"Val"
"M'm."
"I say"
"What, then?"
"What's all this about the Etchingham agency?"
Val Stafford, smoking a well-earned pipe some hours later in the
evening sunlight on the vicarage lawn, looked up at his brother
over the Chronicle with a faint frown. "Who?"
"Ah! who?" said Rowsley, squatting cross-legged on the turf.
"Jack began on it this afternoon, and I had to switch him off, for
I didn't care to own that it was news to me."
"There's nothing in it at present."
"The duke has offered me the management of his Etchingham
property," said Val unwillingly. "Oh no, not to give up Bernard:
Etchingham, you see, marches with Wanhope and the two could be
run together. He was awfully nice about it: would take what time
I could give him: quite saw that Wanhope would have to come
first."
"How much?"
"Four hundred and an allowance for a house. Five, to be precise,
which is what he is giving Mills: but of course I couldn't take
full time pay for a part-time job."
Rowsley whistled.
"Yes, it would be very nice," said Val, always temperate. "It
would practically be 300 pounds, for I couldn't go on taking my
full 300 pounds from Bernard. I should get him to put on a young
fellow to work under me."
"It would make a lot of difference to you, even so."
"To us," Val corrected him. "Another pound a week would oil the
wheels of Isabel's housekeeping. And--" he hesitated, but
having gone so far one might as well go on--"it would enable me
to do two things I've long set my heart on, only it was no use
saying so: give you another hundred and fifty a year and insure
my life in Isabel's favour. It would lift a weight off my mind
if I could do that. Suppose I were to die suddenly--one never
knows what would become of her? She'll be able to earn her own
living after taking her degree in October, but women's posts are
badly paid and it's uncommonly hard to save. Oh yes, old boy, I
know you'd look after her! But I don't want her to be a drag on
you: it's bad enough now--you never grumble, but I know what
it's like never to have a penny to spare. Times have changed
since I was in the Army, but nothing alters the fact that it's
uncommonly unpleasant to be worse off than other fellows. I hate
it for you--all the more because you don't grumble. It is a
constant worry to me not to be able to put you in a better
position."
Rowsley had been too long inured to this paternal tenderness to
be sensible of its touching absurdity on the lips of a man not
much older than himself. But he was not a selfish youth, and he
remonstrated with Val, though more like a son than a brother.
"Yes, I dare say, but where do you come in? A stiff premium for
Isabel and 50 pounds for Jim and 150 pounds for me doesn't leave
much change out of 300 pounds!"
"Oh, I've all I want. Living at home, I don't get the chance of
spending a lot of pocket money."
"Why don't you close at once?"
"Because I can't get an answer out of Bernard. I've spoken to him
but he won't decide one way or the other. And he's my master,
and I can't take on another job if he objects. That's why I kept
it dark at home: what's the good of raising hopes that may be
disappointed?"
"Pity you can't chuck Bernard and take on Etchingham and the
five hundred."
"I should never do that," said Val in the rare tone of decision
which in him was final. "After all these years I could never
leave Bernard in the lurch. I owe him too much."
"As if the boot weren't on the other leg!" Rowsley muttered. He
was not mercenary--none of Mr. Stafford's children were: he saw
eye to eye with Val in Val's calm preference of six to eight
hundred a year: but when Val carried his financial principles
into the realm of sentiment Rowsley now and then lost his temper.
His brother smiled at him, amused by his irritation, unmoved by
it: other men's opinions rarely had any weight with Val Stafford.
"Pax till it happens, at all events! Honestly I don't think
Bernard means to object: he's been all smiles the last day or
two--Hyde's coming has shaken him up and done him good--"
"Oh! Hyde!"
Val let fail his paper and looked curiously at Rowsley, whose
tone was a challenge. "What is it now?"
"Do you like this chap Hyde?"
"That depends on what you mean by liking him. He's not a bad
specimen of his class."
"What is his class? Do you know anything of his people?"
"Of his family I know little except that he has Jew blood in him
and is very well off," Val could have told his brother where the
money came from, but forbore out of consideration for Lawrence,
who might not care to have his connection with the Hyde Galleries
known in Chilmark. "He came here because Lucian Selincourt asked
him to see if he could do anything for Bernard."
"I can't see Hyde putting himself out of his way to oblige Mr.
Selincourt."
"If you ask me, Rose, I should say he had only just got back to
England and was at a loose end. But there was a dash of good
nature in it: he's genuinely fond of Mrs. Clowes."
"So I gathered," said Rowsley. His tone was pregnant. Val sat
silent for a moment.
"What rubbish! He hasn't seen her for eight or ten years."
"Since her marriage." Val shrugged his shoulders. "Sorry, Val,
but I cannot see Hyde staying on at Wanhope out of cousinly
affection for Bernard Clowes. It must be a beastly uncomfortable
house to stay in. Nicely run and all that, and they do you very
well, but Bernard is distinctly an acquired taste. Oh, my dear
chap!" as Val's silence stiffened, "no one suggests that Laura's
ever looked at the fellow! But facts are facts, and Hyde is--
Hyde. I'm not a bit surprised to hear he has Jew blood in him,"
Rowsley continued, warming to the discussion: he was a much
keener judge of character that the tolerant and easy-going Val.
