered.
+
+"Warm tonight, isn't it?  No, thanks, I won't have anything to
+drink--  I've only just finished supper.  By the by, let me
+apologize for my absence this afternoon.  I was most awfully
+sorry to miss you, but I never got away from Countisford till
+after half past five, and my mare cast a shoe on the way back.
+Then I tried to get her shod in Liddiard St. Agnes, which is one
+of those idyllic villages that people write books about, and
+there I found an Odd-fellows' fete in full swing.  The village
+blacksmith was altogether too harmonious for business, so not
+being able to cuff his head, like your cousin, I was obliged to
+walk home.
+
+"Really'?  Have a cigar if you won't have anything else." Val
+accepted one, and in default of a match Lawrence made him light
+it from his own.  He was entirely at his ease, though the
+situation struck him as bizarre, but he did not believe that Val
+was at ease, no, not for all his natural manner and fertility in
+commonplace.  Lawrence was faintly sorry for the poor devil, but
+only faintly: after all, an awkward interview once in ten years
+was a low price to pay for that night which Lawrence never had
+forgotten and never would forget. He had an excellent memory,
+photographic and phonographic, a gift that wise men covet for
+themselves but deprecate in their friends.
+
+Lawrence was no Pharisee, but he was not a Samaritan either.  He
+had deliberately set himself to pull up any stray weeds of moral
+scruple that lingered in a mind stripped bare of Christian ethic,
+a task harder than some realize, since thousands of men who have
+no faith in Christ practise virtues that were not known for
+virtues by the Western world before Christ came to it.  But every
+man is his own special pleader, and Lawrence, whose theory was
+that one man is as good as another, retained a good hearty
+prejudice against certain forms of moral failure, and excused it
+on the ground that it was rather a taste than a principle. He
+looked directly into Stafford's eyes as the red glow of the cigar
+flamed and faded between the two heads so close together, and in
+his own eyes there was the same point of smiling ironic cruelty
+that Isabel had read in them--the same as Stafford himself had
+read in them not so many years ago.  But apparently Stafford read
+nothing in them now.
+
+"Sit down, won't you? you've had a fagging day."  Lawrence
+indicated the chairs left on the lawn.  "Hear me beginning to
+play the host!  As a matter of fact, you must know your way about
+the place far better than I do.  Although we're cousins, Bernard
+and I have seen next to nothing of each other since we were boys
+at school.  You, Val, must know him better than any one except
+his wife.  I want you to tell me about him.  I'm in dangerous
+country and I need a map."
+
+"I should be inclined to vary the metaphor a little and call him
+an uncharted sea," Val smiled as he threw one leg over the other
+and settled himself among his cushions.  He was dead tired,
+having been up since six in the morning and on his feet or in
+the saddle all day.  "But I'm at your service, subject always to
+the proviso that I'm Bernard's agent, which makes my position
+rather delicate.  What is it you want to know?"
+
+Since it was whether Clowes behaved decently to his wife,
+Lawrence shifted in his chair and flicked the ash from his cigar.
+"Imprimis, whether Bernard has a trout rod I can borrow.  I
+didn't know there was any fishing to be had or I'd have brought
+my own."
+
+"You can have mine: I scarcely ever touch a line now.  Certainly
+not in hay-harvest!  I'll send it down for you the first thing--"
+Was it possible that he was as insouciant as he professed to be?
+
+"Oh, thanks very much," Hyde cut in swiftly, but I couldn't
+borrow yours.  I'll find out if Clowes can't lend me one."
+
+"As you please." Stafford left it at that and passed on. "But I
+don't fancy Bernard has ever thrown a line in his life, he is too
+energetic to make a fisherman.  By the way, I suppose you won't
+be staying any length of time at Wanhope?"
+
+Lawrence smiled, the wish was father to the thought: that was
+more like the Val of old times!
+
+"That depends--mainly on my cousin, to be frank: I suspect he'll
+soon get sick of having a third person in the house."
+
+"Oh, probably.  But you needn't take any notice of that."
+Lawrence looked up in surprise.  "But, perhaps, that is none of
+my business.  Or will you let me give you one warning, since
+you've asked for a map?  Don't be too prompt to take Bernard at
+his word.  He may be very rude to you and yet not want you to go.
+He sacks Barry every few weeks. In fact now I come to think of it
+I'm under notice myself, for last time I saw him he told me to
+look out for another job.  He said what he wanted was a practical
+man who knew a little about farming."
+
+"And you stay on?  Quite right, if it suits your book."
+Unconsciously putting the worst construction on everything Val
+said or did, Lawrence's conclusion was that probably Val, an
+amateur farmer, was paid, like Barry, twice what he was worth in
+the market.  "But it wouldn't suit mine.  However, I don't
+imagine Bernard will try it on with me. I'm not Barry.  If he
+hits me I shall hit him back."
+
+"Oh, will you?" returned Val, invisibly amused. "I'm not sure
+that wouldn't be a good plan.  It has at least the merit of
+originality.  All the same I'm afraid Mrs. Clowes wouldn't like
+it, she is a standing obstacle in the way of drastic measures."
+
+"But why do you want me to stay?" Lawrence asked more and more
+surprised.
+
+"Well, here is what brought me up tonight, when I knew Bernard
+would be on his way to bed.  Will you--" he leaned forward, his
+hands clasped between his knees--"stick it out, whatever happens,
+for a week or two, and keep your eyes open?  Life at Wanhope
+isn't all plain sailing."
+
+"Plain sailing for Bernard?"
+
+"Or for his wife."
+
+"You speak as the friend of the house who sees both sides?"
+
+"They're forced on me."
+
+"I'll stay as long as I'm comfortable," said Lawrence, cynically
+frank.  "More I can't promise."
+
+Val leant back with an imperceptible shrug.  He was disappointed
+but not surprised: there was in Hyde a vein of hard selfishness--
+not a weakness, for the egoism which openly says "I will consult
+my own convenience first" is too scornful of public opinion to be
+called weak, but an acquired defensive quality on which argument
+would have been thrown away.  Val's arm dropped inert, he was
+tired, not in body alone, but by the strain of contact with
+another mind, hostile, and pitiless, and dominant.
+
+And Lawrence also was content to sit silent, lulled by the rising
+and falling murmur of the stream, and by that agreeably cruel
+memory. . . .   He had no inclination to recall it to Val, but it
+lent an emotional piquancy to their intercourse.  He had the whip
+hand of Val through the past, and perhaps the present also.
+Lawrence had been struck by Val's allusion to Mrs. Clowes.  He
+was the friend of the house, was he?  Now the position of a
+friend of the house who shields a wife from her husband is
+notoriously a delicate one.
+
+Val roused himself.  "Well, we'll drop this.  I must now say two
+words on a different subject: I'd rather let it alone, and so I
+dare say would you, but we shall meet a good deal off and on
+while you're here, and it had better be got over.  I'm sorry if I
+embarrass you--"
+
+"Set your mind at rest," said Lawrence, silkenly brutal.  "You
+don't embarrass me at all."
+
+He threw away his cigar and got up laughing, and as Val also rose
+Lawrence gently slapped him on the back. "I know what you're
+driving at--that you've not forgotten that small indiscretion
+of yours, or ceased to regret it.  Don't you worry, Val!  You
+always were one of the worrying sort, weren't you?  But you need
+never refer to it again, and I won't if you don't." Surely a
+generous, a handsome offer!  But Stafford only touched with the
+tips of his fingers the ringed and manicured hand of the elder
+man.
+
+"Thank you!  But I wasn't going to say anything of the sort.  The
+fact is that for a long while I've been making up my mind to see
+you some time when you were in England: there was no hurry,
+because so long as my father's alive I can do nothing, but when I
+heard you were coming to Wanhope the opportunity was too good to
+be missed.  Railway fares," Val added with a preoccupied smile,
+"are a consideration to me.  So don't walk away yet, Hyde,
+please.  I have such a vivid recollection of the last time we met.
+Between the lines at dawn.  Do you remember?"
+
+"Everything, Val."
+
+"You were badly hurt, but before you fainted you dragged a
+promise out of me."
+
+"Dragged it out of you?" Lawrence repeated: "that's one way of
+putting it!"
+
+"But I made some feeble resistance at the time," said Val mildly.
+"My head wasn't clear then or for a long while after, but I had
+a--a presentiment that it was a mistake.  You meant it kindly."
+Had he?  Lawrence laughed.  He had never been able, to analyse
+the complex of instincts and passions that had determined his
+dealings with Stafford on that dim day between the lines.
+
+"You were in a damned funk weren't you, Val?"
+
+Stafford gave a slight start, the reaction of the prisoner under
+a blow.  But apart from the coarse cynicism of it, which
+irritated him, it was no more than he had foreseen, and from then
+on till the end he did not flinch.
+
+"Yes, anything you like: you can't overstate it. But my point is
+that I gave you my parole.  Will you release me from it?"
+
+"Good God!" said Lawrence.
+
+He had never been more surprised in his life. "Come in: let us
+talk this over in the light."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Through the open windows of the drawingroom, where candlesticks
+of twisted silver glimmered among Laura's old, silvery brocades,
+and dim mirrors, and branches of pink and white rosebuds blooming
+deliciously in rose-coloured Dubarry jars, the two men came in
+together, Lawrence keenly on the watch.  But observation was
+wasted on Stafford who had nothing to conceal, who was merely
+what he appeared to be, a faded and tired-looking man of middle
+height, with blue eyes and brown hair turning grey, and wellworn
+evening clothes a trifle rubbed at the cuffs. It was difficult to
+connect this gentle and unassuming person with the fiery memory
+of the war, and Lawrence without apology took hold of Stafford's
+arm like a surgeon and tried to flex the rigid elbow-muscles, and
+to distinguish with his fingers used to handling wounds the hard
+seams and hollows below its shrunken joint.  The action, which
+was overbearing was by no means redeemed by the intention, which
+was brutal.
+
+"Surely after all these years you don't propose to confess, Val?"
+
+"I should like to make some sort of amends."
+
+"Too late: these things can never be undone."
+
+"No, of course not.  Undone? no, nothing once done can be undone.
+
+"But one needn't follow a wrong path to the bitter end.  You made
+me give you that promise for the sake of discipline and morale.
+But of the men who were in the trenches with us that night how
+many are left?  Your battalion were pretty badly cut up at
+Cambrai, weren't they?  And the survivors are all back in civil
+life like ourselves.  If it were to come out now there aren't
+twenty men who would remember anything about it: except of course
+here in Chilmark, where they know my people so well."
+
+"But you surely don't contemplate writing to the War Office?
+I've no idea what course they would take, but they'd be safe to
+make themselves unpleasant. I might even come in for a reprimand
+myself!  That's a fate I could support with equanimity, but what
+about you?  If I were you I shouldn't care to be hauled up for an
+interview!"
+
+"Really, if you'll forgive my saying so, I don't want to enter
+into contingencies at all.  Give me my promise back, Hyde,
+there's a good fellow, it's worth nothing now to anyone but the
+owner."
+
+"What about your own people?" said Lawrence, his hands in his
+pockets, and falling unawares into the tone of the orderly room.
+"You'll do nothing while your father's alive: I'm glad you've
+sense enough for that: but what about your brother and sister?
+You're suffering under some unpractical attack of remorse, Val,
+and like most penitent souls you think of nothing but yourself."
+
+"On the contrary, I shrink very much from bringing distress on
+other people.  I'm well aware," said Val slowly, "that a man who
+does what I've done forfeits his right to take an easy way out."
+
+"An easy way?"
+
+"Believe me, I haven't found the way you imposed on me an easy
+one."
+
+"Poor wretch!" said Lawrence under his breath.  Stafford heard,
+perhaps he was meant to hear: and he glanced out over the dark
+turf on which the windows traced a golden oblong, over the trees,
+dark and mysterious except where the same light caught and
+bronzed the tips of their branches.  In its glow every leaf stood
+out separate and defined, clearer than by day through the
+contrast of the immense surrounding darkness: and so it had been
+in that bit of French forest years ago, when the wild bright
+searchlights lit up its plague-spotted glades.  Civilians talk
+glibly of courage and cowardice who have never smelt the odour
+of corruption. . . .
+
+"What's your motive?  Some misbegotten sense of duty?"
+
+"Partly," said Val, turning from the window.  How like his eyes
+were to his young sister's!  The impression was unwelcome, and
+Lawrence flung it off.  "I ought never to have given way to you.
+I ought to have faced Wynn-West and let him deal with me as he
+thought fit.  After all, I was of no standing in the regiment.
+A boy of nineteen--what on earth would it have signified?  I
+was so very young."
+
+Nineteen! yes, one called a lad young at nineteen even in those
+pitiless days.  Under normal conditions he would have had two or
+three years' more training before he was required to shoulder the
+responsibilities and develop the braced muscles of manhood.
+
+"Anyhow it's all over now--"
+
+"No, you forget." A wave of colour swept over Val's face but his
+voice was steady.  "Through me the regiment holds a distinction
+it hasn't earned, and the distinction is in hands that don't
+deserve to hold it. That isn't consonant with the traditions of
+the service."
+
+"Oh, when it comes to the honour of the Army--!" Lawrence jeered
+at him.  "There speaks the soldier born and bred.  But I was only
+a 'temporary.' Give me a personal reason."
+
+"Well, I can do that too!  I hate sailing under false colours.
+The good folk of Chilmark; my own people; Bernard, Laura . . . ."
+Lawrence's eyes began to sparkle: when a man's voice deepens over
+a woman's name--! "Oh, I dare say nothing will ever come of it,"
+Val resumed after a moment: "my father may live another thirty
+years, and by that time I should be too old to stand in a white
+sheet.  Or perhaps I shall only tell one or two people--"
+
+"Mrs. Clowes?"
+
+"I beg your pardon?"
+
+"You would like to tell my cousin and his wife?"
+
+"I should like to feel myself a free agent, which I'm not now,
+because I'm under parole to you."
+
+"And so you will remain," said Lawrence coldly.
+
+"You mean that?"
+
+"Thoroughly.  I've no wish to distress you, Val, but I'm no more
+convinced now than I was ten years ago that you can be trusted to
+judge for yourself.  You were an impulsive boy then with remarkably
+little self-control: you're--forgive my saying so--an impulsive man
+now, capable of doing things that in five minutes you would be
+uncommonly sorry for.  How long would Bernard keep your secret?  If
+I'm not much mistaken you would lose your billet and the whole county
+would hear why.  The whole thing's utter rubbish.  You make too much
+of your ribbon: you--I--it would never have been given if Dale's
+father hadn't been a brass hat."
+
+Stafford was ashy pale. "I know you think you're just."
+
+"No, I don't. I'm not just, my good chap: I'm weakly, idiotically
+generous.  In your heart of hearts you're grateful to me.  Now
+let's drop all this.  Nothing you can say will have the slightest
+effect, so you may as well not say it." He stood by Val's chair,
+laughing down at him and gently gripping him by the shoulder.
+"Be a man, Val! you're not nineteen now.  You've got a comfortable
+job and the esteem of all who know you--take it and be thankful:
+it's more than you deserve.  If you must indulge in a hair shirt,
+wear it under your clothes.  It isn't necessary to embarrass other
+people by undressing in public."
+
+Thought is free: one may be at a man's mercy and in his debt and
+keep one's own opinion of him, impersonal and cold.  With a faint
+smile on his lips Val got up and strolled over to the piano.
+"Hullo, what's all this music lying about?" he said in his
+ordinary manner.  "Has Laura been playing?  Good, I'm so glad:
+Bernard can hardly ever stand it.  See the first fruits of your
+bracing influence!  Oh, the Polonaises . . ."  And then he in
+his turn began to play, but not the melancholy fiery lyrics that
+had soothed Laura's unsatisfied heart.  Val, a thorough musician,
+went for sympathy to the classics.  Impulsive?  There was not
+much impulse left in this quiet, reticent man, who with his old
+trouble fresh on him could sit down and play a chorale of Bach or
+a prelude of Mozart, subordinating his own imperious anguish to
+the grave universal daylight of the elder masters.  Long since
+Val had resolved that no shadow from him should fall across any
+other life.  He had foresworn "that impure passion of remorse,"
+and so keen an observer as Rowsley had grown up in his intimacy
+without suspecting anything wrong.  Unfortunately for Val,
+however, he still suffered, though he was now denied all
+expression, all relief: the wounded mind bled inwardly.  It was
+no wonder Val's hair was turning grey.
+
+Lawrence, no mean judge of music, understood much--not all--of
+the significance of Val's playing.  He was an imaginative man--
+far more so than Val, who would have lived an ordinary life and
+travelled on ordinary lines of thought but for the war, which
+wrenched so many men out of their natural development.  But it
+was again unfortunate for Val that the sporting instinct ran
+strong in Captain Hyde.  He was irritated by Val's grave superior
+dignity, and deep and unacknowledged there was working in him the
+instinct of the bully, the love of cruelty, overlaid by layer on
+layer of civilization, of chivalry, of decency, yet native to the
+human heart and quick to reassert itself at any age: in the boy
+who thrashes a smaller boy, in the young man who takes advantage
+of a woman, in the fighter who hounds down surrendered men.
+
+He settled himself in a chair close to the piano. "Val, I'm very
+glad to have met you.  Having taken so much upon me," he was
+smiling into Val's eyes, "I've often wondered what had become of
+you.  This," he lightly touched Val's arm, "was a cruel handicap.
+I had to disable you, but it need not have been permanent."
+
+"Do you mind moving? you're in my light."
+
+He shifted his chair by an inch or so.  "After all, what's a single
+failure of nerve?  Physical causes--wet, cold, indigestion, tight
+puttees--account for nine out of ten of these queer breakdowns.
+At all events you've paid, Val, paid twice over: when I read your
+name in the Honours List I laughed, but I was sorry for you.  The
+sword-and-epaulets business would have been mild compared to that."
+
+"Cat and mouse, is it?" said Val, resting his hands on the keys.
+
+"What?"
+
+"I'm not going to stand this sort of thing, Hyde, not for a
+minute."
+
+"I don't know what you mean," said Lawrence, reddening slowly to
+his forehead.  But it was a lie: he was not one of those who can
+overstep limits with impunity.  The streak of vulgarity again!
+and worse than vulgarity: Andrew Hyde's sardonic old voice was
+ringing in his ears, "Lawrence, you'll never be a gentleman."
+
+"All right, we'll leave it at that.  Only don't do it again."
+Lawrence was dumb.  "Here's Mrs. Clowes."
+
+Val rose as Laura came in, released at length from attendance on
+her husband. "I heard you playing," she said, giving him her hand
+with her sweet, friendly smile. "So you've introduced yourself to
+Captain Hyde?  I hope you were nice to him, for my gratitude to
+him is boundless. I haven't seen Bernard looking so fit or so
+bright for months and months!  Now sit down, both of you, and
+we'll have cigarettes and coffee.  Ring, Val, will you--? it's
+barely half past ten.
+
+"I can only stay for one cigarette, Laura: I must get home to
+bed."
+
+"But, my dear boy, how tired you look!" exclaimed Laura.  "You do
+too much--I'm sure you do too much.  He wears himself out,
+Lawrence--oh! my scarf!" She was wearing a silver scarf over her
+black dress, and as she moved it fluttered up and caught on the
+chain round her throat. "Unfasten me, please, Val," she said,
+bending her fair neck, and Val was obliged laboriously to
+disentangle the silken cobweb from the spurs of her clear-set
+diamonds, a process which fascinated Lawrence, whose mind was
+more French than English in its permanent interest in women.
+Certainly Val's office of friend of the family was not less
+delicate because Laura, secure in her few years seniority,
+treated him like a younger brother!  Watching, not Val, but Val's
+reflection in a mirror,  Lawrence overlooked no shade of
+constraint, no effort that Val made to avoid touching with his
+finger-tips the satin allure of Laura's exquisite skin.  "Poor
+miserable Val!" Suspicion was crystallizing into certainty.  "Or
+is it poor Bernard?   No, I swear she doesn't know.  Does he know
+himself?"
+
+A servant had brought in coffee, and Lawrence in his quality of
+cousin poured out two cups and carried them over to Laura and to
+Val.  "Well, I'm damned!" murmured Lawrence as Val refastened the
+clasp of the chain.  "Picturesque, all this.--  Here, Val, here's
+your coffee."
+
+"But do you know each other so well as that?" exclaimed Laura,
+arching her wren's-feather eyebrows.
+
+"I was an infant subaltern when Hyde knew me," said Val laughing,
+"and he was a howling swell of a captain.  Do you remember that
+night you all dined with us, sir, when we were in billets?  We
+stood you champagne--"
+
+"Purchased locally.  I remember the champagne."
+
+"Dine with us tomorrow night," said Laura. "Do! and bring
+Isabel." Lawrence gave an imperceptible start: for the last hour
+he had forgotten Isabel's existence except when her eyes had
+looked at him out of her brother's face.  "The child will enjoy
+it, I never knew any one so easily pleased; and you and Lawrence
+and Bernard can rag one another to your heart's content.  Yes,
+you will, I know you will, Army men always do when they get
+together; and you're all boys, even Bernard, even you with your
+grey hair, my dear Val; as for Lawrence, he's only giving himself
+airs."
+
+"Yes, do bring your sister," said Lawrence. "She is the most
+charming young girl I've met for years, if a man of my mature age
+may say so.  She is so natural, a rare thing nowadays: the modern
+jeune fille is a sophisticated product."
+
+"Bravo, Lawrence!" cried Mrs. Clowes, clapping her hands.  "Now,
+Val, didn't I tell you Isabel was going to be very, very pretty?
+That's settled, then, you'll both come: and, to please me," she
+looked not much older than Isabel as she took hold of the lapel
+of Val's coat, "will you wear your ribbon?  I know you hate
+wearing it in civilian kit!  But I do so love to see you in it:
+and it's not as if there would be any one here but ourselves."
+
+Lawrence swung round on his heel and walked away.  One may enjoy
+the pleasures of the chase and yet draw the line at watching an
+application of the rack, and it sickened him to remember that his
+own hand had given a turn to the screw.  It had needed that brief
+colloquy to let him see what Stafford's life was like at Wanhope,
+and in what slow nerve-by-nerve laceration amends were being
+made.  He admired the gallantry of Stafford's reply.
+
+"My dear Laura, I would tie myself up in ribbon from head to foot
+if it would give you pleasure.  I'll wear it if you like, though
+my superior officer will certainly rag me if I do."
+
+"No, I shan't," said Lawrence shortly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+"And now tell me,"  murmured Mrs. Clowes in the mischievously
+caressing tone that she kept for Isabel, "did mamma's little girl
+enjoy her party?"
+
+"Rather!" said Isabel--with a great sigh, the satisfied sigh of
+a dog curling up after a meal. "They were lovely strawberries.
+And what do you call that French thing?  Oh, that's what a
+vol-au-vent is, is it?  I wish I knew how to make it, but probably
+it's one of those recipes that begin 'Take twelve eggs and a quart of
+cream.' I wish nice things to eat weren't so dear, Jimmy would love
+it.  Captain Hyde took two helps--did you see?--big ones!  If he
+always eats as much as he did tonight he'll be fat before he's fifty,
+which will be a pity.  He ate three times what Val did."
+
+"Is that what you were thinking of all the time?  I noticed you
+didn't say very much."
+
+"Well, I was between Captain Hyde and Major Clowes, and they
+neither of them think I'm grown up," explained Isabel.  "They
+talked to each other over the top of me.  Oh no, not rudely,
+Major Clowes was as nice as he could be" (Isabel salved her
+conscience by reflecting that this was verbally true since Major
+Clowes could never he nice), "and Captain Hyde asked me if I was
+fond of dolls--"
+
+"My dear Isabel!"
+
+"Or words to that effect.  Oh! it's perfectly fair, I'm not grown
+up, or only by fits and starts.  Some of me is a weary forty-five
+but the rest is still in pigtails.  It's curious, isn't it?
+considering that I'm nearly twenty.  Let's go through the wood,
+my stockings are coming down."  Out of sight of the house in a
+clearing of the loosely planted alder-coppice by the bridge, she
+pulled them up, slowly and candidly: white cotton stockings
+supported by garters of black elastic.  "After all," she
+continued, "I'm housekeeper, and in common politeness we shall
+have to dine you back, so I really did want to see what sort of
+things Captain Hyde likes.  But it's no use, he won't like
+anything we give him.  Not though we strain our resources to the
+uttermost. Laura! would Mrs. Fryar give me the receipt for that
+vol-au-vent? I don't suppose we could run to it, but I should
+love to try."
+
+"Mrs.  Fryar would be flattered," said Laura, finding a chair in
+the forked stem of a wild apple-tree,  while Isabel sat plump
+down on the net of moss-fronds and fine ivy and grey wood-violets
+at her feet.  "But, my darling, you're not to worry your small
+head over vol-au-vents!  Lawrence will like one of your own roast
+chickens just as well, or any simple thing--"
+
+"Oh no, Lawrence won't!" Isabel gave a little laugh.  "Excuse my
+contradicting you, but Lawrence isn't a bit fond of simple
+things.  That's why he doesn't like me, because I'm simple,
+simple as a daisy.  I don't mind--much," she added truthfully.
+"I can survive his most extended want of interest.  After all
+what can you expect if you go out to dinner in the same nun's
+veiling frock you wore when you were confirmed, with the tucks
+let down and the collar taken out?  O! Laura,  I wish someone
+would give me twenty pounds on condition that I spent it all on
+dress!  I'd buy--I'd buy--oh,--silk stockings, and long
+gloves, and French cambric underclothes, and chiffon nightgowns
+like those Yvonne wears (but they aren't decent: still that
+doesn't matter so long as you're not married, and they are so
+pretty)!  And a homespun tailor-made suit with a seam down the
+back and open tails: and--and--one of those real Panamas that
+you can pull through a wedding ring: and--oh! dear, I am greedy!
+It must be because I never have any clothes at all that I'm
+always wanting some. I ache all over when I look at catalogues.
+Isn't it silly?"
+
+If so it was a form of silliness with which Mrs. Clowes was in
+full sympathy.  In her world, to be young and pretty gave a woman
+a claim on Fate to provide her with pretty dresses and the
+admiration of men.  As for Yvonne, till she married Jack Bendish
+she had never been out of debt in her life.  "No, it's the most
+natural thing on earth," said Laura.  "How I wish--!"
+
+"No, no," said Isabel hastily.  "It's very, very sweet of you,
+but even Jimmy wouldn't like it: and as for Val I don't know what
+he'd say!  Poor old Val, he wants some new evening clothes
+himself, and it's worse for him than for me because men do so
+hate to look shabby and out at elbows.  He's worn that suit for
+ten years.  My one consolation is that Captain Hyde couldn't wear
+a suit he wore ten years ago.  It would burst."
+
+"Isabel!  really!  you ridiculous child, why have you such a
+spite against poor Lawrence?  Any one would think he was a
+perfect Daniel Lambert!  Do you know he's a pukka sportsman and
+has shot all over the world?  Lions and tigers, and rhinoceros,
+and grizzly bears, and all sorts of ferocious animals!  He's
+promised me a black panther skin for my parlour and he's
+persuaded Bernard to call in Dr. Verney for his neuritis, so I
+won't hear another word against him!"
+
+"Has he?  H'm. . . . No, I haven't any prejudice against him: in
+fact I like him," said Isabel, smiling to herself.  "But he
+reminds me of Tom Wallis at the Prince of Wales's Feathers.  Do
+you remember Tom?   'Poor Tom,' Mrs. Wallis always says, 'he went
+from bad to worse.  First it was a drop too much of an evening:
+and then he began getting drunk mornings: and then he 'listed for
+a soldier!' Not that Captain Hyde would get drunk, but he has the
+same excitable temperament. . . .  Laura!"
+
+"What is it?" said Mrs. Clowes, framing the young face between
+her hands as Isabel rose up kneeling before her.  In the
+quivering apple-tree shadow Isabel's eyes were very dark, and
+penetrating and reflective too, as if she had just undergone one
+of those transitions from childhood to womanhood which are the
+mark and the charm of her variable age.  Laura was puzzled by her
+judgment of Lawrence Hyde, so keen, yet so wide of the truth as
+Laura saw it: "excitable" was the last thing that Laura would
+have called him, and she couldn't see any likeness to Tom Wallis.
+But one can't argue over a man's character with a child. "Why so
+serious?"
+
+"This evening, at dinner, weren't there some queer
+undercurrents?"
+
+"Undercurrents!" Laura drew her hands away. She looked startled
+and nervous.  "What sort of undercurrents?"
+
+"When they were chaffing Val about his ribbon. Oh, I don't know,"
+said Isabel vaguely.  Laura drew a breath of relief. "I was sorry
+you made him wear it.  But he'd cut his hand off to please you,
+darling.  You don't really realize the way you can make Val do
+anything you like."
+
+"Nonsense," said Laura, but with an indulgent smile, which was
+her way of saying that it was true but did not signify.  She was
+no coquette, but she preferred to create an agreeable impression.
+Always in France, where women are the focus of social interest,
+there had been men who did as Laura Selincourt pleased, and the
+incense which Val alone continued to burn was not ungrateful to
+her altar.  "As if Val would mind about a little thing like
+that."
+
+Isabel shook her head.  "Perhaps you weren't attending.  Major
+Clowes was very down on him for wearing it--chaffing him, of
+course, but chaffing half in earnest: a snowball with a stone in
+it.  Naturally Val wasn't going to say you made him--"
+
+"No, but Lawrence did: or I should have cut in myself."
+
+"Yes, after a minute, he interfered, and then Major Clowes shut
+up, but it was all rather--rather queer, and I'm sure Val hated
+it.  You won't make him do it again, will you?  Val's so odd.
+Laura--don't tell any one--I sometimes think Val's very
+unhappy."
+
+"Val, unhappy?  You fanciful child, this is worse than Tom
+Wallis! What should make Val unhappy?  He might be dull," said
+Laura ruefully.  "Life at Wanhope isn't exciting!  But he's keen
+on his work and very fond of the country.  Val is one of the most
+contented people I know."
+
+A shadow fell over Isabel's face, the veil that one draws down
+when one has offered a confidence to hands that are not ready to
+receive it.  "Then it must be all my imagination." She abandoned
+the subject as rapidly as she had introduced it. "O! dear, I am
+sleepy." She stretched herself and yawned, opening her mouth wide
+and shutting it with a little snap like a kitten.  "I was up at
+six to give Val his breakfast, and I've been running about all
+day, what with the school treat next week, and Jimmy's new
+night-shirts that I had to get the stuff for and cut them out,
+and choir practice, and Fanny taking it into her head to make
+rhubarb jam.  How can London people stay up till twelve or one
+o'clock every night?  But of course they don't get up at six."
+
+"Have a snooze in my hammock," suggested Laura. "I see Barry
+coming, which means that Bernard is going off and I shall have to
+run away and leave you, and probably the men won't come out for
+some time.  Take forty winks, you poor child, it will freshen you
+up."
+
+"I never, never go to sleep in the daytime," said Isabel firmly.
+"It's a demoralizing habit.  But I shouldn't mind tumbling into
+your hammock, thank you very much." And, while Mrs. Clowes went
+away with Barry, she slipped across to Laura's large comfortable
+cot, swung waist-high between two alders that knelt on the river
+brink.
+
+Isabel sprawled luxuriously at full length, one arm under her
+head and the other dropped over the netting: her young frame was
+tired, little flying aches of fatigue were darting pins and
+needles through her knees and shoulders and the base of her
+spine.  The evening was very warm and the stars winked at her,
+they were green diamonds that sparkled through chinks in the
+alder leafage overhead: round dark leaves like coins, and
+scattered in clusters, like branches of black bloom.  Near at
+hand the river ran in silken blackness, but below the coppice,
+where it widened into shallows, it went whispering and rippling
+over a pebbly bottom on its way to the humming thunder of the
+mill.  And in a fir-tree not far off a nightingale was singing,
+now a string of pearls dropping bead by bead from his throat, now
+rich turns and grace-notes, and now again a reiterated metallic
+chink which melted into liquid fluting:
+
+              Vogek im Tannenwald
+              Pfeifet so hell:
+              Pfeifet de Wald aus und ein,
+         wo wird mein Schatze sein?
+         Vogele im Tannenwald pfeifet so hell.
+
+Isabel was still so young that she felt the beauty more deeply
+when she could link it with some poetic association, and as she
+listened to the nightingale she murmured to herself "'In some
+melodious plot of beechen green with shadows numberless'--but
+it isn't a beech, it's a fir-tree," and then wandering off into
+another literary channel, "'How thick the bursts come crowding
+through the leaves!  Eternal passion--eternal pain' . . . but I
+don't believe he feels any pain at all.  It is we who feel pain.
+He's not been long married, and it's lovely weather, and there's
+plenty for them to eat, and they're in love . . . what a heavenly
+night it is!  I wish some one were in love with me.  I wonder if
+any one ever will be.
+
+"How thrilling it would be to refuse him!  Of course I couldn't
+possibly accept him--not the first: it would be too slow,
+because then one couldn't have any more.  One would be like
+Laura.  Poor Laura!  Now if she were in that tree"--Isabel's
+ideas were becoming slightly confused--"it would be natural for
+her to be melancholy--only if she were a bird she wouldn't care,
+she would fly off with some one else and leave Major Clowes, and
+all the other birds would come and peck him to death.  They
+manage these things better in bird land."  Isabel's eyes shut but
+she hurriedly opened them again.  "I'm not going to go to sleep.
+It's perfectly absurd.  It can't be much after nine o'clock.  I
+dare say Captain Hyde will come out before so very long . . . I
+should like to talk to him again by myself.  He isn't so
+interesting when other people are there. I wonder why I told
+Laura he was getting fat?  He isn't: he couldn't be, to travel
+all over the world and shoot black panthers.  And if he did take
+two helps of vol-au-vent, you must remember, Isabel, he's a big
+man--well over six feet--and requires good support.  He
+certainly is not greedy or he would have tried to pick out the
+oysters: all men love oysters.
+
+"He was nice about Val's ribbon, too . . . wish I understood
+about that ribbon.  Val was grateful: he said 'Thanks, Hyde'
+while Major Clowes was speaking to Barry.  Laura isn't stupid,
+but she never understands Val.  'Contented?' My dearest darling
+Val!  If he were being roasted over a slow fire he would be
+'contented' if Laura was looking on.  That's the worst of being
+perfectly unselfish: people never realize that you're unselfish
+at all.  Wives don't seem to hear what their husbands say.  Often
+and often Major Clowes is absolutely insulting to Val, before
+Laura and before me.  But Laura always looks on Val as a boy.
+Perhaps if Captain Hyde hears it going on he'll interfere and
+shut Major Clowes up as he did tonight.  He can manage Major
+Clowes . . . which is clever of him! 'A strong, silent man'--as
+a matter of fact he talks a good deal. . . . But I loved him for
+sitting on Major Clowes.  I'd rather he were nice to Val than to
+me.
+
+"But he might be nice to me too. . . .
+
+"He was, yesterday afternoon.  How he coloured up! He was
+absolutely natural for the minute.  That can't often happen.
+People who don't like giving themselves away are thrilling when
+they do."
+
+Another yawn came upon her.
+
+"O! dear, I really mustn't go to sleep.  What a lulling noise you
+make, you old river!  I don't think I can get up at six tomorrow.
+This hammock is as comfortable as a bed.  'The young girl
+reclined in a graceful attitude, her head pillowed on her slender
+hand, her long dark lashes entangled and resting on her ivory
+cheek.' Well, they couldn't rest anywhere else: unless they were
+long enough to rest on her nose. 'Her--her breathing  was soft
+and regular . . .'"  It became so.  Isabel slept.
+
+Val would rather have owed no gratitude to a man he disliked so
+much as Hyde.  When Bernard was wheeled away, an interchange of
+perfunctory civilities was followed by a constrained silence,
+which Val broke by rising.  "Hyde, if you'll excuse me, I'll say
+five words to Bernard before Barry begins getting him to bed.
+There's a right of way dispute going on that he liked me to keep
+him posted up in."
+
+"Do," said Lawrence vaguely. He brushed past Val and escaped into
+the garden.
+
+Lawrence was enjoying his stay at Wanhope, but tonight he felt
+defrauded, though he knew not why.  He had had an agreeable day.
+In the morning Jack Bendish had appeared on horseback and Lawrence
+had ridden over with him to lunch at Wharton, a sufficiently amusing
+experience, what with the crabbed high-spirited whims of Jack's
+grandfather and the old-fashioned courtesy of Lord Grantchester, and
+Yvonne's romantic toilette: later Laura had joined them and they had
+played bowls on the famous green: in the cool of the evening he had
+strolled home with Laura through the fields.  Dinner too had been
+amusing in its way, the wines were excellent, the parlour maid waited
+at table like a deft ghost, and he recognized in Mrs. Fryar an artist
+who was thrown away alike on Bernard's devotion to roast beef and
+Val's inability to remember what he ate.  Yet Lawrence was left
+vaguely discontented.
+
+Bernard's manner to Val had set his teeth on edge.  Bernard could
+have meant no harm: no one had ever known the truth except
+Lawrence and Val, and possibly Dale with such torn shreds of
+consciousness as H. E. and barbed wire had left him: but in all
+innocence Bernard had set the rack to work as deftly as Lawrence
+could have done it himself.  Lawrence pitied--no, that was a
+slip of the mind: he was not so weak as to pity Stafford, but
+their intercourse was difficult, genant.
+
+And Isabel Stafford too: Clowes had left her out of the
+conversation as though she were a child, and though Lawrence
+tried to bring her in she remained, so to say, in the nursery
+most of the time, speaking when she was spoken to but without any
+of her characteristic freshness and boldness.  She was the
+schoolgirl that Clowes expected her to be.  Her very dress
+irritated Lawrence, as if he had seen a fine painting in a tawdry
+frame, or a pearl of price foiled by a spurious setting.  He had
+not felt any glow at all, and was left to suppose his fancy had
+played him a trick.  Disappointing! and now there was no chance
+of revising his impression, for apparently she had gone away with
+Laura--who should have known better than to leave Captain Hyde
+to his own devices.  But probably Miss Stafford had refused to
+face the men alone: it was what a little shy country girl would
+do.
+
+Isabel's arm hanging over the edge of the hammock, and pearly
+white in the dark, was his first warning of her presence.  He
+crossed the wood with his hunter's step and found her lapped in
+dreams, the starlight that filtered between the alder branches
+chequering her with a faint diaper of light and shade.  Only the
+very young can afford to be, seen asleep, when the face sinks
+back into its original repose, and lines and wrinkles reappear in
+the loss of all that smiling charm of expression which may efface
+them by day.  Laura, asleep, looked old and haggard.  But Isabel
+presented a blank page, a face virginally pure, and candid, and
+lineless: from the attitude of her young body one would have
+thought she was constructed without bones, and from her serenity
+it might have been a child who slept there in the June night, so
+placidly entrusting herself to its mild embrace.  Vividly aware
+that he had no right to watch her, Lawrence stood watching her,
+though afraid at every breath that she would wake up: it was hard
+to believe that even in her sleep she could remain insensible of
+his eyes.  Here was the authentic Isabel, the girl who had
+enchanted him on the moor: the incarnation of that classic beauty
+by which alone his spirit was capable of being touched to fine
+issues.  The alder branches quivered, their clusters of black
+shadow fell like an embroidered veil over the imperfections of
+her dress, but what light there was shone clear on her head and
+throat, and the pearly moulding of her shoulder, based where her
+sleeve was dragged down a little by the tension of her weight
+upon it.  All the mystery of womanhood and all its promise of
+life in bud and life not yet sown lay on this young girl asleep
+in the starshine.  Lights flashed up in the house, figures were
+moving between the curtains: Laura had left Bernard, soon she
+would come out into the garden and call to Isabel, and Isabel
+would wake and his chance be lost.  His chance?  Isabel had
+rashly incurred a forfeit and would have to pay.  The frolic was
+old, there was plenty of precedent for it, and not for one moment
+did Lawrence dream of letting her off.  A moth, a dead leaf might
+have settled on her sleeping lips and she would have been none
+the wiser, and just such a moth's touch he promised himself, the
+contact of a moment, but enough to intoxicate him with its
+sweetness, and the first--yes, he believed it would be the
+first: not from any special faith in Isabel's obduracy, but
+because no one in Chilmark was enough of a connoisseur to
+appreciate her.  Yes, the first, the bloom on the fruit, the
+unfolding of the bud, he promised himself that: and warily he
+stooped over Isabel, who slept as tranquil as though she were in
+her own room under the vicarage eaves.  Lawrence held his breath.
+If she were to wake?  Then?--Oh, then the middleaged friend of
+the family claiming his gloves and his jest!  But Lawrence was
+not feeling middle-aged.
+
+"O! dear," said Isabel, "I've been asleep!"
+
+She sat up rubbing her eyes.  "Laura, are you there?" But no one
+was there.  Yet, though she was alone, in the solitude of the
+alder shade Isabel blushed scarlet.  "What a ridiculous dream!
+worse than ridiculous, What would Val say if he knew?  Really,
+Isabel, you ought to be whipped!" She slipped to her feet and
+peered suspiciously this way and that into the shadowy corners of
+the wood.  Not a step: not the rustle of a leaf: no one.
+
+Yet Isabel's cheeks continued to burn, till with a little
+frightened laugh she buried them in her hands. "O! it was--
+it was a dream--?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Lawrence's reflections when he went to bed that night were more
+insurgent and disorderly than usual.  In his negative philosophy,
+when he shut the door of his room, it was his custom to shut the
+door on memory too--to empty his mind of all its contents except
+the physical disposition to sleep.  He cultivated an Indian's
+self-involved and deliberate vacancy.  On this his second night
+at Wanhope however--Wanhope which was to bring him a good many
+white nights before he was done with it--he lay long awake,
+watching the stars that winked and glittered in the field of his
+open window, the same stars that were perhaps shining on Isabel's
+pillow. . . .
+
+Isabel: it was on her that his thoughts ran with a tiring
+persistency against which his common sense rebelled.  A kiss!
+what was it after all?  A Christmas forfeit, a prank of which
+even Val Stafford could have said no worse than that it was
+beneath the dignity of his six and thirty years:  only too
+flattering for such a little country girl, sunburnt, simple, and
+occasionally tongue-tied.  The lady of the ivory frame (whom
+Lawrence had fished out of her seclusion and set up on his
+dressing table, to the disgust of Caroline: who was a Baptist,
+and didn't care to dust a person who wore so few clothes), the
+lady of the ivory frame was far handsomer than Isabel, or at
+least handsome in a far more finished style.
+
+Lawrence had the curiosity to get out of bed and carry Mrs. Cleve
+to the window.  Yes, she certainly was an expensive luxury, this
+smiling lady, her eyes large and liquid, her waved hair rippling
+under its diamond aigrette, her rather wide, eighteenth century
+shoulders dimpling down under a collar of diamonds to the half
+bare swell of her breast: and for an amateur of her type she was
+charming, with her tired, sophisticated glance and her fresh
+mouth, like a rouged child: but it was borne in on Lawrence that
+she was not for him.  He had kissed her two or three times, as
+occasion served and she seemed to desire it, but he had never
+lain awake afterwards, nor had his heart beaten any faster, no,
+not even in the summerhouse at Bingley when she was fairly in his
+arms.  He pitched the photograph into a drawer.  Frederick Cleve
+was safe, for him.
