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."