And that evening Val Stafford came to pay his respects to his old
comrade in arms. Lawrence had travelled so much that it never
took him long to settle down. Even at Wanhope he managed within
a few hours to make himself at home. A trap sent over to
Countisford brought back his manservant and an effeminate
quantity of luggage, and by teatime his room was strewn from end
to end with a litter of expensive trifles more proper to a pretty
woman than to a man. Mrs. Clowes, slipping in to cast a
housewifely glance to his comfort, held up her hands in mock
dismay. "You must give yourself plenty of time to dust all this
tomorrow morning, Caroline," she said to the house-maid. She
laughed at the gold brushes and gold manicure set, the polished
array of boots, the fine silk and linen laid out on his bed, the
perfume of sandalwood and Russian leather and eau de cologne.
"And I hope you will be able to make Captain Hyde's valet
comfortable. Did he say whether he liked his room?"
"I reelly don't know, ma'am," replied the truthful Caroline.
"You see he's a foreigner, and most of what he says, well, it
reelly sounds like swearing.
"Madame." It was Gaston himself, appearing from nowhere at
Laura's elbow, and saluting her with an empressement that was
due, if Laura had only known it, to the harmony of her flounces.
Laura eyed the little Gaston kindly. "You are of the South,
are you not?" she said in her soft French, the French of a
Frenchwoman but for a slight stiffness of disuse: "and are you
comfortable here, Gaston? You must tell me if there is anything
you want."
Gaston was grateful less for her solicitude than for the sound
of his own language. When she had left the room he caught up a
photograph, thrust it back into his master's dressingcase, and
spat through the open window--"C'est fini avec toi, vieille
biche," said he: "allons donc! j'aime mieux celle-ci par
exemple."
But, though Laura laughed, it was with indulgence. While Isabel
and Lawrence were conversing among the juniper bushes, the
Bendishes had given Mrs. Clowes a sketch of Hyde which had
confirmed her own impressions. Although he liked good food and
wine and cigars, he liked sport and travel too, and music and
painting and books. His eighty-guinea breechloaders were dearer
to him than the lady of the ivory frame. Who was the lady of the
ivory frame? Gaston would have been happy to define with the
leer of the boulevards the relations between his master and
Philippa Cleve. Gaston had no doubt of them, nor had Frederick
Cleve; Philippa had high hopes; Lawrence alone hung fire. If he
continued to meet her and she to offer him lavish opportunities
the situation might develop, for Lawrence was not sufficiently
in earnest in any direction to play what has been called the
ill-favoured part of a Joseph, but in his heart of hearts, this
Joseph wished Potiphar would keep his wife in order. And,
strange to say, Yvonne was not far wide of the mark. She
believed that Joseph was a sinner but not a willing one: and Jack
Bendish, a little astray among these feminine subtleties,
assented after his fashion--"Hyde's rather an ass in some
ways," he said simply, "but he's an all-round sportsman."
Thus primed, Laura was able to draw out her guest, and dinner
passed off gaily, for Bernard Clowes was no dog in the manger,
and listened with sparkling eyes to adventures that ranged from
Atlantic sailing in a thirty-ton yacht to a Nigerian rhinoceros
shoot. Nor was Lawrence the focus of the lime-light-he was
unaffectedly modest; but when, in expatiating on a favourite
rifle, he confessed to having held fire till a charging
rhinoceros bull was within eight and twenty yards of him, Bernard
could supply the footnotes for himself. "I knew she wouldn't let
me down," said Lawrence apologetically. "Ah! she was a bonnie
thing, that old gun of mine. Ever shoot with a cordite rifle?"
Bernard shook his head. "I'd like you to see my guns," Lawrence
continued, too shrewd to be tactful. "I'll have them sent down,
shall I? Or Gaston shall run up and fetch 'em. He loves a day in
town."
Under this bracing treatment Bernard became more natural than
Laura had seen him for a long time, and he stayed in the
drawingroom after dinner, chatting with Lawrence and listening to
his wife at the piano, till Laura thought the Golden Age had come
again. How long would it last? Philosophers like Laura never
ask that question. At all events it lasted till half past nine,
when the sick man was honestly tired and the lines of no
fictitious pain were drawn deep about his mouth and eyes.
Mrs. Clowes went away with her husband, who liked to have her at
hand while Barry was getting him to bed, and Lawrence had
strolled out on the lawn, when a shutter was thrown down in
Bernard's room and Laura reappeared at the open window.
"Lawrence, are you there?" she asked, shading her eyes between
her hands.
"Here," said Lawrence removing his cigar.
"Will you be so very kind as to unlock the gate over the
footbridge? If Val does look us up tonight he's sure to scramble
over it, which is awkward for him with his stiff arm."
She dropped a key down to Lawrence. A voice--Bernard's called
from within, "Good night, old fellow, thanks for a pleasant
evening. I'm being washed now."
The night was overcast, warm, quiet, and very dark under the
trees: there was husbandry in heaven, their candles were all out.