+
+Strolling out on the balcony,  Lawrence folded his arms on the
+balustrade.  The night was hot: perhaps that was why he could not
+sleep.  By his watch it was ten minutes past two.  The moon was
+near her setting.    She lay on her back with tumbled clouds all
+round her: mother & pearl clouds, quilted, and tinged with a
+sheen of opal.  He wondered whether Bernard was asleep: poor
+Bernard, lying alone through the dreary hours.   Perhaps it was
+because Lawrence was not at all like a curate that Bernard had
+already made his cousin free of certain dark corners which Val
+had never been allowed to explore.  "My wife?  She's not my
+wife," Clowes had said, staring up at Lawrence with his wide
+black eyes.  "She's my nurse."  And he went on defining the
+situation with the large coarse frankness which he permitted
+himself since his accident, and which did not repel Lawrence, as
+it would have repelled Val or Jack Bendish, because Lawrence
+habitually used the same frankness in his own mind.  There was
+some family likeness between the cousins, and it came out in
+their common contempt for modern delicacy, which Bernard called
+squeamishness and Lawrence damned in more literary language as
+the Victorian manner.
+
+The moon dipped lower over the trees while Lawrence took one of
+his sharp turns of self-analysis.  Most men live in a haze, but
+Lawrence was naturally a clear thinker, and he had neither a warm
+heart nor a sentimental temperament to blind him.  Cleve was
+safe: but with his Rabelaisian candour and cultivated want of
+scruple Lawrence reflected that Cleve had been anything but safe
+at Bingley.  Whence the change?  From Isabel Stafford!  Lawrence
+shrugged his shoulders: he was accustomed to examine himself in a
+dry light of curiosity, and no vice or weakness shocked him,  but
+here was pure folly.
+
+What was he doing at Wanhope?  "I'm contracting attachments," he
+reflected, unbuttoning his silk jacket to feel the night air cool
+on his chest, a characteristic action: wind, sunshine, a
+wandering scent,  the freshness of dew, all the small sensuous
+pleasures that most men neglect, Lawrence would go out of his way
+to procure.   "I'm breaking my rule." Long ago he had resolved
+never to let himself get fond of any one again, because in this
+world of chance and change, at the mercy of a blindly striking
+power, the game is not worth the candle: one suffers too much.
+
+As for Miss Stafford, one need not be a professed stole to draw
+the line at a little country girl, pious to insipidity and simple
+to the brink of silliness.  Here Lawrence, not being one of those
+who deny facts when they are unwelcome, caught himself up: she
+was not insipid and her power over him was undeniable.  Twice
+within forty-eight hours she had defeated his will, and what was
+stranger was that each time he had surrendered eagerly, feeling
+for the moment as though it didn't matter what he said or did
+before Isabel.--It was at this point of his analysis that Lawrence
+began to take fright.  "You rascal," he said to himself, "so that's
+why you're off Mrs. Cleve, is it?  What is it you want--to marry the
+child?  You would be sick to death of her in six weeks--and haven't
+you had enough of giving hostages to Fortune?"
+
+Hostages to fortune: that pregnant phrase frightens men who fear
+nothing else in heaven or earth.  But not one of Hyde's friends
+knew that he had ever given fortune a hostage.  He was not
+reserved as a rule: indeed he was always willing to argue creed
+and code with a frankness rare in the self-conscious English
+race: he was never shy and there was little in him that was
+distinctively English.  But he was too subtle and inconsistent
+for the average homogeneous Englishman, and not even the comrades
+of trench and tent knew much about his private life.  Lawrence
+was one of those products of a high civilization which have in
+them pretty strong affinities with barbarism,--but always with a
+difference.  The noble savage tortures his enemy out of hate or
+revenge: Lawrence, more sophisticated in brutality, was capable
+of doing it by way of a psychological experiment.  The savage
+takes a short cut from desire to possession:  Lawrence though his
+blood ran hot curbed it from caution, because in modern life
+women are a burden and a drag.
+
+This was the trained and tempered Lawrence Hyde, a personage of
+great good humour and numitigable egoism.  This was the companion
+of easy morals with whom Lawrence was on familiar terms.  But on
+that first white night at Wanhope Lawrence grew dimly aware of
+the upheaval of deeper forces, as if his youth were stirring in
+its grave.  When Laura Clowes smiled at him with her gallant
+bearing: when Bernard gripped his hand in wishing him good night:
+when Val in the middle of the psychological experiment pierced
+him with his grave tired eyes, all sorts of feelings long dormant
+and believed to be dead came to life in Lawrence: pity, and
+affection, and remorse and shame.  "Hang the fellow!" Lawrence
+reflected.  "He's too like his sister.  And Isabel?  She is a
+child."  Whose voice was it that answered, "This is the woman I
+have been waiting for all my life?"
+
+And then, turning at bay, he came to a sufficiently cynical
+conclusion.  "No nonsense!" he said to himself.  "Your trouble is
+that she's twenty and you're six and thirty, which is a dangerous
+age.  But you don't want to marry her, and there's no middle
+course.  Fruit defendu, mon ami: hands off!  If you can't be
+sensible you'll have to shift out of Wanhope and compromise on
+Mrs. Cleve."
+
+The rain held off, and after breakfast--a cheery meal at which
+Bernard for the first time for many months appeared dressed and
+in a good temper--Lawrence fulfilled the main duty of a guest by
+going for a walk.
+
+He came by footbridge and field path into the High Street, where
+he was immediately buttonholed by the vicar.  Lawrence had a
+fixed idea that all priests were hypocrites: they must be, since
+as educated men they could not well believe the fables they were
+paid to teach!  But it was hard to associate hypocrisy with Mr.
+Stafford, whose fond ambition it was to nail Lawrence Hyde to
+lecture on his Chinese travels before the Bible Class.  "Oh, nothing
+religious," he explained, holding his victim firmly by the coat as
+Lawrence edged away.  "Only half an hour's story-telling to put a few
+new ideas into their heads--as if you were talking to a young brother
+of your own.  I'm always trying to get them to emigrate, but they
+need a great deal of shoving."  Lawrence said they could not emigrate
+to China, and, further, that he didn't regard them as brothers.  "How
+narrow you are, some of you University men!" sighed Mr. Stafford.
+"What a concept of society!  But," brightening, "you're not so bad as
+you're painted.  Come, come! a fifth-of-August recruit can't very
+well deny that we're all brothers in arms?" Before Lawrence escaped
+he was not sure that he hadn't pledged himself to an address on
+"Fringes of the Empire," with special reference to the C.U.M.C.A.
+
+It was too sunny to fish, but the trout lured him, and from the
+cross-roads by the stone bridge he struck into a footpath that
+led upstream into the hills, behind whose green spurs Chilmark
+before long was out of sight.  Here it was lonely country.
+Sometimes on a headland the sun flashed white over a knot of
+labourers, scything the hay where no machine could go: sometimes
+a shepherd's cote gleamed far off above the pale wattlings of a
+fold:  but as he wound on--and on into the Plain there was no
+sign of man in all the hot landscape, and no motion but the
+bicker of the stream over its stony bed, and the hum of insect
+life busy on its millions of dark and tiny vibrant wings.  Not a
+breath of wind stirred among these grassy valleys, and Lawrence,
+feeling warm, had sat down by a pool under a sapling birchtree,
+when he heard a step on the path.  It was Isabel Stafford.
+
+He had hardly seen her again overnight, for Val had carried his
+young sister away before ten o'clock.  He waited for her in the
+rare shadow of the birchtree, a tall powerful figure in a white
+drill suit of the tropics, his fair skin and black eyes shaded by
+a wide Panama hat.  Isabel as she drew near was vexed to find
+herself blushing.  She was a little shy of Captain Hyde, a little
+averse to meet his sparkling eyes.
+
+"Isn't it hot?" she said, frankly wiping her face with a large
+handkerchief.  "This is a favourite pool of mine, I often sit
+here when I come this way.  I never saw such beautiful dragonflies,
+did you?  They must be nearly as big as hummingbirds."
+
+Over the brown mirror of the pool a troop of great dragonflies
+were ceaselessly darting to and fro, their metallic wings making
+a faint whirr as they looped in blinding mazes through the air
+that glowed blue with their splendour.  "Very beautiful," said
+Lawrence.
+
+"Are you out for a walk?  I'm on my way to Wancote." Here panic
+fell on Isabel, the panic that lies in wait for young girls: if
+he were to think she thought he ought to offer to escort her!
+"I'm late, I must go on now.  Good-bye!"
+
+Lawrence stood looking down at her, impassive, almost sombre, but
+for the hot glow in his eyes.  His caution had gone overboard.
+"Mayn't I come too?"
+
+"Oh. . . ."
+
+"Do let me."
+
+"If you--if you like."
+
+The valley narrowed as it receded, the upland air began to
+sparkle with a myriad prismatic needles that glittered from the
+wings of flies and beetles, and from dewdrops on patches of turf
+still as grey as hoarfrost in the shadow on the edge of a wood,
+and from wayside hollies whose leaf-points were all starred in
+silver.  The blue bow overhead was stainless, not a cloud in it
+nor a mist: azure, azure, and unfathomable, like the heart of
+man, or the justice of God.--Isabel was not shy now but alert
+and radiant, as if she had caught a sparkle from the air: and
+expansive, as women are when they are sure of pleasing.  "'For
+the jaded man of the world at her side, the young girl's rustic
+freshness was her chief charm.  She was so different from the
+beautiful but heartless mondaines he had known in Town.  No
+diamonds glittered round her slender throat, and her hands,
+though small and well-shaped, were tanned by the summer sun.  But
+for the jaded-man-of-the-world, weary of sparkling epigram or
+caustic repartee, her simple chatter held a fascination of its
+own.' I don't believe," reflected Isabel, coming down mentally to
+plain prose, "he'd mind if I talked to him about the dinner or
+last week's washing bill."
+
+She did not in fact enter on any such intimate topic, but
+conversed sedately about parish politics and the beauties of the
+Plain.  "This is a very lonely part," she said, "there are
+scarcely any houses.  I'm taking the magazine to one of Major
+Clowes' shepherds.  It's rather interesting going there.  He's
+mad."
+
+"Mad!"
+
+"As a March hare.  He's perfectly harmless of course, and an
+excellent shepherd.  In lambing time he looks after the ewes like
+a mother, Val says his flock hardly ever lose a lamb.  But he's a
+thrilling person to district-visit.  Last time I went he had the
+Prince of Wales staying with him."
+
+"Why on earth don't they put him in an asylum?"
+
+"Do you know much about country villages?" Isabel enquired.  "I
+thought not.  They never put any one in an asylum till after he's
+got into trouble, and not always then if he doesn't want to go:
+just as they never build a bridge over a level crossing till one
+or two people have been killed.  We had a woman in Chilmark that
+was much madder than poor dear Ben is.  She took a knife out of
+her drawer once when I was there and told me she was going to cut
+her throat with it.  She made me feel the edge to see how sharp
+it was.  At last she cut the children's throats instead of her
+own, and then they put her away, but none of them died and she's
+out again now. She's supposed to be cured.  You see a County
+asylum doesn't keep people longer than it must because the money
+comes out of the rates."
+
+"Do you mean to say," Lawrence fastened on the point that struck
+him most forcibly, "that your father lets you go to such places
+by yourself?"
+
+"Oh yes: why not?  He would think it showed want of faith to
+prevent me.  He's very sensible about things like that," said
+Isabel without affectation.  "There are always typhoid and
+diphtheria about in the autumn, but Jimmy never fusses.  It
+wouldn't be much use if he did, with him and Val always in and
+out of infected houses."
+
+"Pure fatalism--" said Lawrence, hitting with his stick at the
+flowers by their path.  "Your brother ought to put his foot
+down--" Isabel seized his arm.
+
+"Take care!--  There was a bee in it.  You really are most
+careless Captain Hyde! I shan't take you for any more walks if
+you do that.  I dare say it was one of my own bees, and he had
+the very narrowest escape!  And Val wouldn't dream of interfering.
+Ben and I are the best of friends.  Besides, it's Mrs. Janaway I
+really go to see, poor dear,  she don't ever hear a bit o' news from
+week's end to week's end.  Wouldn't you be glad to see me," her eyes
+were destitute of challenge but not of humour, "if you lived three
+miles deep in the Plain, alone with your husband and the Prince of
+Wales?"
+
+"I should be delighted to see you at any time."
+
+Isabel, not knowing what to do with this speech, let it alone.
+"And the dog: I mustn't forget the dog.  They have a thoroughbred
+Great Dane.  Mr. Bendish gave Ben the puppy because it was the
+worst of the litter and they thought it would die: but it didn't
+die--no animal does that Ben gets hold of--and he's too fond of
+it now to part with it, though a dog fancier from Amesbury has
+offered him practically his own price for it."
+
+"I should like to see the Dane."
+
+"Well, you will, if you come with me.  There's the cottage."
+
+They had turned a bend and the head of the dale lay before them,
+a mere dimpling depression between breasts of chalky grass.  Set
+close by the way on a cross-track, which forded the brook by
+stepping stones and went on over the downs to Amesbury, stood a
+small, square, tumbledown cottage, its door opening on primeval
+turf, though behind it a plot of garden enclosed in a quickset
+hedge provided Mrs. Janaway with cabbages and gooseberries and
+sour apples and room to hang out the clothes.
+
+"Ben won't be in, but Billy will be looking after Clara.  Billy
+is no good with the sheep, but he's death on tramps.  In fact if
+I weren't here it wouldn't be too safe for you to go to the door.
+A Dane can pull any man down: I've heard even Jack Bendish say he
+wouldn't care to tackle him--"
+
+Even Jack Bendish!  Lawrence smiled.  He felt the prick of
+Isabel's blade, it amused him, automatically he reacted to it,
+she made him want to fight the Dane first and Jack Bendish
+afterwards--but he retained just too much of the ascendancy of
+his six and thirty years to gratify her by self-betrayal.
+"You're a very brave young lady," he said cheerfully, "but if I
+were Val--"
+
+He stopped short.  From the cottage window,  now not twenty yards
+off, there had come a burst of the most appalling screams he had
+ever heard in his life, the mechanical screaming of mortal agony.
+Isabel went as white as chalk and even Hyde felt the blood turn
+cold at his heart.  Next moment the door was torn open and out of
+it came a big red-bearded man, dressed in a brown tweed jacket
+and velveteen trousers tied at the knees, and prancing high in a
+solemn jig.  In one hand he held up an iron stake and in the
+other a rag of red and black carpet . . . the body of a woman in
+a black dress, her arms and legs hanging down, her face a scarlet
+mask that had ceased to scream.
+
+"Keep back, Isabel," said Lawrence: then, running across the
+turf, "Drop that, Janaway! drop her!" in the hard authoritative
+voice of the barrack square.  With the fitful docility of the
+mad, Janaway obeyed, and directly he did so Lawrence checked and
+stood on the defensive, taking a moment to collect his wits--he
+had need of them:  he had to make his head guard his hands.  He
+was a tall powerful man, but so was the shepherd: to offset
+Hyde's science, Janaway was mad and would be stopped by no
+punishment short of a knock-out blow: and Lawrence carried only
+an ordinary walking-stick, while Janaway had hold of an upright
+from a bit of iron railing, five feet long and barbed like a
+spear.
+
+"If he whacks me over the head with that or jabs it into my
+stomach, I'm done," Lawrence thought, and pat to the moment
+Janaway, his mouth open and his teeth bare, rushed on him and
+struck at his eyes.  Lawrence parried and sprang aside: but his
+arm was jarred to the elbow.  "That was a close call.  Ha! my
+chance now . . ."  Like a flash, as Janaway turned, Lawrence
+ran in to meet him body to body, seized him by the lapels of his
+coat, pinned down his arms, set one foot against his thigh, and
+with no great exertion of strength, by the Samurai's trick of
+falling with one's enemy, heaved him up and shot him clean over
+his own shoulder: then, as they dropped together, struck with his
+wrist a paralysing blow at the base of the spine.  Janaway's yell
+of fury was choked into a rattling groan.
+
+Lawrence was up in a twinkling, but the shepherd lay where he had
+fallen, and Lawrence let him lie: he knew that, so handled, the
+victim could be counted out of action, perhaps for good and all.
+He stood erect, breathing deep.  Ben could wait, but what of Mrs.
+Ben?  He was shocked to find Isabel already at her side on the
+reddened turf.
+
+Mechanically Lawrence picked up his stick before he went to join
+her. Clara was huddled up over a pool of blood, her head between
+her knees: not a pleasant sight for a young girl.  But Isabel,
+though white and trembling, was collected.  "I can't feel her
+heart, I--I'm afraid--"
+
+She broke off.  Her glance had travelled beyond Lawrence and her
+features were stiffening into a mask of fear.  "Oh, the dog, the
+dog!"  she pointed past him.  "Billy, Billy, down, sir!"
+
+From some eyrie on the hillside the Dane had watched without
+emotion the legitimate spectacle of his master beating his
+mistress: in the war of the sexes, a dog is ever on the man's
+side.  But when the tables were turned Billy went to the rescue.
+He was coming round the corner of the cottage when Isabel caught
+sight of him, travelling in great bounds at the pace of a wolf,
+but silent.  Lawrence had but just time to swing Isabel behind
+him before the Dane leapt for his throat.  Lawrence struck him
+over the head, but the blow glanced: so sudden, so thundering
+came the impact that Lawrence all but went down under it: and
+once down. . . .
+
+The great jaws snapped one inch from his cheek, and before the
+Dane could recover Lawrence had seized him by the throat and
+fought him off.  Then Lawrence set his back against the cottage
+wall and felt safer.  A second blow got home, and spoilt Billy's
+beauty for ever:  it laid open his left eye and the left side of
+his jaw. Undaunted, the Dane gave himself an angry shake, which
+spattered Lawrence with blood, and gathered his haunches for a
+second spring.  But by now Lawrence had clubbed his stick and was
+beating him about the head with its heavy knobbed handle.  Swift
+as the dog was, the man was swifter: they fought eye to eye, the
+man forestalling every motion of the dog's whipcord frame:
+Lawrence's blood was up, he would have liked to fight it out
+bare-handed.  They would not have been ill-matched, for when the
+Dane reared Lawrence overtopped him only by an inch or so, and
+the weight of the steelclad paws on his breast tore open his
+clothes and pinned him to the wall.  But Lawrence thrashed him
+off his feet whenever he tried to rise, till at length the lean
+muzzle sank with a low baffled moan.
+
+Even then there was such fell strength in him that Lawrence dared
+not spare him, and blow rained on blow.--"Don't kill him," said
+Isabel.  "Put this over his head."
+
+Lawrence took the length of serge she gave him and with
+characteristic indifference to danger stooped over the dog, whose
+spirit he admired, and tried to swathe his head in its heavy
+folds.  But, torn, blinded, baffled, the Dane was undefeated.  He
+wrenched his jaws out of their mufflings and rolled his head from
+side to side, snapping right and left.  "Oh Billy," cried Isabel,
+"you know me, lie down, dear old man!" A pure-bred dog when sight
+and hearing are gone will recognize a familiar scent.  In an
+agony of pity Isabel flung her arm over the heaving shoulders--
+
+"Don't!" Lawrence dragged her off, but too late: the Dane's teeth
+had snapped on her wrist.   The next moment he was lying on his
+side with his brains beaten out.  Lawrence was willing to spare
+his own enemy but not Isabel's.
+
+"Oh," said Isabel, shivering and moaning, "oh, my poor old
+Billy!"
+
+"Damn your poor old Billy," said Lawrence: "let me look at your
+arm."
+
+He carried her indoors, leaving Janaway and his wife and the Dane
+lying scattered on the sunlit turf.  He did not care one straw
+whether they lived or died.  In the little front parlour, neat
+and fresh with its window full of white muslin and red geraniums,
+he laid Isabel on a sofa and rolled up her sleeve: the flesh was
+not much torn but the Dane's fangs had sunk in deep and clean.
+"How far are we from a doctor?"
+
+"Four miles.  Why?  Billy wasn't mad.  I shall be all right
+directly.   May I have some water to drink?"
+
+"Curse these country hamlets," said Lawrence.  He could not carry
+her four miles, nor was she fit to walk so far: but to fetch help
+would mean an hour or so's delay.  He went into the kitchen to
+filla tumbler from the pump, and found an iron wash-bowl in Clara
+Janaway's neat sink, and a kettle boiling on the hob beside a
+saucepan of potatoes that she had been cooking for dinner.
+Isabel sat up and took the glass from his hand.
+
+"I'm so sorry," she murmured, raising her beautiful dark eyes in
+a diffident apology. "It was all my own fault." Lawrence slipped
+a cushion under her head and drew her gently down.  "Oh, thank
+you!  But please don't trouble about me. I do feel rather queer."
+Lawrence thought it probable.  He had been bitten by a dog
+himself and knew how horribly such a wound smarts.  "It was all
+so--so very dreadful.  But I shall be all right directly.. Do go
+back to the others: I'm afraid poor Clara--oh!   oh, Captain
+Hyde!  What are you doing?"
+
+"Set your teeth and shut your eyes," said Lawrence "it won't take
+long.  Your beloved Billy wasn't a nice animal to be bitten by.
+No, he wasn't mad, but his teeth weren't very clean, and we don't
+want blood poisoning to set up.  Steady now." He pressed his lips
+to her arm.
+
+Isabel's hand lay lax in his grasp while he methodically sucked
+the wound and rinsed his mouth from her tumbler.  He hurt her,
+but she had been bred to accept pain philosophically.  "Is it
+done?" she asked meekly when he released her.  "Not any more?"
+
+"No, that's enough.  Now for a drop of warm water." He bathed the
+wound thoroughly and in default of a better dressing bound it up
+with his own handkerchief.  "I wish I had some brandy to give
+you, but there isn't a drop in the place.  Your estimable friend
+appears to have been a teetotaller.  I don't doubt he was a
+pattern of all the virtues.--  But for that matter I couldn't give
+the child publichouse stuff.--  Now, my little friend, if you'll
+lie quiet for five minutes, I'll see what's going on outside."
+
+"Please may I have my skirt?"
+
+"Your what?"
+
+"My serge skirt."
+
+It had not struck Lawrence till then that she was dressed in a
+white muslin blouse and a pink and blue striped petticoat.  "Do
+you mean to say that was your skirt you gave me to tie up the
+dog's head in?"
+
+"I hadn't anything else," said Isabel still more apologetically,
+and blushing--she was feeling very guilty, very much ashamed of
+the trouble she had given: "and you don't know how fond Ben was
+of Billy!"
+
+"Oh, damn Billy!" said Lawrence for the second time.
+
+He went out into the summer sunshine.  The dog, the fallen man,
+the fallen woman, not one of  them had stirred a hair.  All was
+peaceful and clear in every note of black and white and scarlet
+on the turf plat where they lay as if on a stage, in their green
+setting of dimpled hillside and beech grove and marsh.  There was
+a sickly smell in the hot bright air which carried Lawrence back
+to the trenches.
+
+He went to examine the human wreckage.  No need to examine Billy
+--his record for good or ill was manifestly closed: and Lawrence
+had a sickening suspicion that Mrs. Janaway too had finished with
+a world which perhaps had not offered her much inducement to
+remain in it.  He lifted her up and laid her down again in a
+decent posture, straightening her limbs and sweeping back her
+clotted grey hair: no, no need to feel for the pulse in that
+faded breast from which her husband had partly torn away the
+neatly darned stuff bodice, so modest with its white tucker and
+silver Mizpah brooch.  Lawrence composed its disorder with a
+reverent hand, spreading his own coat over her face.
+
+He went on to Ben, and was frankly disappointed to find that Ben
+was not dead--far from it: he gave a deep groan when Lawrence
+rolled him over: but it was a case of broken arm and collarbone,
+if not of spinal injury as well.  Lawrence found a length of line
+in the yard--Clara's clothes-line, in fact--and knotted it into
+a triple cord, for, though no sane man could have got far in such
+a state, it was on the cards that Janaway in his madness might
+scramble up and wander away on the downs.  So Lawrence lashed him
+hand and foot, and Ben blinked and grinned at the sun and
+slavered over his beard.
+
+It was while thus employed that Lawrence began to wonder what
+would have happened if Isabel had come to Wancote alone.  She
+might have run away.  But would she, while Ben was engaged in
+carpet-beating?  Not she!  Lawrence was not a fanciful man: but
+the red and grey remains of Clara Janaway would have set the
+visualizing faculty to work in the mind of a ploughboy.  After
+tying the last of a dozen knots, reef knots and none too loose,
+he went to the back of the cottage where Isabel could not see him
+and was swiftly and violently sick.
+
+After that he felt better.  There was a pump in the yard, and he
+rinsed his head and hands under it, and washed off as best he
+could the stains of the fight, and re-knotted his scarf and shook
+himself down into his disordered clothes before going back to
+Isabel. And then it was that Isabel received of him a fresh
+impression as though she had never known him before, one of those
+vivid second impressions that efface earlier memories.
+
+Val had always held paternal rank, Captain Hyde had been
+introduced as Val's late superior officer, and so Isabel had
+accepted him as Val's contemporary, of the generation before her
+own.  But framed in the sunlit doorway, a very tall handsome man
+in undress, his coat thrown off, his trousers belted on his lean
+flanks, his wet shirt modelling itself over his powerful throat
+and shoulders and sticking to his ribs,  Hyde might have been
+only six or seven and twenty: and certainly his manner was not
+middle-aged!  Val's language was refined enough for a curate, and
+even Rowsley in his young sister's presence never went beyond a
+sarcenet oath; but Hyde's frank fury was piquant to Isabel's not
+very decorous taste.  When he came in, her pain and faintness
+began to diminish as if a stream of warm fresh life were flowing
+into her veins.
+
+"Are you better, Miss Isabel?"
+
+"Ever so much better, thank you.  Is--is Clara--?"
+
+Cool, grave, and tranquil, Lawrence took her hand.  "Clara is
+dead."  He felt her trembling, and found a form of consolation
+which would have been slow to occur to his unprompted fancy.
+"Better so, isn't it?  She wouldn't have been very happy after her
+husband's trying to kill her."
+
+"No, she wouldn't want them to put him in an asylum," Isabel
+agreed, but in a subdued voice.  "Did you forget my skirt?"
+
+"No, but it was rather in a mess with the unfortunate Billy, and
+I'm afraid you'll have to do without it.  I'm going to take you
+home now.  You can walk, can't you, with my help?  I'd like to
+carry you a few steps, till we're out of sight of the cottage.
+Put your arm round my neck." Isabel hesitated.  She had been
+frightened out of her life and still felt cruelly shaken, but her
+quick sense of the ridiculous protested against this deference
+paid to her when she wasn't really hurt and it was all her own
+fault.  What would Val have said?  But apparently Captain Hyde
+was less exacting than Val.  "Ah! let me: it is an ugly little
+scene outside and I don't want you to be haunted by it."
+
+She resigned herself.  She had not yet begun to feel shy of
+Lawrence, she was a child still, a child with the instincts of a
+woman, but those instincts all asleep.  They quickened in her
+when she felt the glow of his life so near her own, but there was
+a touch of Miranda in Isabel, and no cautionary withdrawal
+followed.
+
+And Lawrence?  The trustfulness of a noble nature begets what it
+assumes.  One need not ask what would have become of Miranda if
+she had given her troth to an unworthy Ferdinand, because the
+Mirandas of this world are rarely deceived.  Hyde was but a
+battered Ferdinand.  He was a man of strong and rather coarse
+fibre who had indifferently indulged tastes that he saw no reason
+to restrain.  But he was changing: when he carried Isabel across
+the sunlit grass plot, her beautiful grave childish head lying
+warm on his shoulder, he had travelled far from the Hyde of the
+summer house at Bingley.
+
+"My word!" said Yvonne Bendish, startled out of her drawl.  "Is
+it you,  Isabel?" She reined in and sat gazing with all her eyes
+at the couple coming down the field path to Chilmark Bridge.
+"Have you had an accident?  What's happened?"
+
+"Excuse my hat," said Lawrence with rather more than his habitual
+calm.  "How lucky to have met you.  There has been a shocking
+business up at Wancote.  Perhaps you would take Miss Stafford
+home?  She should be got to bed, I think."
+
+Mrs. Jack Bendish was not soon ruffled, nor for long.  "Lift her
+in," she said.  "Sorry I can't make room for you too, Captain
+Hyde, you are as white as a ghost.  Very upsetting, isn't it? but
+don't worry, girls of her age turn faint rather easily.  Her arm
+hurt? . . ."  She pointed down the road with her whip.  "Dr.
+Verney lives at The Laburnus, on the right, beyond the publichouse.
+If you would be so kind as to send him up to the vicarage?"
+
+She whipped up her black ponies and was gone.  Lawrence was
+grateful to her for asking no questions, but he would rather have
+taken Isabel direct to Val.  Romance in bud requires a delicate
+hand.  Now Mrs. Jack Bendish had all the bourgeois virtues except
+modesty and discretion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+The Wancote affair made a nine days' wonder in the Plain.  Indeed
+it even got into the London papers, under such titles as "A
+Domestic Tragedy" or "Duel with a Dog": and, while the Morning
+Post added a thumbnail sketch of Captain Hyde's distinguished
+career, the Spectator took Ben as the text of a "middle" on "The
+Abuse of Asylum Administration in Rural Districts."
+
+Lawrence himself, when he had despatched Hubert Verney to the
+vicarage, would have liked to cut his responsibility.  But it
+could not be done: first there was the village policeman to run
+to earth and information to be laid before him, and then, since
+Brown's first flustered impulse was to arrest all concerned from
+Lawrence to Clara Janaway,  Lawrence had to walk down with him to
+Wharton to interview Jack Bendish, as both the nearest magistrate
+and the nearest sensible man.  But after pouring his tale into
+Jack's sympathetic ear he felt entitled to wash his hands of the
+affair.  Instead of going back to Wanhope with the relief party
+he got Bendish to drop him at the field path to Wanhope: and he
+slipped up to his room by a garden door, bathed, changed, and
+came down to lunch without trace of discomposure.  Gaston,
+curtly ordered to take his master's clothes away and burn them,
+was eaten by curiosity, but in vain.
+
+Even before his cousin, Lawrence did not own to his adventure
+till the servants had left the room.  If it could have been kept
+dark he would not have owned to it at all.  He did so only
+because it must soon be common property and he did not care to be
+taxed with affectation.
+
+When, bit by bits his story came out across the liqueur glasses
+and the early strawberries, Major Clowes laid his head back and
+roared with laughter.  Lawrence was annoyed: he had not found it
+amusing and he felt that his cousin had a macabre and uncomfortable
+sense of humour.  But Bernard,  wiping the tears from his eyes,
+developed unabashed his idea of a good joke.  "Hark to him!  Now
+isn't that Lawrence all over?  What! can't you run down for
+twenty-four hours to a hamlet the size of Chilmark but you must
+bring your faics divers in your pocket?"
+
+"It isn't my fault if you have dangerous lunatics at large," said
+Lawrence, helping himself daintily to cream.  "If this is a
+specimen of the way things go on in country districts, thank you,
+give me a London slum.  The brute was as mad as a hatter.  He
+ought to have been locked up years ago.  I can't conceive what
+Stafford was about to keep him on the estate."
+
+"All very fine," Bernard chuckled, "but I'd lay any odds Ben
+didn't go for Mrs. Ben till he saw you coming."
+
+"Adventures are to the adventurous," Laura mildly translated the
+bitter jest.  Her mission in life was to smooth down Bernard's
+rough edges.  "But that is too ugly, Berns.  You oughtn't to say
+such a thing even in fun.  It was no fun for Lawrence."
+
+"I don't object to an occasional scrap," said Lawrence.  "But
+this one was overdone." He shivered suddenly from head to foot.
+
+"Hallo, old man, I didn't know you had a nerve in your body!"
+said Bernard staring at him.
+
+Lawrence went on with his strawberries in an ungenial silence.
+He was irritated by his momentary self betrayal. If he had cared
+to explain it he would have had to confess that though personally
+indifferent to adventures he disliked to have women mixed up in
+them.  He was glad when Laura with her intuitive tact changed the
+conversation, not too abruptly.
+
+"All modern men have nerves.  I should think Lawrence had as few
+as any, but it must have been a frightful scene.  I must run up
+after lunch and see Isabel.  Poor child!  But she's wonderfully
+brave.  All the Staffords were brought up to be stoical: if they
+knocked themselves about as children they were never allowed to
+cry.  Mr. Stafford is a fanatic on the point of personal courage.
+Val told me once that the only sins for which his father ever
+cuffed him were telling fibs and running away."
+
+"Did he get cuffed often?" Lawrence enquired.
+
+"Shouldn't wonder," said Bernard. "Val's one of your nervy men."
+
+"Not after he was ten years old," said Laura smiling.  "But as a
+little boy he was always in trouble.  Not the wisest treatment,
+was it? for a delicate, sensitive child."
+
+"Miss Isabel is not nervous," said Lawrence. "She is as cool a
+young lady as I have ever seen. I believe she still owes me a
+grudge for hitting Billy so hard." He dipped his fingers
+delicately into his finger bowl.  "No, no more, thanks.  Did I
+tell you that the brute of a Dane bit her?"
+
+"Bit Isabel!"
+
+"Made his teeth pretty nearly meet in her forearm.  She was
+trying to soothe the dear dog.  Mr. Stafford's theories may be
+ethically beautiful, but I object to their being carried to
+extremes.  Frankly, I should describe your young friend as
+idiotically rash," said Lawrence with a wintry smile.  "I
+couldn't prevent her doing it because I hadn't the remotest
+notion she was going to do it.  The Dane was practically mad with
+rage.  I could have cuffed her myself with pleasure.  It was a
+wild thing to do and not at all agreeable for me."
+
+"But, my dear Lawrence, that is one way of looking at it!" Laura
+protested, amused by his cool egoism, though she took it with the
+necessary grain of salt.  "Bitten by that horrible dog?  My poor
+Isabel! she loves dogs--I don't suppose she stopped to consider
+her own feelings or yours."
+
+"She ought to have had more sense."
+
+"Hear, hear!" said Bernard.  "Half the trouble in the world comes
+from women shoving in where they're not wanted.  It's a pleasure
+to talk to you, Lawrence, after lying here to be slobbered over
+by a pack of old women.  I always exclude you, my dear," he
+nodded to Laura, "but the parson twaddles on till he makes me
+sick, and Val's not much better.  What's a woman want with
+courage?  Teach her to buy decent clothes and put 'em on
+properly, and she's learning something useful.  I'll guarantee
+Isabel only got in the way. But you, Lawrence," he measured his
+cousin with an admiring eye, much as a Roman connoisseur might
+have run over the points of a favourite gladiator, "I should have
+liked to see you tackle the Dane.   You're a big chap--deeper in
+the chest than I ever was, and longer in the reach.  What's your
+chest measurement?--  Yes, you look it.  And nothing in your hand
+but a stick?  By Jove, it must have been worth watching!  Hey,
+Laura?"
+
+"Bernard, you are embarrassing!  You will make even Lawrence shy.
+But, yes," Laura laid her hand on Hyde's arm: "I should have
+liked to watch you fight the Dane."
+
+How long was it since any one had spoken to Lawrence in that warm
+tone of affection?  Not since his father died.  From time to time
+Mrs. Cleve or other ladies had flattered his senses or his
+vanity, but none of them had ever looked at him with Laura's kind
+admiring eyes.  Perhaps after all there was something to be said
+for family life!  Tragic wreck as Clowes was, he would have been
+far more to be pitied but for his wife: their marriage, crippled
+and sterilized, was yet--as Lawrence saw it--a beautiful
+relation.  Suppose he stood in that relation to Isabel?  Sitting
+at table in the cool panelled diningroom, his careless pose
+stiffening under Laura's touch, Lawrence for the first time began
+to wonder whether he would not gain more in happiness than he
+would lose in freedom if he were to make the child his wife.
+
+"To make the child his wife." He was not really more of an egoist
+than the average man, but he did assume that if he wanted her he
+could win her.  His mistress was very young: it was her rose of
+youth and her unquelled spirit that charmed him even more than
+her beauty: and she had not sixpence to her name, while he was a
+rich man.  He did not, as Bernard would have done, go on to plume
+himself on his magnanimity, or infer that Isabel's gratitude
+would give him a claim on her fealty over and beyond the Pauline
+duty of wives.  In the immediate personal relation Lawrence was
+visited by a saving humility.  But on the main issue he took, or
+thought he took, a practical view.  A man in love cannot soberly
+analyse his own psychological state, and Lawrence did not know
+that he had fallen in love with Isabel at first sight or that the
+germ of matrimonial intentions had lain all along in his mind.
+Here and now he believed that he first thought of marrying her.
+
+Then he would have to stay on at Wanhope.   And court Isabel
+under the eyes of all Chilmark?  Under Bernard's eyes at all
+events; they were already watching him.  Lawrence was irritated:
+whatever happened, he was not going to be watched by his cousin
+and chaffed and argued over and betted on.  In most points
+indifferently frank, Lawrence was silent as the grave where sex
+came into play.
+
+"Thank you." He touched with his lips the hand that Laura had
+innocently laid on his wrist.  "It can't really be fourteen
+years, Laura, since you were staying at Farringay."
+
+"Flatterer!" said Laura, smiling but startled, and rising from
+her chair.  "This to an old married woman!"
+
+"Ah! when I remember that I knew you before this fellow did--!"
+
+"Here, I say," came Bernard's voice across the table, riotously
+amused, "none o' that! none o' that!"
+
+"Penalty for having a charming wife," laughed Lawrence, in his
+preoccupation blind and deaf to danger signals.  He rose to open
+the door for Laura.  "By the by, if you go to the vicarage this
+afternoon, I'll stroll up with you, if I may.  I suppose I owe
+the young lady that much civility!"
+
+"I can't: I'm busy," said Laura hastily.  "That is, I don't know
+what time I shall get away.  Go by yourself, don't wait for me."
+
+"Rubbish," said Bernard.  "Much pleasanter for both of you to
+have the walk together.  Lawrence doesn't want to go alone, do
+you?" ("Rather not," said Lawrence heartily.) "And I don't want
+you here, my love, if that's the trouble, I can't have you tied
+to the leg of my sofa."
+
+Later, when Lawrence had gone out on the lawn to smoke, Bernard
+recalled Laura.  She came to him.  He took hold of her wrist and lay
+smiling up at her.  "Nice relationship, isn't it, cousins-in-law?
+So free and easy.  You--.  I watched you pawing him about.  So
+affectionate.  He felt it too.  Did you see the start he gave?  He
+twigged fast enough.  Think you can play that game under my nose, do
+you?  So you can.  I don't care what you do. Take yourself off now
+and take him with you."
+
+"Don't pinch my wrist below the cuff, Bernard," said his wife. "I
+can't wear gloves at tea."
+
+"You can stop out all night for all I care," said Clowes.  "I'm
+sick of the sight of you."
+
+Then Laura knew that the Golden Age was over.
+
+Isabel had refused to go to bed.  She had no nerves: she saw life
+in its proper colours without refraction.  The dreadful scene at
+Wancote had made its full impression on her, but she was not
+beset like Hyde by visions of what might have been.  Still she
+was tired and subdued, and when Verney had dressed her arm she
+announced her intention of spending the afternoon in the garden
+out of the way of kind enquiries: and she settled herself on an
+Indian chair behind a thicket of lilac and syringa, while Val and
+Rowsley and Yvonne brought books and cushions and chocolate and
+eau de cologne to comfort beauty in distress.
+
+But she had reckoned without the wicket gate in the garden wall,
+which Lawrence let himself in by.   He caught sight of her as he
+crossed the lawn and came up to her bare-headed.  "How are you?"
+he asked without preface.  "Better now?"
+
+His informality went against the grain of Isabel's taste: he had
+no right to presume on a forced situation: with what fastidious
+modesty Val would have drawn back!  She was tired, and she did
+not want to be reminded of what had happened in the morning.  She
+shut up her book, but kept a finger in the place.  "Thank you.
+I'm sorry the others are all out."
+
+"Mrs. Clowes sent me on ahead."
+
+For the second time she had made Lawrence redden like a girl, and
+his easy manner deserted him.  Isabel unconsciously let the book
+slip from her hand.  The lives of the Forsythe family were less
+absorbing than her own life when this fiery dramatic glow was
+shed over it.  A singular smile flitted over her lips: "Well, you
+may as well sit down now you are here," she observed.  Lawrence
+sat down in a deck chair and Isabel's smile broadened: she was
+laughing at him and teasing him with her eyes, though what she
+said remained conventional to the point of primness.  "Is Laura
+coming to see me?  How sweet of her!  But what a pity she
+couldn't come with you!  Why couldn't she?"
+
+"I believe she stayed to look after my cousin."
+
+"How is Major Clowes?  Did he have a good night and was he in a--
+was he cheerful today?"
+
+"So-so: he's not a great talker, is he?"
+
+Isabel's speaking face expressed dissent.   "Perhaps not when
+he's in a good temper.  Oh, I'm so sorry, I'm always forgetting
+he's your cousin."
+
+"I'm prone to forget it myself.  I've seen so little of him."
+
+ "('Though the blase-man-of-the-world had seen thousands of
+superbly beautiful women in elegant creations by Paquin or Worth,
+his gaze was riveted as by a mesmeric attraction on the innocent
+young girl in her simple little white muslin frock, with her
+lissome ankles and slim, sunburnt hands.')  Laura said you had
+been a great traveller.  Shall you settle down in England?"
+
+"Not unless I marry."
+
+Isabel declined this topic, on which Mrs. Jack Bendish would have
+expatiated.  "Laura says you have a lovely old house in
+Somersetshire.  It must be jolly to have an ancestral house."
+
+"Mine is not ancestral," said Lawrence amused. "My father bought
+it forty years ago at the time of the agricultural depression.
+It belonged to some county people--Sir Frank Fleet--who
+couldn't afford to keep it up.  It is a lovely place, Farringay,
+but it's full of Fleet ghosts and the neighbourhood doesn't let
+me forget that I'm an alien."
+
+"But how absurd! how narrow-minded!" exclaimed Isabel. "Houses
+must change hands now and then, and I dare say your father was a
+better landlord than the Fleets were.  Besides, see how much worse it
+might have been!  There's Wilmerdings, here in Chilmark, that the
+Morleys have taken: his name isn't Morley at all, Yvonne says it's
+Moss in the City: but they foreclosed on the Orr-Matthews' mortgage
+and turned them out, and that darling old place is delivered over to
+a horrid little Jew!"
+
+"Poor Morley!" said Lawrence laughing.  "I am a Jew myself."
