"And now tell me," murmured Mrs. Clowes in the mischievously
caressing tone that she kept for Isabel, "did mamma's little girl
enjoy her party?"
"Rather!" said Isabel--with a great sigh, the satisfied sigh of
a dog curling up after a meal. "They were lovely strawberries.
And what do you call that French thing? Oh, that's what a
vol-au-vent is, is it? I wish I knew how to make it, but probably
it's one of those recipes that begin 'Take twelve eggs and a quart of
cream.' I wish nice things to eat weren't so dear, Jimmy would love
it. Captain Hyde took two helps--did you see?--big ones! If he
always eats as much as he did tonight he'll be fat before he's fifty,
which will be a pity. He ate three times what Val did."
"Is that what you were thinking of all the time? I noticed you
didn't say very much."
"Well, I was between Captain Hyde and Major Clowes, and they
neither of them think I'm grown up," explained Isabel. "They
talked to each other over the top of me. Oh no, not rudely,
Major Clowes was as nice as he could be" (Isabel salved her
conscience by reflecting that this was verbally true since Major
Clowes could never he nice), "and Captain Hyde asked me if I was
fond of dolls--"
"My dear Isabel!"
"Or words to that effect. Oh! it's perfectly fair, I'm not grown
up, or only by fits and starts. Some of me is a weary forty-five
but the rest is still in pigtails. It's curious, isn't it?
considering that I'm nearly twenty. Let's go through the wood,
my stockings are coming down." Out of sight of the house in a
clearing of the loosely planted alder-coppice by the bridge, she
pulled them up, slowly and candidly: white cotton stockings
supported by garters of black elastic. "After all," she
continued, "I'm housekeeper, and in common politeness we shall
have to dine you back, so I really did want to see what sort of
things Captain Hyde likes. But it's no use, he won't like
anything we give him. Not though we strain our resources to the
uttermost. Laura! would Mrs. Fryar give me the receipt for that
vol-au-vent? I don't suppose we could run to it, but I should
love to try."
"Mrs. Fryar would be flattered," said Laura, finding a chair in
the forked stem of a wild apple-tree, while Isabel sat plump
down on the net of moss-fronds and fine ivy and grey wood-violets
at her feet. "But, my darling, you're not to worry your small
head over vol-au-vents! Lawrence will like one of your own roast
chickens just as well, or any simple thing--"
"Oh no, Lawrence won't!" Isabel gave a little laugh. "Excuse my
contradicting you, but Lawrence isn't a bit fond of simple
things. That's why he doesn't like me, because I'm simple,
simple as a daisy. I don't mind--much," she added truthfully.
"I can survive his most extended want of interest. After all
what can you expect if you go out to dinner in the same nun's
veiling frock you wore when you were confirmed, with the tucks
let down and the collar taken out? O! Laura, I wish someone
would give me twenty pounds on condition that I spent it all on
dress! I'd buy--I'd buy--oh,--silk stockings, and long
gloves, and French cambric underclothes, and chiffon nightgowns
like those Yvonne wears (but they aren't decent: still that
doesn't matter so long as you're not married, and they are so
pretty)! And a homespun tailor-made suit with a seam down the
back and open tails: and--and--one of those real Panamas that
you can pull through a wedding ring: and--oh! dear, I am greedy!
It must be because I never have any clothes at all that I'm
always wanting some. I ache all over when I look at catalogues.
Isn't it silly?"
If so it was a form of silliness with which Mrs. Clowes was in
full sympathy. In her world, to be young and pretty gave a woman
a claim on Fate to provide her with pretty dresses and the
admiration of men. As for Yvonne, till she married Jack Bendish
she had never been out of debt in her life. "No, it's the most
natural thing on earth," said Laura. "How I wish--!"
"No, no," said Isabel hastily. "It's very, very sweet of you,
but even Jimmy wouldn't like it: and as for Val I don't know what
he'd say! Poor old Val, he wants some new evening clothes
himself, and it's worse for him than for me because men do so
hate to look shabby and out at elbows. He's worn that suit for
ten years. My one consolation is that Captain Hyde couldn't wear
a suit he wore ten years ago. It would burst."
"Isabel! really! you ridiculous child, why have you such a
spite against poor Lawrence? Any one would think he was a
perfect Daniel Lambert! Do you know he's a pukka sportsman and
has shot all over the world? Lions and tigers, and rhinoceros,
and grizzly bears, and all sorts of ferocious animals! He's
promised me a black panther skin for my parlour and he's
persuaded Bernard to call in Dr. Verney for his neuritis, so I
won't hear another word against him!"