And by the bridge under the pleated and tasselled branches of an
alder coppice the river ran quiet as the night, only uttering an
occasional murmur or a deep sucking gurgle when a rotten stick,
framed in foam, span down the silken whirl of an eddy: but
down-stream, where waifs of mist curled like smoke off a grey mirror,
there was a continual talking of open water, small cold river voices
that chattered over a pebbly channel, or heaped themselves up and
died down again in the harsh distant murmur of the weir. The
quantity of water that passed through the lock gates should have been
constant from minute to minute, but the roar of it was not constant,
nor the pitch of its note, which fell when Lawrence stood erect, but
rose to a shrill overtone when he bent his head: sometimes one would
have thought the river was going down in spate, and then the volume
of sound dwindled to a mere thread, a lisp in the air. Lawrence was
observing these phenomena with a mind vacant of thought when he heard
footsteps brushing through the grass by the field path from the
village. Val had come, then, after all!
Val had naturally no idea that any one was near him. He had
reached the gate and was preparing to vault it when out of the
dense alder-shadow a hand seized his arm. "So sorry if I
startled you." But Val was not visibly startled. "Mrs. Clowes
sent me, down to let you in."
"Did she? Very good of her, and of you," returned Val's voice,
pleasant and friendly. "She always expects me to walk into the
river. But, after all, I shouldn't be drowned if I did. Is
Clowes gone to bed?"
"He's on his way there. Did you want to see him?"
"I'll look in for five minutes after Barry has tucked him up.
Have you been introduced to Barry yet? He's quite a character."
"So I should imagine. He came in to cart Bernard off, and did
something clumsy, or Bernard said he did, and Bernard cuffed his
head for him. Barry didn't seem to mind much. Why does he stay?
Is it devotion?"
"He stays because your cousin pays him twice what he would get
anywhere else. No, I shouldn't call Barry devoted. But he does
his work well, and it isn't anybody's job."
"I believe you," Lawrence muttered.
"Warm tonight, isn't it? No, thanks, I won't have anything to
drink-- I've only just finished supper. By the by, let me
apologize for my absence this afternoon. I was most awfully
sorry to miss you, but I never got away from Countisford till
after half past five, and my mare cast a shoe on the way back.
Then I tried to get her shod in Liddiard St. Agnes, which is one
of those idyllic villages that people write books about, and
there I found an Odd-fellows' fete in full swing. The village
blacksmith was altogether too harmonious for business, so not
being able to cuff his head, like your cousin, I was obliged to
walk home.
"Really'? Have a cigar if you won't have anything else." Val
accepted one, and in default of a match Lawrence made him light
it from his own. He was entirely at his ease, though the
situation struck him as bizarre, but he did not believe that Val
was at ease, no, not for all his natural manner and fertility in
commonplace. Lawrence was faintly sorry for the poor devil, but
only faintly: after all, an awkward interview once in ten years
was a low price to pay for that night which Lawrence never had
forgotten and never would forget. He had an excellent memory,
photographic and phonographic, a gift that wise men covet for
themselves but deprecate in their friends.
Lawrence was no Pharisee, but he was not a Samaritan either. He
had deliberately set himself to pull up any stray weeds of moral
scruple that lingered in a mind stripped bare of Christian ethic,
a task harder than some realize, since thousands of men who have
no faith in Christ practise virtues that were not known for
virtues by the Western world before Christ came to it. But every
man is his own special pleader, and Lawrence, whose theory was
that one man is as good as another, retained a good hearty
prejudice against certain forms of moral failure, and excused it
on the ground that it was rather a taste than a principle. He
looked directly into Stafford's eyes as the red glow of the cigar
flamed and faded between the two heads so close together, and in
his own eyes there was the same point of smiling ironic cruelty
that Isabel had read in them--the same as Stafford himself had
read in them not so many years ago. But apparently Stafford read
nothing in them now.
"Sit down, won't you? you've had a fagging day." Lawrence
indicated the chairs left on the lawn. "Hear me beginning to
play the host! As a matter of fact, you must know your way about
the place far better than I do. Although we're cousins, Bernard
and I have seen next to nothing of each other since we were boys
at school. You, Val, must know him better than any one except
his wife. I want you to tell me about him. I'm in dangerous
country and I need a map."
"I should be inclined to vary the metaphor a little and call him
an uncharted sea," Val smiled as he threw one leg over the other
and settled himself among his cushions. He was dead tired,
having been up since six in the morning and on his feet or in
the saddle all day. "But I'm at your service, subject always to
the proviso that I'm Bernard's agent, which makes my position
rather delicate. What is it you want to know?"
Since it was whether Clowes behaved decently to his wife,
Lawrence shifted in his chair and flicked the ash from his cigar.
"Imprimis, whether Bernard has a trout rod I can borrow. I
didn't know there was any fishing to be had or I'd have brought
my own."
"You can have mine: I scarcely ever touch a line now. Certainly
not in hay-harvest! I'll send it down for you the first thing--"
Was it possible that he was as insouciant as he professed to be?
"Oh, thanks very much," Hyde cut in swiftly, but I couldn't
borrow yours. I'll find out if Clowes can't lend me one."