+Isabel was stricken dumb.  "I thought I had better tell you than
+let you hear it from some one else.  No, don't apologize! these
+things will happen, and I'm not deeply hurt, for I refuse to call
+sibb with a Moss-Morley. I should never foreclose on any one's
+mortgage.  My mother was an Englishwoman and my father was a
+Levantine--half Jew, half Greek.  Have you never heard of Andrew
+Hyde the big curio dealer in New Bond Street?  He was commonly
+known as old Hyde-and-seek.  The Hyde galleries are famous.  As I
+remember him he was a common-looking little old man with a
+passion for art."
+
+"Well, I'm sorry I said such a stupid thing," said Isabel, still
+very red, "not because of hurting your feelings, for it isn't
+likely that anything I said would do that--but because it was
+stupid in itself, and narrow-minded, and snobbish.  It'll be a
+lesson to me.  All the same, it's interesting."  She had
+forgotten by now that she was an innocent-young-girl and Lawrence
+a blase-man-of-the-world, and had slipped into a vein of intimacy
+which was fast charming Lawrence out of all his caution.  "I
+suppose you take after your father, and that's why you're so
+unlike Major Clowes.  He is a Clowes, but you're a Hyde."
+
+"What does that mean?"
+
+Isabel waited a moment to think it out.  "You're more of a
+cosmopolitan; I expect you have a passion for art too, like your
+father. Major Clowes hasn't.  He doesn't care two pins for the
+beauty of his old swords and daggers, he cares only for getting
+all the different sorts.  You, perhaps, might care almost too
+much." Lawrence dropped his eyes.  "And you vary more, you're
+not always the same,  you have more facets: one can see you've
+done all sorts of things and mixed with all sorts of people. I
+suppose that's why you're so easily bored--I don't mean to be
+rude!"
+
+"At the present moment I am deeply interested.  Go on: it charms
+me to be dissected to my face,  and by such an able hand."
+
+"No: it's absurd and I never meant to begin it.  Of course I
+don't know a bit what you're like."
+
+"God forbid!" Lawrence murmured:--"Guess away and I'll tell you
+if you're right."
+
+"You won't play fair.  You won't own up and you'll get cross if I
+do."
+
+"Not I, I have the most amiable temper in the world."
+
+"Now I wonder if that's true?" said Isabel, scrutinizing him
+closely.  "Perhaps you wouldn't often take the trouble to get in
+a wax.  Oh well," surrendering at indiscretion, "then I guess
+that you care for very few people and for those few very much."
+
+"Missed both barrels.  I like any number of people and I
+shouldn't care if I never saw one of them again."
+
+Isabel laughed. "I said you wouldn't play fair."
+
+"Don't you believe me?"
+
+"No, of course not.  You wouldn't say it if it were true."
+
+Lawrence drew a deep breath and looked away.  Their nook of turf was
+out of sight of the house,  sheltered from it behind a great thicket
+of lilac and syringa, which walled off the lawn from the kitchen
+garden full of sweet-smelling currant bushes and apple-trees laden
+with green fruit.  The sleepy air was alive with gilded wasps, and
+between the stiffly-drooping apple-branches, with their coarse
+foliage, and the pencilled frieze of stonecrop and valerian waving
+along the low stone boundarywall, there was a dim honey-coloured
+expanse that stretched away like an inland sea, where, the afternoon
+sunshine lay in a yellow haze over brown and yellow and blue tracts
+of the Plain.  Nothing was to be heard but the drone of wings near at
+hand and the whirr of a haycutter far down in the valley.  No one was
+near and summer lay heavy on the land.
+
+"I did care once. . I had a bad smash in my life when I was
+little more than a boy." He dragged a heavy gold band from his
+finger.  "That was my wedding ring."
+
+"Oh ... I'm sorry!" faltered Isabel.  She was stunned by the
+extraordinary confidence.
+
+"I married out of my class.  It was when I was at Cambridge.  She
+was a beautiful girl but she was not a lady.  Her father was a
+tobacconist in the Cury, and Lizzie liked to serve in the shop.
+As she didn't want to lose her character nor I my degree, we
+compromised on secret nuptials. I took a house for her in Newham
+where I could go and visit her. I ought not to tell you the rest
+of the story."
+
+"Oh yes, you can," said Isabel simply. "I hear all sorts of
+stories in the village."
+
+So childish in some ways, so mature in others, she saw that
+Lawrence was longing to unbosom himself, and her instinct was to
+listen quietly, for, after all, this, though the strangest, was
+not the first such confidence that had been poured into her ear.
+She and her brother Val were alike in occasionally hearing
+secrets that had never been told to any one else.  Why?  Probably
+because they never gave advice, never moralized, never thought of
+themselves at all but only of the friend in distress. Isabel took
+Hyde's hand and held it closely, palm to palm.  "Tell me all
+about it."
+
+"There was another fellow at Trinity who had been in the Sixth at
+Eton with me, a year older than I was, a very brilliant man and
+as hard as nails: Rendell, his name was: an athlete, a tophole
+centre-forward, with a fascinating Irish manner and blazing blue
+eyes.  To him I told my tale, because we were Damon and Pythias,
+and I couldn't have kept a secret from him to save my life.  I
+was an ingenuous youngster in those days: never was such a pal as
+my pal!  He saw me through my marriage and afterwards I took him
+with me once or twice to Myrtle Villa: it may illuminate the
+situation if I say that it made me all the prouder of Lizzie when
+I saw Rendell admired her: never was such an idyll as my manage a
+trois! Unluckily, one evening when I turned up unexpectedly I
+found them together."
+
+"Oh! . . . What did you do?"
+
+"Nothing.  There was nothing to be done. I wasn't going to ruin
+myself by divorcing her.  Luckily the war broke out and Rendell
+and I both enlisted the next day.  He was killed fighting by my
+side at Neuve Chapelle, and I had the job of breaking the news to
+Lizzie.  She was royally angry, poor Lizzle: told me I had no
+right to be alive when a better man than myself was dead. I
+agreed: Rendell was--the better man, though he didn't behave
+well to me.  He died better than he lived.  Out there it didn't
+seem to matter much.  He died in my arms."
+
+"Did you forgive your wife?"
+
+"I never lived with her again, if that's what you mean.  If I had
+been willing, which I wasn't, she never would have consented.
+She had the rather irrational prejudices of her type and class,
+and persisted in regarding me, or professing to regard me, as
+answerable for Rendell's death.  It wasn't true," said Lawrence,
+turning his eyes on Isabel without any attempt to veil their
+agony.  "If I'd meant to shoot him I should have shot him to his
+face.  But I'd have saved him if I could.  How on earth could any
+one do anything in such a hell as Neuve Chapelle?  That week
+every officer in my company was either killed or wounded.  But
+Lizzie had no imagination.  She couldn't get beyond the fact that
+I was alive and he was dead."
+
+"What became of her?"
+
+"I'm sorry to say she went to the bad.  She had money from both
+of us, but she spent it in public houses--didn't seem to care
+what happened to her after losing Arthur: a wretched life: it
+ended last January with her death from pneumonia after measles.
+That was what brought me back to England; I couldn't stand coming
+home before."
+
+"Was it a relief when she died?"
+
+"No, I was sorry," said Hyde.  His wide black eyes, devil-driven
+beyond reticence, were riveted on Isabel's: apparently she no
+longer existed for him except as the Chorus before whom he could
+strip himself of the last rag of his reserve.  "It brought it all
+back.  I was besotted when I married her, and I remembered all
+that when I saw her dead. I forgot the other men.  It was just as
+it was when Arthur died.  I couldn't do anything for him, and he
+was in agony: he was shot through the stomach: it didn't seem to
+matter then that he had robbed me of Lizzie.  I couldn't even get
+him a drop of water to drink.  He died hard, did Rendell.  It
+wasn't true, what Lizzie said.  I'd have given my life for him.
+But I couldn't even make it easy for him to go."
+
+"Poor Rendell," said Isabel softly, "and poor you!  Oh, I'm so
+sorry--I'm so sorry!"
+
+She was not afraid of Hyde now nor shy of him, she felt only an
+immense pity for him--this man who for no conceivable reason and
+without the slightest warning had flung the weight of his
+terrible past on her young shoulders.  She longed to comfort him.
+But he was inaccessibly far away, isolated, his voice rapid and
+hard and clear, his manner normal: every nerve stripped bare but
+still rigid.  Inexperienced as she was, Isabel had a shrewd idea
+of his immediate need.  She took up the ring that Lawrence had
+wrenched off and slipped it on his finger again.
+
+"Don't do that," said Lawrence starting: "why do you do that?"
+
+"But I shall love to see you wear it," said Isabel. "It's the
+sign that you've forgiven them both."
+
+"Have I?"
+
+"Of course you have.  You loved them too much not to forgive."
+
+"It is true.  But I hate myself for it," said Lawrence.  "I hate
+your etiolated Christian ethics.  I don't believe in the
+forgiveness of sins.  The complaisant husband, O God!  If I'd had
+the spirit of a man, I should have shot Arthur the night--that
+night--. . . .
+
+ "But you loved him," said Isabel, "and your wife too.  You felt
+revenge and hate and passion, but love was stronger: and love is
+nobler than hate.  They betrayed you, but you never betrayed
+them.  It wasn't unmanly of you, it was defeat and dishonour for
+them, not for you, when Rendell, after that great wrong he had
+done you, when you tried to make it easy for him to go."
+
+"May I--?" said Lawrence.
+
+He leaned his face down on her open palms, and she felt the tears
+that she could not see.  He could not control them, and indeed
+after the first racking agony, when he felt as though his will
+were being torn out of him by the roots, he made no effort to
+control them, releasing Isabel and dropping at full length upon
+the turf.  Nothing else, no torment of his own thoughts, not
+Rendell's last pangs nor his wife's beauty young again in death
+had ever made Hyde weep: if Rendell had died hard, Lawrence had
+lived equally hard, locking up his frightful trouble in his own
+breast, escaping from it when he could, cursing it and fighting
+against it when it threatened to overpower him.  But now he
+surrendered to it and acknowledged to himself that it had broken
+his life.  And he felt no shame, not one iota, nothing but a
+profound soulagement: the proud reticent man, too vain to shed
+tears in his own room alone, wept voluntarily before Isabel,
+uncovering for her pity the wounds not only of grief but of rage
+and humiliation.
+
+Such an outbreak would have been impossible in a man of pure
+English blood, and in a pure Oriental it would have manifested
+itself differently, but Isabel had truly said of Hyde that his
+temperament was not homogeneous: the mixed strain in him betrayed
+him into strange incongruities of strength and weakness.  Isabel
+shut her eyes to incongruity.  She gave him without stint the
+pitying gentleness he thirsted for.  She refused now to contrast
+him with her brother.  Certainly Val's judgment would have been
+cutting and curt.  But just?  Hardly.  By instinct Isabel felt
+that her brother's clear, sane, English mind had not all the
+factors necessary for judging this collapse.
+
+Her imagination was at work in the shadow: "'the night--that
+night. . . ." How do men live through such hours?  She saw Lizzie
+as a chocolate-box beauty, but redeemed from hebetude by her
+robust youth: able to attract Hyde by his love of luxury and to
+hold him by main force: uneducated, coarse, and cruel, but not
+weak.  What a disastrous marriage! doomed from the outset, even
+if no Rendell had come on the scene.  Isabel dismissed Rendell
+rather scornfully: in that night at Myrtle Villa she felt pretty
+sure that the duel had been fought out between husband and wife:
+the very staging of it, picturesque for Lizzie Hyde and tragic
+for her husband, must for the entrapped lover have taken a frame
+of ignominious farce. A gleam shot through Isabel's eyes-as she
+imagined Rendell trying to face Hyde, and Hyde sparing him and
+sending him away untouched.  No, no! as between the two men, the
+honours lay with Hyde.
+
+But as between him and Lizzie?  There the reckoning was not so
+easy.  His wife had set scars on him that would never wear out.
+Dimly Isabel guessed that since coming out of her destructive
+hands Hyde himself could be both coarse and cruel: the seed of
+brutality must have been in him all along, but Myrtle Villa had
+fertilized it.  If he married again, what would be required of
+Lizzie's successor?  A strange deep smile gave to Isabel's young
+lips the wisdom of the women of all the ages. Love that gives
+without stint asking for no recompense: love that understands yet
+will not criticize nor listen to criticism: love that dares to
+deny its lover for his own sake.
+
+After collapse came quiescence, and, after a long quiescence,
+revival.  Hyde raised himself on his arm and felt for his
+handkerchief--indifferent to Isabel's observation, or soothed by
+it:  his features were ravaged.  Isabel drenched her own
+handkerchief in Mrs. Bendish's eau-de cologne and gave it him,
+dripping wet.  "Take this, it will do you  good."
+
+"Thank you" said Lawrence, exhausted and subdued.
+
+Becoming gradually rather more composed, he raised his eyes
+again.  "What must you think of me? It is beyond apology.  Will
+you ever forgive me?"
+
+"There's nothing to forgive: I'm not hurt."
+
+"You're rather young to hear such a history as mine."
+
+She blushed.  "Val says it doesn't matter what one knows so long
+as one doesn't think about it in the wrong way." With her sweet
+friendly smile, she touched with her fingertip the lapel of his
+coat: an airy gesture, but there was a fire as well as sweetness
+in Isabel, and for his life Lawrence could not repress a start.
+"You mustn't mind me, Captain Hyde.  You needn't mind, because
+you couldn't help it.  One can keep a secret for twenty years but
+not for ever, and for confessor I suppose any woman will do
+better than a man, won't she?  It's not as though I should ever
+tell any one else: I never will, I promise you that.  You'll go
+away and never see me again, and it'll be as though no one knew
+or as though I were dead."
+
+Touching innocence!  Did she indeed imagine that after such a
+scene . . .?
+
+"But I do not care two straws," said Lawrence, "so spare your
+consolations!  On the contrary, it has been a great relief to me.
+It's as if you had unlocked a door.  The prisoner you have set
+free thanks you.  I was only afraid it might have been too much
+for you, but you're made of strong stuff.  Yet I don't suppose
+you ever saw a man weep before: well, you've seen it now: mon
+Dieu, mon Dieu, but I am tired!  But you've let yourself in for a
+considerable responsibility."
+
+"For what?"
+
+"For me.  Do you think it can ever again be the same between us?"
+On one knee by Isabel's chair, Hyde laughed down at her with his
+brilliant eyes, irreticent and unsparing of timidity in others.
+"Do you think I could have leaned my head on any hands but
+yours?"
+
+He came too near, he touched her.  Isabel had gone through a
+great deal that day, but, with the cruel and sordid history of
+Hyde's married life fresh in her mind, none of the material
+horrors at Wancote had produced in her such a shuddering recoil
+as now.  His wife had not been dead six months!  "Captain Hyde,
+how dare you?"
+
+"I beg your pardon."
+
+Lawrence drew himself up, a good-humoured  smile on his lips: but
+they were pale.  "I--I didn't mean to hurt you," faltered
+Isabel, as the tension of his silence reached her.  What right
+had she, a young girl, to impose her own code of delicacy on a
+man of Hyde's age and standing?--Lawrence looked at her
+searchingly and his eyes changed, the sad irony died out of them,
+and rapidly, imperceptibly, he returned to his normal manner.
+
+"Nor I to frighten you.  Why, what a child it is, after all!
+Yes, your hands are strong, but they aren't practised yet.  Never
+mind, you shall forget or remember anything you like, except this
+one thing which it pleases me and may please you to remember that
+I'm very glad you know the worst and weakest of me--"
+
+"Isabel, are you there?"
+
+Thus daily life revenges itself on those who forget its
+existence.
+
+"That is Val's voice," said Lawrence.  He stood up, no longer
+pale.  "Heavens, I can't face him!"
+
+"Oh dear!" said Isabel in dismay.  She was no more anxious for
+them to meet than Lawrence was,  but Val's footstep on the turf
+was dangerously near.  But he was making for the middle of the
+lilac-hedge, for the red rose archway and the asphalt walk
+between reddening apple trees: and Isabel was sitting near the
+end, close to the garden wall.  She flew out of her chair, held
+up a branch while  Lawrence squeezed between the wall and the
+lilacs,  and flew back and curled up again.  The lilac leaves had
+not finished twinkling and rustling when  Val appeared.
+
+"How are you, invalid?  I came home early on purpose to look
+after you." He was in well-worn grey  riding clothes, booted and
+spurred, his whip in one hand and his gloves in the other: a
+slight,  cool, well-knit figure of low tones and half-lights.
+"Have you had a quiet afternoon?"
+
+"So-so," said Isabel, crimson.
+
+"You look flushed, my darling," said Val tenderly.  He sat down
+at the foot of Isabel's Indian chair and laid a finger on her
+wrist. "You don't  feel feverish, do you?" The light click of the
+wicket gate, which meant that Lawrence was safely off the
+premises, enabled Isabel to say no with a sigh of relief.  "It
+must be the hot weather.  Hallo! what have we here?"
+
+He held up the gold cigarette case which had dropped from Hyde's
+coat when he was lying on the grass.
+
+"Some of Mrs. Bendish's property by the look of it," remarked
+Val. "Diamonds, begad!  I should have thought Yvonne had better
+taste.  But it must be hers, though the cipher doesn't seem to
+have a B in it.  I'll guarantee it isn't Rosy's."   He slipped it
+into his pocket.  "I'll give it to Jack, I shall see him tonight
+at the vestry-meeting."
+
+"It belongs to Captain Hyde."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"He's been here this afternoon."
+
+"How long did he stay?"
+
+"What time is it?--  An hour and twenty minutes."
+
+"What brought him?" said Val, bewildered.
+
+Isabel was mute. . . "I don't know what you're talking about,
+Isabel.  Has he been with you all that time?  Very stupid of him
+when I particularly wanted you to have a quiet afternoon.  When
+did he go?"
+
+"He has only just gone."
+
+"Just gone? I never saw him."
+
+"He went by the wicket gate."
+
+"But I came in by the wicket gate myself!" said Val.  His kind
+serene eyes rested on his sister without a shadow of any thought
+behind surprise.
+
+"I left the mare with Rowsley in the village."
+
+Isabel sat up suddenly and wound her arms round Val's neck. "I
+sent him away when I heard you coming.  He dodged you behind the
+lilacs. I didn't want to tell you he'd been here.  I never should
+have told you if you hadn't found that case."
+
+"You got rid of him--  This minute?  Because I came--?  Isabel!"
+Stafford held her off.  "It is not possible--!  Listen to me: I
+will have an answer.  I know Hyde.  Has he said anything to
+offend you?"
+
+"No! no! oh Val, don't be so angry!"
+
+"Lucky for him," said Val, drawing a long breath and sitting down
+again, his whip across his knee.  "My dear little sister, you
+mustn't make mysteries out of nothing at all!  I'm sorry I
+startled you, but you startled me: I didn't know what to make of
+it. Hyde has not a very good name. . . . In fact I'd rather you
+didn't see too much of him unless Rose or I were there: it was
+cheek of him to come up this afternoon when I was out, considering
+that he scarcely knows you: but I suppose he thinks the Wancote show
+gives him right of entry.  That is the sort of thing a chap like Hyde
+does think.  Now begin again and tell me what it's all about."
+
+"Oh, nothing, Val, nothing!" said Isabel, laughing, though the
+tears were not far from her eyes.  "I didn't know you could get
+in such a wax if you tried!  It's as you say, a little mystery of
+nothing at all.  I'd tell you like a shot if I could, but I can't
+because it would be breaking a promise."
+
+"Hyde had no earthly right to make you promise."
+
+"It was of my own accord."
+
+"It is all wrong," said Val.  "Promises and silly secrets between
+a child like you and a fellow like Hyde!"  He was more grave and
+vexed than Isabel had ever seen him.  "There must be no more of
+it."
+
+"There won't if I can help it!" said Isabel.  "I like Captain
+Hyde--yes, I do: I know you don't, and I can quite see that he's
+what Rose would call a bit of an outsider, but I'm sorry for him
+and there's a great deal I like in him.  But I don't want to see
+him again for years and years." She gave a little shiver of
+distaste: if anything had been wanting to heighten the reaction
+of her youth against Hyde's stained middle age, the evasions in
+which he had involved her would have done it.  "Now don't scold
+me any more!  I'm innocent, and I feel rather sad.  The world
+looks unhomely this afternoon.  All except you!  You stay there
+where I can watch you: you're so comfortably English, so nice and
+cool and quiet!  There's no one like you, no one: the more I see
+of other people the more I like you!  I'm so glad you don't wear
+linen clothes and a Panama hat and rings.  I'd give you away if
+you did with half a pound of tea.  No, it's no use asking me any
+more questions because I shan't answer them: a promise is all the
+more binding if one would rather not keep it.  No, and it's no
+use fishing either, I can keep a secret as well as you can--"
+
+She broke off before the white alteration in Val's face.
+
+"Has--.
+
+"No," said Isabel slowly: "no, he never mentioned your name."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+"Val"
+
+"M'm."
+
+"I say"
+
+"What, then?"
+
+"What's all this about the Etchingham agency?"
+
+Val Stafford, smoking a well-earned pipe some hours later in the
+evening sunlight on the vicarage lawn, looked up at his brother
+over the Chronicle with a faint frown.  "Who?"
+
+"Ah! who?" said Rowsley, squatting cross-legged on the turf.
+
+"Jack began on it this afternoon, and I had to switch him off, for
+I didn't care to own that it was news to me."
+
+"There's nothing in it at present."
+
+"The duke has offered me the management of his Etchingham
+property," said Val unwillingly. "Oh no, not to give up Bernard:
+Etchingham, you see, marches with Wanhope and the two could be
+run together.  He was awfully nice about it: would take what time
+I could give him: quite saw that Wanhope would have to come
+first."
+
+"How much?"
+
+"Four hundred and an allowance for a house.  Five, to be precise,
+which is what he is giving Mills: but of course I couldn't take
+full time pay for a part-time job."
+
+Rowsley whistled.
+
+"Yes, it would be very nice," said Val, always temperate.  "It
+would practically be 300 pounds, for I couldn't go on taking my
+full 300 pounds from Bernard.  I should get him to put on a young
+fellow to work under me."
+
+"It would make a lot of difference to you, even so."
+
+"To us," Val corrected him.  "Another pound a week would oil the
+wheels of Isabel's housekeeping.   And--" he hesitated, but
+having gone so far one might as well go on--"it would enable me
+to do two things I've long set my heart on, only it was no use
+saying so: give you another hundred and fifty a year and insure
+my life in Isabel's favour.  It would lift a weight off my mind
+if I could do that.  Suppose I were to die suddenly--one never
+knows what would become of her?  She'll be able to earn her own
+living after taking her degree in October, but women's posts are
+badly paid and it's uncommonly hard to save.  Oh yes, old boy, I
+know you'd look after her!  But I don't want her to be a drag on
+you: it's bad enough now--you never grumble, but I know what
+it's like never to have a penny to spare.  Times have changed
+since I was in the Army, but nothing alters the fact that it's
+uncommonly unpleasant to be worse off than other fellows. I hate
+it for you--all the more because you don't grumble.  It is a
+constant worry to me not to be able to put you in a better
+position."
+
+Rowsley had been too long inured to this paternal tenderness to
+be sensible of its touching absurdity on the lips of a man not
+much older than himself.  But he was not a selfish youth, and he
+remonstrated with Val, though more like a son than a brother.
+"Yes, I dare say, but where do you come in? A stiff premium for
+Isabel and 50 pounds for Jim and 150 pounds for me doesn't leave
+much change out of 300 pounds!"
+
+"Oh, I've all I want.  Living at home, I don't get the chance of
+spending a lot of pocket money."
+
+"Why don't you close at once?"
+
+"Because I can't get an answer out of Bernard. I've spoken to him
+but he won't decide one way or the other.  And he's my master,
+and I can't take on another job if he objects.  That's why I kept
+it dark at home: what's the good of raising hopes that may be
+disappointed?"
+
+"Pity you can't chuck Bernard and take on Etchingham and the
+five hundred."
+
+"I should never do that," said Val in the rare tone of decision
+which in him was final.  "After all these years I could never
+leave Bernard in the lurch.  I owe him too much."
+
+"As if the boot weren't on the other leg!" Rowsley muttered.  He
+was not mercenary--none of Mr. Stafford's children were: he saw
+eye to eye with Val in Val's calm preference of six to eight
+hundred a year: but when Val carried his financial principles
+into the realm of sentiment Rowsley now and then lost his temper.
+His brother smiled at him, amused by his irritation, unmoved by
+it: other men's opinions rarely had any weight with Val Stafford.
+
+"Pax till it happens, at all events!  Honestly I don't think
+Bernard means to object: he's been all smiles the last day or
+two--Hyde's coming has shaken him up and done him good--"
+
+"Oh!  Hyde!"
+
+Val let fail his paper and looked curiously at Rowsley, whose
+tone was a challenge.  "What is it now?"
+
+"Do you like this chap Hyde?"
+
+"That depends on what you mean by liking him.  He's not a bad
+specimen of his class."
+
+"What is his class?  Do you know anything of his people?"
+
+"Of his family I know little except that he has Jew blood in him
+and is very well off," Val could have told his brother where the
+money came from, but forbore out of consideration for Lawrence,
+who might not care to have his connection with the Hyde Galleries
+known in Chilmark.  "He came here because Lucian Selincourt asked
+him to see if he could do anything for Bernard."
+
+"I can't see Hyde putting himself out of his way to oblige Mr.
+Selincourt."
+
+"If you ask me, Rose, I should say he had only just got back to
+England and was at a loose end.  But there was a dash of good
+nature in it: he's genuinely fond of Mrs. Clowes."
+
+"So I gathered," said Rowsley.  His tone was pregnant.  Val sat
+silent for a moment.
+
+"What rubbish!  He hasn't seen her for eight or ten years."
+
+"Since her marriage." Val shrugged his shoulders.  "Sorry, Val,
+but I cannot see Hyde staying on at Wanhope out of cousinly
+affection for Bernard Clowes.  It must be a beastly uncomfortable
+house to stay in.  Nicely run and all that, and they do you very
+well, but Bernard is distinctly an acquired taste.  Oh, my dear
+chap!" as Val's silence stiffened, "no one suggests that Laura's
+ever looked at the fellow!  But facts are facts, and Hyde is--
+Hyde.  I'm not a bit surprised to hear he has Jew blood in him,"
+Rowsley continued, warming to the discussion: he was a much
+keener judge of character that the tolerant and easy-going Val.
+"That accounts for the arty strain in him.  Yvonne says he's a
+thorough musician, and Jack told me Lord Grantchester took to him
+because he knew such a lot about pictures.  Well, so he ought!
+He's a Londoner.  What does he know of the country?  Only what
+you pick up at a big country-house party or a big shoot!  He's
+not the sort of chap to stay on at Wanhope for the pleasure of
+cheering up across-grained br--a fellow like Bernard.  Yes, he's
+talking of staying on indefinitely: is going to send to town for
+one of his confounded cars. . . .  And what other woman is there
+in Chilmark that he'd walk across the road to look at?"
+
+"I'm not sure you're fair to him."
+
+Rowsley turned up to his brother an amused, rather sweet smile.
+"Val, you'd pray for the devil?"
+
+"Oh, Hyde isn't a devil! I came pretty close to him ten years
+ago.  He has a streak of generosity in him: no one knows that
+better than I do, for I'm in his debt.  What?  Oh! no, not in
+money matters: is that likely?  But he's capable of . . .
+magnanimity, one might call it," Stafford fastidiously felt after
+precision: "no, he wouldn't pursue Laura; he wouldn't make her
+life harder than it is already."
+
+"He might propose to make it easier." Rowsley threw a daisy at a
+cockchafer and missed it.  "You and I are sons of a parsonage.
+We shouldn't run off with a married lady because it would be
+against our principles." His thin brown features were twisted
+into a faint grimace.  Rowsley, like Val, possessed a satirical
+sense of humour, and gave it freer play than Val did.  "It's so
+difficult to shake off early prejudices.  When Fowler and I were
+at the club the other day, we met a horrid little sweep who waxed
+confidential.  I said I couldn't make love to a married woman if
+I tried, and Fowler said he could but held rather not, and we
+walked off, but as I remarked to Fowler afterwards the funny
+thing was that it was true.  I don't see anything romantic in the
+situation.  It strikes me as immoral and disgusting.  But Hyde
+wouldn't take a narrow view like mine.  He has to live up to his
+tailor."
+
+"Oh, really, Rose!" Val gave his unwilling laugh.  "You're like
+Isabel, who can't forgive him for sporting a diamond monogram."
+
+"No, but I'm interested.  I know Jack's limitations, and Jimmy's,
+and yours, but Hyde's I don't know, and he intrigues me," said
+Rowsley, lighting a cigarette with his agile brown fingers.
+"Now I'll tell you the way he really strikes me.  He's not a bad
+sort: I shouldn't wonder if there were more decency in him than
+he'd care to get credit for.  But I should think," he looked up
+at Val with his clear speculative hazel eyes, "that he's never in
+his life taken a thrashing.  He's always had pots of money and
+superb health.  I know nothing, of his private concerns, but at
+all events he isn't married, and from what Jack says he's sought
+safety in numbers.  No wife, no kids, no near relations--that
+means none of the big wrenches.  No: I don't believe Hyde's ever
+taken a licking in his life."
+
+"You sound as if you would like to administer one."
+
+"Only by way of a literary experiment," said Rowsley with his
+mischievous grin.  He was of the new Army, Val of the old: it was
+a constant source of mild surprise to Val that his brother read
+books about philosophy, and psychology, and sociology, of which
+pre-war Sandhurst had never heard: read poetry too, not Tennyson
+or Shakespeare, but slim modern volumes with brown covers and
+wide margins: and wrote verses now and then, and sent them to
+orange-coloured magazines or annual anthologies, at which Val
+gazed from a respectful distance.  "I don't owe him any grudge.
+I'm not Bernard's dry-nurse!"
+
+Val turned a leaf of his paper, but he was not reading it.
+
+"I rather wish you hadn't said all this, Rowsley.  It does no
+good: not even if it were true."
+
+"Val, if it weren't such a warm evening I'd get up and punch your
+head.  You're a little too bright and good, aren't you?  Yvonne
+Bendish says it, and she's Laura's sister."
+
+"Yvonne would say anything. I wish you had given her a hint to
+hold her tongue.  She may do most pestilent mischief if she sets
+this gossip going."
+
+"It'll set itself going," said Rowsley.  "And, though I know the
+Bendishes pretty well, I really shouldn't care to tell Mrs. Jack
+not to gossip about her own sister.  You might see your way to
+it, reverend sir, but I don't."
+
+"If it came to Bernard's ears I wouldn't answer for the
+consequences."
+
+"Won't Bernard see it for himself?"
+
+"If I thought that," said Val, "if I thought that. . . .
+
+"You couldn't interfere, old man," said Rowsley with a shrewd
+glance at his brother.  "Your hands are tied."
+
+"H'm: yes, that's true." It was much truer than Rowsley knew.  "I
+don't care," said Val, involuntarily crushing the paper in his
+hand: "I would not let that stand in my way: I'd speak to Hyde."
+
+"Are you prepared to take high ground? I can't imagine any one
+less likely to be amenable to moral suasion, unless of course
+you're much more intimate with him than you ever let on to me.
+Perhaps you are," Rowsley added.  "He certainly is interested in
+you."
+
+"Hyde is?"
+
+"Watches you like a cat after a mouse.  What's at the root of it,
+Val?  Is it the original obligation you spoke of?  I'm not sure
+that I should care to be under an obligation to Hyde myself.
+Hullo,  are you off?" Val had risen, folding the newspaper,
+laying it carefully down on his chair: in all his ways he was as
+neat as an old maid.
+
+"I have to be at the managers' meeting by half past eight, and
+it's twenty past now."
+
+Watching his brother across the lawn, Rowsley cudgelled his
+brains to account for Val's precipitate departure.  The pretext
+was valid, for Val was always punctual, and yet it looked like a
+retreat--not to say a rout.  But what had he said to put Val to
+flight?
+
+Present at the managers' meeting were Val, still in breeches:
+Jack Bendish in a dinner jacket and black tie: Garrett the
+blacksmith, cursorily washed:  Thurlow, a leading Nonconformist
+tradesman: and Mrs. Verney the doctor's wife.  Agenda: to instruct
+the Correspondent to requisition a new scrubbing brush for the
+Infants' School.  This done and formally entered in the Minutes by
+Mrs. Verney,  the meeting resolved itself into a Committee of Ways
+and Means for getting rid of the boys' headmaster without falling
+foul of the National Union of Teachers; but these proceedings, though
+of extreme interest to all concerned, were recorded in no Minutes.
+
+The meeting broke up in amity and Bendish came out into the
+purple twilight, taking Val's arm.  It was gently withdrawn.
+"Neuritis again?"  said Jack.  "Why don't you try massage?" He
+always asked the same question, and, being born to fifteen
+thousand a year, never read between the lines of Val's vague
+reply.  Val had a touch of neuritis in his injured arm two nights
+out of seven, but he could not find the shillings for his train
+fare to Salisbury, far less the fees of a professional masseuse.
+Bendish, who could have settled that difficulty out of a week's
+cigar bills, would have been shocked and distressed if Val had
+owned to it, but it was beyond the scope of his imagination,
+though he was a thoughtful young man and quietly did his best to
+protect Val from the tax of chauffeurs and gamekeepers.  He
+understood that poor men cannot always find sovereigns.  But he
+really did not know that sometimes they cannot even find
+shillings.  Tonight he said, "I can't think why you don't get a
+woman over to massage you," and then, reverting to the peccant
+master,  "Brown's a nuisance.  He has a rotten influence on the
+elder boys.  He's thick with all that beastly Labour crowd, and I
+believe Thurlow's right about his goings on with Warner's wife,
+though I wasn't going to say so to Thurlow. I do wish he'd do
+something, then we could fire him. But we don't want a row with
+the N.U.T."
+
+"You can't fire a man for his political opinions."
+
+"Why not, if they're wrong?" said Bendish placidly.
+
+His was the creed that Labour men are so slow to understand
+because it is so slow to explain itself: not a blind prejudice,
+but the reasonable faith of one who feels himself to belong to an
+hereditary officer caste for whom privilege and responsibility go
+hand in hand.  And an excellent working rule it is so long as
+practice is not divorced from theory: so long as the average
+member of the governing class acts up to the tradition of
+government, be he sachem or daimio or resident English squire.
+It amused Val: but he admired it.
+
+"Brown is a thorn in Jimmy's side," he remarked, dropping the
+impersonal issue. "I never in my life heard a man make such a
+disagreeable noise on the organ. I tackled him about it last
+Sunday.  He said it ciphered, but organs don't cipher in dry
+weather, so I went to look at it and found three or four keys
+glued together with candle grease."
+
+"Filthy swine!  Are you coming round to Wanhope? I have to call
+in on my way home, my wife's dining there."
+
+Val made no reply.  "Are you coming up or not?  You look fagged,
+Val," said Bendish affectionately. "Anything wrong?"
+
+"No: I was only wondering whether I'd get you to take a message
+for me, but I'd better go myself."
+
+Bendish nodded.  "Just as you like.  Have you settled yet about
+the Etchingham agency?"
+
+"No, I'm waiting for Bernard."
+
+"Hope you'll see your way to accepting.  My only fear is that it
+would throw too much work on you; you're such a conscientious beggar!
+but of course you wouldn't do for us all the odd jobs you do for poor
+Bernard.  Seems to me," Jack ruminated, "the best plan would be for
+you to have a car.  One gets about quicker like that and it wouldn't
+be such a fag.  There's that little green Napier roadster, she'd come
+in handy if we stabled her at Nicholson's."  He added simply, to
+obviate any possible misunderstanding, "Garage bills our show, of
+course."
+
+"Thanks most awfully," said Val, accepting without false pride.
+"I should love it, I do get tired after being in the saddle all
+day.  It would more than make up for the extra work."
+
+They were crossing the Wanhope lawn as he spoke, on their way to
+the open French windows of the parlour, gold-lit with many
+candles against an amethyst evening sky.  Laura, in a plain black
+dress, was at the piano, the cool drenched foliage of Claude
+Debussy's rainwet gardens rustling under her magic fingers.
+Bernard was talking to Mrs. Jack Bendish, for the sufficient
+reason that she disliked him and disliked talking to any one
+while Laura played.  Her defiant sparkle, her gipsy features, her
+slim white shoulders emerging from the brocade and sapphires of a
+sleeveless bodice cut open almost to her waist, produced the
+effect of a Carolus Duran lady come to life and threw Laura back
+into a dimmed and tired middle age.  Jack's eyes glowed as they
+dwelt on her.  His marriage had been a trial to his family, but
+no one could deny that Yvonne had made a success of it, for Jack
+worshipped her.--Lawrence, leaning forward in his chair, his
+forehead on his hand to shield his eyes from the light, looked
+exceedingly tired, and probably was so.
+
+"Queer chap Hyde," said Bendish to Val as they waited on the
+grass for the music to finish.  "Can't think what he's stopping
+on for."
+
+"Oh, Jack, for heaven's sake don't you begin on that subject!"
+
+"Hey?  Oh!  No, by Jove.  Seems a shame, doesn't it?" returned
+Bendish, taking the point with that rapid effortless readiness of
+his class which made him more soothing to Val than many a
+cleverer man.  "It all says itself, so what's the good of saying
+it?  All the same I shan't be sorry when Hyde packs his movin'
+tent a day's march nearer Jerusalem."  And with a casual wink at
+Val he stepped over the threshold.  His judgment, so vague and
+shrewd and sure of itself, represented probably the kindest view
+that would be taken in Chilmark.
+
+Their entrance broke up the gathering.  Jack carried off his
+wife, and Barry appeared to wheel Bernard away to bed.  With a
+word to Laura, Val followed the cripple to his room.  The Duke
+was pressing for an answer, and long experience had taught Val
+that for Bernard one time was as good as another: it was not
+possible to count on his moods.  And there was not much to be
+said; all pros and cons had been thrashed out before; the five
+minutes while Barry was out of the room fetching Bernard's
+indispensable hot-water bottles would give Val ample time to
+secure Bernard's consent.--Laura had scarcely finished putting
+away her music when Val came back, humming under his breath the
+jangled tune that echoes night in the streets of Granada.  Laura
+glanced at Lawrence, who had gone into the garden to smoke and
+was passing and repassing the open window: no, he could not hear.
+"Well, Val?"
+
+"Let me do that for you, shall I?" said Val, lightly smiling, at
+her. "Your ottoman has a heavy lid."
+
+"Have you spoken to Bernard?"
+
+"I have."
+
+"And it's all right?"
+
+"Yes" said Val, deftly flinging diamond-wise a glittering Chinese
+cloth: "is that straight?--that is, for me.  I shan't take the
+agency."
+
+"Val!"
+
+"Bernard agrees with me that the double work would be too heavy.
+Of course I should like the money and I'm awfully sorry to
+disoblige Lord Grantchester and Jack, but one has one's
+limitations, and I don't want to knock up."
+
+"It is too bad--too bad of Bernard,". said Laura, lowering her
+voice as Lawrence lingered near the window.  "He doesn't half
+deserve your goodness to him."
+
+"Bosh!" said Val laughing.  "Where do these candlesticks go?  In
+my heart of hearts I'm grateful to him.  I'm a cowardly beggar,
+Laura, and I was dreading the big financial responsibility.  Oh
+no, Bernard didn't put any pressure on me: simply offered me the
+choice between Etchingham and Wanhope."
+
+"They would pay you twice what you get from Bernard.  Oh, Val, I
+wish you would take it and throw us over!"
+
+"That's very unkind of you."
+
+"Is this definite?"
+
+"Quite: Bernard had thought it well over and made up his mind.  I
+shouldn't speak to him about it if I were you."
+
+"I shan't. I couldn't bear to."
+
+"Bosh again--excuse me.  I must go home. Good-night, dear." He
+held out his hand, wishing, in the repressed way that had become
+a second nature to him, that Laura would not wring it so warmly
+and so long.  In the first bitterness of disappointment--so much
+the keener for his unlucky confidence to Rowsley--Val could not
+stand sympathy.  Not even from Laura?  Least of all from Laura.
+He nodded to her with a bright careless smile and went out into
+the night.
+
+But he had still one more mission to perform before he could go
+home to break the bad news to Rowsley: a trying mission under
+which Val fretted in repressed distaste. He came up to Lawrence
+holding out the gold cigarette case.  "You dropped this at our
+place when you were talking to my sister this afternoon."
+
+"Did I?" Lawrence slipped it into his pocket. His manner was
+perfectly calm.  "Thanks so much.--I hadn't missed it."  He had
+no fear of having been betrayed, in essentials, by Isabel.
+
+"I don't want to offend you," Val continued with his direct
+simplicity of manner, "but perhaps you hardly realize how young
+my sister is."
+
+"Some one said she was nineteen, but why?"
+
+"I don't know what you said to her, probably nothing of the
+slightest consequence, but she's only a child, and you managed to
+upset her.  To be frank, I didn't want her to see any one this
+afternoon.  Oh, she's all right, but her arm has run her up a bit
+of a temperature, and Verney wants her to keep quiet for a few
+days.  It'll give her an excuse to keep clear of the inquest too.
+This sounds ungrateful as well as ungracious, when we owe you so
+much, but there's no ingratitude in it, only common sense."
+
+"Oh, damn your common sense!" exclaimed Lawrence.
+
+It was as laconic a warning-off as civility allowed: and it
+irritated Lawrence beyond bearing to be rebuked by young
+Stafford, whose social life stood in his danger, whom he could at
+pleasure strip to universal crucifying shame.  But there was
+neither defiance nor fear in Val: tranquil and unpretentious, in
+his force of character he reminded Lawrence of Laura Clowes.  She
+too had been attacked once or twice that evening by her husband,
+and Lawrence had admired the way in which she either foiled or
+evaded the rapier point, or took it to her bosom without
+flinching.  This same silken courage, it seemed, Val also
+possessed.  Both would stand up to a blow with the same grave
+dignity and--perhaps--secret scorn.
+
+Minutes passed.  Val waited because he chose not to be the first
+to break silence, Lawrence because he was absorbing fresh
+impressions with that intensity which wipes out time and place.
+He was in the mood to receive them: tired, softened, and
+quickened, from the tears of the afternoon.  After all Val was
+Isabel's brother and possessed Isabel's eyes!  This drew Lawrence
+to him by a double cord: practically, because it is inconvenient
+to be on bad terms with one's brother-in-law, and mystically,
+because in his profound romantic passion he loved whatever was
+associated with her, down to the very sprig of honeysuckle that
+she had pinned into his coat.  But for this cord his relations
+with Stafford would have begun and ended in a casual regret for
+the casual indulgence of a cruel impulse.  But Isabel's brother
+had ex officio a right of entry into Hyde's private life, and,
+the doors once opened, he was dazed by the light that Val let in.