"Has he? H'm. . . . No, I haven't any prejudice against him: in
fact I like him," said Isabel, smiling to herself. "But he
reminds me of Tom Wallis at the Prince of Wales's Feathers. Do
you remember Tom? 'Poor Tom,' Mrs. Wallis always says, 'he went
from bad to worse. First it was a drop too much of an evening:
and then he began getting drunk mornings: and then he 'listed for
a soldier!' Not that Captain Hyde would get drunk, but he has the
same excitable temperament. . . . Laura!"
"What is it?" said Mrs. Clowes, framing the young face between
her hands as Isabel rose up kneeling before her. In the
quivering apple-tree shadow Isabel's eyes were very dark, and
penetrating and reflective too, as if she had just undergone one
of those transitions from childhood to womanhood which are the
mark and the charm of her variable age. Laura was puzzled by her
judgment of Lawrence Hyde, so keen, yet so wide of the truth as
Laura saw it: "excitable" was the last thing that Laura would
have called him, and she couldn't see any likeness to Tom Wallis.
But one can't argue over a man's character with a child. "Why so
serious?"
"This evening, at dinner, weren't there some queer
undercurrents?"
"Undercurrents!" Laura drew her hands away. She looked startled
and nervous. "What sort of undercurrents?"
"When they were chaffing Val about his ribbon. Oh, I don't know,"
said Isabel vaguely. Laura drew a breath of relief. "I was sorry
you made him wear it. But he'd cut his hand off to please you,
darling. You don't really realize the way you can make Val do
anything you like."
"Nonsense," said Laura, but with an indulgent smile, which was
her way of saying that it was true but did not signify. She was
no coquette, but she preferred to create an agreeable impression.
Always in France, where women are the focus of social interest,
there had been men who did as Laura Selincourt pleased, and the
incense which Val alone continued to burn was not ungrateful to
her altar. "As if Val would mind about a little thing like
that."
Isabel shook her head. "Perhaps you weren't attending. Major
Clowes was very down on him for wearing it--chaffing him, of
course, but chaffing half in earnest: a snowball with a stone in
it. Naturally Val wasn't going to say you made him--"
"No, but Lawrence did: or I should have cut in myself."
"Yes, after a minute, he interfered, and then Major Clowes shut
up, but it was all rather--rather queer, and I'm sure Val hated
it. You won't make him do it again, will you? Val's so odd.
Laura--don't tell any one--I sometimes think Val's very
unhappy."
"Val, unhappy? You fanciful child, this is worse than Tom
Wallis! What should make Val unhappy? He might be dull," said
Laura ruefully. "Life at Wanhope isn't exciting! But he's keen
on his work and very fond of the country. Val is one of the most
contented people I know."
A shadow fell over Isabel's face, the veil that one draws down
when one has offered a confidence to hands that are not ready to
receive it. "Then it must be all my imagination." She abandoned
the subject as rapidly as she had introduced it. "O! dear, I am
sleepy." She stretched herself and yawned, opening her mouth wide
and shutting it with a little snap like a kitten. "I was up at
six to give Val his breakfast, and I've been running about all
day, what with the school treat next week, and Jimmy's new
night-shirts that I had to get the stuff for and cut them out,
and choir practice, and Fanny taking it into her head to make
rhubarb jam. How can London people stay up till twelve or one
o'clock every night? But of course they don't get up at six."
"Have a snooze in my hammock," suggested Laura. "I see Barry
coming, which means that Bernard is going off and I shall have to
run away and leave you, and probably the men won't come out for
some time. Take forty winks, you poor child, it will freshen you
up."
"I never, never go to sleep in the daytime," said Isabel firmly.
"It's a demoralizing habit. But I shouldn't mind tumbling into
your hammock, thank you very much." And, while Mrs. Clowes went
away with Barry, she slipped across to Laura's large comfortable
cot, swung waist-high between two alders that knelt on the river
brink.
Isabel sprawled luxuriously at full length, one arm under her
head and the other dropped over the netting: her young frame was
tired, little flying aches of fatigue were darting pins and
needles through her knees and shoulders and the base of her
spine. The evening was very warm and the stars winked at her,
they were green diamonds that sparkled through chinks in the
alder leafage overhead: round dark leaves like coins, and
scattered in clusters, like branches of black bloom. Near at
hand the river ran in silken blackness, but below the coppice,
where it widened into shallows, it went whispering and rippling
over a pebbly bottom on its way to the humming thunder of the
mill. And in a fir-tree not far off a nightingale was singing,
now a string of pearls dropping bead by bead from his throat, now
rich turns and grace-notes, and now again a reiterated metallic
chink which melted into liquid fluting:
Vogek im Tannenwald
Pfeifet so hell:
Pfeifet de Wald aus und ein,
wo wird mein Schatze sein?
