"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."