+
+It was after ten o'clock and dews were falling, falling from a
+clear night.  "One faint eternal eventide of gems," beading the
+dark turf underfoot and the pale faces of roses that had bloomed
+all day in sunshine: now prodigal of scent only they hung their
+heads like ghosts of flowers among dark glossy leaves.  Stars
+hung sparkling on the dark field of heaven, stars threw down
+their spears on the dark river fleeting to the star-roofed
+distant Channel.  Stream and grass and leaf-buds were ephemeral
+and eternal, ever passing and ever renewed, old as the stars, or
+the waste ether in which they range: the green, sappy stem, the
+dew-bead that hung on it, the shape of a ripple were the same now
+as when Nineveh was a queen of civilization and men's flesh was
+reddening alive in osier cages over altar fires on Wiltshire
+downs. And all the sweetness, all the romance of an English
+midsummer night seized the heart of Lawrence, a nomad, a returned
+exile, and a man in love--as if he had never known England
+before.
+
+Or her inhabitants either!  Lawrence, without country, creed,
+profession, or territorial obligation, was one of those sons of
+rich men who form, in any social order, its loosest and most
+self-centred class.  In his set, frank egoism was the only motive
+for which one need not apologize.  But in Chilmark it was not
+so. Far other forces were in play in the lives of the Stafford
+family, and Laura Clowes, and Lord Grantchester and his wife and
+Jack Bendish.  What were these forces?  Lawrence thought in
+flashes, by imagery, scene after scene flitting before him out of
+the last forty-eight hours.  Homespun virtues: unselfishness,
+indifference to money values, the constant sense of filial,
+fraternal, social responsibility . . . the glow in Jack's eyes
+when they rested on his wife: Verney's war on cesspools: Leverton
+Morley as scoutmaster: the Chinese lecture: rosebushes in the
+churchyard, by the great stone cross with its list of names
+beginning "George Potts, Wiltshire Rifles, aged 49," and ending
+"Robert Denis Bendish, Grenadier Guards, aged 19: Into Thy Hands,
+O Lord": old, old feudal England, closeknit, no pastoral of easy
+virtues, yet holding together in a fellowship which underlies
+class disunion: whose sons, from days long before the Conquest,
+have always desired to go to sea when the cuckoo sang, and to
+come home again when they were tired of the hail and salt
+showers, because they could not bear to be landless and lordless
+men. . . .
+
+[Footnote]
+
+     "Swylce geac mona geomran reorde, singe sumeres
+     weard, sorge beade bittre in breosthord; pset se
+     beorn ne wat, secg esteadig, hwset pa sume dreoga,
+     pe pa wrseclastas widost lecga! . . . . pince him
+     on mode pset he his monndryhten clyppe and cysse
+     andon cneo lecge honda and heafod; ponne onwsecne,
+     gesihp him beforan fealwe wegas, bapian brimfuglas."
+
+     "Even so the cuckoo warns him with its sad voice,
+     Summer's warden sings foreboding sorrow, bitter grief
+     of heart.  Little knows the prosperous fellow what
+     others are doing who follow far and wide the tracks
+     of exile . . . Then dreams the seafarer that he clasps
+     his lord and kisses him, and on his knee lays hand and
+     head; but he awakes and sees before him the fallow
+     waterways and the sea-fowls bathing."
+
+[End of Footnote]
+
+
+Lawrence flung off the impression with a jerk of his shoulders,
+as if it were a physical weight.  It was too heavy to be endured.
+Not even to marry Isabel was he going to impose on his own
+unbroken egoism the restricting code of a country village.
+
+"You are a dreamer, Val!  Why don't you throw over Bernard and
+take the Etchingham agency?  Yes, I heard every word you said to
+Laura: you made a gallant effort, but the facts speak for
+themselves, and your terminological inexactitudes wouldn't
+deceive a babe at the breast.  Bernard pays you 300 pounds a year
+and orders you about like a groom, Grautchester would give you
+six and behave like a gentleman.  But no, you must needs stick to
+Bernard, though you never get any thanks for it!  You're an
+unpractical dreamer."
+
+"I don't know what on earth you're talking about."
+
+"And you're all in it together, damn you!"  Lawrence broke out
+with an angry laugh.  "It's all equally picturesque--feudal's
+the word!  I never knew anything like it in my life and I
+wouldn't have believed it could continue to exist.  What do you
+do with gipsies?  evict 'em, I suppose."  He flung a second
+question at Val which made the son of a vicarage knit his brows.
+
+"As a matter of fact there's a house in Brook Lane about which
+Bendish and I are a good deal exercised in our minds at the
+present moment . . . and the percentage of children born too soon
+after marriage is disastrous.    You're all out, Hyde.  Nothing
+could be more commonplace than Chilmark, believe me: life is like
+this all over rural England, and it's only from a distance that
+one takes it for Arcadia."
+
+"Folly," said Lawrence.  "Good God, why should you exercise your
+simple minds over the house in Brook Lane?  Ah! because the men
+who go to it are your own men, and the parsonage and the Castle
+are answerable for their souls." Val, irritated, suggested that
+if Hyde's forebears had lived in Chilmark since the time when
+every freeman had to swear fealty, laying his hands between the
+knees of his lord, Hyde might have shared this feeling.  "But
+they didn't," said Lawrence, drily. "My grandfather was a
+pawnbroker in the New Cut."
+
+"Then perhaps you're hardly in a position to judge."
+
+"Judge? I don't judge, my good fellow--I'm lost in admiration!
+In an age of materialism it's refreshing to come across these
+simple, homespun virtues. I didn't know there was a man left in
+England that would exist, for choice, on three hundred a year.
+Are you always content with your rustic ideals, Val?  Haven't you
+any ambition?"
+
+"I?" said Val.
+
+"'Carry me out of the fight,'" quoted Lawrence under his breath.
+"I swear I forgot."
+
+Silence fell again, the silence on Lawrence's part of continual
+conflict and adjustment, and on Val's mainly of irritation.
+Lawrence talked too much and too loosely, and was over-given to
+damning what he disliked--a trick that went with his rings and
+his diamond monogram.  Val was not interested in a townsman's
+amateur satire; in so far as Lawrence was not satirical, he had
+probably drunk one glass more of Bernard's' champagne than was
+good for him!  In the upshot, Val was less disinclined to credit
+Rowsley than half an hour ago.
+
+Lawrence roused himself.  "About your sister: I was sorry
+afterwards to have stayed so long.  She seemed none the worse for
+it at the time, but no doubt she ought to keep quiet for a bit.
+Will you make my excuses to her?"
+
+"I will with pleasure."
+
+"And will you allow me to tackle Bernard about the agency?"
+
+"To--?"
+
+"If you won't resent my interfering? I can generally knock some
+sense into Bernard's head.  It's an iniquitous thing that he
+should take advantage of your generosity, Val."
+
+Stafford was completely taken by surprise.  "I'd rather--it's
+most awfully kind of you," he stammered, "but I couldn't trespass
+on your kindness--"
+
+"Kindness, nonsense!  Bernard's my cousin: if your services are
+worth more in the open market than he pays you, it's up to me to
+see he doesn't fleece you.  Otherwise you might ultimately chuck
+up your job, and where should we be then?  In the soup: for he'd
+never get another man of your class--a gentleman--to put up
+with the rough side of his tongue.  No: he must be brought to
+book: if you'll allow me?"
+
+Val's disposition was to refuse; it was odious to him to accept a
+favour from Hyde.  But pride is one of the luxuries that poor men
+cannot afford. "I should be most grateful.  Thank you very much."
+
+"And now go to bed: you're tired and so am I.  I've had the devil
+of a hard day." He stretched himself, raising his wrists to the
+level of his shoulders, luxuriously tense under the closefitting
+coat. "I shall hope to see your sister again after the inquest."
+
+"Yes," said Val, hesitating: "are you staying on, then?"
+
+"As you advised."
+
+"You'll be very bored."
+
+"No, I've fallen in love." Val gave a perceptible start.  "With
+the country," Lawrence explained with a merry laugh.  "Rustic
+ideals. Don't misjudge me, I beg: I have no designs on Mrs.
+Bendish."
+
+"Hyde . . .
+
+"Well, my dear Val?"
+
+"Give me back my parole."
+
+"Not  I."
+
+"You're unjust and ungenerous," said Val with repressed passion.
+"But I warn you that I shall interfere none the less to protect
+others if necessary.  Good-night."
+
+Lawrence watched him across the lawn with a bewildered
+expression.  But he forgot him in a minute--or remembered him
+only in the association with Isabel which brought Val into the
+radius of his good will.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+"Hadow's bringing out a new play," remarked Lawrence, looking up
+from the Morning Post.  "A Moore comedy, They're clever stuff,
+Moore's comedies: always well written, and well put on when Hadow
+has a hand in it.  You never were a playgoer, Bernard."
+
+"Not I," said Bernard Clowes.  He and his guest were smoking
+together in the hall after breakfast, Lawrence imparting items of
+news from the Morning Post, while Bernard, propped up in a
+sitting attitude on the latest model of invalid couch, turned
+over and sorted on a swing table a quantity of curios mainly in
+copper, steel, and iron.  Both swing-table and couch had been
+bought in London by Lawrence, and to his vigorous protests it was
+also due that the great leaved doors were thrown wide to the
+amber sunshine: while the curios came out of one of his Eastern
+packing-cases, which he had had unpacked by Gaston for Bernard to
+take what he liked.  Lawrence's instincts were acquisitive, not
+to say predatory.  Wherever he went he amassed native treasures
+which seemed to stick to his fingers, and which in nine cases out
+of ten, thanks to his racial tact, would have fetched at
+Christie's more than he gave for them.  Coming fresh from foreign
+soil, they were a godsend to Bernard, who was weary of collecting
+from collectors' catalogues.  "Can I have this flint knife?
+Egyptian, isn't it?  Oh, thanks awfully, I'm taking all the
+best."  This was true.  But Lawrence, like most of his nation,
+gave freely when he gave at all.  "No, I never was one for plays
+except Gilbert and Sullivan and the 'Merry Widow' and things like
+that with catchy tunes in 'em.  Choruses."  He gave a reminiscent
+laugh.
+
+"Legs?" suggested Lawrence.
+
+"Exactly," said Bernard, winking at him.  "Oh damn!"  A mechanical
+jerk of his own legs had tilted the table and sent the knife
+rolling on the floor.  Lawrence picked it up for him, drew his
+feet down, and tucked a rug over his hips.
+
+"Mind that box of Burmese darts, old man, they're poisoned.--  I
+used to be an inveterate first-nighter.  Still am, in fact, when
+I'm in or near town.  I can sit out anything from 'Here We Are
+Again' to 'Samson Agonistes.' To be frank, I rather liked
+'Samson':  it does one's ears good to listen to that austere,
+delicate English."
+
+"How long would these take to polish one off?"
+
+"Ten or twelve hours, chiefly in the form of a hoop.  No, Berns,
+I can't recommend them." He drew from its jewelled sheath and put
+into Bernard's hands a Persian dagger nine inches long, the naked
+blade damascened in wavy ripplings and slightly curved from point
+to hilt.  "That would do your trick better.  Under the fifth rib.
+I bought it of a Greek muleteer, God knows how he got hold of it,
+but he was a bit of a poet: he assured me it would go in 'as soft
+as a kiss.' For its softness I cannot speak, but it is as sharp
+as a knife need be."
+
+"Sharper," said Bernard, his thumb in his mouth.
+
+"You silly ass, I warned you!--  I should rather like to see this
+Moore play.  I suppose Laura never goes, as you don't?"
+
+"I don't stop her going, as you jolly well know.  She's welcome
+to go six nights a week if she likes."
+
+"She couldn't very well go alone," Lawrence ignored the scowl of
+his host.  "Tell you what: suppose I took her tonight?  I could
+run her up and down in my car, or we could get back by the
+midnight train.  Would the feelings of Chilmark be outraged?"
+
+"What business is it of Chilmark's?  If I'm complaisant, that's
+enough," said Bernard, his features relaxing into a broad grin.
+"I may be planked down in a country village for the rest of my
+very unnatural life, but I'll be shot if I'll regulate mine or my
+wife'& behaviour by the twaddle they talk!  I'll have that
+dagger."  Slipping it slowly into its sheath he watched it travel
+home, the supple female curve gliding and yielding as a woman
+yields to a man's caress.  "Voluptuous, I call it.  Under the
+left breast, eh?"  He drew it again and held it poised and
+pointing at his cousin.  "Come, even I could cut your heart out
+with a gem of a blade like that." Lawrence held himself lightly
+erect, his big frame stiffening from head to foot and the pupils
+of his eyes dilating till the irids were blackened.  "Call
+Laura."  Bernard sheathed the dagger again and laid it down.
+"She's out there snipping away at the roses.  Why can't she leave
+'em to Parker?  She's always messing about out there dirtying her
+hands, and then she comes in and paws me.  Call her in."
+
+Lawrence escaped into the sunshine.  He had not liked that moment
+when Bernard had held up the dagger, nor was it the first time
+that Bernard had made him shiver, but these vague apprehensions
+soon faded in the open air.  It was a sallow sunshine, a light
+wind was blowing, and the lawn was spun over with brilliancies of
+gossamer and flecked with yellow leaflets of acacia and lime.
+Little light clouds floated overhead, sun-smitten to a fiery
+whiteness, or curling in gold and silver surf over the grey of
+distant hayfields.  In the borders the velvet bodies of bees hung
+between the velvet petals, ruby-red, of dahlias.  There had been
+no frost, and yet a foreboding of frost was in the air, a
+sparkle, a sting--enough to have braced Lawrence when he went
+down to bathe before breakfast, standing stripped amid long
+river-herbage drenched in dew, a west wind striking cold on his
+wet limbs: sensations exquisite so long as the blood of health
+and manhood glowed under the chilled skin!  It was early autumn.
+
+
+Time slips away fast in a country village, and Lawrence remained
+a welcome guest at Wanhope, where Chilmark said--though with a
+covert smile--that Captain Hyde had done his cousin a great deal
+of good.  Bernard was better behaved with Lawrence than with any
+one else, less surly, less unsociable, less violently coarse:
+since June there had been fewer quarrels with Val and Barry and
+the servants, and less open incivility to Laura.  He had even
+let Laura give a few mild entertainments, arrears of hospitality
+which she was glad to clear off: and he had appeared at them in
+person, polite and well dressed, and on the friendliest terms
+with his cousin and his wife.
+
+Lawrence knew his own mind now.  It was because he knew it that
+he held his hand: meeting Isabel two or three times a week,
+entering into the life of the little place because it was her
+life, fighting Val's battle with Bernard--and winning it--
+because Val was her brother.  When he remembered his collapse he
+was not abashed: shame was an emotion which he rarely felt: but
+he had gone too far and too fast, and was content to mark time in
+a more rational and conventional courtship.
+
+But a courtship under the rose, for before others he hid his love
+like a crime, treating Isabel as good humoured elderly men treat
+pretty children.   Where the astringent memory of Lizzie came
+into play, Lawrence was dumb.  The one aspect of that fiasco
+which he had not fully confessed to Isabel--though only because
+it was not then prominent in his mind--was its scorching, its
+lacerating effect on his pride.  But for it he would probably
+have flung discretion to the winds, confided in Laura, in
+Bernard, in Val, pursued Isabel with a hot and headstrong
+impetuosity: but it had left the entire tract of sex in him one
+seared and branded scar.
+
+Even when they were alone together, which rarely happened--Val
+saw to that--he had as yet made no open love to her: it was
+difficult to do so when one was never secure from interruption
+for ten minutes together.  Of late he had begun to chafe against
+Val's cobweb barriers.  Three months is a long time! and patience
+was not a virtue that came natural to Lawrence Hyde.
+
+He found Laura cutting off dead roses, a sufficiently harmless
+occupation, one would have thought: a trifle thinner, a trifle
+paler than when he came: and were those grey threads in her brown
+hair?
+
+"Berns wants you," said Lawrence.  "I've done such an awful
+thing,  Laura--"
+
+Again that flash of imperfect perception!  What was going on
+under the surface at Wanhope, that Laura should turn as white as
+her handkerchief?   He hurried on as if he had noticed nothing.
+"Bernard and I have been laying our heads together.  Do you know
+what I'm going to do?  Run you up to town to see the new Moore
+play at Hadow's."
+
+"Delightful!" Already Laura had recovered herself: her smile was
+as sweet as ever, and as serene.  "Was it your idea or Bernard's?"
+
+"Mine. . . I say, Laura: Bernard is all right, isn't he?"
+
+"In what way, all right?"
+
+Lawrence reddened, regretting his indiscretion.  "I've fancied
+his manner queer, once or twice."
+
+"There is a close connection, of course, between the spine and
+the brain," said Laura quietly.  "But my husband is perfectly
+sane. . . . Oh my dear Lawrence, of course I forgive you! what is
+there to forgive? I only wish I could come tonight, but I'm
+afraid it can't be managed--"
+
+"She says it can't be managed," said Lawrence,  standing aside
+for Laura to pass in.  "Pitch into her, Bernard.  Hear her talk
+like a woman of sixty!  Are you frightened of the night air,
+Laura?  Or would Chilmark chatter?"
+
+"It might, if you and I went alone," Laura smiled.
+
+"Make up a party then," suggested Lawrence.  "Get the Bendishes
+to come too."
+
+She shook her head.  "They're dining with the Dean."
+
+"And decanal dinner-parties can't be thrown over."  When he made
+the suggestion, Lawrence had known that the Bendishes were dining
+with the Dean.  "Some one else, then."
+
+"Whom could I ask like this at the last moment?   No, I won't
+go--thank you all the same.  I'm not so keen on late hours and
+long train journeys as I used to be.  Go by yourself and you can
+tell us all about it afterwards.  Berns and I shall enjoy that as
+much as seeing it ourselves.  Shan't we, Berns?"  Clowes gave a
+short laugh: he could not have expressed his opinion more clearly
+if he had called his wife a fool to her face.
+
+"You weren't so particular before you married me, my love.  When
+you ran that French flat with Yvonne you jolly well knew how to
+amuse yourself."
+
+"Girls do many things before they're married," said Laura
+vaguely.  "I know better now."
+
+"Oh, you know a lot.  She ought to go, Lawrence. It'll do her
+good.  Now you shall go, my dear, that's flat."
+
+Lawrence began to wish he had held his tongue.  He had his own
+ends to serve, but, to do him justice, he had not meant to serve
+them at Laura's expense.  But he had still his trump card to
+play. "Surely we could find a chaperon?" he said gently, ignoring
+Bernard. "What about the Staffords?  Hardly in Val's line,
+perhaps.  But the child--little Miss Isabel--won't she do?"
+
+To his relief, Laura's eyes lit up with pleasure.  "Isabel? I
+never thought of her!  Yes, she would love to come!--But, if she
+does, she must come as my guest.  You would never have asked her
+of your own accord, and the Staffords are so proud, I'm sure Val
+wouldn't like you to pay for her."  Again Bernard's short,
+sardonic laugh translated the silence of his cousin's constraint
+and dismay.
+
+"Hark to her!  I'll sort her for you, Lawrence.  She shall go,
+and you shall be paymaster.  Yes, and for the Stafford brat too.
+Lawrence and I don't understand these modern manners, my dear.
+When we take a pretty woman out we like to do the treating.  Now
+cut along and see about the tickets, Lawrence.  You can 'phone
+from the post office."
+
+Lawrence had secured a box ten days ago, but he strolled out,
+thinking that the husband and wife might understand each other
+better when alone.  As soon as he was out of earshot Bernard
+turned on Laura and seized her by the wrist, his features
+altering, their sardonic mask recast in deep lines of hate.
+"Why wouldn't you go up alone?  That's what he wanted.  Why have
+you saddled him with the little Stafford girl?  You can't take
+her to dine in a private room."
+
+"It was because I foresaw this that I refused.  Why do you
+torment yourself by forcing me to go?"
+
+"I?  What do I care?  Do you think I should shed many tears if
+you walked out of the house and never came back?  Think I don't
+know he's your lover? you're uncommonly circumspect with your
+stable door! . . . A woman like you! Look here." He picked up the
+Persian dagger.  "See it? That's been used before. I should like
+to use it on you. I should like to cut your tongue out with it.
+Don't be afraid, I'm not going to stab you."
+
+"Afraid?" said his wife with her serene ironical smile.   "My
+dear Bernard, you tempt me to wish you were."
+
+"Oh, not before tonight.  Jolly time you'll have tonight, you and
+Lawrence . . . I can only trust you'll respect the Stafford
+child's innocence."
+
+"Bernard!  Bernard!"
+
+"Don't you Bernard me.  You can't take me in. Stop.  Where are
+you off to now?"
+
+"To tell Lawrence not to get the tickets.  I shan't go with him."
+
+"You will go with him," said Bernard Clowes, his fingers
+tightening on her wrist.  "Stop here: come closer." He locked his
+arm round her waist. "Is he your lover yet, Lally?  Tell me: I
+swear I won't kill you if you do.  Are you on the borderland of
+virtue still, or over it?"
+
+"Let me go," said Laura, panting for breath under his clenched
+grip.  "I will not answer such questions.  You know you don't
+mean one word of them.  Take care, you're tearing my blouse.  Oh,
+that frightful war! what has it done to you, to turn you from the
+man I married into what you are?"
+
+"What am I?"
+
+"A madman, or not far off it.  End this horrible life: send him
+away.  It's killing me, and as for you, if you were sane enough
+to understand what you're doing, you would blow your brains out."
+
+"Likely enough," said Bernard Clowes.
+
+He let her go.  "Come back to me now, Laura."  His wife leant
+over him, unfaltering, though she had known for some time that
+she was dealing with the abnormal.  "Kiss me." Laura touched his
+lips.  "That's better, old girl.  I am a cross-grained devil and
+I make your life a hell to you, don't I?  But don't--don't leave
+me.  Don't chuck me over.  Let me have your love to cling to.  I
+don't believe in God, I don't believe in any other man, often
+enough I don't believe in myself, I feel, I feel unreal . . . ."
+He stopped, shut his eyes, moved his head on the pillow, and felt
+about over his rug with the blind groping hands of a delirious,
+almost of a dying man.  Laura gathered them up and held them to
+her heart.  "That's better," said Bernard, his voice gaining
+strength as he opened his eyes on the beautiful still face bent
+over him.  "Just now and again, in my lucid moments, I do--I do
+believe in you, old girl.  You are just the one thing I have
+left.  You won't forsake me, will you, ever? not whatever I do to
+you."
+
+"Never, my darling."
+
+"Seems a bit one-sided, that bargain," said Bernard.
+
+He lay perfectly still for a little while, his great hands softly
+pressed against his wife's firm breast.
+
+"And now get your hat and trot up to the village with Lawrence.
+Yes, I should like you to go tonight.  It'll do you good.  Give
+you a breath of fresh air after your extra dose of sulphur.  Yes,
+you shall take Isabel.  Then you'll be safe: I can't insult you
+if you and Lawrence weren't alone.   Now run along, I've had
+enough emotions.  But don't forget.  Laura," he spoke thickly and
+with effort, turning his head away as he pushed her from him
+"yes, get out, I've had enough of you for the present--but don't
+forget all the same that you're the one thing on earth that ever
+is real to me."
+
+Isabel was up a ladder in the orchard picking plums.  Waving her
+hand to Laura and Lawrence Hyde, she called out to them to look
+the other way while she came down.  It must be owned that neither
+Laura nor Lawrence obeyed her, and they were rewarded, while she
+felt about for the top rung, with an unimpeded view of two very
+pretty legs.  Lawrence really thought she was going to fall out
+of the tree, but eventually she came safe to earth, and
+approached holding out a basket full of glowing fruit.  "Though
+you don't deserve them," she said reproachfully, "because I could
+feel you looking at me.  I did think I should be safe at this
+hour in the morning!"
+
+"Do I see Val?" said Laura, screwing up her eyes to peer in
+through the slats of the green jalousies.  "I'll go and talk him
+round, while you break the news to Miss Stafford.  Such do's,
+Isabel! You don't know what dissipations are in store for you, if
+only Val will say yes."  She like every one else elevated Val to
+the parental dignity vice Mr. Stafford deposed.
+
+
+"He's come in for some lunch.  He'll love to have you watch him
+eat," said Isabel.  "What's it to be, Captain Hyde?  A picnic?"
+
+Isabel's imagination had never soared beyond a picnic.  When
+Lawrence unfolded the London scheme her eyes grew round with
+astonishment and an awed silence fell on her.  "Oh, it won't
+happen," she said, when she had recovered sufficiently to reply
+at all.  "Nothing so angelically wonderful ever would happen to
+me.  I'm perfectly certain Val will say no.  Now we've settled
+that, you can tell me all about it, because of course you and
+Laura will go in any case."
+
+"But that's precisely what we can't do." Gently and imperceptibly
+Lawrence impelled her through the rose archway into the kitchen
+garden, where they were partly sheltered behind the walls of
+lilacs, a little thinner than they had been in June but still an
+effective screen.  He had not found himself alone with Isabel for
+ten days. Since Val was with Laura, Lawrence drew the rather
+cynical conclusion that he could count on a breathing space, and
+he wondered if Isabel too were glad of it. She was in a brown
+cotton dress, her right sleeve still tucked up high on her bare
+arm: a rounded slender arm not much tanned even at the wrist, for
+her skin was almost impervious to sunburn.  Above the elbow it
+was milk-white with a faint bloom on it, in texture not like
+ivory, which is a dead, cold, and polished material, but like a
+flower petal, one of those flowers that have a downy sheen on
+them,  white hyacinths or tall lilies. Lawrence fixed his eyes on
+it unconsciously but so steadily that Isabel became aware of his
+admiration.  She blushed and was going to pull down her sleeve,
+but checked herself, and turning a little away, so that she could
+pretend not to know that he was looking at her, raised her arm to
+smooth her hair, lifting it and pushing a loosened hairpin into
+place. After all . . . This was Isabel's first venture into
+coquetry.  But it was half unconscious.
+
+"Why can't you? oh, I suppose people would be silly.  Major
+Clowes himself is silly enough for anything.  Oh, I'm so sorry,
+I always forget he's your cousin!  Is that why you want me to
+go?"
+
+"No."
+
+She laughed.  "Never mind, you'll soon find some one else.  What
+play is it?"
+
+"'She Promised to Marry.'"
+
+"Oh ah, yes: that's by Moore, who wrote 'The Milkmaid' and
+'Sheddon, M.P.' I've read some of his things.  I liked them so, I
+made Rowsley give me them for my last birthday.  They're quite
+cheap in brown paper. O! dear, I should love to see one of them
+on the stage!" Isabel gave a great sigh.  "A London stage too!
+I've never been to a theatre except in Salisbury.  And Hadow's is
+the one to go to, isn't it?  Where they play the clever plays
+that aren't tiresome.  Who's acting tonight?"
+
+"Madeleine Wild and Peter Sennet."
+
+"Have you ever seen them?"
+
+ Lawrence laughed outright.  "I was at their wedding.  Madeleine
+is half French: I knew her first when she was singing in a cafe
+chantant on the Champs Elysees.  She is dark and pretty and Peter
+is fair and pretty, and Peter is the deadliest poker player that
+ever scored off an American train crook."
+
+"Oh," said Isabel with a second sigh that nearly blew her away,
+"how I should love to know actors and actresses and people who
+play poker!  It must make Life so intensely interesting!"
+
+Behind her badinage was she half in earnest?  Lawrence's eye
+ranged over the old pale walls of the vicarage, on which the
+climbing roses were already beginning to redden their leaves:
+over the lavender borders: over the dry pale turf underfoot and
+the silver and brown of the Plain, burnt by a hot summer.  The
+fruit that had been green in June was ripe now, and down the
+Painted-Lady apple-trees fell such a cascade of ruby and
+coral-coloured apples, from high sprig to heavy bole, that they
+looked like trees in a Kate Greenaway drawing.  But there was no
+other change.  Life at Chilmark flowed on uneventful from day to
+day.  He did not admonish Isabel to be content with it.  "Should
+you like to live in Chelsea?"
+
+Isabel shut her eyes.  "I should like fifteen thousand a year and
+a yacht.  Don't tell Jimmy, it would break his heart.  He says
+money is a curse. But he's not much of a judge, dear angel,
+because he's never had any.  What's your opinion--you're rich,
+aren't you?  Has it done you any harm?"
+
+"Oh, I am a fairly decent sort of fellow as men go."
+
+"But would you be a nobler character if you were poor?" Isabel
+asked, pillowing her round chin on her palm and examining
+Lawrence apparently in a spirit of scientific enquiry.  "Because
+that is Jimmy's theory, and merely to say that you're noble now
+doesn't meet the case.  Do you do good with your money?"
+
+"No fear! I encourage trade.  I've never touched second rate
+stuff in my life."
+
+"Oh, you are different!" Isabel exclaimed.  They had been using
+words for counters, to mean at once less and more than they said,
+but under his irony she penetrated to a hard material egoism, as
+swiftly as he had detected in her the eternal unrest of youth.
+"Val was right."
+
+"What saith the Gospel according to St. Val?"
+
+"That you were only a bird of passage."
+
+ Lawrence waited a moment before replying.  "Birds of passage
+have their mating seasons."  Once more Isabel, not knowing what
+to make of this remark, let it alone.  "But I should like to
+possess Val's good opinion.  What have I done to offend him?
+Can't you give me any tips?"
+
+"It isn't so much what you do as what you are. Val's very, very
+English."
+
+"But what am I?"
+
+"Foreign," said Isabel simply.
+
+"A Jew?  Yes, I knew I should have that prejudice to live down.
+But I'm not a hall-marked Israelite, am I? After all I'm half
+English by birth and wholly so by breeding." Isabel was betrayed
+into an involuntary and fleeting smile.  "Hallo! what's this?"
+
+"Oh, Captain Hyde--"
+
+"Go on."
+
+"No: it's the tiniest trifle, and besides I've no right."
+
+"Ask me anything you like, I give you the right."
+
+Isabel blushed.  "You must be descended from Jephthah!--  O! dear,
+I didn't mean that!"
+
+"Never mind," said Lawrence, unable to help laughing.  "My
+feelings are not sensitive.  But do finish--you fill me with
+curiosity.  What shibboleth do I fail in?"
+
+Faithful are the wounds of a friend.  "Englishmen don't wear
+jewellery," murmured Isabel apologetic.
+
+"Sac a papier!" said Lawrence.  "My rings?"
+
+ He stretched out his hand, a characteristic hand, strong and
+flexible, but soft from idleness and white from Gaston's daily
+attentions: a diamond richly set in a cluster of diamonds and
+emeralds sparkled on the second finger, and a royal turquoise
+from Iran, an immense stone the colour of the Mediterranean in
+April, on the third.  "Does Val object to them?  Certainly Val
+is very English.  My pocket editions of beauty!  That diamond was
+presented by one of the Rothschilds in gratitude for the help old
+Hyde-and-seek gave him in getting together his collection of
+early English watercolours: as for the other, it never ought to
+have left the Persian treasury, and there'd have been trouble in
+the royal house if my father had worn it at the Court.   Have you
+ever seen such a blue?  On a dull railway journey I can sit and
+watch those stones by the hour together.  But Val would rather
+read the Daily Mail"
+
+"Every one laughs at them: Jack and Lord Grantchester, and even
+Jimmy."
+
+"And you?" said Lawrence, taking off the rings:--not visibly
+nettled, but a trifle regretful.
+
+Isabel knit her brows.  "Can a thing be very beautiful and
+historic, and yet not in good taste?--  It can if it's out of
+harmony: that's what the Greeks never forgot.  Men ought not to
+look effeminate--  Oh! O Captain Hyde, don't!"
+
+Lawrence, standing up, had with one powerful smooth drive of the
+arm sent both rings skimming over the borders, under the apple
+trees, over the garden wall, to scatter and drop on the open
+moor. "And here comes Mrs. Clowes, so now I shall learn my fate.
+I thought Val would not leave us long together.--  Well, Val, what
+is it to be?  May the young lady come?"
+
+Isabel also sprang up, changing from woman to child as Lawrence
+changed from deference to patronage.  Their manner to each other
+when alone was always different from their manner before an
+audience.  But this change, deliberate in Lawrence, had hitherto
+been instinctive and almost unconscious in Isabel.  It was not so
+now, she fled to Val and to her younger self for refuge.  What a
+fanfaronade!  Why couldn't Captain Hyde have put the rings in his
+pocket?  But no, it must all be done with an air--and what an
+air!  Rings worth thousands--historic mementoes--stripped off
+and tossed away to please--!  And at that Isabel, enchanted and
+terrified, bundled the entire dialogue into the cellars of her
+mind and locked the doors on it.  Later,--later,--when one was
+alone!  "Oh, Val, say I may go!" she cried, clasping her hands on
+Val's arm, so cool and firm amid a spinning world.
+
+[Footnote]
+
+What actually happened later that afternoon was that Isabel, who
+had a practical mind, spent three-quarters of an hour on the moor
+hunting for the rings.  The turquoise she found, conspicuous on a
+patch of smooth turf: the other was never recovered.
+
+[End of Footnote]
+
+"You may," said Val laughing.  He disliked the scheme, but was
+incapable of refusing Laura Clowes: he gave her Isabel as he would
+have given her the last drops of his blood, if she had asked for them
+in that low voice of hers, and with those sweet eyes that never
+seemed to anticipate refusal.  There are women--not necessarily the
+most beautiful of their sex--to whom men find it hard to refuse
+anything.  And, consenting, it was not in Val to consent with an ill
+grace.  "Certainly you may, if Captain Hyde is kind enough to take
+you!"  Stafford's lips, finely cut and sensitive, betrayed the
+sarcastic sense of humour which he ruled out of his voice: perhaps
+the less said about kindness the better!  "But do look over her
+wardrobe first, Laura: I'm never sure whether Isabel is grown up or
+not, but she could hardly figure at Hadow's in her present easy-going
+kit--"
+
+He stopped, because Isabel was trying to waltz him round the
+lawn. In her reaction from a deeper excitement, she was as
+excited as a child.  She released Val soon and hugged Laura
+Clowes instead, while Lawrence, looking on with his wintry smile,
+wondered whether she would have extended the same civility to him
+if she had known how much he desired it. . . . There were moments
+when he hated Isabel.  Was she never going to grow up?
+
+Not at present, apparently.  "What must I wear, Laura?  Do people
+wear evening dress?  Where shall we sit?  What time shall we get
+back?  How are you going?  What time must I be ready?  Will you
+have dinner before you go or take sandwiches with you?"--how
+long the patter of questions would have run on it is hard to say,
+if the extreme naivete of the last one had not drowned them in
+universal laughter, and Isabel in crimson.
+
+Mrs. Jack Bendish rode up while they were talking, slipped from
+her saddle, and threw the reins to Val without apology, though
+she knew there was no one but Val to take the mare to the stable.
+Yvonne was the only member of the Castle household who presumed
+on Val's subordinate position.  She treated him like a superior
+servant.  When she heard what was in the wind her eyes were as
+green as a cat's.  "How kind of Captain Hyde!" she drawled, as
+Lawrence, irritated by her manner, went to help Val, while Isabel
+was called indoors by Fanny to listen to a tale of distress,
+unravel a grievance, and prescribe for anemia.  "Some one ought
+to warn the child."
+
+"Warn her of what?"
+
+"Has it never struck you that Isabel is a pretty girl and
+Lawrence a good looking man?"
+
+"But Isabel is too intelligent to have her head turned by the
+first handsome man she meets!"  Yvonne looked as though she found
+her sister rather hopeless.  "Dear, you really must be sensible!"
+Laura pleaded.  "It's not as if poor Lawrence had tried to flirt
+with her.  He never even thought of asking her for tonight till I
+suggested it!" This was the impression left on Laura's memory.
+"She isn't the sort of woman to attract him."
+
+"What sort of woman would attract him, I wonder?" said Mrs. Jack,
+blowing rings of smoke delicately down her thin nostrils.
+
+"Oh, when he marries it will be some one older than Isabel, more
+sophisticated, more a woman of the world. I like Lawrence
+immensely, but there is just that in him: he's one of the men who
+expect their wives to do them credit."
+
+"Some one more like me," suggested Yvonne. "Or you." Her face was
+a study in untroubled innocence.  Laura eyed her rather sharply.
+"But Lawrence isn't a marrying man.  He won't marry till some
+woman raises the price on him."
+
+"You speak as if between men and women life were always a duel."
+
+"So It is."  Laura made a small inarticulate sound of dissent.
+"Sex is a duel.  Don't you know"--an infinitesimal hesitation
+marked the conscious forcing of a barrier: cynically frank as she
+was on most points, Mrs. Bendish had always left her sister's
+married life alone:--"that--that's what's wrong with Bernard?  Oh!
+Laura!  Simpleton that you are. . .  I'm often frightfully sorry
+for Bernard.  It has thrown him clean off the rails.  One can't
+wonder that he's consumed with jealousy."
+
+In the stillness that followed Yvonne occupied herself with her
+cigarette.  Mrs. Clowes was formidable even to her sister in her
+delicately inaccessible dignity.
+
+"Had you any special motive in saying this to me now, Yvonne?"
+
+"This theatre business."
+
+"I don't contemplate running away with Lawrence, if that is what
+you mean."
+
+"Wish you would!" confessed Mrs. Bendish frankly.  "Then Bernard
+could divorce you and you could start fair again.  I'm fed up
+with Bernard.  I'm sorry for him, poor devil, but he never was
+much of a joy as a husband, and he's going from bad to worse.
+Think I'm blind?  Of course he's jealous.  High dresses and lace
+cuffs aren't the fashion now, Lal."
+
+Her sister slowly turned back the frill from her wrist and
+examined the scarlet stain of Bernard's finger-print.  "Does it
+show so plainly?  I hope other people haven't noticed.  Bernard
+doesn't remember how strong his hands still are."
+
+"Doesn't care, you mean."
+
+"Do you want me quite naked?" said Laura. "Well, doesn't care,
+then."
+
+Yvonne was not accustomed to the smart of pity.  She winced under
+it, and her tongue, an edge-tool of intelligence or passion, but
+not naturally prone to express tenderness, became more than ever
+articulate.  "Sorry!" she said with difficulty, and then, "Didn't
+want to rake all this up.  But I'm fond of you.  We've always
+been pals, you and I, Lulu."
+
+"Say whatever you like."
+
+"Then--" she sat up, throwing away her cigarette-"I'm going to
+warn you.  All Chilmark believes Lawrence is your lover."
+
+"And do you?"
+
+"No.  I know you wouldn't run an intrigue."
+
+"Thank you."
+
+"But Jack and I both think, if you don't want to cut and run with
+him, you ought to pack him off.  Mind, if you do want to, you can
+count me in, and Jack too.  I'm not religious: Jack is, but he's
+not narrow.  As for the social bother of it--marriage is a
+useful institution and all that, but it's perfectly obvious that
+one can get--over the rails and back again if one has money.
+There aren't twenty houses (worth going to) in London that would
+cut you if you turned up properly remarried to a rich man."
+
+"Are you . . . recommending this course?"
+
+"I'd like you to be happy."
+
+"And what about Bernard?"
+
+"Put in a couple of good trained nurses who wouldn't give him his
+head as you do, and he'd be a different man by the spring."
+
+"He certainly would," said Laura drily.  "He would be dead."
+
+"Not he.  He's far too strong to die of being made uncomfortable.
+As a matter of fact it would do him all the good in the world,"
+pursued Yvonne calmly.  "He cries out to be bullied.  What's so
+irritating in the present situation is that though you let him
+rack you to pieces you never give him what he wants!  You don't
+shine as a wife, my dear."
+
+"It will end in my sending Lawrence away," said Laura with a subdued
+sigh.  "I didn't want to because in many ways he has done Bernard so
+much good; no one else has ever had the same influence over him;
+besides, I liked having him at Wanhope for my own sake--he freshened
+us up and gave us different things to talk about, outside interests,
+new ideas.  And after all, so far as Bernard himself is concerned,
+one is as good as another.  He always has been jealous and always
+will be.   But if all Chilmark credits us with the rather ignominious
+feat of betraying him, Lawrence will have to go."
+
+"Lawrence may have something to say to that."
+
+"He's not in love with me." Yvonne's eyes widened in genuine
+scepticism.--"Oh dear, as if I shouldn't know!" Laura broke out
+petulantly.  Might not Yvonne have remembered that, in the days
+when they were living together in a French appartement, Laura's
+experience had been pretty nearly as wide as her own?  "He is
+not, I tell you! nor I with him.  But, if we were, I shouldn't
+desert Bernard. I do not believe in your two highly trained
+nurses. I don't think you much believe in them yourself.  They
+might break him in, because nurses are drilled to deal with
+tiresome and unmanageable patients, but it would be worse for
+him, not better.  He rebels fiercely enough now, but if I weren't
+there he would rebel still more fiercely, and all the rage and
+humiliation would have no outlet.  You want me to be happy?  We
+Selincourts are so quick to seize happiness!  Father did it . . .
+and Lucian does it:  dear Lulu!  We both love him, but it's
+difficult to be proud of him.  Yet he has good qualities, good
+abilities.  He's far cleverer than I am, and so are you," Laura's
+tone was diffident, "but oh, you are wrong in thinking so much of
+mere happiness.  There is an immense amount of pain in the world,
+and if one doesn't bear one's own share it falls on some one
+else.  My life with Bernard isn't--always easy," she found a
+momentary difficulty in controlling her voice, "but he's my
+husband and I shall stick to him.  The more so for being deeply
+conscious that a different woman might manage him better.  No I
+don't mind your saying it.  Oh, how often I've felt the truth of
+it!  But, such as I am, I'm all he has."
+
+"You're a thousand times too good for him.  Why are you so good?"
+
+"I'm not good and no more is Lulu."  Mrs. Bendish sighed,
+impressed perhaps by Laura's alien moralities, certainly by her
+determination.  "However, if you won't you won't, and in a way
+I'm glad, selfishly that is, because of Jack's people.  But in
+that case, dear girl, do get rid of Lawrence!  The situation
+strikes me as fraught with danger.  One of those situations where
+every one says something's sure to happen, and then they're all
+flabbergasted when it does."
+
+"Bernard is not a formidable enemy," said Mrs. Clowes drily.
+"But, yes, Lawrence must go.  I'll speak to him tomorrow."
+
+"Why not today?"
+
+"It would spoil our evening."
+
+"Give it up."
+
+"And disappoint Isabel?"
+
+"I don't like it."
+
+"Nor I. But I was forced into it, and I can't break my word to
+Lawrence and the child.  After all, there's no great odds between
+today and tomorrow.  What can happen in twenty-four hours?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+In after life, when Isabel was destined to look back on that day
+as the last day of her youth, she recalled no part of it more
+clearly than wandering up to her own room after an early tea to
+dress, and flinging herself down on her bed instead of dressing.