Vogele im Tannenwald pfeifet so hell.
Isabel was still so young that she felt the beauty more deeply
when she could link it with some poetic association, and as she
listened to the nightingale she murmured to herself "'In some
melodious plot of beechen green with shadows numberless'--but
it isn't a beech, it's a fir-tree," and then wandering off into
another literary channel, "'How thick the bursts come crowding
through the leaves! Eternal passion--eternal pain' . . . but I
don't believe he feels any pain at all. It is we who feel pain.
He's not been long married, and it's lovely weather, and there's
plenty for them to eat, and they're in love . . . what a heavenly
night it is! I wish some one were in love with me. I wonder if
any one ever will be.
"How thrilling it would be to refuse him! Of course I couldn't
possibly accept him--not the first: it would be too slow,
because then one couldn't have any more. One would be like
Laura. Poor Laura! Now if she were in that tree"--Isabel's
ideas were becoming slightly confused--"it would be natural for
her to be melancholy--only if she were a bird she wouldn't care,
she would fly off with some one else and leave Major Clowes, and
all the other birds would come and peck him to death. They
manage these things better in bird land." Isabel's eyes shut but
she hurriedly opened them again. "I'm not going to go to sleep.
It's perfectly absurd. It can't be much after nine o'clock. I
dare say Captain Hyde will come out before so very long . . . I
should like to talk to him again by myself. He isn't so
interesting when other people are there. I wonder why I told
Laura he was getting fat? He isn't: he couldn't be, to travel
all over the world and shoot black panthers. And if he did take
two helps of vol-au-vent, you must remember, Isabel, he's a big
man--well over six feet--and requires good support. He
certainly is not greedy or he would have tried to pick out the
oysters: all men love oysters.
"He was nice about Val's ribbon, too . . . wish I understood
about that ribbon. Val was grateful: he said 'Thanks, Hyde'
while Major Clowes was speaking to Barry. Laura isn't stupid,
but she never understands Val. 'Contented?' My dearest darling
Val! If he were being roasted over a slow fire he would be
'contented' if Laura was looking on. That's the worst of being
perfectly unselfish: people never realize that you're unselfish
at all. Wives don't seem to hear what their husbands say. Often
and often Major Clowes is absolutely insulting to Val, before
Laura and before me. But Laura always looks on Val as a boy.
Perhaps if Captain Hyde hears it going on he'll interfere and
shut Major Clowes up as he did tonight. He can manage Major
Clowes . . . which is clever of him! 'A strong, silent man'--as
a matter of fact he talks a good deal. . . . But I loved him for
sitting on Major Clowes. I'd rather he were nice to Val than to
me.
"But he might be nice to me too. . . .
"He was, yesterday afternoon. How he coloured up! He was
absolutely natural for the minute. That can't often happen.
People who don't like giving themselves away are thrilling when
they do."
Another yawn came upon her.
"O! dear, I really mustn't go to sleep. What a lulling noise you
make, you old river! I don't think I can get up at six tomorrow.
This hammock is as comfortable as a bed. 'The young girl
reclined in a graceful attitude, her head pillowed on her slender
hand, her long dark lashes entangled and resting on her ivory
cheek.' Well, they couldn't rest anywhere else: unless they were
long enough to rest on her nose. 'Her--her breathing was soft
and regular . . .'" It became so. Isabel slept.
Val would rather have owed no gratitude to a man he disliked so
much as Hyde. When Bernard was wheeled away, an interchange of
perfunctory civilities was followed by a constrained silence,
which Val broke by rising. "Hyde, if you'll excuse me, I'll say
five words to Bernard before Barry begins getting him to bed.
There's a right of way dispute going on that he liked me to keep
him posted up in."
"Do," said Lawrence vaguely. He brushed past Val and escaped into
the garden.
Lawrence was enjoying his stay at Wanhope, but tonight he felt
defrauded, though he knew not why. He had had an agreeable day.
In the morning Jack Bendish had appeared on horseback and Lawrence
had ridden over with him to lunch at Wharton, a sufficiently amusing
experience, what with the crabbed high-spirited whims of Jack's
grandfather and the old-fashioned courtesy of Lord Grantchester, and
Yvonne's romantic toilette: later Laura had joined them and they had
played bowls on the famous green: in the cool of the evening he had
strolled home with Laura through the fields. Dinner too had been
amusing in its way, the wines were excellent, the parlour maid waited
at table like a deft ghost, and he recognized in Mrs. Fryar an artist
who was thrown away alike on Bernard's devotion to roast beef and
Val's inability to remember what he ate. Yet Lawrence was left
vaguely discontented.