"That accounts for the arty strain in him. Yvonne says he's a
thorough musician, and Jack told me Lord Grantchester took to him
because he knew such a lot about pictures. Well, so he ought!
He's a Londoner. What does he know of the country? Only what
you pick up at a big country-house party or a big shoot! He's
not the sort of chap to stay on at Wanhope for the pleasure of
cheering up across-grained br--a fellow like Bernard. Yes, he's
talking of staying on indefinitely: is going to send to town for
one of his confounded cars. . . . And what other woman is there
in Chilmark that he'd walk across the road to look at?"
"I'm not sure you're fair to him."
Rowsley turned up to his brother an amused, rather sweet smile.
"Val, you'd pray for the devil?"
"Oh, Hyde isn't a devil! I came pretty close to him ten years
ago. He has a streak of generosity in him: no one knows that
better than I do, for I'm in his debt. What? Oh! no, not in
money matters: is that likely? But he's capable of . . .
magnanimity, one might call it," Stafford fastidiously felt after
precision: "no, he wouldn't pursue Laura; he wouldn't make her
life harder than it is already."
"He might propose to make it easier." Rowsley threw a daisy at a
cockchafer and missed it. "You and I are sons of a parsonage.
We shouldn't run off with a married lady because it would be
against our principles." His thin brown features were twisted
into a faint grimace. Rowsley, like Val, possessed a satirical
sense of humour, and gave it freer play than Val did. "It's so
difficult to shake off early prejudices. When Fowler and I were
at the club the other day, we met a horrid little sweep who waxed
confidential. I said I couldn't make love to a married woman if
I tried, and Fowler said he could but held rather not, and we
walked off, but as I remarked to Fowler afterwards the funny
thing was that it was true. I don't see anything romantic in the
situation. It strikes me as immoral and disgusting. But Hyde
wouldn't take a narrow view like mine. He has to live up to his
tailor."
"Oh, really, Rose!" Val gave his unwilling laugh. "You're like
Isabel, who can't forgive him for sporting a diamond monogram."
"No, but I'm interested. I know Jack's limitations, and Jimmy's,
and yours, but Hyde's I don't know, and he intrigues me," said
Rowsley, lighting a cigarette with his agile brown fingers.
"Now I'll tell you the way he really strikes me. He's not a bad
sort: I shouldn't wonder if there were more decency in him than
he'd care to get credit for. But I should think," he looked up
at Val with his clear speculative hazel eyes, "that he's never in
his life taken a thrashing. He's always had pots of money and
superb health. I know nothing, of his private concerns, but at
all events he isn't married, and from what Jack says he's sought
safety in numbers. No wife, no kids, no near relations--that
means none of the big wrenches. No: I don't believe Hyde's ever
taken a licking in his life."
"You sound as if you would like to administer one."
"Only by way of a literary experiment," said Rowsley with his
mischievous grin. He was of the new Army, Val of the old: it was
a constant source of mild surprise to Val that his brother read
books about philosophy, and psychology, and sociology, of which
pre-war Sandhurst had never heard: read poetry too, not Tennyson
or Shakespeare, but slim modern volumes with brown covers and
wide margins: and wrote verses now and then, and sent them to
orange-coloured magazines or annual anthologies, at which Val
gazed from a respectful distance. "I don't owe him any grudge.
I'm not Bernard's dry-nurse!"
Val turned a leaf of his paper, but he was not reading it.
"I rather wish you hadn't said all this, Rowsley. It does no
good: not even if it were true."
"Val, if it weren't such a warm evening I'd get up and punch your
head. You're a little too bright and good, aren't you? Yvonne
Bendish says it, and she's Laura's sister."
"Yvonne would say anything. I wish you had given her a hint to
hold her tongue. She may do most pestilent mischief if she sets
this gossip going."
"It'll set itself going," said Rowsley. "And, though I know the
Bendishes pretty well, I really shouldn't care to tell Mrs. Jack
not to gossip about her own sister. You might see your way to
it, reverend sir, but I don't."
"If it came to Bernard's ears I wouldn't answer for the
consequences."
"Won't Bernard see it for himself?"
"If I thought that," said Val, "if I thought that. . . .
"You couldn't interfere, old man," said Rowsley with a shrewd
glance at his brother. "Your hands are tied."
"H'm: yes, that's true." It was much truer than Rowsley knew. "I
don't care," said Val, involuntarily crushing the paper in his
hand: "I would not let that stand in my way: I'd speak to Hyde."
"Are you prepared to take high ground? I can't imagine any one
less likely to be amenable to moral suasion, unless of course
you're much more intimate with him than you ever let on to me.
Perhaps you are," Rowsley added. "He certainly is interested in
you."
"Hyde is?"