+She slept next to Val.  But while Val's room, sailor-like in
+its neatness, was bare as any garret and got no sun at all,
+Isabel's was comfortable in a shabby way and faced south and west
+over the garden: an autumn garden now, bathed in westering
+sunshine, fortified from the valley by a carved gold height of
+beech trees, open on every other side over sunburnt moorland pale
+and rough as a stubble-field in its autumn feathering of light
+brown grasses and seedling flowers aflicker in a west wind.
+Tonight however Isabel saw nothing of it, she lay as if asleep,
+her face hidden in her pillow: she, the most active person in the
+house, who was never tired like Val nor lazy like Rowsley!
+Conscience pricked her, but she was muffled so thick in happiness
+that she scarcely felt it: the fancies that floated into her mind
+frightened her, and yet they were too sweet to banish: and then
+after all were they wrong?
+
+Always on clear evenings the sun flung a great ray across her
+wall, turning the faded pale green paper into a liquid gold-green
+like sunlit water, evoking a dusty gleam from her mirror, and
+deepening the shadows in an old mezzo tint of Botticelli's Spring
+which was pinned up where she could gaze at it while she brushed
+her hair.  The room thus illumined was that of a young girl with
+little time to spare and less money, and an ungrown individual
+taste not yet critical enough to throw off early loyalties.
+There were no other pictures, except an engraving of "The Light
+of the World," given her by Val, who admired it.  There was a
+tall bookcase, the top shelves devoted to Sweet's "Anglo-Saxon
+Reader," Lanson's "Histoire de la litterature Francaise," and
+other textbooks that she was reading for her examination in
+October, the lower a ragged regiment of novels and verse--"The
+Three Musketeers," "Typhoon," "Many Inventions," Landor's
+"Hellenics," "with fondest love from Laura," "Une Vie" and "Fort
+comme la Mort" in yellow and initialled "Y.B." There were also a big
+table strewn with papers and books, and a chintz covered box-ottoman
+into which Isabel bundled all those rubbishing treasures that people
+who love their past can never make up their weak minds to throw away.
+She examined them all in the stream of gold sunlight as if she had
+never seen them before.  It was time to get up and arrange her hair
+and change into her lace petticoats. If she did not get up at once
+she would be late and they would lose their train.  And it seemed to
+her that she would die if they lost their train, that she never could
+survive such a disappointment: and yet she could not bring herself to
+get up and give over dreaming.
+
+And what dreams they were, oh! what would Val say to them?--And
+yet again after all were they so wicked?--They were incredibly
+naif and innocent, and so dim that within twenty-four hours
+Isabel was to look back on them as a woman looks back on her
+childhood.  She was not ignorant of the mysteries of birth and
+death.  She had lived all her life among the poor, and knew many
+things which are not included in school curricula, such as the
+gentle art of keeping children's hair clean, how to divide a
+four-roomed cottage between a man and wife and six children and a
+lodger, and what to say when shown "a beautiful corpse": but she
+had never had a lover of her own.  There were no marriageable men
+in Chilmark--there never are in an English village--and she was
+too young for Rowsley's brother officers, or they were too young
+for her.  She had dreamed of fairy princes (blases-men-of-the-world,
+mostly in the Guards or the diplomatic service), but it was never
+precisely Isabel Stafford whom they clasped to their hearts--no, it
+was LaSignora Isabella, the star of Covent Garden, or the Lady Isabel
+de Stafford, a Duke's daughter in disguise.  And Lawrence came to her
+in the mantle of these patrician ghosts.
+
+But--and at this point Isabel hid her face on her arm--he was no
+ghost: he knew what he wanted and he meant to have it: and it was a
+far cry from visionary Heroes to Lawrence Hyde in the flesh, son of a
+Jew, smelling of cigar-smoke, and taking hold of her with his large,
+fair, overmanicured hands.  A far cry even from Val or Jack Bendish:
+from the cool, mannered Englishman to the hot Oriental blood.  When
+people were engaged they often kissed each other . . . but when it
+came to imagining oneself . . . one's head against that thick
+tweed . . . no . . . it must be one of the things that are safe to do
+but dangerous to dream of doing.  Oh, never, never!--But she had been
+trained in sincerity: and was this cry sincere?  Her mind was chaos.
+
+And yet after all why dangerous?  Even Laura, Val's adored Laura,
+had been engaged twice before she married Major Clowes: as for
+Yvonne, Isabel felt sure she had been kissed many times, and not
+by Jack Bendish only.  Such things happen, then! in real life,
+not only in books.  As for the cigars and the valet . . . and
+Val's warnings . . . one can't have all one wants in this world!
+It contains no ideal heroes: what was it Yvonne had once said?
+"Every marriage is either a delusion or a compromise." And Isabel
+had shortcomings enough of her own: she was irritable, lazy,
+selfish: read novels when she ought to have been at her lessons:
+left household jobs undone in the certainty that Val, however
+tired he was, would do them for her: small sins, but then her
+temptations were small!  Take it by and large, she was probably
+no better than Captain Hyde except for want of opportunity.  And
+how he would laugh if he heard her say so!
+
+She liked him for laughing.  She had been brought up in an
+atmosphere of scruple.  Her father overworked his conscience,
+treating a question of taste as a moral issue, and drawing no
+line between great and small--like the man who gave a penny to a
+beggar and implored him not to spend it on debauchery.  Charity
+and a sense of fun saved Val, but if more lenient to others he
+was ruthlessly stern to himself.  Lawrence blew on Isabel like a
+breath of sea air.  In her reaction she liked his external
+characteristics, his manner to servants, his expensive clothes
+and boots, all the signs of money spent freely on himself.
+
+She even liked his politics.  Isabel had been brought up all her
+life to talk politics.  Mr. Stafford was a Christian Socialist, a
+creed which in her private opinion was nicely calculated to
+produce the maximum of human discomfort: and from a conversation
+between Hyde and Jack Bendish she had learnt that Hyde was all of
+her own view.  There was no nonsense about him--none of that
+sweet blind altruism which, as Isabel saw it, only made the
+altruist and his family so bitterly uncomfortable without doing
+any good to the poor. The poor?  She knew intuitively that
+servants and porters and waiters would far rather serve Hyde than
+her father.  Mr. Stafford longed to uplift the working classes,
+but Isabel had never got herself thoroughly convinced that they
+stood in need of uplifting.  Her practical common sense rose in
+arms against Movements that tried to get them to go to picture
+galleries instead of picture palaces. Why shouldn't they do as
+they liked?   Does one reform one's friends?  Captain Hyde would
+live and let live.
+
+And he was rich.  Few girls as cramped as Isabel could have
+remained blind to that wide horizon, and she made no pretence of
+doing so: she was honest with herself and owned that she had
+always longed to be rich.  No one could call her discontented!
+her happy sunny temper took life as it came and enjoyed every
+minute of it, but her tastes were not really simple, though Val
+thought they were.  She had long felt a clear though perfectly
+good-humoured and philosophic impatience of her narrow scope.
+Hyde could give her all and more than all she had ever desired--
+foreign countries and fine clothes, books and paintings, and
+power apparently and the admiration of men . . . Isabel Hyde
+. . . Mrs. Lawrence Hyde . . . .smiling she tried his name under
+her breath . . .and suddenly she found herself standing before
+the mirror, examining her face in its dusky shallows and asking
+of it the question that has perplexed many a young girl as
+beautiful as she--"Am I pretty?" She pulled the pins out of her
+hair and ran a comb through it till it fell this way and that
+like an Indian veil, darkly burnished and sunset-shot with
+threads of bronze.  "Lawrence has never seen it loose," she
+reflected: "surely I am rather pretty?" and then "Oh, oh, I shall
+be late!" and Isabel's dreams were drenched and scattered under
+the shock of cold water.
+
+Dreamlike the run through the warm September landscape: dreamlike
+the slip of country platform, where, while Lawrence took their
+tickets, she and Laura walked up and down and fingered the tall
+hollyhocks flowering upward in quilled rosettes of lemon-yellow
+and coral red, like paper lanterns lit by a fairy lamplighter on
+a spiral stair: and most dreamlike of all the discovery that the
+Exeter express had been flagged for them and that she was
+expected to precede Laura into a reserved first class carriage.
+It was not more than once or twice in a year that Isabel went by
+train, and she had never travelled but third class in her life.
+How smoothly life runs for those who have great possessions!  How
+polite the railway staff were!  The station master himself held
+open the door for the Wanhope party.  Now she knew Mr. Chivers
+very well, but in all previous intercourse one finger to his cap
+had been enough for young Miss Isabel.  Certainly it was
+agreeable, this hothouse atmosphere.  "Shall you feel cold?"
+Lawrence asked, and Isabel, murmuring "No, thank you," blushed in
+response to the touch of formality in his manner.  She felt what
+women often feel in the early stages of a love affair, that he
+had been nearer to her when he was not there, than now when they
+were together in the presence of a third person.  She had grown
+shy and strange before this careless composed man lounging
+opposite her with his light overcoat thrown open and his crush
+hat on his knees, conventionally polite, his long legs stretched
+out sideways to give her and Laura plenty of room.
+
+And Lawrence on the journey neither spoke to her nor watched her,
+though Isabel shone in borrowed plumes.  There had been no time
+to buy clothes, and so Val, though grudgingly, had allowed Laura
+and Yvonne to ransack their shelves and presses for Cinderella's
+adornment.  But one glance had painted her portrait for him, tall
+and slender in a long sealskin coat of Yvonne's which was rulled
+and collared and flounced with fur, her glossy hair parted on one
+side and drawn back into what she called a soup-plate of plaits.
+Once only he directly addressed her, when Laura loosened her own
+sables.  "Do undo your coat, won't you?  It's hot tonight for
+September."
+
+"I'm not hot, thank you," said Isabel stiffly: but slowly, as if
+against her will, she opened the collar of her coat and pushed it
+back from her young neck and the crossed folds of her lace gown.
+The gown was very old, it had indeed belonged to Laura Selincourt: it
+was because Laura loved its soft, graceful, dateless lines that it
+had survived so long. She had seized on it with her unerring tact:
+this was right for Isabel, this dim transparency of rosepoint
+modelling itself over the immature slenderness of nineteen: and she
+and her maid Catherine and Mrs. Bendish had spent patient hours
+trying it on and modifying it to suit the fashion of the day.  Laura
+had refused to impose upon Isabel either her own modish elegance or
+Yvonne's effect of the arresting and bizarre.  "Isn't she almost too
+slight for it?"  Yvonne had asked, and Laura for all answer had
+hummed a little French song--
+
+          'Mignonne allons voir si la rose
+           Qui ce matin avoit desclose
+           Sa robe de pourpre au soleil
+           A point perdu ceste vespree
+           I as plis de sa robe pourpree
+           Et son teint au votre pareil . . .'
+
+She discerned in Isabel that quality of beauty, noble, spirited,
+and yet wistful, which requires a most expensive setting of
+simplicity.  And that was why Isabel opened her coat.  If Captain
+Hyde had admired her in her Chilmark muslin, what would he think
+of flounce and fold of rose-point of Alencon under Yvonne's
+perfumed furs?  And then she blushed again because the yearning
+in his eyes made her wonder if he cared after all whether she
+wore lace or cotton.  Everything was so strange!
+
+Strangest of all it was, to the brink of unreality, that Laura
+evidently remained blind.  But Laura was always blind.  "Why, she
+never even sees Val!" reflected Isabel scornfully.  And yet--
+suppose Isabel were deceiving herself?  What if Captain Hyde were
+not in earnest?  But her older self comforted her child's self:
+careless was he, and composed?  "You were not always so composed,
+Lawrence," in her own mind the elder Isabel mocked him with her
+sparkling eyes.
+
+Waterloo, lamplit and resonant: the pulsing of many lamps, the
+hurry of many steps, the flitting by of many faces under an arch
+of gloom: dark quiet and the scent of violets in a waiting car.
+
+"What a jolly taxi!" Isabel exclaimed.  "I never was in a taxi
+like this before.  Is it a more expensive kind?"
+
+"My dear Lawrence, you certainly have the art of making your life
+run on wheels!" said Laura smiling.  "How many telegrams have you
+sent today?"
+
+"If you do a thing at all you may as well do it in decent
+comfort," Lawrence replied sententiously. "Half past seven;
+that'll give us easy time!  I booked a table at Malvani's, I
+thought you would prefer it to one of the big crowded shows."
+
+"Are we going to have supper--dinner I mean--at a restaurant?"
+asked Isabel awestruck.
+
+Laurance smiled at her with irrepressible tenderness.  "Did you
+think you weren't going to get anything to eat at all?" He
+forbore to remind her of her unfortunate allusion to sandwiches--
+for which Isabel was grateful to him.  "Aren't you hungry?"
+
+"Oh yes: but then I often am.  Is Malvani's a very quiet place?"
+
+Lawrence looked at Laura with a comical expression.  "What an ass
+I was!  Wouldn't the Ritz have been more to the point?"
+
+"Never mind, sweetheart," said Laura.  "Malvani's isn't dowdily
+quiet.  It's the smartest of the smart, and there are always a
+lot of distinguished people in it.  Dear me, how long it is since
+I've dined in town!  Really it's great fun, I feel as if I had
+come out of a tomb--" she checked herself: but she might have
+been as indiscreet as she liked, for her companions were not
+listening.  Laura was faintly, very faintly startled by their
+attitude--Hyde leaning forward in the half-light of the brougham
+to button Isabel's glove--but she was soon smiling at her own
+fancy. "Poor Isabel, poor simple Isabel!" She was only a child
+after all.
+
+A child, but a very gay and winning child, when she came into
+Malvani's with her long swaying step, direct glance, and joyous
+mouth.  A spirit of excitement sparkled in Isabel tonight, and
+every movement was a separate and conscious pleasure to her: the
+physical sensation of walking delicately, the ripple of her skirt
+over her ankles, the poise of her shoulders under their
+transparent veil. . . . Laura saw a dozen men turn to look after
+the Wanhope party, and took no credit for it, though not long ago
+she had been accustomed to be watched when she moved through a
+public room.  But now she was better pleased to see Isabel
+admired than to be admired herself.
+
+As they neared their reserved table a man who had been sitting at
+it rose with an amused smile. "Have you forgotten who I am,
+Laura?"
+
+"One might as well be even numbers," Lawrence explained.  "So, as
+I knew Selincourt was in town, I wired to him to join us."
+
+A worn, fatigued-looking, but not ungentle rake of forty,
+Selincourt had stayed once at Wanhope, but the visit had not been
+a success: indeed Laura had been thankful when it ended before
+host and guest threw the decanters at each other's heads. That
+she was pleased to see him now there could be no doubt: she had
+taken him by both hands and was smiling at him as if she would
+have liked to fling decorum to the winds and kiss him.  Lawrence
+also smiled but with a touch of finesse.  His plan was working.
+Laura was going to enjoy herself: bon! he was truly fond of Laura
+and delighted to give her pleasure.  But by it he would be left
+free to devote himself to Isabel.
+
+It was to this end that he had planned the entire expedition.  At
+Chilmark they met continually in the same setting, and he had no
+means of printing a fresh image of himself on her mind, but here
+he was free of country customs, a rich man among his equals, an
+expert in the art of "doing oneself well"--one of those who rule
+over modern civilization by divine right of a chequebook and a
+trained manner.  Isabel had been brought up by High Churchmen,
+had she?  Let them test what hold they had of her!  Every aspect
+of their journey and of the supper-table at Malvani's, with its
+heady music and smell of rich food and wines, had been calculated
+to produce a certain effect--an intoxication of excitement and
+pleasure.  And he set himself to stamp his own impression on
+Isabel, naming to her, in his soft, isolating undertones, the
+notable men and women in the room, describing their careers,
+their finances, even their scandals--it amused him to watch her
+repress a start.  It amused him still more to stand up and shake
+hands when the immense body and Hebraic nose of an international
+financier went by with two great ladies and a cabinet minister in
+tow.  "One of my countrymen," Hyde turned to Isabel with a
+mocking smile. "I am a citizen of no mean city.  Those--" with an
+imperceptible jerk of the head--"would lick the dust off his
+boots to find out what line the Jew bankers mean to take in the
+Syrian question.  They might as well lick mine."
+
+"Why, do you know?" breathed Isabel.
+
+"Verily, O Gentile maiden." Lawrence grinned at her over his
+champagne.  "I lunched Raphael last time I was in town and he
+told me all about it. But I shouldn't tell them.  It isn't good
+for Gentiles to know too much about Weltpotitik. That's our
+show." He leant back in his chair and his hot eyes challenged her
+to call him a dirty Jew.
+
+Selincourt caught his last remark and looked him up and down with
+a twinkling glance.  He no longer wondered why Lawrence had spent
+his summer in the tents of Kedar--so differently do brothers
+look on their own and other men's sisters.  But he knew men and
+things pretty well, and at a moment when Laura was speaking to
+Isabel he looked straight at Lawrence and touched his glass with
+a murmured, "Go slow, old man." The elder man had seen instantly
+what neither Mrs. Clowes nor Isabel had any notion of, that under
+his easy manner Hyde's nerves were all on edge.  Lawrence started
+and stared at him, half offended: but after a moment his good
+sense extorted a grudging "Thanks." It warned him to be grateful
+for the hint, and he took it: a second glass of champagne that
+night would infallibly have gone to his head.
+
+A darkened theatre, fantastically decorated in scarlet and
+silver: a French orchestra already playing a delicate prelude: a
+lively audience--a typical "Moor" audience--agreeably ready to
+be piqued and scandalized as well as amused.
+
+All the plays Isabel had ever seen were Salisbury matinees of
+"As You Like It" and "Julius Caesar." It was not by chance that
+Hyde introduced her tonight to this filigree comedy, so cynical
+under its glittering dialogue.  He could find no swifter way to
+present to her le monde ou l'on s'amuse in all its refined and
+defiant charm.  He liked to watch her laugh, he laughed himself
+and gave a languid clap or two when Madeleine Wild made one of
+her famous entries, but his main interest was in his plan of
+campaign.
+
+Yet chance can never he counted out.  When the lights went up
+after the first act Lawrence found himself looking directly
+across the rather small and narrow proscenium at a lady in the
+opposite box.  Who the devil was it?--The devil, with a
+vengeance!  It was Mrs. Cleve.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+Conscious to his fingertips that Selincourt was watching him with
+an amused smile, Lawrence returned Mrs. Cleve's nod with less
+than his usual ease.  Her eye ranged on from Selincourt, to whom
+she waved a butterfly salute, over the rather faded elegance of
+Laura Clowes and the extremely youthful charms of Isabel:
+apparently she did not admire Lawrence's ladies: she spoke to her
+cavalier, an elderly, foreign-looking man with a copper complexion
+and curly dark hair, and they laughed together.  What ensued between
+them was not difficult to follow.  She made him a request, he rolled
+plaintive eyeballs at her, the lady carried her point, the gentleman
+left the box.  Then--one saw it coming--she leaned forward till the
+diamonds in her plenitude of fair hair sparkled like a crown of
+flame, and beckoned Lawrence to join her.
+
+He cursed her impertinence.  Apart from leaving Isabel, he did
+not want to talk to Mrs. Cleve: he had forgotten her existence,
+and it was a shock to him to meet her again.  Good heavens, had
+he ever admired her?  That white blanc-mange of a woman in her
+ruby-red French gown, cut open lower than one of Yvonne's without
+the saying of Yvonne's wiry slimness?  Remembering the summerhouse at
+Bingley Lawrence blushed with shame, not for his morals but for his
+taste:  he was thankful to have gone no further and wondered why he
+had gone so far.--He had not yet realized that during three months
+among women of a different stamp his taste had imperceptibly modified
+itself from day to day.
+
+But she had been his hostess.  Impossible to refuse: and with a
+vexed word of apology to Laura he went out.  "Dear me, what an
+opulent lady!" said Laura with lifted eyebrows.  "Who's your
+friend, Lulu?"
+
+Lucian drily named her.  "Queen's Gate, and Sundays at the
+Metropole.  They're shipping people, which is where the diamond
+ta-ra-ras come from.  Oh yes, there's a husband, quite a nice
+fellow, crocked in the Flying Corps. No, I don't know who the
+chap is she's got with her.  Some dusky brother.  Not Cleve." He
+fell silent as Lawrence appeared in the opposite box.
+
+It was an odd scene to watch in dumbshow.  Mrs. Cleve shook
+hands, and Lawrence was held for more than the conventional
+moment. He remained standing till she pointed to her cavalier's
+empty chair: then dropped into it, but sat forward leaning his
+aim along the balcony, while she, drawn back behind her curtain,
+was almost drowned in shadow except for an occasional flash of
+diamonds, or an opaque gleam of white and dimpled neck.  An
+interlude entirely decorous, and yet, so crude was the force of
+Philippa's personality, one would have had to be very young, or
+very innocent, to overlook her drift.
+
+"Well, my darling," said Laura, "and what do you think of
+Madeleine Wild?" She did not wish Isabel to watch Mrs. Cleve.
+"Is she as nice as your Salisbury Rosalind?"
+
+"Angelical!" said Isabel.  "And isn't it luck for me, Royalty
+coming tonight?  I've never seen any one Royal before.  It's one
+of those evenings when nothing goes wrong."
+
+Was not Isabel a trifle too guileless for this wicked world?  She
+prattled on, Selincourt and Laura lending an indulgent ear,
+Selincourt, like any other man of his type, touched by her
+innocence, Laura faintly irritated: and meanwhile Isabel through
+her black lashes watched, not the Duchess of Cumberland's rubies,
+but those two in the opposite box.  Between it and her stretched
+a beautiful woodland drop-scene, the glitter of the stalls, and
+the murmur of violins humming through the rising flames of the
+Feuerzauber . . . presently the Fire Charm eddied away and the
+lights went down, yet still Lawrence sat on though the interval
+was over.  Across the semi-dark of a "Courtyard by Moonlight" it
+was hard to distinguish anything but the silhouette of his hand
+and arm, and Mrs. Cleve's fair hair and immense jewelled fan.
+What were they saying to each other in this public isolation
+where anything might be said so long as decorum was preserved?
+
+Selincourt gave a little laugh as the curtain rose. "An old
+flame," he whispered to Laura, not dreaming that Isabel would
+understand even if she heard.
+
+"What's an old flame?" asked Isabel, examining him with her
+brilliant eyes.
+
+"Feuerzauber," said Selincourt readily.  "It means fire spell.
+It's often played between the acts."
+
+"Lucian, Lucian!" said his sister laughing.
+
+"I don't know much about music," said Isabel. "Was it well
+played?"
+
+"Ah! I know a lot about music," said Selincourt, looking at her
+very kindly.  "No, it was rottenly played.  But some fellers
+can't tell a good tune from a bad one."
+
+Lawrence did not return till the middle of the third act, and
+offered no apology.  He looked fierce and jaded and his eyes were
+strained.  "Past eleven," he said, hurrying Laura into her coat
+while the orchestra played through the National Anthem, for which
+Selincourt stood stiffly to attention.  "No time for supper, our
+train goes at 11:59, I hate first nights, the waits between the
+acts are so infernally long." Laura's eyebrows, faintly arched,
+hinted at derision.  "Oh, it dragged," said Lawrence impatiently.
+"Let's get out of this."
+
+It was a clear autumn night: the air was mild, and stars were
+burning overhead almost as brightly as the lamps in Shaftesbury
+Avenue.  What a chase of lamps, high and low, like fireflies in a
+wood: green as grass, red as blood, or yellow as a naked flame!
+What a sombre city, and what a fleeting crowd!  Isabel had never
+seen midnight London before.  Coming out into the hurrying street
+roofed with stars, she was seized by an impression of a solitude
+lonelier than any desert, and dark, like the terror of an eerie
+sunset or a dry storm on the moor.
+
+"These taxis are waiting for us," Lawrence had come up behind her
+and his hand was on her arm. "Will you bring your sister,
+Selincourt?--  Miss Isabel, will you come with me?"
+
+"Oh but--!" said Laura, startled. She was responsible to Val for
+Isabel, and she was not sure that either Val or Isabel would
+welcome this arrangement.
+
+"Thank you," said Isabel, obediently getting into the second cab.
+
+"Better come, dear," said Selincourt with a shrug, and Laura
+yielded, for it would have been tiresome to make Isabel get out
+again, and after all what signified a twenty minutes' run?  Yet
+after the Cleve incident she did not quite like it.  Nor did
+Selincourt; Hyde's overbearing manner set his teeth on edge; but
+the gentle Lucian would sooner have faced a loaded rifle than a
+dispute.   He agreed with Laura, however, that her fair Arcadian
+was a trifle too innocent for her years.
+
+Alone with Isabel, Lawrence took off his hat and ran his fingers
+through his thick fair hair, so thick that it might have been
+grey, while the deep lines round his mouth began to soften as
+though fatigue and irritation were being wiped away.  "Thank
+heaven that's over."
+
+"I've enjoyed every minute of it," said Isabel smiling.  "Thank
+you, Captain Hyde, for giving me such a delightful treat!  If I
+weren't sleepy I should like to begin again."
+
+"Oh, don't get sleepy yet," said Lawrence.  He pulled up the fur
+collar of her coat and buttoned it under her chin.  "I can't have
+you catching cold, or what will Val say?  You aren't used to
+driving about in evening dress and we've a long run before us.
+And how I have been longing for it all the evening, haven't you?
+I didn't know how to sit through that confounded play.  Yes, you
+can take in Selincourt and Laura but you can't take me in. I know
+you must have hated it as much as I did. But it's all right now."
+Sitting sideways with one knee crossed over the other, his face
+turned towards Isabel, without warning he put his arm round her
+waist.  He had determined not to ask her to marry him till he was
+sure of her answer, but he was sure of it now, intuitively sure
+of it . . . the truth being that under his impassive manner
+impulse was driving him along like a leaf in the wind.  "I love
+you, Isabel, and you love me.  Don't deny it."
+
+"Don't do that," said Isabel: "don't hold me."
+
+"Why not? no one can see us."
+
+"Take your arm away.  I won't have you hold me. No, Captain Hyde,
+I will not.  I am not Mrs. Cleve."
+
+"Isabel!" said Lawrence, turning grey under his bronze.
+
+"O! I oughtn't to have said that," Isabel murmured.  She hid her
+face in her hands.  "Oh Val--  I wish Val were here!"
+
+"My darling," they were among the dark streets now that border
+the river, and he leant forward making no effort to conceal his
+tenderness, "what is there you can't say to me or I to you?
+You're so strange, my Isabel, a child one minute and a woman the
+next, I never know where to have you, but I love the woman more
+than the child, and there's nothing on earth you need be ashamed
+to ask me.  Naturally you want to be sure. . . . But there was
+nothing in it except that I hated leaving you, there never has
+been; I can't discuss it, but there's no tie, no--do you
+understand?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then, dearest darling of the world, what are you crying for?"
+
+"I'm not crying." She tried to face him, but he was too old for
+her, and mingling in his love she discerned indulgence, the
+seasoned judgment and the fixed view.  Struggling in imperfect
+apprehensions of life, she was not yet master of her forces--
+they came near to mastering her.  In his eyes it was natural for
+her to be jealous.  But she was not jealous.  That passion can
+hardly coexist with such sincere and cool contempt as she had
+felt for Mrs. Cleve.  What had pierced her heart and killed her
+childhood in her was terror lest Lawrence should turn out to have
+lowered himself to the same level.  She knew now that she loved
+him, and too much to care whether he was Saxon or Jew or rich or
+poor, but he must--he must be what in her child's vocabulary she
+called "good," or if not that he must at least see good and bad
+with clear eyes: sins one can pardon, but the idea of any
+essential inferiority of taste was torture to her.  And meanwhile
+Lawrence wide of the mark began to coax her. . "My own," his arm
+stole inside her coat again, "there's nothing to get so red
+about! Come, you do like me--confess now--you like me better
+than Val?"
+
+"No, no," Isabel murmured, and slowly, though she had not
+strength to free herself, she turned her head away.  "If you kiss
+me now I never shall forgive you."
+
+"I won't, but why are you so shy?  My Isabel, what is there to be
+afraid of?"
+
+"You," Isabel sighed out.  He was gratified, and betrayed it.  "No,
+Lawrence, you misunderstand. I am not--not shy of you . . ."  Under
+his mocking eyes she gave it up and tried again.  "Well, I am, but
+if that were all I shouldn't refuse . . . I should like you to be
+happy.  Oh! yes, I love you, and I'd so far rather not fight, I'd
+rather--" she waited a moment like a swimmer on the sand's edge, but
+his deep need of her carried her away and with a little sigh she
+flung herself into the open sea--"let you kiss me, because I don't
+want anything so much as to make you happy, and I believe you would
+be, and besides I--I should like it myself.  But I must know more.
+I must know the truth.  She--Mrs. Cleve--"
+
+"I've already given you my word: do you think I would lie to
+you?"
+
+"No, I don't; they say men do, but I'm sure you wouldn't.  I
+don't believe you ever would deceive me. But there have been
+other women, haven't there, since your wife left you?" Lawrence
+assented briefly.  At that moment he would have liked to see Mrs.
+Cleve hanged and drawn and quartered.  "Other women who were--
+who--with whom--"
+
+"Must you distress yourself like this?  Wouldn't it do if I
+promised to lay my record before Val, and let him be judge?"
+
+"Would you do that?"
+
+"If you wish it."
+
+"Wouldn't you hate it?"
+
+Lawrence smiled.
+
+"And I should hate it for you,", said Isabel. "No: no one can
+judge you for me and no one shall try.  I know you better than
+Val ever would. No, if you're to be humiliated it shall be before
+me and me only."  She brought the colour into his face.  "There
+have been others, Lawrence?"
+
+"My dear, I've lived the life of other men."
+
+"Do all men live so?"
+
+"Pretty well all."
+
+"Does Val?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.  "His facilities are limited!"
+
+"He did once--might again?"
+
+"Couldn't we confine the issue to ourselves?"
+
+"Are you afraid of my misjudging Val? I never should: my dearest
+darling Val is a fixed standard for me, and nothing could alter
+the way I think of him."
+
+"Don't challenge luck," Lawrence muttered.
+
+"I'm not, it's true.  I'm surer of Val than I am of myself, or
+you, or the sun's rising tomorrow.  All I want is to cheek you by
+him."
+
+"Val is genuinely religious and a bit of an ascetic.  I have no
+doubt that his life is now and will continue to be spotless.  But
+that it was always so is most unlikely.  Army subalterns during
+the war were given no end of a good time.  And quite right too,
+it was the least that could be done for us: and the most, in nine
+cases out of ten: personally I had no use for munition workers in
+mud-coloured overalls, but I still remember with gratitude the
+nymphs who decorated my week end leaves."
+
+Isabel shivered: the hand that he was holding had grown icy cold.
+
+"There, you see!" said Hyde with his saddened cynicism.  "You
+will have it all out but you can't stand it when it comes.  You
+had better have left it to Val: not but what I'd rather talk to
+you, but I hate to distress you, and you're not old enough yet,
+my darling, to see these trivial things--yes, trivial to nine-tenths
+of the world: it's only the clergy, and unmarried women, and a small
+number of hyper-sensitives like Val, who attach an importance to them
+that they don't deserve.  But you're too young to see them in
+perspective.  Try to do it for my sake.  Try to see me as I am."
+
+"Well, show me then."
+
+But what he showed her was not himself but the aspect of himself
+that he wished her to see--a very different matter.  "I'm too
+old for you.  I'm the son of a Jew, and a Houndsditch Jew at
+that.  But I'm rich--what's called rich in my set--and when I
+marry I shan't keep my wife dependent on me.  Ah! don't
+misunderstand me--yours is a rich manysided nature, and you're
+too intelligent to underrate the value of money.  It means a wide
+life and lots of interests, books, pictures, music, travel,
+mixing with the men and women best worth knowing.  You're
+ambitious, my dear, and as my wife you can build yourself up any
+social position you like.  Farringay's not as big as Wharton, but
+on my soul it's more perfect in its way.  I've never seen such
+panelling in my life, and the gardens are admittedly the most
+beautiful in Dorsetshire.  There are Sevres services more
+precious than gold plate, and if you come to that there's gold
+plate into the bargain.  Can't I see you there as chatelaine,
+entertaining the county!  You'll wear the sapphires my mother
+wore; the old man couldn't have been more happily inspired,
+they're the very colour of your eyes.  And there'll be no price
+to pay, for since I'm a Jew and a cosmopolitan, and not a country
+squire, you'll keep your personal freedom inviolate.  You'll give
+what you will, when you will, as you will.  Any other terms are
+to my mind unthinkable--a brutalizing of what ought to be the
+most delicate of things.  Heavens, how I hate a middleclass
+English marriage!  Ah! but I'm not so accommodating as I sound,
+for you won't be a grudging giver; you're not an ascetic like
+Val, there's passion in you though you've been trained to repress
+it, you'll soon learn what love means as we understand it in the
+sunny countries. . . . Isabel, my Isabel, when we get away from
+these grey English skies you won't refuse to let me kiss
+you. . ."
+
+Isabel had ceased to listen.  Without her own will a scene had sprung
+up before her eyes: an imaginary scene, like one of those romantic
+adventures that she had invented a thousand times before--but this
+was not romantic nor was she precisely the heroine. A foreign hotel
+with long corridors and many rooms: a door thoughtlessly left ajar:
+and through it a glimpse of Lawrence--her husband--holding another
+woman in his arms.  It was lifelike, she could have counted the buds
+embroidered on the girl's blouse, their rose-pink reflected in the
+hot flush on Hyde's cheek and the glow in his eyes as he stooped over
+her.  And then the imaginary Isabel with a pain at her heart like the
+stab of a knife, and a smile of inexpressible self-contempt on her
+lips, noiselessly closed the door so that no one else might see what
+she had seen, and left him. . . . It would all happen one day, if not
+that way, some other way; and he would come to her by and by without
+explanation--she was convinced that he would not lie to her--smiling,
+the hot glow still on his face, a subdued air of well-being diffused
+over him from head to foot--and then?  The vision faded; her
+clairvoyance, which had already carried her far beyond her
+experience, broke down in sheer anguish.  But reason took it up and
+told her that she would speak to him, and that he would apologize and
+she would forgive him--and that it would all happen again the next
+time temptation met him in a weak hour.
+
+Faithful? it was not in him to be faithful: with so much that was
+generous and gallant, there was this vice of taste in him which
+had offended her that first morning on the moor and again at
+night in Laura's garden, and which now led him to make love to
+her when she was under his protection and while the scent of Mrs.
+Cleve's flowers still clung to his coat.  And what love! if he
+had simply spoken to her out of his need of her, one would not
+have known how to resist, but it was he who was to be the giver,
+and what he offered was the measure of what he desired--a lesson
+in passion and a liberal allowance. . . .
+
+"O no, no, no, I can't!" Isabel cried out, turning from him.
+"Yes, I love you, but I don't trust you, and I won't marry you.
+I'm too much afraid."
+
+"Afraid of me?"
+
+"Afraid of the pain."
+
+"What pain?"
+
+"And the--wickedness of it." Lawrence, frozen with astonishment--he
+had foreseen resistance,  but not of this quality--let fall her hand.
+"Yes, we'll part now.  We can part now.  I love you, but not too much
+to get over it in a year or so; and you?  you'll forget sooner,
+because I'm not worth remembering."
+
+"Forget you?"
+
+"Oh! yes, it's not as if you really cared for me; you wouldn't
+talk to me of money if you did.  But I suppose you've known so
+many. . . . Val warned me long ago that you had not a good name
+with women."
+
+"Val said that?  Val!"
+
+"And now you're angry with Val; I repeat what I oughtn't to
+repeat, and make mischief.  Lawrence, this isn't Val's doing; it
+isn't even Mrs. Cleve's: it's my own cowardice.  I daren't marry
+you."
+
+"But why not?"
+
+"You're not trying to be good."
+
+"The language of the nursery defeats me, Isabel."
+
+She flushed.  "That means I've hurt you."
+
+"Naturally."
+
+"I can't help it." That was truer than he realized, for she could
+hardly help crying. She could not soften her refusal, because she
+was so shaken and exhausted by the strain of it that she dared
+not venture on more than one sentence at a time.
+
+"I'm very sorry."
+
+"But as my wife you could be as 'good' as you liked?"
+
+"You would not leave me strength for it."
+
+"I should corrupt you?"
+
+"Yes, I think you would deliberately tempt me. . . . I think you
+have tonight."
+
+"Do you care for no one but yourself?" he flung at her in his
+vertigo of humiliation and anger.
+
+"No: I care for God."
+
+"For God!" Lawrence repeated stupidly: "what has that to do with
+your marrying me?"
+
+He heard his own betise as it left his lips, and felt the
+immeasurable depth of it, but he had not time to retract before
+every personal consideration was wiped from his mind by a cry
+from Isabel in a very different accent--"Lawrence! oh! look at
+the time!"
+
+She pointed to the dial of an illuminated clock, hanging high in
+the soft September night.  It was eight minutes to twelve.  "What
+time did you say our train went?"
+
+They were in Whitehall.  Lawrence caught up the speaking tube.
+"Waterloo main entrance--and drive like the devil, please, we're
+late."
+
+"I thought we had plenty of time?"
+
+"So we had: so much so that I told the man to drive round and
+round for a bit."
+
+"And have we still time?"
+
+"No."
+
+"We shan't lose the train?"
+
+"Unless it's delayed in starting, which isn't likely."
+
+"Will the others go on and leave us?"
+
+"Hardly!"
+
+"You don't mean that Laura won't get home till tomorrow?  Oh!"
+
+"No.  But don't look so frightened, no one will blame you--the
+responsibility is mine entirely."
+
+Isabel's lip curled.  It was for Laura that she felt afraid and
+not for herself, and surely he might have guessed as much as
+that!  "Did you do it on purpose?"
+
+"No."
+
+"I beg your pardon.  That was stupid of me."
+
+"Very," said Lawrence with his keen sarcastic smile.
+
+At Waterloo he sprang out, tossed a sovereign to the driver, and
+made Isabel catch up her skirts and run like a deer.  But before
+they reached the platform it was after twelve and the rails
+beyond were empty.  Selincourt and Laura were waiting by the
+barrier, Selincourt red with impatience, Laura very pale.
+
+"Are you aware you've lost the last train down?" said the elder
+man with ill-concealed anger, as Lawrence, shortening his step,
+strolled up in apparent tranquillity with Isabel on his arm.
+"What on earth has become of you?  We've been waiting here for
+half an hour!"
+
+"We were held up in the traffic," said Lawrence deliberately.
+Isabel turned scarlet.  The truth would have been insupportable,
+but so was the lie.  "Although it was no fault of mine, Laura,
+I'm more sorry than I can say.  Will you let me telephone for my
+own car and motor you down? I could get you to Chilmark in the
+small hours--long before the first morning train."
+
+Laura hesitated: but Selincourt's brow was dark. The streets that
+night had not been unusually crowded, ample time had been allowed
+to cover any ordinary delay, and Isabel was cruelly confused. In
+his simple code Hyde had committed at least one if not two
+unpardonable sins--he had neglected one of the ladies in his
+care if he had not affronted the other.
+
+"That wouldn't do at all," he said with decision. "You've been
+either careless or unlucky once, Lawrence.  It might happen
+again."
+
+It was a direct challenge, and cost him an effort, but it was not
+resented.  "It would not.  From my soul I regret this contretemps,
+Lucian.  Do you settle what's to be done: you're Laura's brother, I
+put myself unreservedly in your hands."
+
+"My dear fellow!" the gentle Lucian was instantly disarmed.
+"After all we needn't make a mountain out of a molehill--they'll
+know we're all right, four of us together!"
+
+"At all events it can't be helped," said Mrs. Clowes, smiling at
+Lawrence with her kind trustful eyes, "so don't distress
+yourself.  My sweet Isabel too, so tired!" she took Isabel's cold
+hand. "Never mind, Val won't let your father worry, and we shall
+be home by ten or eleven in the morning. It is only to go to an
+hotel for a few hours.  Come, dear Lawrence, don't look so
+subdued! It wasn't your fault, so you mustn't trouble even if--"
+
+"Even if what?"
+
+"Even if Bernard locks the door in my face," she finished
+laughing.  "He'll be fearfully cross! but I dare say Val will go
+down and smooth his ruffled plumage."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+"I do not like all this running about to places of amusement,"
+said Mr. Stafford, rumpling up his curls till they stood on end
+in a plume.  "If you or Rowsley were to visit a theatre I should
+say nothing.  You're men and must judge for yourselves.  But
+Isabel is different. I have a good mind to put my foot down once
+and for all.  An atmosphere of luxury is not good for a young
+girl."
+
+He stretched himself out in his shabby chair; a shabby, slight
+man, whose delicate foot, the toes poking out of a shabby
+slipper, looked as if it were too small to make much impression
+however firmly put down.  Val, smoking his temperate pipe on the
+other side of the diningroom hearth, temperately suggested that
+the amount of luxury in Isabel's life wouldn't hurt a fly.
+
+"One grain of strychnine will destroy a life: and one hour of
+temptation may destroy a soul for ever."  Val bowed his head in
+assent.  "Why are we all so fond of Isabel?  Because she hasn't a
+particle of self-consciousness in her.  A single evening's
+flattery may infect her with that detestable vice."
+
+"She must grow up some time."
+
+"More's the pity," retorted the vicar.  "Another point: I'm not
+by any means sure I approve of that fellow Hyde.  I doubt if he's
+a religious man."  Val brushed away a smile.  "He comes to church
+with Laura pretty regularly, but would he come if her influence
+were removed?  I greatly doubt it."  So did Val, therefore he
+prudently held his tongue. "I hate to be uncharitable," continued
+Mr. Stafford "but I doubt if he is even what one narrowly calls a
+moral man.  Take Jack Bendish, now one can see at a glance that
+he's a good fellow, right-living and clean-minded.  But Hyde
+doesn't inspire me with any such confidence. I know nothing of
+his private life--"
+
+"Nor do I," said Val rather wearily.  "But what does any man know
+of another man's private life?  If you come to that, Jim, what do
+you know of Rowsley's--or mine?"
+
+"Pouf, nonsense!" said Mr. Stafford.
+
+At his feet lay a small black cat, curled up in the attitude of a
+comma.  Before going on he inserted one toe under her waist,
+rapidly turned her upside down, and chucked her under her ruffled
+and indignant chin.
+
+"Val, my boy, has any one repeated to you a nasty bit of gossip
+that's going about the village?"
+
+"This violence to a lady!" Val held out his hand and made small
+coaxing noises with his lips.  But Amelia after a cold stare
+walked away and sat down in the middle of the floor, turning
+her back and sticking out a refined but implacable tail.  "There
+now! you've hurt her feelings."
+
+"Of course there's nothing in it--on one side at least.  But I
+can't help wondering whether Hyde . . . . our dear Laura would
+naturally be the last to hear of it.  But Hyde's a man of the
+world and knows how quickly tongues begin to wag.  In Laura's
+unprotected position he ought to be doubly careful."
+
+"He ought."
+
+"But he is not.  Now is that designed or accidental?  We'll allow
+him the benefit of the doubt and call it an error of judgment.