Bernard's manner to Val had set his teeth on edge. Bernard could
have meant no harm: no one had ever known the truth except
Lawrence and Val, and possibly Dale with such torn shreds of
consciousness as H. E. and barbed wire had left him: but in all
innocence Bernard had set the rack to work as deftly as Lawrence
could have done it himself. Lawrence pitied--no, that was a
slip of the mind: he was not so weak as to pity Stafford, but
their intercourse was difficult, genant.
And Isabel Stafford too: Clowes had left her out of the
conversation as though she were a child, and though Lawrence
tried to bring her in she remained, so to say, in the nursery
most of the time, speaking when she was spoken to but without any
of her characteristic freshness and boldness. She was the
schoolgirl that Clowes expected her to be. Her very dress
irritated Lawrence, as if he had seen a fine painting in a tawdry
frame, or a pearl of price foiled by a spurious setting. He had
not felt any glow at all, and was left to suppose his fancy had
played him a trick. Disappointing! and now there was no chance
of revising his impression, for apparently she had gone away with
Laura--who should have known better than to leave Captain Hyde
to his own devices. But probably Miss Stafford had refused to
face the men alone: it was what a little shy country girl would
do.
Isabel's arm hanging over the edge of the hammock, and pearly
white in the dark, was his first warning of her presence. He
crossed the wood with his hunter's step and found her lapped in
dreams, the starlight that filtered between the alder branches
chequering her with a faint diaper of light and shade. Only the
very young can afford to be, seen asleep, when the face sinks
back into its original repose, and lines and wrinkles reappear in
the loss of all that smiling charm of expression which may efface
them by day. Laura, asleep, looked old and haggard. But Isabel
presented a blank page, a face virginally pure, and candid, and
lineless: from the attitude of her young body one would have
thought she was constructed without bones, and from her serenity
it might have been a child who slept there in the June night, so
placidly entrusting herself to its mild embrace. Vividly aware
that he had no right to watch her, Lawrence stood watching her,
though afraid at every breath that she would wake up: it was hard
to believe that even in her sleep she could remain insensible of
his eyes. Here was the authentic Isabel, the girl who had
enchanted him on the moor: the incarnation of that classic beauty
by which alone his spirit was capable of being touched to fine
issues. The alder branches quivered, their clusters of black
shadow fell like an embroidered veil over the imperfections of
her dress, but what light there was shone clear on her head and
throat, and the pearly moulding of her shoulder, based where her
sleeve was dragged down a little by the tension of her weight
upon it. All the mystery of womanhood and all its promise of
life in bud and life not yet sown lay on this young girl asleep
in the starshine. Lights flashed up in the house, figures were
moving between the curtains: Laura had left Bernard, soon she
would come out into the garden and call to Isabel, and Isabel
would wake and his chance be lost. His chance? Isabel had
rashly incurred a forfeit and would have to pay. The frolic was
old, there was plenty of precedent for it, and not for one moment
did Lawrence dream of letting her off. A moth, a dead leaf might
have settled on her sleeping lips and she would have been none
the wiser, and just such a moth's touch he promised himself, the
contact of a moment, but enough to intoxicate him with its
sweetness, and the first--yes, he believed it would be the
first: not from any special faith in Isabel's obduracy, but
because no one in Chilmark was enough of a connoisseur to
appreciate her. Yes, the first, the bloom on the fruit, the
unfolding of the bud, he promised himself that: and warily he
stooped over Isabel, who slept as tranquil as though she were in
her own room under the vicarage eaves. Lawrence held his breath.
If she were to wake? Then?--Oh, then the middleaged friend of
the family claiming his gloves and his jest! But Lawrence was
not feeling middle-aged.
"O! dear," said Isabel, "I've been asleep!"
She sat up rubbing her eyes. "Laura, are you there?" But no one
was there. Yet, though she was alone, in the solitude of the
alder shade Isabel blushed scarlet. "What a ridiculous dream!
worse than ridiculous, What would Val say if he knew? Really,
Isabel, you ought to be whipped!" She slipped to her feet and
peered suspiciously this way and that into the shadowy corners of
the wood. Not a step: not the rustle of a leaf: no one.
Yet Isabel's cheeks continued to burn, till with a little
frightened laugh she buried them in her hands. "O! it was--
it was a dream--?"