"As you please." Stafford left it at that and passed on. "But I
don't fancy Bernard has ever thrown a line in his life, he is too
energetic to make a fisherman. By the way, I suppose you won't
be staying any length of time at Wanhope?"
Lawrence smiled, the wish was father to the thought: that was
more like the Val of old times!
"That depends--mainly on my cousin, to be frank: I suspect he'll
soon get sick of having a third person in the house."
"Oh, probably. But you needn't take any notice of that."
Lawrence looked up in surprise. "But, perhaps, that is none of
my business. Or will you let me give you one warning, since
you've asked for a map? Don't be too prompt to take Bernard at
his word. He may be very rude to you and yet not want you to go.
He sacks Barry every few weeks. In fact now I come to think of it
I'm under notice myself, for last time I saw him he told me to
look out for another job. He said what he wanted was a practical
man who knew a little about farming."
"And you stay on? Quite right, if it suits your book."
Unconsciously putting the worst construction on everything Val
said or did, Lawrence's conclusion was that probably Val, an
amateur farmer, was paid, like Barry, twice what he was worth in
the market. "But it wouldn't suit mine. However, I don't
imagine Bernard will try it on with me. I'm not Barry. If he
hits me I shall hit him back."
"Oh, will you?" returned Val, invisibly amused. "I'm not sure
that wouldn't be a good plan. It has at least the merit of
originality. All the same I'm afraid Mrs. Clowes wouldn't like
it, she is a standing obstacle in the way of drastic measures."
"But why do you want me to stay?" Lawrence asked more and more
surprised.
"Well, here is what brought me up tonight, when I knew Bernard
would be on his way to bed. Will you--" he leaned forward, his
hands clasped between his knees--"stick it out, whatever happens,
for a week or two, and keep your eyes open? Life at Wanhope
isn't all plain sailing."
"Plain sailing for Bernard?"
"Or for his wife."
"You speak as the friend of the house who sees both sides?"
"They're forced on me."
"I'll stay as long as I'm comfortable," said Lawrence, cynically
frank. "More I can't promise."
Val leant back with an imperceptible shrug. He was disappointed
but not surprised: there was in Hyde a vein of hard selfishness--
not a weakness, for the egoism which openly says "I will consult
my own convenience first" is too scornful of public opinion to be
called weak, but an acquired defensive quality on which argument
would have been thrown away. Val's arm dropped inert, he was
tired, not in body alone, but by the strain of contact with
another mind, hostile, and pitiless, and dominant.
And Lawrence also was content to sit silent, lulled by the rising
and falling murmur of the stream, and by that agreeably cruel
memory. . . . He had no inclination to recall it to Val, but it
lent an emotional piquancy to their intercourse. He had the whip
hand of Val through the past, and perhaps the present also.
Lawrence had been struck by Val's allusion to Mrs. Clowes. He
was the friend of the house, was he? Now the position of a
friend of the house who shields a wife from her husband is
notoriously a delicate one.
Val roused himself. "Well, we'll drop this. I must now say two
words on a different subject: I'd rather let it alone, and so I
dare say would you, but we shall meet a good deal off and on
while you're here, and it had better be got over. I'm sorry if I
embarrass you--"
"Set your mind at rest," said Lawrence, silkenly brutal. "You
don't embarrass me at all."
He threw away his cigar and got up laughing, and as Val also rose
Lawrence gently slapped him on the back. "I know what you're
driving at--that you've not forgotten that small indiscretion
of yours, or ceased to regret it. Don't you worry, Val! You
always were one of the worrying sort, weren't you? But you need
never refer to it again, and I won't if you don't." Surely a
generous, a handsome offer! But Stafford only touched with the
tips of his fingers the ringed and manicured hand of the elder
man.
"Thank you! But I wasn't going to say anything of the sort. The
fact is that for a long while I've been making up my mind to see
you some time when you were in England: there was no hurry,
because so long as my father's alive I can do nothing, but when I
heard you were coming to Wanhope the opportunity was too good to
be missed. Railway fares," Val added with a preoccupied smile,
"are a consideration to me. So don't walk away yet, Hyde,
please. I have such a vivid recollection of the last time we met.
Between the lines at dawn. Do you remember?"
"Everything, Val."
"You were badly hurt, but before you fainted you dragged a
promise out of me."
"Dragged it out of you?" Lawrence repeated: "that's one way of
putting it!"
"But I made some feeble resistance at the time," said Val mildly.
"My head wasn't clear then or for a long while after, but I had
a--a presentiment that it was a mistake. You meant it kindly."
Had he? Lawrence laughed. He had never been able, to analyse
the complex of instincts and passions that had determined his
dealings with Stafford on that dim day between the lines.
"You were in a damned funk weren't you, Val?"
Stafford gave a slight start, the reaction of the prisoner under
a blow. But apart from the coarse cynicism of it, which
irritated him, it was no more than he had foreseen, and from then
on till the end he did not flinch.
"Yes, anything you like: you can't overstate it. But my point is
that I gave you my parole. Will you release me from it?"
"Good God!" said Lawrence.
He had never been more surprised in his life. "Come in: let us
talk this over in the light."