+Then some one ought to give him a hint."
+
+"Some one would be knocked down for his pains."
+
+"D'you think he'd knock me down?" asked Mr. Stafford, casting a
+comical glance over his slender elderly frame.
+
+"Hardly," said Val laughing.  "But--no, Jim, it wouldn't do.
+Too formal, too official."  His real objection was that Mr.
+Stafford would base his appeal on ethical and spiritual grounds,
+which were not likely to influence Lawrence, as Val read him.
+"But if you like I'll give him a hint myself.  I can do it
+informally; and I very nearly did it as long ago as last June.
+Hyde is amenable to treatment if he's taken quietly."
+
+Mr. Stafford, by temperament and training a member of the Church
+Militant, clearly felt a trifle disappointed, but he had little
+petty vanity and accepted Val's amendment without a murmur. "Very
+well, if you think you can do it better!  I don't care who does
+it so long as it's done." The clock struck.  "Half past eleven is
+that?  Isabel can't be home before four.  Dear me, how I hate
+these ridiculous hours, turning night into day!"  As some
+correspondents put the point of a letter into a postscript, so
+the vicar in returning to his Church Times revealed the peculiar
+sting that was working in his mind.  "And I don't--  I do not like
+Isabel to make one of that trio--in view of what's being said."
+
+"She is with Mrs. Clowes," said Val shortly, and colouring all
+over his face.  Fling enough mud and some of it is sure to stick!
+If his unworldly father could think Laura, though innocent, so
+far compromised that Isabel was not safe in her care, what were
+other people saying?  Val got up.  "I shall walk down and smoke a
+pipe with Clowes.  He won't go to bed till they come in."
+
+The beechen way was dark and steep; roosting birds blundered out
+from overhead with a sleepy clamour of alarm-notes and a great
+rustle of leaf-brushed wings; one could have tracked Val's course
+by the commotion they made.  On the footbridge dark in alder-shadow
+he lingered to enjoy the cool woodland air and lulling ripple
+underfoot.  Not a star pierced to that black water, it might have
+been unfathomably deep; and though the village street was only a
+quarter of a mile away the night was intensely quiet, for all
+Chilmark went to bed after closing time.  It was not often that Val,
+overworked and popular, tasted such a profound solitude.  Not a leaf
+stirred: no one was near: under golden stars it was chilling towards
+one of the first faint frosts of the year: and insensibly Val relaxed
+his guard: a heavy sigh broke from him, and he moved restlessly,
+indulging himself in recollection as a man who habitually endures
+pain without wincing will now and then allow himself the relief of
+defeat.
+
+For it is a relief not to pretend any more nor fight: to let pain
+take its way, like a slow tide invading every nerve and flooding
+every recess of thought, till one is pierced and penetrated by
+it, married to it, indifferent so long as one can drop the mask
+of that cruel courage which exacts so many sacrifices.  Val was
+still only twenty-nine.  Forty years more of a life like
+this! . . . Lawrence had once compared him to a man on the rack.
+But, though Lawrence knew all, Val had never relaxed the strain
+before him: was incapable of relaxing it before any spectator.
+He needed to be not only alone, but in the dark, hidden even from
+himself: and even so no open expression was possible to him, not
+a movement after the first deep sigh: it was relief enough for
+him to be sincere with himself and own that he was unhappy.  But
+why specially unhappy now?
+
+Midnight: the church clock had begun to strike in a deep whirring
+chime, muffled among the million leaves of the wood.
+
+That trio were in the train now, Isabel probably fast falling
+asleep, Hyde and Laura virtually alone for the run from Waterloo
+to Chilmark.
+
+A handsome man, Hyde, and attractive to women, or so rumour and
+Yvonne Bendish affirmed. If even Yvonne, who was Laura's own
+sister, was afraid of Hyde! ... Well, Hyde was to be given the
+hint to take himself off, and surely no more than such a hint
+would be necessary?  Val smiled, the prospect was not without a
+wry humour.  If he had been Hyde's brother, what he had to say
+would not have said itself easily.  "Let us hope he won't knock
+me down," Val reflected, "or the situation will really become
+strained; but he won't--that's not his way."  What was his way?
+The worst of it was that Val was not at all sure what way Hyde
+would take, nor whether he would consent to go alone.  A handsome
+man, confound him, and a picked specimen of his type: one of
+those high-geared and smoothly running physical machines that are
+all grace in a lady's drawingroom and all steel under their
+skins.  What a contrast between him and poor Bernard! the one so
+impotent and devil-ridden, the other so virile, unscrupulous, and
+serene.
+
+Val stirred restlessly and gripped the rail of the bridge between
+his clenched hands.  His mind was a chaos of loose ends and he
+dared not follow any one of them to its logical conclusion.  What
+was he letting himself think of Laura?  Such fears were an insult
+to her clear chastity and strength of will.  Or, in any event,
+what was it to him?  He was Bernard's friend, and Laura's but he
+was not the keeper of Bernard's honour. . . . But Hyde and
+Laura . . . alone . . . the train with its plume of fire rushing
+on through the dark sleeping night. . . .
+
+"In manus tuas . . ."  Val raised his head, and shivered, the
+wind struck chill: he was tired out.  Yet only a second or so had
+gone by while he was indulging himself in useless regrets for
+what could never be undone, and still more useless anxiety for a
+future which was not only beyond his control but outside his
+province as Bernard's agent.  That after all was his status at
+Wanhope, he had no other.  It was still striking twelve: the last
+echo of the last chime trembled away on a faint, fresh sough of
+wind. . . . A lolloping splash off the bank into the water--what
+was that?  A dark blot among ripples on a flat and steely
+glimmer, the sketch of a whiskered feline mask . . . Val made a
+mental note to speak to Jack Bendish about it: otters are bad
+housekeepers in a trout stream.
+
+"Hallo!  Good man!" Major Clowes was on his back in the
+drawingroom, in evening dress, and playing patience.  "I've tried
+Kings, Queens and Knaves, and Little Demon, and Fair Lucy, and
+brought every one of 'em out first round.  Something must be
+going to happen." With a sweep of his arm he flung all the cards
+on the floor. "What do you want?"
+
+"A pipe," said Val, going on one knee to pick up the scattered
+pack.  "I looked in to see how you were getting on.  Aren't you
+going to bed?"
+
+"Not before they come in."
+
+"Nor will Jimmy, I left him sitting up for Isabel.  You're both
+of you very silly, you'll be dead tired tomorrow, and what's the
+object of it?"
+
+"To make sure they do come in," Bernard explained with a broad
+grin.  Val sprang up: intolerable, this reflection of his own
+fear in Bernard's distorting mirror!  "Ha ha!  Suppose they
+didn't?  Laura was rather fond of larks before she married me.
+She was, I give you my word--she and the other girl.  You
+wouldn't think it of Laura, would you?  Butter wouldn't melt in
+her mouth.  But she might like a fling for a change.  Who'd blame
+her?  I'm no good as a husband, and Lawrence is a picked
+specimen.  Quelle type, eh?"
+
+"Very good-looking."
+
+"'Very good-looking!'" Bernard mocked at him. "You and your Army
+vocabulary!  And I'm a nice chap, and Laura's quite a pretty
+woman, and this is a topping knife, isn't it, and life's a jolly
+old beano--  Pity I can't get out of it, by the by: if physiology
+is the basis of marriage, those two would run well in harness."
+
+"There's an otter in the river," remarked Val, examining the
+little dagger, the same that Lawrence had given Bernard.  "I
+heard him from the bridge.  They come down from the upper
+reaches.  Remind me to tell Jack, he's always charmed to get a
+day's sport with his hounds." He laid the dagger on a side-table.
+
+"Have one of my cigars?  You can't afford cigars, can you? poor
+devil!  They're on that shelf.  Not those: they're Hyde's." Val
+put back the box as if it had burnt his fingers.  "Leaves his
+things about as if the place were a hotel!" grumbled Major
+Clowes. "That's one of his books.  Pick it up. What is it?" Val
+read out the title.  "Poetry?  Good Lord deliver us!  Do you read
+poetry, Val?"
+
+"I occasionally dip into Tennyson," Val replied, settling himself
+in an easy chair.  "I can't understand modern verse as a rule,
+it's too clever for me, and the fellows who write it always seem
+to go in for such gloomy subjects.  I don't like gloomy books, I
+like stuff that rests and refreshes you.  There are enough sad
+things in life without writing stories about them. I can read the
+'Idylls of the King,' but I can't read Bernard Shaw."
+
+"Nor anybody else," said Bernard.  He fixed his eyes on Val: eyes
+like his cousin's in form and colour, large, and so black under
+their black lashes that the pupil was almost indistinguishable
+from the iris, but smouldering in a perpetual glow, while Hyde's
+were clear and indifferent.  "You're a good sort to have come
+down to look after me.  I don't feel very brash tonight.  Oh Val!
+oh Val! I know I'm a brute, a coarse-minded, foul-mouthed brute.
+I usedn't to be.  When I was twenty-five, if any man had said
+before me what I say of Laura, I'd have kicked him out of his own
+house.  Why don't you kick me?"
+
+"I am not violent."
+
+"Ain't you?  I am." He flung out his arm. "Give me your hand."
+Val complied, amused or touched: as often happened when they were
+alone,  he remained on the borderline.  But it was taken in no
+affectionate clasp.  Bernard's grip closed on him, tighter and
+tighter, till the nails were driven into his palm.  "Is that
+painful?" Clowes asked with his Satanic grin.  "Glad of it.  I'm
+in pain too.  I've got neuritis in my spine and I can't sleep for
+it.  I haven't had any proper sleep for a week.--Oh my God, my
+God, my God! do you think I'd grumble if that were all?  I can't,
+I can't lie on my back all my life playing patience or fiddling
+over secondhand penknives!  I was born for action.  Action, Val!
+I'm not a curate.  I'd like to smash something--crush it to a
+jelly."  Val mincingly pointed out that such a consummation was
+not far off, but he was ignored.  "Oh damn the war! and damn
+England too--what did we go to fight for?  What asses we were!
+Did we ever believe in a reason?  Give me these ten years over
+again and I wouldn't be such a fool.  Who cares whether we lick
+Germany or Germany licks England?  I don't."
+
+"I do."
+
+Bernard stared at him, incredulous.  "What--'freedom and
+honour' and all the rest of it?"
+
+"In a defensive war--"
+
+"Oh for God's sake!  I've just had my supper."
+
+"--any man who won't fight for his country deserves to be shot."
+
+"You combine the brains of a rabbit with the morals of a eunuch."
+
+Val crossed his legs and withdrew his cigar to laugh.
+
+"Ah! I apologize." Clowes shrugged his shoulders. "'Eunuch' is
+the wrong word for you--as a breed they're a cowardly lot.  But
+I used the term in the sense of a Palace favourite who swallows
+all the slop that's pumped into him.  'Lloyd George for ever and
+Britannia rules the waves.' Dare say I should sing it myself if
+I'd come out covered with glory like you did."
+
+"I met Gainsford today.  He says the longacre fences ought to be
+renewed before winter.  Parts of them are so rotten that the
+first gale will bring them down."
+
+"Damn Gainsford and damn the fences and damn you."
+
+"Really, really!" Val stretched himself out and put his feet up.
+"You're very monotonous tonight."
+
+"And you, you're tired: I wear you both out, you and Laura--and
+yet you're the only people on earth. . . . Why can't I die?
+Sometimes I wonder if it's anything but cowardice that prevents
+me from cutting my throat.  But my life is infernally strong in
+me, I don't want to die: what I want is to get on my legs again
+and kick that fellow Hyde down the steps.  What does he stop on
+here for?"
+
+"Well, you're always pressing him to stay, aren't you?  Why do
+you do it, if this is the way you feel towards him?"
+
+"Because I've always sworn I'd give Laura all the rope she
+wanted," said Clowes between his teeth.  "If she wants to hang
+herself, let her.  I should score in the long run.  Hyde would
+chuck her away like an old shoe when he got sick of her."   There
+was a fire not far from madness burning now in the wide, dilated
+eyes.  "Afterwards she'd have to come back, because those
+Selincourts haven't got twopence between the lot of them, and if
+she did she'd be mine for good and all.  Hyde would break her in
+for me."
+
+"You don't realize what you're saying, Berns, old man.  You
+can't," said Val gently, "or you wouldn't say it.  It is too
+unutterably beastly."
+
+"Ah! perhaps the point of view is a bit warped," Bernard returned
+carelessly to sanity.  "It shocks you, does it?  But the fact is
+Laura has the whip hand of me and I can't forgive her for it.
+She's the saint and I'm the sinner.  She's a bit too good. If
+Hyde broke her in and sent her home on her knees, I should have
+the whip hand of her, and I'd like to reverse the positions.  Can
+you follow that?  Yes! A bit warped, I own. But I am warped--
+bound to be.  Give the body such a wrench as the Saxons gave mine
+and you're bound to get some corresponding wrench in the mind."
+
+"That's rank materialism."
+
+"Bosh! it's common sense.  Look at your own case!  Do you never
+analyze your own behaviour?  You would if you lay on your back
+year in year out like me.  You're maimed too."
+
+"No, am I?" Val reached for a fourth cushion. "Think o' that,
+now."
+
+"Or you wouldn't be content to hang on in Chilmark, riding over
+another man's property and squiring another man's wife.  The shot
+that broke your arm broke your life.  You had the makings of a
+fine soldier in you, but you were knocked out of your profession
+and you don't care for any other.  With all your ability you'll
+never be worth more than six or seven hundred a year, for you've
+no initiative and you're as nervous as a cat.  You're not married
+and you'll never marry: you're too passive, too continent, too
+much of a monk to attract a healthy woman.  No: don't you flatter
+yourself that you've escaped any more than I have. The only
+difference is that the Saxons mucked up my life and you've mucked
+up your own.  You fool! you high-minded, over-scrupulous
+fool! . . . You and I are wreckage of war, Val: cursed, senseless
+devilry of war.--  Go and play a tune, I'm sick of talking."
+
+Val was not any less sick of listening.  He went to the piano,
+but not to play a tune.  Impossible to insult that crippled
+tempest on the sofa with the sweet eternal placidities of Mozart
+or Bach.  His fingers wandered over the lower register,
+improvising, modulating from one minor key to another in a cobweb
+of silver harmony spun pale and low from a minimum of technical
+attention.  For once Bernard had struck home.  "The shot that
+broke your arm broke your life." Stripped of Bernard's rhetoric,
+was it true?
+
+Val could not remember the time when his ambition had not been
+set on soldiering: regiments of Hussars and Dragoons had deployed
+on his earliest Land of Counterpane: he had never cared for any
+other toys.  But as soon as war was over he had resigned his
+commission, a high sense of duty driving him from a field in
+which he felt unfit to serve.  He had pitilessly executed his own
+judgment: no man can do more.  But what if in judgement itself
+had been unhinged--warped--deflected by the interaction of
+splintered bone and cut sinew and dazed, ghost-ridden mind?  Have
+not psychologists said that few fighting men were strictly normal
+in or for some time after the war?
+
+If that were true, Val had wasted the best years of his life on a
+delusion.  It was a disturbing thought, but it brought a sparkle
+to his eyes and an electric force to his fingertips: he raised
+his head and looked out into the September night as if there was
+stirring in him the restless sap of spring.  After all he was
+still a young man.  Forty years more!  If these grey ten years
+since the war could be taken as finite, not endless: if after
+them one were to break the chain, tear off the hair shirt, come
+out of one's cell into the warm sun--then, oh then--Val's
+shoulders remembered their military set--life might be life
+again and not life in death.
+
+"What the devil are you strumming now?"
+
+"Tipperary."
+
+"That's not much in your line."
+
+"Oh! I was in the Army once," said Val. "You go to sleep."
+
+He had his wish.  The heavy eyelids closed, the great chest rose
+and fell evenly, and some--not all--of the deep lines of pain
+were smoothed away from Bernard's lips.  Even in sleep it was a
+restless, suffering head, but it was no longer so devil-ridden as
+when he was talking of his wife.  Val played on softly: once when
+he desisted Bernard stirred and muttered something which sounded
+like "Go on, damn you," a proof that his mind was not far from
+his body, only the thinnest of veils lying over its terrible
+activity.  David would have played the clock round, if Saul would
+have slept on.
+
+Saul did not. He woke--with a tremendous start, sure sign of
+broken nerves: a start that shook him like a fall and shook the
+couch too.  "Hallo!" he came instantly into full possession of
+his faculties: "you still here?  What's the time? I feel as if
+I'd been asleep for years.  Why, it's daylight!" He dragged out
+his watch.  "What the devil is the time?"
+
+Val rose and pulled back a curtain.  The morning sky was full of
+grey light, and long pale shadows fell over frost-silvered turf:
+mists were steaming up like pale smoke from the river, over whose
+surface they swept in fantastic shapes like ghosts taking hands
+in an evanescent arabesque: the clouds, the birds, the flowers
+were all awake.  The house was awake too, and in fact it was the
+clatter of a housemaid's brush on the staircase that had roused
+Bernard. "It's nearly six o'clock," said Val.  "You've had a long
+sleep, Berns.  I'm afraid the others have missed their train."
+
+"Missed their train!"
+
+"First night performances are often slow, and they mayn't have
+been able to get a cab at once.  It's tiresome, but there's no
+cause for anxiety."
+
+"Missed their train!"
+
+"Well, they can't all have been swallowed up by an earthquake!
+Of course fire or a railway smash is on the cards, but the less
+thrilling explanation is more probable, don't you think, old
+man?"
+
+"Missed the last train and were obliged to stay in town?"
+
+"And a rotten time they'll have of it.  It's no joke, trying to
+get rooms in a London hotel when you've ladies with you and no
+luggage."
+
+"You think Laura would let Hyde take her to an hotel?"
+
+"Well, Berns, what else are they to do?" said Val impatiently.
+"They can't very well sit in a Waterloo waitingroom!"
+
+"No, no," said Clowes.  "Much better pass the night at an hotel.
+Is that what you call a rotten time?  If I were Lawrence I should
+call it a jolly one."
+
+Val turned round from the window.  "If I were Hyde," he said
+stiffly, "I should take the ladies to some decent place and go to
+a club myself.  You might give your cousin credit for common
+sense if not for common decency!  You seem to forget the
+existence of Isabel."
+
+"Oh, all right," said Bernard after a moment.  "I was only
+joking.  No offence to your sister, Val, I'm sure Laura will look
+after her all right.  But it is a bit awkward in a gossippy hole
+like Chilmark. When does the next train get in?"
+
+No man knows offhand the trains that leave London in the small
+hours, but Val hunted up a timetable--its date of eighteen
+mouths ago a pregnant commentary on life at Wanhope--and came
+back with the information that if they left at seven-fifteen they
+could be at Countisford by ten.  "Too late to keep it quiet," he
+owned.  "The servants are a nuisance.  But thank heaven Isabel's
+with them."
+
+"Thank heaven indeed," Bernard assented.  "Not that I care two
+straws for gossip myself, but Laura would hate to be talked
+about.  Well, well!  Here's a pretty kettle of fish.  How would
+it be if you were to meet them at the station?  I suppose they're
+safe to come by that train?  Or will they wait for a second one?
+Getting up early is not Laura's strong point at the best of
+times, and she'll be extra tired after the varied excitements of
+the night."
+
+Val examined him narrowly.  His manner was natural if a trifle
+subdued; the unhealthy glow had died down and his black eyes were
+frank and clear.  Nevertheless Val was not at ease, this natural
+way of taking the mishap was for Bernard Clowes so unnatural and
+extraordinary: if he had stormed and sworn Val would have felt
+more tranquil.  But perhaps after the fireworks of last night the
+devil had gone out of him for a season?  Yet Val knew from
+painful experience that Bernard's devil was tenacious and wiry,
+not soon tired.
+
+"They might," he said cautiously, "but I shouldn't think they
+will.  Laura knows you, old fellow.  She'll be prepared for a
+terrific wigging, and she'll want to get home and get it over."
+A dim gleam of mirth relieved Val's mind a trifle: when the devil
+of jealousy was in possession he always cast out Bernard's sense
+of humour, a subordinate imp at the best of times and not of a
+healthy breed.  "Besides, there's Isabel to consider.  She'll be
+in a great state of mind, poor child, though it probably isn't in
+the least her fault.  By the bye, if there's no more I can do for
+you, I ought to go home and see after Jim.  He expressed his
+intention of sitting up for Isabel, and I only wonder he hasn't
+been down here before now.  Probably he went to sleep over his
+Church Times, or else buried himself in some venerable volume of
+patristic literature and forgot about her.  But when Fanny gets
+down he'll be tearing his hair."
+
+"Go by all means," said Bernard.  "You must be fagged out, Val;
+have you been at the piano all these hours?  How you spoil me,
+you and Laura!  Get some breakfast, lie down for a nap, and after
+that you can go on to Countisford and meet them in the car."
+
+"All right!" In face of Bernard's thoughtful and practical good
+humour Val's suspicions had faded.  "Shall I come back or will
+you send the car up for me?" Neither he nor Clowes saw anything
+unusual in these demands on his time and energy: it was
+understood that the duties of the agency comprised doing anything
+Bernard wanted done at any hour of day or night.
+
+"I'll send her up.  Stop a bit." Clowes knit his brows and looked
+down, evidently deep in thought.  "Yes, that's the ticket.  You
+take Isabel home and send Lawrence and Laura on alone.  Drop them
+at the lodge before you drive her up.  She'll be tired out and
+it's a good step up the hill.  And you must apologize for me to
+your father for giving him so much anxiety.  Lawrence must have
+been abominably careless to let them lose their train: they ought
+to have had half an hour to spare."
+
+"He is casual."
+
+"Oh very: thinks of nothing but himself.  Pity you and he can't
+strike a balance!  Good-bye.  Mind you take your sister straight
+home and apologize to your father for Hyde's antics.  Say I'm
+sorry, very sorry to mix her up in such a pickle, and I wouldn't
+have let her in for it if it could have been avoided.  Touch the
+bell for me before you go, will you?  I want Barry."
+
+Val let himself out by the window and the impassive valet
+entered.  But it was some time before Bernard spoke to him.
+
+"Is that you, Barry? I didn't hear you come in."
+
+"Now what's in the wind?" speculated Barry behind his
+professional mask.  "Up all night and civil in the morning?  Oh
+no, I don't think."
+
+"Shall I wheel you to your room, sir?"
+
+"Not yet," said Clowes.  He waited to collect his strength.
+"Shut all those windows." Barry obeyed.  "Turn on the electric
+light . . . .Put up the shutters and fasten them securely . . . .
+Now I want you to go all over the house and shut and fasten all
+the other ground floor windows: then come back to me."
+
+"Am I to turn on the electric light everywhere, sir?" Barry asked
+after a pause.
+
+"Where necessary.  Not in the billiard room; nor in Mrs. Clowes'
+parlour."   Barry had executed too many equally singular orders
+to raise any demur.  He came back in ten minutes with the news
+that it was done.
+
+"Now wheel me into the hall," said Clowes. Barry obeyed.  "Shut
+the front doors. . . . Lock them and put up the chain."
+
+This time Barry did hesitate.  "Sir, if I do that no one won't be
+able to get in or out except by the back way: and it's close on
+seven o'clock."
+
+"You do what you're told."
+
+Barry obeyed.
+
+"Now wheel my couch in front of the doors."
+
+"Mad as a March hare!" was Barry's private comment.  "Lord, I
+wish Mr. Stafford was here."
+
+"That will do," said Clowes.
+
+He settled his great shoulders square and comfortable on his
+pillow and folded his arms over his breast.
+
+"I want you to take an important message from me to the other
+servants.  Tell them that if Mrs. Clowes or Captain Hyde come to
+the house they're not to be let in.  Mrs. Clowes has left me and
+I do not intend her to return.  If they force their way in I'll
+deal with them, but any one who opens the door will leave my
+service today.  Now get me some breakfast.  I'll have some coffee
+and eggs and bacon.  Tell Fryar to see that the boiled milk's
+properly hot."
+
+Barry, stupefied, went out without a word, leaving the big couch,
+and the big helpless body stretched out upon it, drawn like a bar
+across the door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+It was a fatigued and jaded party that got out on the platform at
+Countisford.  The mere wearing of evening dress when other people
+are at breakfast will damp the spirits of the most hardened, and
+even Lawrence had an up-all-night expression which reddened his
+eyelids and brought out the lines about his mouth.  Isabel's hair
+was rumpled and her fresh bloom all dimmed.  Laura Clowes had
+suffered least: there was not a thread astray in her satin waves,
+and the finished grace of her aspect had survived a night in a
+chair.  But even she was very pale, though she contrived to smile
+at Val.
+
+"How's Bernard?" were her first words.
+
+"All serene. He slept most of the time. I was with him, luckily.
+We guessed what had happened.  You missed your train?" In this
+question Val included Lawrence.
+
+"It was my fault," said Lawrence shortly.  It was what he would
+have said if it had not been his fault.
+
+"It was nobody's fault!" cried Laura.  "We were held up in the
+traffic.  But Lawrence is one of those people who will feel
+responsible if they have ladies with them on the Day of Judgment,
+won't you, Lawrence?"
+
+"I ought to have left more time," said Lawrence impatiently.
+"Let's get home."
+
+In the car Val heard from Laura the details of their
+misadventure.  Selincourt had waited with the women while
+Lawrence secured rooms for them in a Waterloo hotel: when they
+were safe, Lawrence had gone to Lucian's rooms in Victoria
+Street, where the men had passed what remained of the night in a
+mild game of cards.  They had all breakfasted together by
+lamplight at the hotel, and Selincourt had seen his sister into
+the Chilmark train.  Nothing could have been more circumspect--
+comically circumspect! between Selincourt and Isabel and the
+chambermaid, malice itself was put to silence. But Lawrence was
+fever-fretted by the secret sense of guilt.
+
+At the lodge gates Val drew up.  "It's preposterous, but I'm
+under Bernard's express orders to drive Isabel straight home. I
+don't know how to apologize for turning you and Hyde out of your
+own car, Laura!"  No apology was needed, Laura and Lawrence knew
+too well how direct Bernard's orders commonly were to Val.
+Lawrence silently offered his hand to Mrs. Clowes.  The morning
+air was fresh, fog was still hanging over the river, and the sun
+had not yet thrown off an autumn quilting of cloud.  Touched by
+the chill of dawn, some leaves had fallen and lay in the dust,
+their ribs beaded with dark dew: others, yellow and shrivelling,
+where shaken down by the wind of the car and fluttered slowly in
+the eddying air. Laura drew her sable scarf close over her bare
+neck.
+
+"What I should like best, Lawrence, would be for you to go home
+with Isabel and make our excuses to Mr. Stafford.  Would you
+mind?  Or is it too much to ask before you get out of your
+evening dress?"
+
+"I should be delighted," said Lawrence, feeling and indeed
+looking entirely the reverse.  "But Miss Isabel has her brother
+to take care of her, she doesn't want me." Isabel gave that
+indefinable start which is the prelude of candour, but remained
+dumb.  "I don't like to leave you to walk up to Wanhope alone."
+This, was as near as in civilized life he could go to saying
+"to face Clowes alone."
+
+"The length of the drive?" said Laura smiling. "I should prefer
+it.  You know what Berns is."  This was what Lawrence had never
+known. "If he's put out I'd rather you weren't there."
+
+"Why, you can't imagine I should care what Bernard said?"
+
+Laura struck her hands together.-"There! There!" she turned to
+Val, "can you wonder Bernard feels it?"
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Lawrence from his heart.
+
+"No, the contrast is poignant,'' said Val coldly.
+
+"Dear Val, you always agree with me," said Laura.  "Take Captain
+Hyde home and give him some breakfast.  I'd rather go alone,
+Lawrence: it will be easier that way, believe me."
+
+It was impossible to argue with her.  But while Val wheeled and
+turned in the wide cross, before they took their upward bend
+under the climbing beechwood, Lawrence glanced over his shoulder
+and saw Mrs. Clowes still standing by the gate of Wanhope,
+solitary, a wan gleam of sunlight striking down over her gold
+embroideries and ivory coat, a russet leaf or two whirling slowly
+round her drooping head: like a butterfly in winter, delicate,
+fantastic, and astray.
+
+Breakfast at the vicarage was not a genial meal.  Val was anxious
+and preoccupied, Isabel in eclipse, even Mr. Stafford out of
+humour--vexed with Lawrence, and with Val for bringing Lawrence
+in under the immunities of a guest.  Lawrence himself was in a
+frozen mood.  As soon as they had finished he rose: "If you'll
+excuse my rushing off I'll go down to Wanhope now."
+
+"By all means," said Mr. Stafford drily.
+
+"Good-bye," said Isabel, casting about for a form of consolation,
+and evolving one which, in the circumstances, was possibly
+unique:  "You'll feel better when you've had a bath."
+
+"I'll walk down with you to Wanhope" said Val.
+
+"You?  Oh! no, don't bother," said Lawrence very curtly.  "I can
+manage my cousin, thanks."
+
+But Val's only reply was to open the door for him and stroll with
+him across the lawn.  At the wicket gate Hyde turned: "Excuse my
+saying so, but I prefer to go alone."
+
+"I'm not coming in at Wanhope.  But I've ten words to say to you
+before you go there."
+
+"Oh?" said Lawrence.  He swung through leaving Val to follow or
+not as he liked.
+
+"Stop, Hyde, you must listen.  You're going into a house full of
+the materials for an explosion.  You don't know your own danger."
+
+"I dislike hints.  What are you driving at?"
+
+"Laura."
+
+"Mrs.  Clowes?"
+
+"Naturally," said Val with a faint smile.  "You know as well as I
+do how pointless that correction is.  You imply by it that as I'm
+not her brother I've no right to meddle.  But I told you in June
+that I should interfere if it became necessary to protect
+others."
+
+"And since when, my dear Val, has it become necessary?  Last
+night?"
+
+"Well, not that only: all Chilmark has been talking for weeks and
+weeks."
+
+"Chilmark--"
+
+"Oh," Val interrupted, flinging out his delicate hands, "what's
+the good of that?  Who would ever suggest that you care what
+Chilmark says?  But she has to live in it."
+
+The scene had to be faced, and a secret vein of cruelty in
+Lawrence was not averse from facing it. This storm had been
+brewing all summer.--They were alone, for the beechen way was
+used only as a short cut to the vicarage.  Above them the garden
+wall lifted its feathery fringe of grass into great golden boughs
+that drooped over it: all round them the beech forest ran down
+into the valley, the eye losing itself among clear glades at the
+end of which perhaps a thicket of hollies twinkled darkly or a
+marbled gleam of blue shone in from overhead; the steep dark path
+was illumined by the golden lamplight of millions on millions of
+pointed leaves, hanging motionless in the sunny autumnal morning
+air which smelt of dry moss and wood smoke.
+
+"And what's the rumour?  That I'm going to prevail or that I've
+prevailed already?"
+
+"The worst of it is," Val kept his point and his temper, "that
+it's not only Chilmark.  One could afford to ignore village
+gossip, but this has reached Wharton, my father--Mrs. Clowes
+herself.  You wouldn't willingly do anything to make her unhappy:
+indeed it's because of your consistent and delicate kindness both
+to her and to Bernard that I've refrained from giving you a hint
+before.  You've done Bernard an immense amount of good.  But the
+good doesn't any longer counterbalance the involuntary mischief:
+hasn't for some time past: can't you see it for yourself?  One
+has only to watch the change coming over her, to look into her
+eyes--"
+
+"Really, if you'll excuse my saying so, you seem to have looked
+into them a little too often yourself."
+
+Val waited to take out his case and light a cigarette.  He
+offered one to Hyde--"Won't you?"
+
+"No, thanks: if you've done I'll be moving on."
+
+"Why I haven't really begun yet.  You make me nervous--it's a
+rotten thing to say to any man, and doubly difficult from me to
+you--and I express myself badly, But I must chance being called
+impertinent.  The trouble is with your cousin.  If you had heard
+him last night. . . .  He's madly jealous."
+
+"Of me?  Last night?" Lawrence gave a short laugh: this time he
+really was amused.
+
+"Dangerously jealous."
+
+"There's not room for a shadow of suspicion.  Go and interview
+Selincourt's servant if you like,  or nose around the Continental."
+
+"Well," said Val, coaxing a lucifer between his cupped palms,
+"I dare say it'll come to that.  I've done a good deal of
+Bernard's dirty work.  Some one has to do it for the sake of a
+quiet life.  His suspicions aren't rational, you know."
+
+"I should think you put them into his head."
+
+"I?" the serene eyes widened slightly, irritating Lawrence by
+their effect of a delicacy too fastidious for contempt.  For this
+courtesy, of finer grain than his own sarcasm, made him itch to
+violate and soil it, as mobs will destroy what they never can
+possess.  "Need we drag in personalities?  He was jealous of you
+before you came to Wanhope.  He fancies or pretends to fancy that
+you were in love with Mrs. Clowes when you were boy and girl.
+We're not dealing with a sane or normal nature:  he was
+practically mad last night--he frightened me.  May I give you,
+word for word, what he said?  That he let you stay on because he
+meant to give his wife rope enough to hang herself."
+
+"What do you want me to do?" said Lawrence after a pause.
+
+"To leave Wanhope."
+
+More at his ease than Val, in spite of the disadvantage of his
+evening dress, Lawrence stood looking down at him with brilliant
+inexpressive eyes.  "Is it your own idea that I stayed on at
+Wanhope to make love to Laura?"
+
+"If I answer that, you'll tell me that I'm meddling with what is
+none of my business, and this time you'll be right."
+
+"No: after going so far, you owe me a reply."
+
+"Well then, I've never been able to see any other reason."
+
+"Oh?  Bernard's my cousin."
+
+"Since you will have it, Hyde, I can't see you burying yourself
+in a country village out of cousinly affection.  You said you'd
+stay as long as you were comfortable.  Well, it won't be
+comfortable now!  I'm not presuming to judge you.  I've no idea
+what your ethical or social standards are.  Quite likely you
+would consider yourself justified in taking away your cousin's
+wife.  Some modern professors and people who write about social
+questions would say, wouldn't they, that she ought to be able to
+divorce him: that a marriage which can't be fruitful ought not to
+be a binding tie?  I've never got up the subject because for me
+it's settled out of hand on religious grounds, but they may not
+influence you, nor perhaps would the other possible deterrent,
+pity for the weak--if one can call Bernard weak.  It would be an
+impertinence for me to judge you by my code, when perhaps your
+own is pure social expediency--which would certainly be better
+served if Mrs. Clowes went to you."
+
+"Assuming that you've correctly defined my standard--why should
+I go?"
+
+Val shrugged his shoulders.  "You know well enough.  Because Mrs.
+Clowes is old-fashioned; her duty to Bernard is the ruling force
+in her life, and you could never make her give him up.  Or if you
+did she wouldn't live long enough for you to grow tired of her--
+it would break her heart."
+
+"Really?" said Lawrence.  "Before I grew tired of her?"
+
+He had never been so angry in his life.  To be brought to book at
+all was bad enough, but what rankled worst was the nature of the
+charge.  Sometimes it takes a false accusation to make a man
+realize the esteem in which he is held, the opinions which others
+attribute to him and which perhaps, without examining them too
+closely, he has allowed to pass for his own.  Lawrence had
+indulged in plenty of loose talk about Nietzschean ethics and the
+danger of altruism and the social inexpediency of sacrificing the
+strong for the weak, but when it came to his own honour not Val
+himself could have held a more conservative view.  He, take
+advantage of a cripple?  He commit a breach of hospitality?  He
+sneak into Wanhope as his cousin's friend to corrupt his cousin's
+wife?  What has been called the pickpocket form of adultery had
+never been to his taste.  Had Bernard been on his feet, a strong
+man armed, Lawrence might, if he had fallen in love with Laura,
+have gloried in carrying her off openly; but of the baseness of
+which Val accused him he knew himself to be incapable.
+
+"Really?" he said, looking down at Val out of his wide black
+eyes, so like Bernard's except that they concealed all that
+Bernard revealed.  "So now we understand each other.  I know why
+you want me to go and you know why I want to stay."
+
+"If I've done you an injustice I'm sorry for it."
+
+"Oh, don't apologize," said Lawrence laughing. His manner
+bewildered Val, who could make nothing of it except that it was
+incompatible with any sense of guilt.
+
+"But, then," the question broke from Val involuntarily, "why did
+you stay?"
+
+"Why do you?"
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes, you.  Did it never strike you that I might retort with a tu
+quoque?"
+
+"How on earth--?"
+
+"You were perhaps a little preoccupied," said Lawrence with his
+deadly smile. "I suggest, Val, that whether Clowes was jealous or
+not--you were."
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes, my dear fellow:" the Jew laughed: it gave him precisely the
+same satisfaction to violate Val's reticence, as it might have
+given one of his ancestors to cut Christian flesh to ribbons in
+the markets of the East: "and who's to blame you?  Thrown so much
+into the society of a very pretty and very unhappy woman, what
+more natural than for you to--how shall I put it?--constitute
+yourself her protector?  Set your mind at rest.  You have only
+one rival, Val--her husband."
+
+He enjoyed his triumph for a few moments, during which Stafford
+was slowly taking account with himself.
+
+"I'm not such a cautious moralist as you are," Lawrence pursued,
+"and so I don't hold a pistol to your head and give you ten
+minutes to clear out of Wanhope, as you did to mine.  On the
+contrary, I hope you'll long continue to act as Bernard's agent.
+I'm sure he'll never get a better one.  As for Laura, she won't
+discover your passion unless you proclaim it, which I'm sure
+you'll never do.  She looks on you as a brother--an affectionate
+younger brother invaluable for running errands.  And you'll
+continue to fetch and carry, enduring all things from her and
+Bernard much as you do from me.  When I do go--which won't be
+just yet--I shan't feel the faintest compunction about leaving
+you behind.  I'm sure Bernard's honour will be as safe in your
+hands as it is in mine."
+
+And thus one paved the way to pleasant relations with ones
+brother-in-law.  The civilized second self, always a dismayed and
+cynical spectator of Hyde's lapses into savagery, raised its
+voice in vain.
+
+"You seem a little confused, Val--you always were a modest chap.
+But surely you of all men can trust my discretion--?"
+
+"That's enough," said Val.  He touched Hyde's coat with his
+finger-tips, an airy movement, almost a caress, which seemed to
+come from a long way off.  "Lawrence, you're hurting yourself
+more than me."
+
+It was enough and more than enough: an arrest instant and final.
+Later Lawrence wondered whether Val knew what he had done, or
+whether it was only a thought unconsciously made visible; it was
+so unlike all he had seen of Val, so like much that he had felt.
+
+It put him to silence.  Not only so, but it flung a light cloud
+of mystery over what had seemed noonday clear.  Since that first
+night when he had watched in a mirror the disentangling of
+Laura's scarf, Lawrence had entertained no doubt of Val's
+sentiments, but now he was left uncertain.  Val had translated
+himself into a country to which Lawrence could not follow him,
+and the light of an unknown sun was on his way.
+
+Lawrence drew back with an impatient gesture.  "Oh, let's drop
+all this!" The civilized second self was in revolt alike against
+his own morbid cruelty and Val's escape into heaven: he would
+admit nothing except that he had gone through one trying scene
+after another in the last eighteen hours, and that Val had paid
+for the irritation produced successively by Mrs. Cleve, Isabel, a
+white night, and a distressed anxious consciousness of unavowed
+guilt.  "We shall be at each other's throats in a minute, which
+wouldn't suit either your book or mine--you've no idea, Val, how
+little it would suit mine!  I'm sorry I was so offensive.  But
+you wrong me, you do indeed; I'm not in love with Laura, and, if
+I were, the notion of picking poor Bernard's pocket is absolutely
+repugnant to me.  Social expediency be hanged!  What! as his
+guest?--  But let's drop recrimination; I had no right to resent
+what you said after forcing you to say it, nor, in any case, to
+taunt you . . . I beg your pardon: there! for heaven's sake let's
+leave it at that."
+
+"Will you release me from my parole?"
+
+"Yes, and wish to heaven I'd never extracted it. I had no right
+to impose it on you or to hold you to it.  But don't give
+yourself away, Val, I can't bear to think of what you'll have to
+face.  It will be what you once called it--crucifixion."
+
+"No, freedom," said Val.  "After all these years in prison." He
+put up his hand to his head. "The brand--the--What's the
+matter?" Lawrence had seized his arm.  "Am I--am I talking
+rubbish?  I feel half asleep.  But one night's sitting up
+aughtn't to--  Oh, this is absurd! . . ."
+
+Lawrence waited in the patience of dismay.  It was no excuse to
+plead that till then he had not known all the harm he had done;
+men should not set racks to work in ignorance of their effect on
+trembling human nerves.
+
+"That's over," said Val, wiping his forehead.  "Sorry to make a
+fuss, but it came rather suddenly.  Things always happen so
+simply when they do happen."
+
+"Are you going to confess?"
+
+"Oh yes.  I ought to have done it long ago.  In fact last night I
+made up my mind to break my parole if you wouldn't let me off,
+but I'd rather have it this way.  Remains only to choose time and
+place: that'll need care, for I mustn't hurt others more than I
+can help.  But I wouldn't mind betting it'll all be as simple as
+shelling peas.  The odds are that people won't believe half I
+say.  They'll have forgotten all about the war by now, and
+they'll make far too much allowance for my being only nineteen."
+
+"And for a voluntary confession: that always carries great
+weight. They would judge you very differently if it had come out
+by chance.  Rightly, too: if you're going to make such a
+confession at your time of life, it will be difficult for any one
+to call you a coward."
+
+"Thank you!" Val shrugged his shoulders with the old indolent
+irony.  "But moral courage was always my long suit."
+
+"How young you still are!" said Lawrence smiling at him, "young
+enough to be bitter.  But you're under a delusion.  No, let me
+finish--  I'm an older man than you are, I've seen a good deal of
+life, and I had four years out there instead of six weeks like
+you.  So far as I can judge you never were a coward.  Thousands
+and hundreds of thousands of men broke down like you, but they
+were lucky and it wasn't known, or at all events it wasn't
+critical.  Their failure of nerve didn't coincide with the
+special call to action.  You would have redeemed yourself if you
+had been able to stick to your profession.  You have redeemed
+yourself: and you'd prove it fast enough if you got the chance,
+only of course in these piping times of peace unluckily you
+won't." He coloured suddenly to his temples.  "Good God, Val! if
+there were any weakness left in you, could you have mastered me
+like this?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+The quickest way to Wanhope was by High Street and field path.
+But Lawrence to avoid the village entered the drive by the lodge,
+through iron gates over which Bernard had set up the arms and
+motto of his family: FORTIS ET FIDELIS, faithful and strong.
+Winding between dense shrubs of rhododendron under darker
+deodars, the road was long and gloomy, but Lawrence was thankful
+to be out of sight of Chilmark.  He hurried on with his light
+swinging step--light for his build--his tired mind vacant or
+intent only on a bath and a change of clothes, till in the last
+bend, within a hundred yards of Wanhope he came on Mrs. Clowes.
+
+He never could clearly remember his first sight of her, the shock
+was too great, but as he came up she put out her hands to him and
+he took them in his own.  She was still in her evening dress but
+without cloak or fur, which had probably slipped off her
+shoulders: they were bare, and her beautiful bodice was torn.
+"Oh, here you are," she said with her faint smile.  "I was afraid
+you would come by the field." She looked down at herself and made
+a weak and ineffective effort to gather her loosened laces
+together.  "I'm--I'm not very tidy, am I?"
+
+Lawrence was carrying an overcoat on his arm.  He put her into
+it, and, as she did not seem able to cope with it, buttoned it
+for her.  "What has happened, dear?"
+
+"Bernard has turned me out," said Laura with the same piteous,
+bewildered smile.  "Indeed he never let me in.  I went home soon
+after you left me. The door was shut, I tried the window, but
+that was shut too, so I had to go back to the door.  I couldn't
+open it and I rang.  He answered me through the door, 'Who's
+there?'"  She ended as if the motive power of speech had died
+down in her.
+
+"And you--?"
+
+"Oh, I said, 'It's I--Laura.'"
+
+"Go on, dear," Lawrence gently prompted her.
+
+"I said 'I'm your wife.' He said 'I have no wife.' And he called
+me--coarse names, words I couldn't repeat to any one. I couldn't
+answer him.  Then he said 'Where's Hyde?  Are you there, Hyde?'
+and that you were a coward or you wouldn't stand by and hear him
+calling me a--what he had called me. So I told him you weren't
+there, that you had gone back with Isabel and Val.  He said:
+after you had had all you wanted out of me--I beg your pardon?"
+
+"Nothing.  Go on, dear: tell me all about it."
+
+"But ought I to?" said Laura, raising her dimmed eyes to his
+face.  "It's such a horrible story to tell a man, especially the
+very man who--I feel so queer, Lawrence: don't let me say
+anything I ought not!"
+
+"Laura dear, whatever you say is sacred to me. Besides, I'm your
+cousin by marriage, and it's my business to think and act for
+you: let me help you into this alley." A little further on there
+was a by-path through the shrubberies, and Lawrence drew her
+towards it, but her limbs were giving way under her, and after a
+momentary hesitation he carried her into it in his arms.  "There:
+sit on this bank.  Lean on me," he sat down by her.  "Is that
+better?"
+
+"Oh yes: thank you: I'm so glad to be out of the drive," said
+Laura, letting her head fall, like a child, on his shoulder.  "I
+seem to have been there such a long while. I didn't know where to
+go.  Once a tradesman's cart drove by, the butcher's it was: you
+know Bernard gets so cross because they will drive this way to
+save the long round by the stables.  He stared at me, but I
+didn't know what to do."  Lawrence repressed a groan: it would be
+all over the village then, there was no help for it.  "Where was
+I to go in these clothes?  I did wish you would come, I always
+feel so safe with you."
+
+Lawrence silently stroked her hair.  His heart was riven.  "So
+safe?" and this was all his doing.
+
+"Was the door locked?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And he refused to open it?"
+
+"No, he did open it."
+
+"He did open it, do you say?"
+
+"Yes, because--oh, my head."
+
+"You aren't hurt anywhere, are you?" asked Lawrence, feeling cold
+to his fingertips.
+
+"No, no," she roused herself, dimly sensible of his anxiety,
+"it's only that I feel faint, but it's passing off.  No, I don't
+want any water!  I'd far rather you stayed with me.  It's such a
+comfort to have you here." Lawrence was speechless.  Her hands
+went to her hair.  "Oh dear, I wish I weren't so untidy!  Never
+mind, I shall be all right directly: it does me more good than
+anything else just to tell you about it."
+
+"Well, tell me then."
+
+"The door was locked," she continued languidly but a thought more
+clearly, "and the chain was up and Bernard's couch was drawn
+across inside.  He must have got Barry to wheel it over.  When I
+begged him to let me in he unlocked the door but left it on the
+chain so that it would only open a few inches. I tried to push my
+way in, but he held me back."
+
+"Laura, did he strike you?"
+
+"No, no," said Laura with greater energy than she had yet shown.
+Lawrence drew a breath of relief.  He had felt a horrible fear
+that her faintness might be the result of a blow or a fall.  "Oh,
+how could you think that?  All he did was to put his hand out
+flat against my chest and push me back."
+
+"But your dress is torn" said Lawrence, sickening over the
+question yet feeling that he must know all.
+
+"His ring caught in it.  These crepe de chine dresses tear if you
+look at them."
+
+"Well, did you give it up after that?"
+
+"No, oh no: I never can be angry with Berns because it--it isn't
+Berns really," she glanced up at Lawrence with her pleading eyes.
+"It's a possession of the devil.  He suffers so frightfully,
+Lawrence: he never ceases to rebel, and no one can soothe him but
+me.  So that I hadn't the heart to leave him.  You'll think it
+poor-spirited of me, but I--I can't help loving the real
+Bernard, a Bernard you've never seen.  So I waited because--I
+never can make Yvonne understand--I am so sorry for him: he
+hurts himself more than me--"
+
+Lawrence started.  The echo struck strangely on his ear. "I
+understand."
+
+"You always understand.  So I tried again; I said: would he at
+least let me go to my room and change my clothes and get some
+money.  But he said it was your turn to buy my clothes now.  When
+I'd convinced myself that he was unapproachable, I thought of
+trying to get in by a side door or through the kitchen.  It would
+have been ignominious, but anything was better than standing on
+the steps; Bernard was talking at the top of his voice, and the
+maids were at the bedroom windows overhead.  I didn't look up but
+I saw the curtains flutter."
+
+"Servants don't matter much.  But you did quite right.  What
+happened?"
+
+"He held me by the arm as I turned to go, and told me that all
+the doors and windows were locked and that he had given orders
+not to admit me: not to admit either of us."
+
+"Either you or--?"
+
+"Yourself.  If we liked to stay out all night together we could
+stay out for ever."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Don't ask me." She shuddered and drooped, and the colour came up
+into her face, a rose-pink patch of fever.  "I can't remember any
+more."
+
+"He must have gone raving mad."
+
+"He is not mad, Lawrence.  But he has indulged his imagination
+too long and now it has the mastery of him," said Laura slowly.
+"It's fatal to do that.  'Withstand the beginning: after-remedies
+come too late.' Ever since you came he's been nursing an
+imaginary jealousy of you: though he knew it was imaginary, he
+indulged it as though it were genuine: and now it has turned on
+him and got him by the throat.  Oh, he is so unhappy?  But what
+can I do?"
+
+What, indeed?  Lawrence, recalling Val's warning, subdued a curse
+or a groan.  "A house full of the materials for an explosion."
+And he had lived in that house--blind fool!--week after week
+and had noticed nothing!  "Why--why did no one warn me before?"
+he stammered.  "My poor Laura!  Why didn't you send me away?"
+
+"But if it hadn't been you it would have been someone else!" said
+Mrs. Clowes simply.  "At one time it was Val: then it was Dr.
+Verney's junior partner, who attended me for influenza while Dr.
+Verney was away: and once it was a young chauffeur we had, who
+happened to be a University man.  I did get rid of him, because
+he found out, and that made everything so awkward.  But I
+couldn't get rid of Val, and in many ways I was most unwilling to
+let you go,--you did him so much good.  But I'd made up my mind
+to turn you out: Yvonne was at me--" she paused--"yes, it
+really was only yesterday!  I promised her to speak to you this
+morning.  Well, I've done it!"
+
+"Did you explain to Bernard that Selincourt and Isabel were with
+us all the time?"
+
+"He talked me down."
+
+"He must be made to listen to reason."
+
+"He won't: not yet.  Later, perhaps, but not in time to save the
+situation.  Never mind, you're not married, and if he does
+divorce me people will only say 'Another Selincourt gone wrong.'"
+A dreary and rather cynical gleam of humour played over Laura's
+lips. "I'm sorry mainly for Yvonne, Jack's people are so
+particular; they hated the marriage, and now, when she's lived it
+all down and made them fond of her, I must needs go and
+compromise myself and drag our wretched family into the mud
+again!"
+
+"Good heavens! he can't propose to divorce you?"
+
+"He said he would."
+
+Bit by bit it was all coming out, the cruel and sordid drama
+played before an audience of housemaids, as one admission led to
+another and her strength revived for the ordeal.  Lawrence
+shuddered and sat silent, trying to gauge the extent of the
+mischief.  "What can I do?" said Laura.  She looked down at
+herself and blushed again.  "I do feel so--so disreputable in
+these clothes. I haven't even been able to wash my face and hands
+or tidy my hair since I left the hotel."
+
+"Have you been wandering about in the drive all this time?"
+
+"I suppose so.  I was afraid to go into the road in such a
+pickle."
+
+"These infernal clothes!" Lawrence burst out exasperated.  Their
+wretched plight was reduced to farce by the fact that they were
+locked out of their bedrooms, unable to get at their wardrobes,
+their soaps and sponges and brushes, his collars, her hairpins,
+all those trifles of the toilette without which civilized man can
+scarcely feel himself civilized.  Most of these wants the
+vicarage could supply; but to reach the vicarage they had to
+cross the road.  Lawrence got up and stood looking down at Laura.
+"Can you trust your maid?"
+
+"Trust her? I can't trust her not to gossip.  She's a nice girl
+and a very good maid, but I've only had her a year."
+
+"Silly question!  One doesn't trust servants nowadays.  My man's
+a scamp, but I can depend on him up to a certain point because I
+pay him well.  Anyhow we must make the best of a bad job.  If I
+cut straight down from here I shall get into the tradesmen's
+drive, shan't I?"
+
+"But you can't go to the back door!"
+
+"Apparently I can't go to the front," said Lawrence with his
+wintry smile.  He promised himself to go to the front by and by,
+but not while Laura was shivering in torn clothes under a bush.
+
+"But what are you going to do?"
+
+"Simply to get us a few necessaries of life.  You can't be seen
+like this, and you can't stand here forever, catching cold with
+next to nothing on: besides, you've had no food since five
+o'clock this morning--and not much then."
+
+"But the servants--if they have orders--"
+
+"Servants!" He laughed.
+
+"But you don't mean to force your way in?"
+
+"Not past Bernard, dear.  Don't be afraid: I shall skulk in by
+the rear."
+
+It was easy to say "Don't be afraid": doubly easy for Lawrence,
+who had never known Bernard's darker temper.  But there was no
+coward blood in Mrs. Clowes, and she steadied herself under the
+rallying influence of Hyde's firm look and tone.
+
+"Go, then, but don't be long.  And, Lawrence promise me. . ."
+
+"Anything, dear."
+
+"You won't touch Bernard, will you?"  Lawrence was dumb, from wonder,
+not from indecision.  "No one can do that," said Laura under her
+breath.  "Oh, I know you wouldn't dream of it.  But yet--if he
+insulted you, if he struck you . . . if he insulted me. . . ?"
+
+"No, on my honour."
+
+He touched her hand with his lips--a ceremony performed by
+Lawrence only once beforehand in what different circumstances!--
+and left her: more like a winter butterfly than ever, with her
+shining hair, pale face, and gallant eyes, and the silver threads
+of her embroidered skirt flowing round her over the sunburnt
+turf.
+
+Wanhope was an old-fashioned house, and the domestic premises
+were much the same as they had been in the eighteenth century, except
+that Clowes had turned one wing of the stables into a garage and
+rooms for the chauffeur.  He kept no indoor menservants except Barry,
+the groom and gardener living in the village, while three or four
+maids were ample to wait on that quiet family.  Pursuing the
+tradesman's drive between coach-house, tool shed, coal shed, and
+miscellaneous outbuildings, Lawrence emerged on a brick yard, ducked
+under a clothes-line, made for an open doorway, and found himself in
+the scullery.  It was empty, and he went on into a big old-fashioned
+kitchen, draughty enough with its high roof and blue plastered walls.
+Here, too, there was not a soul to be seen: a kettle was furiously
+boiling over on the hob, a gas ring was running to waste near by,
+turned on but left unlit and volleying evil fumes.  His next
+researches carried him into a flagged passage, on his right a sunlit
+pantry, on his left a dingy alcove evidently dedicated to the
+trimming of lamps and the cleaning of boots.  He began to wonder if
+every one had run away.  But no: a sharp turn, a couple of steps, and
+he came on an inner door, comfortably covered with green baize,
+through which issued a perfect hubbub of voices all talking at once.
+He listened long enough to hear himself characterized by a baritone
+as a stinking Jew, and by a treble as not her style and a bit too gay
+but quite the gentleman, before he raised the latch and stepped in.
+
+His appearance produced a perfect hush.  Except Barry and his own
+valet they were all there, the entire domestic staff of Wanhope:
+and to face them was not the least courageous act that Lawrence
+had ever performed.  It was a large, comfortable room, lit by
+large windows overlooking the kitchen garden; a cheerful fire
+burnt in the grate this autumn morning, and in a big chair before
+it sat a cheerful, comely person in a print gown, in whom he
+recognized Mrs. Fryar the cook.  Gordon the chauffeur, a
+pragmatic young man from the Clyde, in this levelling hour was
+sitting on the edge of the table with a glass of beer in his
+hand.  Caroline, the Baptist housemaid, held the floor: she was
+declaiming, when Lawrence entered, that it was a shame of Major
+Clowes and she didn't care who heard her say so, but apparently
+Lawrence was an exception, for like all the rest she was
+instantly stricken dumb as the grave.
+
+Lawrence remained standing in the open doorway.  He would have
+given a thousand pounds to be in morning attire, but no
+constraint was perceptible in the big, careless, impassive figure
+framed against the sunlit yard.
+
+"Are you Mrs. Clowes's maid?" he singled out a tall, rather
+stiff, quiet-looking girl in the plain black dress of her
+calling.  "Is your name Catherine? I want to speak to you."
+
+She stood up--they were all standing by now except Gordon--but
+she looked at him very oddly, as if she were half frightened and
+half inclined to be familiar. "I suppose you can tell me where
+my lady is, sir?"
+
+"She is waiting for you," said Lawrence. "I say that I want to
+speak to you by yourself.  Come in here, please." Catherine
+continued to look as if she felt inclined to flounce and toss her
+head, but under his cold and steady eyes she thought better of it
+and followed him into the pantry. Lawrence shut the door.
+
+"I'd have gone to my lady, sir, if I'd known where she was."
+
+"You're going to her now," said Lawrence.  "I want you, please,
+to run up to her room and fetch some clothes, the sort of clothes
+she would wear to go out walking: you understand what I mean?  A
+jacket and dress and hat, walking boots, a veil--" Catherine
+intimated that she did understand: much better than any
+gentleman, her smile implied.
+
+"Perhaps," she suggested, "what you would like is for me to pack
+a small box for her, sir?  My lady will want a lot of things that
+gentlemen don't think of: underskirts and--"
+
+"Good God, what do I care?" said Lawrence impatiently.  "No,
+nothing of that sort: take just what she wants to change out of
+evening dress into morning dress.  It'll be only for a few hours.
+Go and get them, and be as quick and quiet as you can.  Say
+nothing to Major Clowes." He laid his hand on her shoulder.
+"Are you a decent girl, I wonder?"
+
+She drew up and for the first time looked him straight in the
+eyes. "If you mean, sir, that you're going to take my poor lady
+away, why, I think it's high time too.  I was always brought up
+respectable, but when it comes to a gentleman calling his own
+married wife such names, why, it's time some one did interfere.
+I heard him with my own ears call her a--"
+
+"That'll do," said Lawrence.
+
+"And struck her, that he did, which you ought to know," Catherine
+persisted eagerly: "put his arm out through the door and gave her
+a great blow! and it's not the first time neither.  Many's the
+night when I've undressed my lady but perhaps you've seen for
+yourself--"
+
+She stopped short and put her hand over her mouth.
+
+"Go and get the things," said Lawrence, "then wait for me in the
+yard."
+
+Catherine retired in disorder and Lawrence followed her out.  He
+found Barry waiting to speak to him.  "Where's my man?" Lawrence
+asked. "Send him to me, will you?"
+
+"Beg pardon, sir, but are you going to speak to Major Clowes?"
+
+"Why?"
+
+Barry looked down.  "His orders was that you weren't to be
+admitted, sir."
+
+"How is Major Clowes?"
+
+"Very queer.  I took it on myself to send for the doctor, but he
+was out: but they sent word that he'd step round as soon as he
+came in.  I'd have liked to catch Mr. Val, but he slipped off
+while I was waiting on the Major."
+
+"But Major Clowes isn't ill?"
+
+"Oh no, sir.  But I don't care for so much responsibility."
+
+"Shall I have a look at him?"
+
+"Oh no," a much more decided negative. "I wouldn't go near the
+Major, sir, not if I was you."
+
+"Why, what's the matter with him?" Lawrence asked curiously.  But
+Barry refused to commit himself beyond repeating that the Major
+was very queer, and after promising to send Val to the rescue
+Lawrence dismissed him, as Gaston came hurrying up.  Something
+suspiciously like a grin twinkled over the little Frenchman's
+face when he found his master waiting for him on the sill of
+Caroline's pantry, silhouetted against row on row of shining
+glass and silver, and wearing at noon-day the purple and fine
+linen, the white waistcoat and thin boots of last night.  But his
+French breeding triumphed and he remained, except for that one
+furtive twinkle, the conscientious valet, nescient and urbane.
+Lawrence did not give him even so much explanation as he had
+given Catherine.  "Is there a back staircase?" he asked, and
+then, "Take me up by it.  I'm going to my room."
+
+Gaston led the way through the servants' hall. Lawrence,
+following, had to fight down a nausea of humiliation that was
+almost physical: he had never before done anything that so
+sickened him as this sneaking progress through the kitchen
+quarters in another man's house.  At length Gaston, holding up a
+finger to enjoin silence, brought him out on the main landing
+overlooking the hall.
+
+There was no carpet on the polished floor but Lawrence when he
+chose could tread like a cat.  He stepped to the balustrade.  It
+was as dark as a dark evening, for the great doors were still
+fast shut, and what scanty light filtered through the painted
+panes was absorbed, not reflected, by raftered roof, panelled
+walls, and Jacobean stair.  But as he grew used to the gloom he
+could distinguish Bernard's couch and the powerful prostrate
+figure stretched out on it like a living bar.  Bernard's arms
+were crossed over his breast: his features were the colour of
+stone: he might have been dead.
+
+Lawrence was startled.  But he could do no good now, and the
+Frenchman was fidgeting at his bedroom door.  Later . . .
+
+Secure of privacy Gaston's decorum relaxed a trifle, for it was
+clear to him that confidences must be at least tacitly exchanged:
+M'sieur le captaine could not hope to keep him in the dark, there
+never was an elopement yet of which valet and lady's maid were
+not cognizant. Like Catherine, "You wish I pack for you, Sare?"
+he asked in his lively imperfect English.  He was naturally a
+chatterbox and brimful of a Parisian's salted malice, even after
+six years in the service of Captain Hyde, who did not encourage
+his attendants to be communicative.
+
+Lawrence was tearing off his accursed evening clothes. (All day
+it had been the one drop of sweetness in his bitter cup that he
+had borrowed Lucian's razor and shaved in Lucian's rooms.) "Get
+me a tweed suit and boots."
+
+Gaston frowned, wrinkling his nose: if M'sieur imagined that that
+nose had no scent for an affair of gallantry--!  But still he
+persisted, even he, though the snub was a bitter pill: himself a
+gallant man, could allow for jaded nerves.  "You wish I pack,
+yes?" he deprecated reticence by his insinuatingly sympathetic
+tone.
+
+"No," said Lawrence, tying his tie before a mirror.  "I'm coming
+back."
+
+"'Ere?  Back--so--'ere, m'sieur?"
+
+"Yes, before tonight."
+
+It was more than flesh and blood could stand. "Sir Clowes 'e say
+no," remarked Gaston in a detached and nonchalant tone, as he
+gathered up the garments which his master had strewn over the
+floor. "'E verree angree.  'E say 'Zut! m'sieur le captaine est
+parti!--il ne revient plus.'"
+
+"Gaston." The Frenchman turned from the press in which he was
+hanging up Lawrence's coat.  "You're a perfect scamp, my man,"
+Lawrence spoke over his shoulder as he ran through the contents
+of a pocketbook, "and I should be sorry to think you were
+attached to me.  But your billet is comfortable, I believe: I pay
+you jolly good wages, you steal pretty much what you like, and
+you have the additional pleasure of reading all my letters.  Now
+listen: I'm coming back to Wanhope before tonight and so is Mrs.
+Clowes.  I'm not going to run away with her, as Major Clowes gave
+you all to understand.  What you think is of no importance
+whatever to any one, what you say is equally trilling, but I
+don't choose to have my servant say it: so, if you continue to
+drop these interesting hints, I shall not only boot you out, but"
+--he turned "I shall give you such a thrashing in the rear,
+Gaston--in this direction, Gaston--that you won't be able to
+sit down comfortably for a month."
+
+"M'sieur is so droll," murmured Gaston, removing himself with
+dignified agility and an unabashed grimace.
+
+Lawrence let himself out by the back stairs again and the kitchen
+--now in a state of great activity, the gas ring lit and
+preparations for lunch going on apace--and forth into the yard.
+Out in the open air he drew a long breath: safe in tweeds and a
+felt hat, he was his own man again, but he felt as though he had
+been wading in mud.  The mystified Catherine followed him at a
+sign into the drive. There Hyde stood still.  "Take that path to
+the left.  You'll find your mistress waiting for you.  Help her
+to dress, and tell her I shall be at the lodge gates when she's
+ready.  And, Catherine--"
+
+He paused, feeling an almost insuperable distaste for his job.
+But it had to be done, the girl must not find him tight with his
+money: that she would hold her tongue was beyond expectation, but
+if well tipped at least she might not invent lies.  It went
+against the grain of his temper to bribe one of Bernard's maids,
+but fate was not now consulting his likes or dislikes.  He thrust
+his hand into his pocket--"Look after your mistress, will you?"
+
+The respectably brought up Catherine turned scarlet. She put her
+hand behind her back. "I'm sure, sir, I don't want your money to
+make me do that!"
+
+"If you prick us shall we not bleed?" It was the first time that
+Lawrence had ever discovered a servant to be a human being: and
+his philosophical musings were chequered, till he moved out of
+earshot, by the clamour of Catherine's irrepressible dismay.
+"Oh madam!"  he heard, and, "Well, if I ever-!" and then in a
+tone suddenly softened from horror to sympathy, "there now,
+there, let me get your dress off . . . ."  From Mrs. Clowes came
+no answer, or none audible to him.
+
+Laura joined him in ten minutes' time, neatly dressed, gloved,
+and veiled, her hair smoothed--it had never been rough so far as
+Lawrence could observe--her complexion regulated by Catherine's
+powder puff.  "Are you better?" said Lawrence, examining her
+anxiously: "able to walk as far as the vicarage?"
+
+"The vicarage?"
+
+"Wharton's too far off.  You're dead tired:  You'll have to lie
+down and keep quiet.  Isabel will look after you." It speaks to
+the complete overthrow of Lawrence's ideas that for the last hour
+he had not recollected Isabel's existence. "And we shall have to
+wait till Bernard raises the siege: one can't bawl explanations
+through a keyhole.  Besides, I must wire to Lucian." He slipped
+his hand under her arm.  "Would you like this good girl of yours
+to come with you?"
+
+"I will come, madam, directly I've fetched my hat," said
+Catherine eagerly.  "You must have some one to look after you,
+and your hair never brushed and all."
+
+But Laura shook her head, Catherine must not defy her master.
+"If you want to please me," she said not without humour "--I
+can't help it, Lawrence--try to look after Major Clowes.  You
+had better not go near him yourself, because as you know he isn't
+very pleased with me just now, but see that Mrs. Fryar sends him
+in a nice lunch and ask Barry to try to get him to eat it. I
+ordered some oysters to come this morning, and Major Clowes will
+enjoy those when he won't touch anything else."
+
+Catherine watched her lady up the road with a disappointed eye.
+It was a tame conclusion to a promising adventure.  Although
+respectably brought up, her sympathies were all with Captain Hyde:
+she had foreseen herself, the image of regretful discretion,
+sacrificing her lifelong principles to escort Mrs. Clowes to
+Brighton, or Switzerland, or that place where they had the little
+horses that Mr. Duval made such a 'mysterious joke about--it would
+have been amusing to do foreign parts with Mr. Duval.  But when Laura
+took the turning to the vicarage Catherine was invaded by a creeping
+chill of doubt.  Was it possible that Captain Hyde was not Mrs.
+Clowes's lover after all?
+
+"I know which I'd choose," she said to Gordon. "I've no patience
+with the Major.  Such a way to behave! and my poor lady with the
+patience of an angel, putting up and putting up--  No man's worth
+it, that's what I say."
+
+"Well, it is a bit thick," said Gordon: "calling his own wife a--"
+
+"Mr.  Gordon!"
+
+The son of the Clyde was a contentious young man, and a jealous
+one.  "You didn't seem to mind when the French chap was talking
+about a fille de joy.  What d'ye suppose a fille de joy is in
+English? but there's some of us can do no wrong."
+
+"French sounds so much more refined," said Catherine firmly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+Inaction was hard on Lawrence.  He hated it: and he was not used
+to it: his impulse was to go direct to Wanhope and break down the
+door: but it was not to be done.  When he reached the vicarage
+Mr. Stafford had gone out after an early lunch to take a wedding
+in Countisford, while Val had been obliged to ride over to a
+neighbouring farm.  Leaving Laura to Isabel, who startled him by
+her cool "So Major Clowes has done it at last?" he hurried down
+to the post office to telephone to Selincourt (aware on his way
+that every eye was staring at him: no doubt the tale was already
+on every lip), but Selincourt too was out, and he had to be
+content with despatching colourless duplicate telegrams to his
+rooms and club.  From a hint let fall during the night he was
+aware that no more than the most laconic wire would be needed,
+but he fretted under the delay, which meant that Selincourt could
+not arrive before six o'clock.  After that he would have liked to
+go to Wharton, but dared not, for, though Jack's grandfather was
+what Yvonne called a Romantic, the Grantchesters were old-fashioned
+straightlaced people who had better not hear of the scandal till it
+was over.  No, till Selincourt and Val appeared there was no more to
+be done, and Lawrence, returned to the vicarage and flung himself
+into a chair to wait. He dreaded inaction: inaction meant thought:
+and thought meant such bitter realities as he knew not how to stand
+up against: but what he liked or disliked was no longer to the point.
+
+In that easy-going household, where comfort was obtained at the
+expense of appearances, there was always a diningroom fire in
+cold weather, and on this September morning the glow of the
+flames had a lulling effect.  Dead tired, he dropped asleep, to
+be roused by the feeling that there was some one in the room.
+There was, it was Isabel; and in the drugged heaviness that
+follows daylight slumber Hyde simply held out his arms to her in
+oblivion of last night.  "Oh, oh!" said Isabel smiling at him
+and touching his palms with the tips of her fingers, "were you
+dreaming of me?"  Hyde drew back, a deep flush covering his face.
+What had changed Isabel? she was pure fascination.  "I've been
+watching you a long time while you were asleep. I thought you
+would never wake.  You're so, so tired!  Here's a cup of coffee
+for you."
+
+"Thank you," said Lawrence, entirely subdued.
+
+He still felt half dazed: confused and shy, emotions the harder
+to disguise because they were so unfamiliar: and restless under
+Isabel's merry eyes.  How near she was to him, the leaping flames
+flinging a dance of light and shadow over her silk shirt, and the
+bloom on her cheek, and the dark hair parted on one side (a
+boyish fashion which he had always disliked) and waved over her
+head! So near that without rising he could have pressed his lips
+to that white throat of hers. . . . Last night it had been beauty
+clouded, beauty averse, but this morning it was beauty in the
+most delicate and derisive and fleeting sunlight of pleasure; and
+the temperament of his race delivered Lawrence hand and foot into
+its power.  The deep waters went over him and he ceased to
+struggle--"Isabel," he heard himself saying in a level voice but
+without his own volition, "should you mind if I were to kiss
+you?"
+
+What a banality to ask of a woman, his second self scoffed at
+him: a woman who should be kissed or left alone, but never asked
+for a kiss!
+
+"Not very much," said Isabel, presenting her smooth cheek.  "Not
+if it would do you any good."
+
+Oh irony, oh disenchantment!  "Thank you."  He curbed his passion
+and sat still.  "I am not Val."
+
+"Shut your eyes then."
+
+He held his breath: the thick beating of his heart was like a
+muffled hammer.
+
+"This isn't the way I kiss Val."
+
+"Isabel!" exclaimed Lawrence.  He held out his arms again but
+they closed on the empty firelight: she had gone dancing off, the
+most fugitive, the most insubstantial of mistresses, nothing left
+of her to him but the memory of that moth's wing touch.
+
+"Isabel,  come here!" He, sprang to his feet.  From the other end
+of the room Isabel turned round, wistful, her head bent, glancing
+up at him under her eyelashes.
+
+"Oh must you have me?--all of me?  Oh Lawrence!--well then--"
+
+She advanced step by step, slowly.  Lawrence waited, convinced
+that if he tried to seize her she would be gone, such a vague
+thistledown grace there was in her slender immaturity.  He waited
+and Isabel came to him, drifted into his arms, was lying for a
+moment on his breast, and then, "Let me go: dearest, don't hold
+me!"
+
+He kept her long enough to ask "But are you mine?"
+
+"Yes," said Isabel, sighing.
+
+"This is a grudging gift, Isabel."
+
+"Oh no," she whispered, "not grudging.  All my heart: all of me.
+Only don't hold me, I'm still afraid."
+
+"Of me?"
+
+"Yes: now are you triumphant?" She escaped.
+
+"Will you sit down in a chair, you sprite, and let me kneel at
+your ladyship's feet?"
+
+"No--yes--No, you too sit down." Then as Lawrence, enchained,
+relapsed into the deep easy chair by the fire, she came behind
+and leant over him, wreathing her arms over his shoulders.
+"There: now lie still: so: is that cosy for you?  Now will you go
+to sleep?"
+
+"Circe . . ."
+
+"You don't feel as though you were going to sleep."
+
+"Mon Dieu!" Lawrence murmured under his breath.
+
+"Don't say that," her voice was so soft that it was like the
+voice of his own heart speaking to him, "it isn't a proper reply
+to make when a lady says she loves you."
+
+"Oh! provided that you do love me--!"
+
+She took his temples between her fingertips and again her
+enchanting caress brushed his lips. Lawrence lay helpless.  It
+was like receiving the caresses of a fairy: a delight and a
+torment, a serenity and a flame.  "I love you.  I will marry you.
+I shall be a most exacting wife, 'December when I wed.' Very soon
+you'll wish you had never set eyes on me.  You'll have to marry
+Val too and all the family." Her long lashes were fluttering
+against his cheek. "As you're thirty-six and I'm only nineteen,
+you'll have to be very docile or I shall tell you you're
+ungenerous."
+
+"Presuming on my income, as you said--was it last night?"
+
+"When you were free.  Does it seem so long ago?" She gave a
+little laugh, airy and sweet. "Oh poor Benedict!  Would you like
+to cry off?  Let me see: you may scratch any time before I tell
+Val, which will be when he comes in at five o'clock.  Now then?"
+
+This mention of Val was like a dash of cold water, and Lawrence
+tried to rouse himself.  "Will you be serious for half a second,
+you incarnation of mischief?"
+
+"No--yes--no, I don't want to be serious," she turned in his
+arms and the Isabel of last night pierced him with her dark,
+humid, brilliant eyes.  "I want to forget.  Make me forget!"
+
+"Forget what?"
+
+"Other women."
+
+"There are no other women, Isabel."
+
+"There have been.--Lawrence!" the scent of the honeysuckle
+pinned into her blouse seemed to narcotize all his senses with
+its irresistible sweetness, "you will be true to me, won't you?
+You won't love other women now?  Say you never wanted to kiss any
+of them so much as--  Oh!" Drunk with her Circean cup, Hyde was
+more than willing to convince her, but in a fashion of his own.
+Isabel gave a little sigh and faded out of his clasp: he tried to
+seize her but she was gone, leaving only the scent of bruised
+petals and the memory of a silken contact.  "You're so--so
+stormy," the gossamer voice mocked him with its magic of youth
+and gaiety. "Val says--"
+
+"Isabel, I'm sick of that formula.  You're going to marry me, not
+Val."
+
+"--You're not one-third English."
+
+"I've lived in countries where they knew how to manage women,"
+Lawrence muttered.
+
+"With a whip?"
+
+"No."
+
+"What a pity!"
+
+"No, the other method is more effective."
+
+"You terrify me," her eyes were sparkling now like a diamond.
+"Don't fling any more of those dark threats at me or I shall
+never marry you at all.  Some day you'll be madly jealous of me like
+Major Clowes--you are like him: you could be just as brutal: and I'm
+not like Laura--and you'll lure me out of England and wreak a
+mysterious vengeance."
+
+"I wish we were out of England now."
+
+"So do I.  Oh Lawrence, I'd sell my soul to go to Egypt!"
+
+"Red-hot days and blue sands in the moonlight.  Shall I take you
+there for our honeymoon?"
+
+"Or Spain: or Sicily: or what about Majorea?--  Let's slip off
+alone in a nom de plume and an aeroplane to some place where no
+one ever goes, all roses and lemon thyme and honey-coloured
+cliffs and a bay of blue sea--"
+
+"Should you like to be alone with me?"
+
+"Yes ... why not?"
+
+"Good!" said Hyde laughing.  "I see no reason if you don't." He
+put his hand before his eyes, which were throbbing as though he
+had looked too long at a bright light.  But Isabel pulled down
+his wrist.  "Don't do that.  I like to watch your eyes.  I allow
+no reserves, Lawrence.  And isn't it rather too late to lock the
+door?  I've seen you--"
+
+"Isabel!" He freed himself and stood up. "I beg your pardon, but
+you must not--  I can't stand--" His face was burning.  Isabel had
+not realized--it is difficult for a young girl to realize,
+convinced of her own insignificance--how deeply his pride had
+been cut overnight, but she was under no delusion now.  He was
+hot with shame and anger, and had to wait to fight them down
+before he could go on.  "Nineteen are you--or nine?  I can't
+play with you today.  Make allowance for me, dearest!  I'm in a
+most difficult position.  I've done incalculable mischief, and,
+to tell you the truth, I shouldn't have chosen to raise this
+subject again till I'm clear of it.  Your people may very fairly
+object.  My cousin is threatening a divorce action.  He's mad:
+and no decent lawyer would take his case into court: but the fact
+remains that poor Laura has been turned out of doors, and for
+that I am, in myself-centred carelessness, to blame.  You won't
+misunderstand me, will you, if I say that while this abominable
+business is hanging over me we can't be formally engaged?  Val
+must be told--nothing would induce me to keep him in the dark
+for an hour.  But for all that I shan't know how to face him.
+What! ask him for you, and in the same breath tell him that Laura
+has been turned adrift because I've compromised her?  If I were Val
+there'd be the devil and all to pay.  In the meantime I must--I
+must be sure of you.  But you change like the wind: last night you
+refused me, and to-day . . ."  He walked over to the window and stood
+looking out into the garden, fighting down one of those tremendous
+storms of memory which swept over him from time to time and made the
+present seem absolutely one with the past.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+He turned, but his voice was thick.  "Last time I trusted a woman
+she betrayed me."
+
+"You're thinking of your wife."
+
+"I often think of her," Hyde said savagely, "and wonder if all
+women are tarred with the same brush."
+
+"Oh, that is brutal," said Isabel, paling: "but you're tired
+out."
+
+It was true, he was too tired to rest: heartsick and ashamed,
+painfully aware of the immense harm he had done and uncertain how
+to mend it.  This sense of guilt was the more harassing because
+he was not in the habit of regretting his actions, good or bad:
+but now he could no longer fling off responsibility: it was
+riveted on him by all the other emotions which Wanhope had
+evoked, pity for Bernard, and affection for Laura, and humility
+before Val.
+
+Among the lilacs a robin was singing his delicate and bold
+welcome to autumn, and over the window a branch of red roses
+nodded persistently and rhythmically in a draught of wind.
+Lawrence stood looking out into the garden of which he saw
+nothing, and Isabel, watching him, felt tears coming into her own
+eyes, the tears of that unnerving pity which a woman feels for
+the man she loves, when she has never before seen him in defeat
+or depression.  No wonder he thought her fickle!  How could he
+read what was dark to her?
+
+Isabel had not deliberately altered her mind in the night.  She
+had lain down free and risen up bond, waking from sound sleep,
+the sleep of a child, to find that the silent inner Court of
+Appeal had reversed her verdict while she slept.  Her first
+thought had been, "I'm going to marry Lawrence!" For he needed
+her: that was what she had forgotten last night: by his parade of
+wealth he had defeated his own ends, but, her first anger over,
+she had realized that one should no more refuse a man for being
+rich, than accept him.  Far other were the grounds on which that
+decision had to be made.  It had been pity that carried Isabel
+away.  Perhaps in any case she could not have held out for long.
+
+Did she expect to be happy?  Scarcely, for she did not trust him
+enough to be frank with him.  Sophisticated men soon tire of candid
+women: it was in this faith that Isabel had clouded herself in such
+an iridescence of mystery and coquetry, laughing when she felt more
+inclined to cry, eluding Lawrence when she would rather have rested
+in his arms.  Roses and steel: innocence in a saffron scarf:
+ascendancy won and held only by surrender: such was to be the life of
+the woman who married Lawrence Hyde, as she had seen it long ago on a
+June evening, and as, with some necessary failings for human
+weakness, she carried it out to the end. If any moralities at all
+were to be fulfilled in their union, it was for her to impose them,
+for Hyde had none.  Within the limits of his code of honour he would
+simply do as he liked.  And with nine-tenths of her nature Isabel
+would have liked nothing better than to shut her eyes and yield to
+him as all her life she had yielded to Val, for she too loved red
+roses and sunshine and the pleasure of the senses: but her innermost
+self, the warder of her will, would rather have died than yield, she
+the child of an ascetic and trained in Val's simple code of duty.
+
+But there should be compromise: one must not--one need not--cheat
+him of the pride of his manhood.  Isabel's heart ached for
+her lover.  She could not defend herself against him any longer,
+and in her yielding the warder of her will whispered, "You may
+yield now.  Not to be frank with him now would be unfair as well
+as unkind."
+
+She came softly to him in the window, and instantly by some
+change of tension Lawrence discovered to his delight that Circe
+had vanished.  His mistress was his own now, a girl of nineteen
+who had promised to be his wife, and he was carried beyond doubt
+or anger by the rush of tenderness which went over him when he
+began to taste the sweetness of his victory.  "Have I won you?"
+he whispered, his voice as unsteady as a boy's in his first
+passion. "You won't fail me?"
+
+"Oh never! never!"
+
+"You have the most beautiful eyes in the world.  I believe one
+reason why I always secretly liked Val was that his eyes reminded
+me of yours.  I can't stand it when he looks at me under your
+eyelashes.  I always want to say 'Here take it Val.'"
+
+"Take what?"
+
+"Anything he wants.  I'm going to extend a protecting wing over
+my young brother-in-law.  He shall not, no, I swear he shall not
+come to grief. I can't stand it, he's too like you.  When did you
+first fall in love with me?"
+
+"When did you?"
+
+"The night you went to sleep in the garden at Wanhope."
+
+"Oh! when you kissed me?"
+
+"When I--?"
+
+Isabel was speechless.
+
+"How do you know I kissed you, Isabel? I thought you were
+asleep."
+
+"So I was," said Isabel, blushing deeply. "Oh! Captain Hyde, I
+wasn't pretending!  But I woke up directly after, and heard a
+rustling in the wood, and I--I knew, don't ask me: I could feel
+-"
+
+"This?"
+
+"Yes," Isabel murmured, resigning herself.
+
+"How strange!" said Lawrence under his breath. "You were asleep
+and you felt me kiss you?"
+
+She looked up at him through her eyelashes. "Is that so strange?"
+
+"Rather: because I never did kiss you."
+
+"Not?"
+
+"No: I bent over you to do it, but you were so defenceless and so
+young, I didn't dare.--  Isabel! my darling! what have I done?"
+
+The first days of love are supposed to be blind days, but too
+often they are days of overstrained criticism, when from very
+fear each sees slips and imperfections even where they do not
+exist.  The discovery that she had misjudged Hyde was an
+exquisite joy to Isabel.  This trivial, crucial scruple, of
+morality or taste, whichever one liked to call it, was the sign
+of a chastity of mind which could coexist, it seemed, with the
+coarse and careless sins that he had never denied.  After all no
+marriage on earth is perfect, and husbands as well as wives have
+to make allowances; but as years go on, and affection does its
+daily work, the rubs are less and less felt, till the time comes
+when deeper wisdom can look back smiling on the fears of youth.
+Isabel at nineteen did not possess this wisdom but she had youth
+itself.
+
+The flames crackled low on the hearth: the wind, a small autumn
+wind, piped weakly round white wall and high chimneypot: outside
+in the garden late roses were shedding their petals loosened by a
+touch of frost in the night.  "Tears because you mistrusted me?"
+said Hyde in his soft voice.  "But why should the Gentile maiden
+trust a Jew?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+Riding back from Liddiard St. Agnes in the low September
+sunshine, Val became aware of something pleasantly pictorial in
+the landscape.  It was a day when the hills looked higher than
+usual, the tilt of the Plain sharper, the shadows a darker umber,
+the light clearer under a softly-quilted autumn sky.  When he
+crossed a reaped cornfield, the pale golden stalks of stubble to
+westward were tipped each with a spark of light, so that all the
+upland flashed away from him toward the declining sun.
+
+In his own mind there was a lull which corresponded with this
+clear quietness of Nature: a pleasant vacancy and a suspension of
+personal interest, so that even his anxiety about Laura was put
+at a little distance, and he could see her and Bernard, and
+Lawrence himself, like figures in a picture, hazed over by a kind
+of moral sunlight--the Grace of God, say, which from Val's point
+of view shapes all our ends:
+
+          I do not ask to see
+          The distant scene: one step enough for me,
+
+this courage came to Val now without effort, and not for himself
+only, which would have been easy at any time, but for Laura in
+her difficult married life, and for those other beloved heads on
+which he was fated to bring disgrace--his father, Rowsley,
+Isabel: come what might, sorrow could not harm them, nor fear
+annoy.  How quiet it was! the quieter for the wrangling of rooks
+in the border elms, and for the low autumn wind that rustled in
+the hedgerows: and how full of light the sky, in spite of the
+soft bloomy clouds that had hung about all day, imbrowning the
+sunshine! far off in the valley doves were grieving, and over the
+reaped and glittering cornstalks curlews were flying and calling
+with their melancholy--shrill wail, an echo from the sea, while
+small birds in flocks flew away twittering as he rode up, and
+settled again further on, and rose and settled again, always with
+a clatter of tiny wings.  Evening coming on: and winter coming
+on: and light, light everywhere, and calm, over the harvest
+fields and the darkened copses, and the far blue headlands that
+seemed to lift themselves up into immeasurable serenities of sky.
+
+It was lucky for Val that he was able to enjoy this quiet hour,
+for it was soon over.  When he crossed the turf to the diningroom
+window, the fire had burnt down into red embers and not much
+light came in from out of doors under that low ceiling, but there
+was enough to show him Isabel in Lawrence's arms.  Fatality!  He
+had not foreseen it, not for a moment: and yet directly he saw it
+he seemed to have known it all along.  After a momentary
+suspension of his faculties, during which his ideas shifted much
+as they do when an unfamiliar turns into a familiar road, Val
+tapped on the glass and strolled in, giving his young sister one
+of his light teasing smiles.  "Am I to bestow my consent,
+Isabel?"
+
+"Oh Val!--  Don't be angry, or not with Lawrence anyhow, it wasn't
+his fault."
+
+Isabel disengaged herself but without confusion. Her brother
+watched her in increasing surprise. Rosy and sparkling, she
+seemed to have grown from child to woman in an hour, as after a
+late spring the first hot day brings a million buds into leaf.
+
+"Are you startled?" she asked, holding up her cheek for a kiss.
+
+"Not so much so as I should have been twenty-four hours ago.  No,
+I didn't guess--not a bit; I suppose brothers never expect
+people to want to marry their sisters.  We know too much about
+you."
+
+"Better run off to the nursery, Isabel," said Lawrence.  Isabel
+made him a little smiling curtsey eloquent of her disdain--it
+was so like Captain Hyde to be saucy before Val!--and slipped
+away. When Lawrence returned after holding open the door for her,
+he found a certain difficulty in meeting Val's eyes.
+
+"And this then is the mysterious attraction that has kept you at
+Wanhope all the summer?  Wonderful!  What will Mrs. Jack say?
+But I suppose nineteen, for forty, has a charm of its own."
+
+Lawrence was not forty.  But he refused to be drawn.  "She is
+very beautiful."
+
+"Oh, very," Val was nothing if not cordial.  "But her face is her
+fortune. I needn't ask if you can keep her in the state to which
+she's accustomed," his eye wandered over the dilapidated vicarage
+furniture, "or whether your attentions are disinterested.
+Evidently you're one of those men who like their wives to be
+dependent on them--  Dear me!"
+
+"Damn the money!" said Lawrence at white heat.  "Jew I may be,
+but it's you and Isabel that harp on it, not I."
+
+"Come, come!" Val arched his eyebrows.  "So sorry to ruffle you,
+but these questions are in all the etiquette books and some one
+has to ask them.  If you could look on me as Isabel's father--?"
+
+It was too much.  Angry as he was, Lawrence began to laugh.  "No,
+I won't look on you as Isabel's father," he had regained the
+advantage of age and position, neutralized till now by Val's
+cooler self-restraint. "I won't look on you as anything but a
+brother-in-law; a younger brother of my own, Val, if you can
+support the relation.  Won't you start fresh with me?  I've not
+given you much cause to think well of me up to now, but I love
+Isabel, and I'll do my best to make her happy.  I might find
+forgiveness difficult if I were you, but then," for his life he
+could not have said whether he was in earnest or chaffing Val,
+"I'm a Jew of Shylock's breed and you're a Christian."
+
+"But, my dear fellow, what is there to forgive?  We're only too
+delighted and grateful for the honour done us: it's a brilliant
+match, of course, far better than she could expect to make." A
+duller man than Lawrence could not have missed the secret silken
+mischief.  "And to me, to all of us, you're more than kind; it's
+nice to feel that instead of losing a sister I shall gain a
+brother."
+
+"You are an infernal prig, Val!"
+
+"Oh," said Val, this time without irony, "It's easy for you to
+come with an apology in one hand and a cheque in the other."
+
+He turned away and stood looking out into the garden.  In the
+lilac bushes over the lawn Isabel's robin was still singing his
+winter carol, and the atmosphere was saturated with the smell of
+wet, dead leaves, the poignant, fatal smell of autumn. "There's
+winter in the air tonight," said Val half aloud.
+
+"What?" said Lawrence startled.
+
+"I say that life's too short for quarrelling." He held out his
+hand.  "But be gentle with her, she is very young.--  Yes, what is
+it, Fanny?"
+
+"Major Clowes's compliments, sir, and he would be glad to see
+Captain Hyde as soon as convenient."
+
+At Wanhope half an hour later the sun had gone down behind a bank
+of purple fog, and cloud after cloud had put off its vermilion
+glow and faded into a vague dimness of twilight: house and garden
+were quiet, except for the silver rippling of the river which
+went on and on, ceaselessly fleeting over shallows or washing
+along through faded sedge.  These river murmurs haunted Wanhope
+all day and night, and so did the low river-mists: in autumn by
+six o'clock the grass was already ankle deep and white as a field
+of lilies.
+
+The tall doors were wide open now: no lamps were lit, but a big
+log fire blazed on the hearth, and through the empurpled evening
+air the house streamed with flame-light, flinging a ruddy glow
+over leafless acacia and misty turf.  Stretched on his couch in a
+warm and dark angle by the staircase, Clowes was busy with his
+collection, examining and sorting a number of small objects which
+were laid out on his tray: sparks of light winked between his
+fingers as iron or gold or steel turned up a reflecting edge. His
+face as white as his hands, the wide eyes blackened by the
+expansion of their pupils, he looked like a ghost, but a ghost of
+normal habits, washed and shaved and dressed in ordinary tweeds.
+
+"Hullo, Bernard."
+
+"Good evening, Lawrence.  Oh, you've brought Val and--
+Selincourt, is it?  What years since we've met, Selincourt!  Very
+good of you to come down, and I'm delighted to see you, one can't
+have too many witnesses.  Mild evening, isn't it?  Leave the
+doors open, Val, Barry has made up an immense fire, big enough
+for January.  Now sit down all of you, will you?  I shan't keep
+you long."
+
+Propped high on cushions, he lay like a statue, his huge
+shoulders squared against them as boldly as if he were in the
+saddle.  Lawrence, so like him in frame and colouring, stood with
+his back to the hearth: Selincourt with his tired eyes and grey
+hair sat near the door, one hand slipped between his crossed
+knees: Val preferred to stay in the background, a spectator,
+interested and deeply sympathetic, but a trifle shadowy.  They
+were three to one, but the dominant personality was that of the
+cripple.
+
+"It's with you, Lawrence, that I have to do business.  You passed
+last night with my wife."
+
+The heavy voice was deadened out of all heat except grossness.
+How had Clowes spent the last twelve hours?  In reliving over and
+over again his wife's fall: defiling her image and poisoning his
+own soul with emanations of a diseased mind, from which
+Selincourt, a straightforward sinner, would have turned in
+disgust.  Men of strong passions like Bernard need greater
+control than Bernard possessed to curb what they cannot indulge:
+and a mind full of gross imagery was nature's revenge on him for
+a love that had been to him "hungry, and barren, and sharp as the
+sea." But for the friend, the brother, and the lover it was
+difficult to grant him such allowances as would have been made by
+a physician.
+
+"That'll do," said Lawrence, raising his hand.  "Your wife is
+innocent.  Send any one you like to the hotel--private detective
+if you like--and find out what rooms Miss Stafford and Laura
+had, or whether Selincourt and I stayed five minutes in the place
+after the ladies went upstairs."
+
+"So Laura said this morning."
+
+"There's no loophole for suspicion. I went back with Selincourt
+to his rooms and we sat up the rest of the night smoking and
+playing auction piquet.  He won about five pounds off me.  Ask
+him: he'll confirm it."
+
+"That's what he came for, isn't it?" Bernard smiled.  "My good
+chap, think I don't know that if you gave him a five pound note
+to do it Selincourt would hold the door for you?"
+
+Selincourt's pale face was scarlet.  "I say she shall not return
+to him!" he broke out loudly.  "If this is a specimen of what
+he'll say to us, what does he say to her?"
+
+"No offence, no offence,'' Bernard bore him down, insolent and
+jovial. "'The Lord commended the unjust steward.' I foresaw that
+Lawrence would lie through thick and thin, and if I'd given it a
+thought either way I should have known you'd be brought down to
+back him up.  And quite right too to stand by your sister--the
+more so that all you Selincourts are as poor as Church rats and
+naturally don't want your damaged goods back on your hands.  But
+don't get huffy, keep calm like me.  You deny everything,
+Lawrence. Quite right: a man's not worth his salt if he won't lie
+to protect a woman.  Laura also denies everything.  Quite right
+again: a woman's bound to lie to save her reputation.  But the
+husband also has his natural function, which is to exercise a
+decent incredulity.  Perhaps it's a bit difficult for you to
+enter into my feelings.  You're none of you married men and you
+don't know how it stings a man up when his wife makes him a--
+Hallo!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"What's the matter with you?"
+
+"Go on," said Lawrence, flinging himself into a chair: "if you
+have a point, come to it.  I'm pretty well sick of this."
+
+"So it seems," said Bernard staring at him.  "Is it the good
+old-fashioned English word that you can't stomach?  All right, after
+tonight I shan't offend again.  That's my point and I'm coming to
+it as fast as I can.  I won't have any one of the lot of you near
+me again except Val: I acquit him of complicity: he probably
+believes Laura innocent.  Don't you, Val?"
+
+"There's no evidence whatever against her, outside your
+imagination, old man."
+
+"You're in love with her yourself," Bernard retorted brutally.
+Val started, it was the second time in twelve hours.  "Oh! think
+I haven't seen that?  There's not much I don't see, that goes on
+around me.  Cheer up, I'm not really jealous of you.  Laura never
+cared that for you.  She was my wife for ten days, after all: it
+takes a man to master her."
+
+"What he wants is a medical man," said Lawrence to Selincourt in
+a low voice.  He dared not look at Val.
+
+"After tonight neither Selincourt nor you, Lawrence nor your lady
+friend will darken my doors again.  Try it on and I'll have you
+warned off by the police."
+
+"Bernard, you over-rate the attractions of your society."
+
+"Pass to my second point. I don't propose to divorce Laura."
+
+"You couldn't get a divorce, you ass: you've no case."
+
+"But equally I don't propose to take her back. If she lives alone
+and conducts herself decently I'll make her an allowance--say
+four or five hundred a year.  If she lives with a lover or tries
+to force her way in here I won't give her a stiver.  Now,
+Selincourt, you had better use your influence or you'll have her
+planted on you directly Lawrence gets sick of her.  If she goes
+from me to Lawrence she can go from Lawrence on the streets for
+all I--shut that door, Val!--Keep her out!"
+
+"Laura! go away!" cried Selincourt. The scene was rising into a
+nightmare and his nerves shivered under it.  But he was too late.
+The wide doorway had filled with people: Laura with her satin
+hair, her flying veil, her ineffaceable French grace of air and
+dress: Isabel bare-headed, very pale and reluctant: and Mr.
+Stafford, who had come down to exercise a moderating influence in
+the direction of compromise.  Isabel edged round towards
+Lawrence, while Mr. Stafford stood glancing from one to another
+with keen authoritative eyes, waiting a chance to strike in.  But
+Laura after her long sleep had recovered her fighting temper and
+was no longer content to remain a cipher in her own house.  She
+smiled and shook her head at Lucian, reddening under her dark
+skin.
+
+"Bernard, have they told you the truth yet?  No, I thought not,
+Lawrence was too shy." High spirited, for all her sensitiveness,
+she laid her slight hand on her husband's wrist.  "Did you think
+if Lawrence stayed on at Wanhope it must be because he admired
+me?  You forget that there are younger and prettier women in
+Chilmark than I am.  Lawrence is going to marry Isabel.  It's a
+romantic tale," was there a touch of pique in Laura's charming
+voice? "and I'm afraid they both of them took some pains to throw
+dust in our eyes.  I've only this moment learnt it from Isabel."
+Yes, undeniably a trace of pique.  Women like Laura, used to the
+admiration of men however innocent, cannot forego it without a
+sigh.  She did not grudge Isabel her happiness or even envy it,
+and she had never believed Lawrence to be in love with herself,
+and yet this courtship that had gone on under her blind eyes
+produced in her a faint sense of irritation, of male defection
+that had made her look a little silly.  She was aware of it
+herself and faintly amused and faintly ashamed.  "My time for
+romantic adventure has gone by.  Oh my poor Berns, you forget
+that I'm thirty-six!"
+
+Here was the authentic accent of truth.  Clowes heard it, but he
+had got beyond the point where a man is capable of saying "I was
+wrong, forgive me."  At that moment he no longer desired Laura to
+be innocent, he would have preferred to justify himself by
+proving her guilty.  "Take your damned face out of this," he
+said, enveloping her in an intensity of hate before which Laura's
+delicate personality seemed to shrivel like a scorched leaf.
+"Take it away before I kill you." He struck her hand from his
+wrist and dashed himself down on the pillow, his great arms and
+shoulders writhing above the marble waist like some fierce animal
+trapped by the loins.  "Oh, I can't stand it, I can't stand
+it . . ."
+
+"Oh dear, this is awful," said Selincourt weakly.  He got up and
+stood in the doorway.  Despair is a terrible thing to watch.  Not
+even Lawrence dared go near Bernard.  It was the priest, inured
+to scenes of grief and rebellion, who came forward with the cold
+strong common sense of the Christian stoic.  "But you will have
+to stand it," said Mr. Stafford sternly, "it is the Will of God
+and rebellion only makes it worse.  After all, thousands of men
+of all ranks have had to bear the same trial and with much less
+alleviation.  You know now that your wife is innocent and is
+prepared to forgive you." It did not strike Mr. Stafford that men
+like Bernard Clowes do not care to be forgiven by their wives.
+There was no confessional box in Chilmark church.  "You have
+plenty of interests left and plenty of friends: so long as you
+don't alienate them by behaving in such an unmanly way.  Lift
+him, Val.--  Come, Major Clowes, you're torturing your wife.  This
+is cowardice--"
+
+"Like Val's, eh?"
+
+"Like--?"
+
+"Like your precious Val behaved ten years ago."   Clowes raised
+himself on his elbows.  "Aha! how's that for a smack in the eye?"
+
+"Val, my darling lad," said Mr. Stafford, stumbling a little in
+his speech, "what--what is this?"
+
+"Poor chap!" Clowes gave his curt "Ha ha!" as he reached out a
+long arm to turn on all the lights.  "Who was that chap, Hercules
+was it, that pulled the temple on his own head?  By God, if my
+life's gone to pieces, I'll take some of you with me.  You, Val,
+I was always fond of you: tell your daddy, or shall I, what you
+did in the Great War?"
+
+"Bernard. . . ."
+
+"Can't stand it, eh?  But, like me, you'll have to stand it.
+Come, come, Val, this is cowardice--"
+
+"Lawrence, don't touch him: let it come."
+
+But no one dared touch Clowes.  "Before his sister!" Selincourt
+muttered.  He had no idea what was coming but Val's grey pallor
+frightened him.  "And the old man!" Lawrence added with clenched
+hands.  Clowes ignored them both.  He held the entire group in
+subjection by sheer savage force of personality.
+
+"Simple little anecdote of war.  Dale, you remember, was a
+brother officer of mine.  He was shot in a raid and left hanging
+on the German wire. In the night when he was dying another chap
+in our regiment, that had been lying up all day between the lines
+with a bullet in his ribs, crawled across for him.  The Boches
+opened fire but he got Dale off and started back.  Three quarters
+of the way over they found a third casualty, a subaltern in the
+Dorchesters.  This chap wasn't hurt but he was weeping with fear.
+He had gone to ground in a shellhole during the advance and
+stayed there too frightened to move.  The Winchester man was by
+now done to the world.  He kicked the Dorchester to his feet and
+ordered him to carry on with Dale.  The Dorchester pointed out
+that if he turned up without a scratch on him, he would probably
+be shot by court martial, so the other fellow by way of pretext
+put a shot through his arm. 'Now you can tell 'em it was you who
+fetched Dale.' 'Oh I can't, I'm frightened,' says the Dorchester
+boy.  'By God you shall,' says the other, 'or I'll put a second
+bullet through your brains.' Now, Val, you finish telling us how
+you did the return trip in tears with Dale on your shoulders and
+Lawrence at your heels chivying you with a revolver."
+
+"You unutterable devil," said Lawrence under his breath, "who
+told you that?"
+
+Bernard grinned at him almost amicably.  He had got one blow home
+at last and felt better. "Why, I've always known it.  Dale told
+me himself.  He lived twenty minutes after you got him in."
+
+"Val," said Mr. Stafford, "this isn't true?"
+
+"Perfectly true, sir."
+
+Undefended, unreserved, stripped even of pride, Val stood up
+before them all as if before a firing party, for the others had
+involuntarily fallen back leaving him alone. . . . To Lawrence
+the silence seemed endless, it went on and on, while through the
+open doorway grey shadows crept in, the leafy smell of night and
+the liquid river-murmur so much louder than it could have been
+heard by day.  Suddenly, as if he could not stand the strain any
+longer, Val covered his eyes with his hands.  The movement, full
+of shame galvanized Lawrence into activity.  But he had not the
+courage to approach Val.  He had but one desire which was to get
+out of the house.
+
+"Bernard, if you weren't a cripple I'd put the fear of God into
+you with a stick"  He stood near the door eyeing his cousin with
+a cold dislike more cutting than anger.  "You're as safe as a
+woman. But I'm through with you.  I'll never forgive you this,
+never.  I'm going: and I shall take your wife with me." He
+turned.  "Come, Laura--"
+
+"Take care, Lawrence!" cried Isabel.
+
+She spoke too late.  Bernard's hand was already raised and a
+glint of steel shone between his fingers.  No one was near enough
+to disarm him.  Unable to move without exposing Laura, Lawrence
+mechanically threw up his wrist on guard, but the trick of
+Bernard's left-handed throw was difficult to counter, and
+Lawrence was bracing himself for a shock when Val stepped into
+the line of fire.  Selincourt uttered an exclamation of horror,
+and Val reeled heavily.  "For me!" said Lawrence under his
+breath.  He was by Val in a moment, bending over him, tender and
+protecting, an arm round his shoulders.  "Are you hurt, Val?
+What is it, old man?"
+
+Stafford had one hand pressed to his side.  "He meant it for
+you," he said, grimacing over the words as if he had not perfect
+control of his facial muscles.  "Take care.  Ah! that's better."
+Selincourt with a sweep of his arm had sent the remaining
+contents of the swing-tray flying across the floor.  There was no
+need of such violence, however, for the devil had gone out of
+Bernard Clowes now.  Deathly pale, his eyes blank with startled
+fear, his great frame seemed to break and collapse and he turned
+like a lost child to his wife: Laura--Laura . . ."
+
+"I'm here, my darling." In panic, as if the police were already
+at the door, Laura fell on her knees by the low couch.  Come what
+might he was still her husband, still the man she loved, to be
+defended against the consequences of his own acts irrespective of
+his deserts.  There was much of the wife but more of the mother
+in the way she covered him with her arms and breast.  "No one
+shall touch you, no one.  It was only an accident, you never
+meant it, and besides Val's only a little hurt--"
+
+Val, still with that wrenched grimace of pain, turned round and
+leant against Lawrence.  "Get me out of this," he said weakly.
+"Invent some story.  Anything, but spare her.  Get me out, I'm
+going to faint."
+
+Between them, Lawrence and Selincourt carried him out and laid
+him on the steps.  No one else paid any attention.  Laura was
+taken up with Bernard.  Mr. Stafford had shuffled over to the
+fire and was stooping down to warm his fingers while Isabel tried
+brokenly to soothe the anguish from which old and tired hearts
+rarely recover.  She was more frightened for him than for Val,
+and the grief she felt for him was a grief outside herself, which
+could be pitied and comforted, whereas the blow that had fallen
+on Val seemed to have fallen on her own life also, withering
+where it struck.  She suffered for her father but with Val, and
+this intensity of communion hardened her into steel, for it
+seemed as weak and vain to pity him as it would have been to pity
+herself if she like him had fallen under the stress of war.  The
+weak must first be served--later, later there would be time to
+pity the strong.
+
+She did not realize that for Val, whom instinctively she still
+classed among the strong, time and opportunity were over.  He
+fainted before they got him out into the air, and his hand fell
+away from his side, and then they saw what was wrong.  He had
+been stabbed: stabbed with the Persian dagger that Lawrence
+himself had given Bernard.  Val had taken it under his left
+breast, and it was buried to its delicate hilt.  When Lawrence
+opened his coat and shirt there was scarcely any blood flowing:
+scarcely any sign of mischief except his leaden pallor and the
+all-but-cessation of his pulse.  "Internal haemorrhage," said
+Lawrence.  He drew out the weapon, which came forth with a slow
+sidelong wrench of its curved blade: a gush of blood followed,
+running down over Val's shirt, over his shabby coat, over the
+steps of Wanhope and the dry autumn turf.  Lawrence held the lips
+of the wound together with his hand.  "Go and find Verney, will
+you?  Mind, it was an accident.  Don't be drawn into giving any
+details.  We must all stick to the same story."
+
+"But--but" Selincourt could not frame a coherent question with
+his pale frightened lips: "you don't--you can't think--"
+
+"That he's dying?  He won't see another sun rise."
+
+"But do they--do they--in there--understand?"
+
+"Oh for them," said Lawrence with his bitter ironical smile, "he
+died five minutes ago."
+
+This then was the end.  Waiting in the autumn twilight with Val's
+head on his arm Lawrence tried to retrace the steps by which it
+had been reached.  Bernard's revenge had struck blind and wild as
+revenge is apt to strike, but it had helped to bring the wheel
+full circle.  Val's expiation was complete.  In his heart
+Lawrence knew that his own was complete also.  In breaking Val's
+life he had permanently scarred his own.
+
+And the night when it had all begun came back to him, a March
+night, quiet and dark but for the periodical fanbeam of an enemy
+searchlight from the slope of an opposite hill: a mild rain had
+been falling, falling, ceaselessly, plashingly, over muddy
+ploughland or sere grass, over the intricacy of trenchwork behind
+the firing lines and the dreary expanse of no man's land between
+them: falling over wire entanglements from which dangled rags of
+uniform and rags of flesh: falling on faces of the unburied dead
+that it was helping to dissolve into, their primal pulp of clay.
+War! always war! and no theatre of scarlet and gold and cavalry
+charges, but a rat's war of mud and cold and fleas and unutterable,
+nerve-dissolving fatigue.  Not far off occasionally the rustle of
+clothes or the tinkle of an entrenching tool, as a sleeper turned
+over or the group sentry shifted arms on the parapet; and always in a
+lulling undertone the plash of rain on grass or wire, and the heavy
+breathing of tired men.  For four years these nocturnal sounds of war
+had been familiar in the ears of Lawrence Hyde.  He could hear them
+now, the river-murmur repeated them.  And then as now he had taken
+young Stafford's head on his arm, the boy lying as he had lain for
+eighteen hours, immovable, the rain running down over his face and
+through his short fair hair.
+
+He had failed . . . Lawrence recalled his own first near glimpse
+of death, a fellow subaltern hideously killed at his side: he had
+turned faint as the nightmare shape fell and rose and fell again,
+spouting blood over his clothes: contact with elder men had
+steadied him.  By night and alone?  Well: even by night and alone
+Lawrence knew that he would have recovered himself and gone on.
+It was no more than they all had to fight through, thousands of
+officers, millions of men.  Val had failed. . . . Yet how vast
+the disproportion between the crime and the punishment!  Endurance
+is at a low ebb at nineteen when one's eyelids are dropping and one's
+head nodding with fatigue.  Oh to sleep--sleep for twelve hours on a
+bed between clean sheets, and wake with a mind wiped clear of bloody
+memories! . . . memories above all . . . incommunicable things that
+even years later, even to men who have shared them, cannot be
+recalled except by a half-averted glance and a low "Do you
+remember--?" like frightened children holding hands in the dark of
+the world. . . . Had any one of them kept sane that night--those
+many nights? . . . But how should a civilian understand?
+
+He felt Val's heart.  It was beating slower and slower.  If one
+could only have one's life over again! but the gods themselves
+cannot recall their gifts.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+It was one March evening six mouths later, one of those warm,
+still, sunshot-and-grey March evenings when elm-root are blue
+with violets and the air is full of the faint indeterminate scent
+of tree flowers, that Lawrence brought his bride home to
+Farringay.  March weather is uncertain, and he preferred to go
+where he could be sure of comfort, while Isabel, having once
+consented to be married, left all arrangements to him.  It was
+eight o'clock before they reached the house, and Isabel never
+forgot the impression which it made on her when she came in out
+of the bloomy twilight; warm and dim and smelling of violets that
+were set about in bowls on bookcase and cabinet, while the flames
+of an immense wood fire on an open hearth flickered over the blue
+and rose of porcelain or the oakleaf and gold of morocco.  She
+stood in the middle of an ocean of polished floor and looked
+round her as if she had lost her way in it, till Lawrence came to
+her and kissed her hands.  "Isabel, do you like the look of your
+new home?"
+
+"Very much.  Thank you."
+
+"May I take off your furs for you?" Getting no answer he took
+them off.  Framed in the sable cap and scarf that Yvonne had
+given her Isabel still parted her hair on one side, a fashion
+which Lawrence had grown to admire immensely, but her young
+throat and the fine straight masque of her features were thin and
+she had lost much of her colour since the autumn.  Lawrence held
+her by the wrists and stood looking down at her, compelling her
+to raise her eyes, though they soon fell again with a flutter of
+the sensitive eyelids.  "Are you tired, sweetheart?"
+
+"Oh no, thank you."
+
+"Cold?"
+
+"Not now."
+
+"Frightened?"
+
+"A little."
+
+"You wouldn't rather I left you for a little while?"
+
+Isabel almost imperceptibly shook her head, but with a shade of
+mockery in her smile which prevented Lawrence from taking her in
+his arms.  "Am I an unsatisfactory wife?  Will you soon be tired
+of me?  No, not yet," she said, moving away from him to put down
+her gloves and muff.  "I've hardly had time to thank you for my
+presents yet.  Oh Lawrence, how you spoil me!"  She held up her
+watch to admire the lettering on its Roman enamel.  "'I.H.' Does
+that stand for me--am I really Isabel Hyde?  And are those
+sapphires mine, and can I drink my tea out of this roseleaf
+Dresden cup?  It does seem strange that saying a few words and
+writing one's name in a book should make so much difference."
+
+"Regretful?"
+
+"A little oppressed, that's all.  I shall soon get used to it.
+If you were not you I should hate it.  But there's something
+essentially generous and careless in you, Lawrence, that makes it
+easy to take from you.  Come here." He came to her.  "Oh, I've
+made you blush!" said Isabel, naively surprised.  Under her rare
+and unexpected praise he had coloured against his will.  "Oh
+foolish one!"  She kissed him sweetly.  "Lawrence, are you sorry
+Val died?"  Lawrence freed himself and turned away.  It was six
+months since Val's death, but he still could not bear to think of
+it and he had scarcely spoken of it to Isabel.
+
+There had been no protracted farewell for Val.  He had died in
+Lawrence's arms on the steps of Wanhope without recovering
+consciousness, while Verney stood by helpless, and Isabel, by a
+stroke of irony, tried to convince poor agonized Laura Clowes
+that the law should not touch her husband.  It had not done so.
+He had been saved mainly by the unscrupulous concerted perjury of
+Lawrence and Selincourt, who swore that Val had stumbled and
+fallen by accident with the dagger in his hand, while Verney
+confined himself to drily agreeing that the wound might have been
+self-inflicted. In the absence of any contrary evidence the lie
+was allowed to pass, but perhaps it would hardly have done so if
+it had not been universally taken for a half-truth.  The day
+before the inquest there appeared in the Gazette a laconic notice
+that Second Lieutenant Valentine Ormsby Stafford, late of the
+Dorchester Regiment, had been deprived of his distinction on
+account of circumstances recently brought to light.  After that,
+no need to ask why Val should have had a dagger in his hand!  A
+jury who had known Val and his father before him were not anxious
+to press the case; and perhaps even the coroner was secretly
+grateful for evidence which spared him the pain of calling Mr.
+Stafford.
+
+Except in Chilmark, the scandal scarcely ran its nine days, but
+there of course it raged like a fire, and no one was much
+surprised when the vicar resigned his living and crept away to a
+bed-sittingroom in Museum Street, a broken old man, to spend the
+brief remainder of his life among black letter texts and
+incunabula.  He could have borne any sin in the Decalogue less
+hardly than a breach of the military oath.  He stopped Isabel,
+Rowsley, Lawrence himself when they tried to plead for Val. "I
+am not angry," he said feebly.  "If my son were alive I wouldn't
+shut my door on him.  But it's better as it is." He even tried to
+persuade Isabel to break with Lawrence.  "Captain Hyde is an
+honourable man and no doubt considers himself bound to you, so
+you mustn't wait for him to release himself.  It is very sad for
+you, my dear, but you belong to a disgraced family now and you
+must suffer with the rest of us."  Isabel agreed, and returned
+her engagement ring.  Followed a rather fiery scene, in which
+Lawrence lost his temper, and Isabel wept: and finally Mr.
+Stafford, finding Lawrence obdurate, broke down and owned that
+his one last wish was to see his daughter happily married.  He
+refused to take her to Bloomsbury.  She stayed with Rowsley or at
+the Castle till Lawrence brought her to Farringay.
+
+So there were changes at Chilmark, for the parish went to a
+hot-tempered Welshman with a wife and six children, and Wanhope was
+let to an American steel magnate, and Mrs. Jack Bendish, always
+mischievous when she was unhappy, embroiled them with each other
+first and then quarrelled with both.  Yes, Wanhope was let: a
+fortnight after Val's death Major Clowes went by car to Cornwall
+with his wife for a change of air after the shock. He was
+reported to have stood the journey very well, but Laura's letters
+were not expansive.
+
+Nor was Isabel: nor any other of those who had been eyewitnesses
+of the tragedy at Wanhope.  The memory of it cast a shadow and a
+silence.  Lawrence had never discussed it with Isabel; nor with
+Selincourt, except in a hurried whispered interchange of notes to
+avoid discrepancy in their evidence; nor with Bernard . . . the
+murderer.  Since the night when he carried Val dead over the
+vicarage threshold Lawrence had not seen his cousin.  He had seen
+Laura and tried to comfort her, but what could one say?  It was
+murder.  Had it not been for Laura he would have left Clowes to
+stand his trial.  Even for her sake he would not have kept the
+secret if Rowsley, to whom alone it was revealed, had not given
+his leave, in the dim blinded room where revenge and anger seemed
+small things, and Val's last words, almost unremarked at the
+time, took on the solemn force of a dying injunction.  The grey
+placidity of Val's closed eyelids and crossed hands was the last
+memory that Lawrence would have chosen to evoke on his wedding
+night.
+
+"Come and get warm," said Isabel.  She saw that she had startled
+and distressed her husband, and she drew him down into an immense
+armchair by the fire, a man's chair, spacious and soft.  "Is
+there room for me too?"  She slipped into it beside him and threw
+her arms round his neck.  Lawrence held her lightly and
+passively. Not once during their engagement had she so
+surrendered herself to him for more than a moment, and he dared
+not take advantage of his opportunities for fear of losing her
+again.  But Isabel smiled at him with shut eyes.  "All my heart,"
+she murmured; "don't be afraid, I'm not going to slip through
+your fingers now . . . I love you too, too much . . . Val would
+say it was wrong to care so much for any one."
+
+Val again!  Lawrence lifted her eyelashes with his finger.
+"Isabel, why are you haunted by Val now?  I don't want you to
+think of any one but me."
+
+"Are you jealous of the dead?"
+
+"Not I!" his voice rang out harsh with passion: "with you in my
+arms why should I be jealous of any one in heaven or earth?"
+
+"Val would say that was wrong too. . . . Lawrence, do you
+remember your first wedding night?"
+
+"Well enough."
+
+"Was Lizzie beautiful?"
+
+"I thought so then. She was a tall, well-made piece: black hair,
+blue eyes, buxom and plenty of colour. I was shy of her because--
+it's a curious fact--she was my first experience of your sex:
+but she was not shy with me, though I believe she too was--
+technically--innocent.  Even at the time I was conscious of
+something wanting--some grace, some reserve, some economy of
+effect.  She was of a coming-on disposition, very amorous and
+towardly."
+
+"Val would call that coarse."
+
+"Probably.  Do you object?  You asked for it."
+
+"Not a bit.  I don't mind your telling me any thing that's a
+fact.  Bad thoughts are different, but facts, good or bad, coarse
+or refined, are the stuff the world's made of, and why should we
+shut our eyes to them? I like to take life as it comes without
+expurgation.  Lawrence, Lizzie never had any children, did she?"
+
+"By me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"No, our married life didn't last long. I should have warned you,
+my dear, if I had had any responsibilities of that description."
+
+"So you would--I forgot that." Isabel lay silent a moment,
+nestling her closed eyelids against his throat.  "Lawrence, my
+darling, I don't want to hurt you; but tell me, did she have any
+children after she left you?"
+
+"Yes--one, a boy: Rendell's."
+
+"What became of him after Rendell died?"
+
+"When it became impossible to leave him with Lizzie I sent him to
+school.  He spends his holidays with my agent here at Farringay.
+He's quite a nice little chap, and good looking, like Arther, and
+by the gossip of the neighbourhood I'm supposed to be his father.
+Do you mind leaving it at that?  It's no worse for him and less
+ignominious for me."
+
+"Nothing in what I've heard of your married life is ignominious
+for you.  So you brought up Rendell's child?  Essentially generous
+. . . . Kiss me."  Isabel's pale beauty glowed like a flame.  A
+Christian malagre lui and very much ashamed of it, Lawrence gave
+her the lightest of butterfly kisses, one on either eyelid.  "Oh,
+I suppose you'll say I am--what was it?--towardly too,"
+murmured Isabel.  "Don't you want to kiss me?" He shook his head.
+Isabel, a trifle startled, opened her eyes, but was apparently
+satisfied, for she shut them again hurriedly and let her arm fall
+across them.  "We'll go and see Rendell's boy tomorrow.  You
+shall take me. I can say what I like to you now, can't I? . . .
+Shall you like to have one of our own?"
+
+"Isabel, Isabel!"
+
+"But it's perfectly proper now we're married!  Oh Lawrence, it'll
+so soon come to seem commonplace--  I want to taste the
+strangeness of it while I'm still near enough to Isabel Stafford
+to realize what a miracle it'll be.  Our own! it seems so strange
+to say 'ours.'"
+
+"I don't want any brats to come between you and me."
+
+"Aren't you always in your secret soul afraid of life?"
+
+"Afraid of life--I?"
+
+"You have no faith . . . Everything we possess--your happiness,
+our love, the children you'll give me--don't you hold it all at
+the sword's point?  You're afraid of death or change?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How frank you are!" Isabel smiled fleetingly. "Aren't there any
+locked doors?--no?--I may go wherever I like ?--Lawrence, are
+you sorry Val's dead?"
+
+"Oh, for heaven's sake, not Val again!"
+
+"One locked door after all?"
+
+"I was fond of him," said Lawrence with difficult passion.  "He
+told me once that I broke his life, it was no one's doing but
+mine that he had to go through the crucifixion of that last hour
+at Wanhope, and he was killed for me." He left her and went to
+the window, flung it up and stood looking out into the night.
+"I'd have given my life to save him.  I'd give it now--now."
+
+"I heard from Laura this morning."
+
+"I wonder she dared write to you."
+
+"Major Clowes is wonderfully better.  He drives out with her
+every day and mixes with other people in the sanatorium and makes
+friends with them.  He's been sleeping better than he has ever
+done since his accident."
+
+"Good God!"
+
+"He has been having a new massage treatment, and there's just a
+faint hope that some day he may be able to get about on
+crutches."
+
+Lawrence had an inclination to laugh.  "That's enough," he said,
+shuddering.  "I don't want to hear any more."
+
+"She sent a message to you."
+
+"Well, give it to me, then."
+
+"'Don't let Lawrence suppose that Bernard has gone unpunished.'"
+
+"He should have stood his trial," said Lawrence thickly.  "It was
+murder."
+
+He understood all that Laura's laconic message implied.  Bernard
+reformed was Bernard broken by remorse: if he had shot himself--
+which was what Lawrence had anticipated--he would have deserved
+less pity.  Yet Lawrence would have liked some swifter and less
+subtle form of punishment.
+
+Out of doors in the garden an owl was hooting and the night air
+breathed on him its perfume of lilac and violets.  How quiet it
+was and how fragrant and dim! one could scarcely distinguish
+between the dewy glimmer of turf and the dark island-like
+thickets of guelder-rose and other flowering shrubs.  It was one
+of those late spring nights that are full of the promise of
+summer; but for Val there were no summers to come.  His death had
+been as quiet as his life and without any struggle; his head on
+Lawrence's arm, he had stretched himself out with a little sigh,
+and was gone.  Lawrence with his keen physical memory could still
+feel that light burden leaning on him.  Isabel too had memories
+she was afraid of, the watch ticking on the dead man's wrist was
+one of them.  Many tears had been shed for Val, some very bitter
+ones by Yvonne Bendish, but none by Lawrence or by Isabel.  It
+was murder: a flash of devil's lightning, that withered where it
+struck.
+
+Isabel turned in her chair to watch her husband.  He had brought
+her straight into the drawingroom without staying to remove his
+leathern driving coat, which set off his big frame and the
+drilled flatness of his shoulders; everything he wore or used was
+expensive and fashionable.  There came on her suddenly the
+impression of being shut up alone with a stranger, a man of whom
+she knew nothing except that in upbringing and outlook he was
+entirely different from her and her family.  The room seemed
+immense and Hyde was at the other end of it.  Suddenly he turned
+and came striding back to Isabel.  Her instinct was to defend
+herself.  She checked it and kept still, her arms and hands
+thrown out motionless along the arms of the chair in which her
+slight figure was lying in perfect repose.  Lawrence tenderly
+took her head between his finger-tips and kissed her mouth.
+"Why did you raise a ghost you can't lay?" he said.  "My cousin
+killed your brother." Isabel smiled at him without moving.  Her
+eyes were mysteriously full of light.  Lawrence knelt down and
+threw his arms round her waist and let his head fall against her
+bosom.  What strength there was in this immature personality
+neither yielded nor withdrawn!  Lawrence was entirely disarmed
+and subdued.  He uttered a deep sigh and gave up to Isabel with
+the simplicity of a child the secret of his tormented restlessness.
+"I am unhappy, Isabel."
+
+"I know you are, my darling, and that's why I raised the ghost.
+What is it troubles you?"
+
+"My own guilt.  I never knew what remorse meant before, but your
+Christian ethics have mastered me this time. I had no right to
+extract that promise from Val."
+
+"No.  Why did you?  It seems so motiveless."
+
+"Because it amused me to get a man into my power." Isabel felt
+him shuddering.  "Is this what you call the sense of sin?  I used
+to hear it described as a theological fiction.  But it tears
+one's heart out.  Bernard killed him: but who put the weapon into
+Bernard's hand?"
+
+"Val did."
+
+"I don't understand you."
+
+"The original fault was Val's, and you and Major Clowes were
+entangled in the consequences of it. Let us two face the truth
+once and for all!  Val can stand it--can't you, Val? . . . He
+broke his military oath.  He deserved a sharp stinging punishment,
+and if you had reported him he would have had it; perhaps a worse one
+than you exacted, except for that last awful hour at Wanhope, and for
+that Major Clowes, not you, was responsible.  Oh, I won't say he
+deserved precisely what he got! because judgment ought to be
+dispassionate, and in yours there was an element of cruelty for
+cruelty's sake; wasn't there?  You half enjoyed it and half shivered
+under it . . ."
+
+"More than half enjoyed it," said Hyde under his breath.
+
+"But I do not believe that was your only motive.  I think you
+were sorry for Val.  Haven't I seen you watching him at Wanhope?
+with such a strange half-unwilling pity, as if you hated yourself
+for it.  Oh Lawrence, it's for that I love you!"  Lawrence shook
+his head. He had never been able to analyse the complex of
+feelings that had determined his attitude to Val.  "Well, in any
+case it was not your fault only.  A coward is an irresistible
+temptation to a bully."
+
+"Do you call Val a coward?  Nervous collapses were not so
+uncommon as you may have gathered from the Daily Mail."
+
+"Did Major Clowes describe the scene truthfully?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Did you ever break down like Val?"
+
+"I was older."
+
+"There were plenty of boys of nineteen, officers and men.  Did
+you ever know such another case so complete, so prolonged?"
+
+"I've commanded a firing party."
+
+"For cowardice?"
+
+"For cowardice."
+
+"A worse exhibition than Val's?"
+
+"Isabel, you are pitiless!"
+
+"Because Val deserves justice not mercy.  It's his due: he died
+to earn it."
+
+Hyde was silent, not thoroughly understanding her.
+
+"He wasn't a coward when he died," said Isabel with her sweet
+half melancholy smile.  "He fought under a heavy handicap, and
+won: he paid his debt, paid it to the last farthing; and now do
+you grudge him his sleep?  'He hates him, that would upon the
+rack of this tough world stretch him out longer. . . .'"  Her
+beautiful voice dropped to a murmur which was almost lost in the
+rustling of flames on the hearth and the stir of wind among
+budded branches in the garden.
+
+The clock struck ten and Lawrence raised his head.  "It's growing
+late, Isabel.  Aren't you tired?"
+
+"A little. I got up at five to say good-bye to all the animals."
+
+"All the--?"
+
+"My cocks and hens and Val's mare and Dodor and Zou-zou and
+Rowsley's old rabbits.  They're at the Castle, don't you
+remember?  Jack Bendish offered to take charge of them when we
+turned out of the vicarage."
+
+"I hope you put your pinafore on," said her husband.
+
+He took her by the hands and raised her to her feet, and Isabel
+with irreproachable docility began to collect her scattered
+belongings, her sable scarf and mull and veil.  Lawrence
+forestalled her. "Mayn't I even carry my own gloves?" Isabel
+pleaded.  "No, you're so slow," said Lawrence laughing down at
+her. Isabel's cheeks flew their scarlet flag before the invading
+enemy.  "Isabel," Lawrence murmured, "are you shy of me?"
+
+"A little.  I'm only twenty," Isabel excused herself.
+
+"And I'm not gentle. I shall brush the bloom off. . . . Yet I
+love the bloom."
+
+He went to close the window.  A breath of night wind shook
+through the bushes on the lawn and blew off a snow of petals
+through the soft air.  He was not a believer in the immortality
+of the soul, but tonight he would have given much to know that
+Val was near him, a spirit of smiling tenderness.  But no: the
+night was empty of everything except moonlight and petals and the
+sighing of wind over diapered turf. Youth passes, and beauty, and
+bloom: it is of the essence of their sweetness that they cannot
+last.  Yet, while they last, how sweet they are!
+
+
+
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