"Watches you like a cat after a mouse. What's at the root of it,
Val? Is it the original obligation you spoke of? I'm not sure
that I should care to be under an obligation to Hyde myself.
Hullo, are you off?" Val had risen, folding the newspaper,
laying it carefully down on his chair: in all his ways he was as
neat as an old maid.
"I have to be at the managers' meeting by half past eight, and
it's twenty past now."
Watching his brother across the lawn, Rowsley cudgelled his
brains to account for Val's precipitate departure. The pretext
was valid, for Val was always punctual, and yet it looked like a
retreat--not to say a rout. But what had he said to put Val to
flight?
Present at the managers' meeting were Val, still in breeches:
Jack Bendish in a dinner jacket and black tie: Garrett the
blacksmith, cursorily washed: Thurlow, a leading Nonconformist
tradesman: and Mrs. Verney the doctor's wife. Agenda: to instruct
the Correspondent to requisition a new scrubbing brush for the
Infants' School. This done and formally entered in the Minutes by
Mrs. Verney, the meeting resolved itself into a Committee of Ways
and Means for getting rid of the boys' headmaster without falling
foul of the National Union of Teachers; but these proceedings, though
of extreme interest to all concerned, were recorded in no Minutes.
The meeting broke up in amity and Bendish came out into the
purple twilight, taking Val's arm. It was gently withdrawn.
"Neuritis again?" said Jack. "Why don't you try massage?" He
always asked the same question, and, being born to fifteen
thousand a year, never read between the lines of Val's vague
reply. Val had a touch of neuritis in his injured arm two nights
out of seven, but he could not find the shillings for his train
fare to Salisbury, far less the fees of a professional masseuse.
Bendish, who could have settled that difficulty out of a week's
cigar bills, would have been shocked and distressed if Val had
owned to it, but it was beyond the scope of his imagination,
though he was a thoughtful young man and quietly did his best to
protect Val from the tax of chauffeurs and gamekeepers. He
understood that poor men cannot always find sovereigns. But he
really did not know that sometimes they cannot even find
shillings. Tonight he said, "I can't think why you don't get a
woman over to massage you," and then, reverting to the peccant
master, "Brown's a nuisance. He has a rotten influence on the
elder boys. He's thick with all that beastly Labour crowd, and I
believe Thurlow's right about his goings on with Warner's wife,
though I wasn't going to say so to Thurlow. I do wish he'd do
something, then we could fire him. But we don't want a row with
the N.U.T."
"You can't fire a man for his political opinions."
"Why not, if they're wrong?" said Bendish placidly.
His was the creed that Labour men are so slow to understand
because it is so slow to explain itself: not a blind prejudice,
but the reasonable faith of one who feels himself to belong to an
hereditary officer caste for whom privilege and responsibility go
hand in hand. And an excellent working rule it is so long as
practice is not divorced from theory: so long as the average
member of the governing class acts up to the tradition of
government, be he sachem or daimio or resident English squire.
It amused Val: but he admired it.
"Brown is a thorn in Jimmy's side," he remarked, dropping the
impersonal issue. "I never in my life heard a man make such a
disagreeable noise on the organ. I tackled him about it last
Sunday. He said it ciphered, but organs don't cipher in dry
weather, so I went to look at it and found three or four keys
glued together with candle grease."
"Filthy swine! Are you coming round to Wanhope? I have to call
in on my way home, my wife's dining there."
Val made no reply. "Are you coming up or not? You look fagged,
Val," said Bendish affectionately. "Anything wrong?"
"No: I was only wondering whether I'd get you to take a message
for me, but I'd better go myself."
Bendish nodded. "Just as you like. Have you settled yet about
the Etchingham agency?"
"No, I'm waiting for Bernard."
"Hope you'll see your way to accepting. My only fear is that it
would throw too much work on you; you're such a conscientious beggar!
but of course you wouldn't do for us all the odd jobs you do for poor
Bernard. Seems to me," Jack ruminated, "the best plan would be for
you to have a car. One gets about quicker like that and it wouldn't
be such a fag. There's that little green Napier roadster, she'd come
in handy if we stabled her at Nicholson's." He added simply, to
obviate any possible misunderstanding, "Garage bills our show, of
course."
"Thanks most awfully," said Val, accepting without false pride.
"I should love it, I do get tired after being in the saddle all
day. It would more than make up for the extra work."
They were crossing the Wanhope lawn as he spoke, on their way to
the open French windows of the parlour, gold-lit with many
candles against an amethyst evening sky. Laura, in a plain black
dress, was at the piano, the cool drenched foliage of Claude
Debussy's rainwet gardens rustling under her magic fingers.
Bernard was talking to Mrs. Jack Bendish, for the sufficient
reason that she disliked him and disliked talking to any one
while Laura played. Her defiant sparkle, her gipsy features, her
slim white shoulders emerging from the brocade and sapphires of a
sleeveless bodice cut open almost to her waist, produced the
effect of a Carolus Duran lady come to life and threw Laura back
into a dimmed and tired middle age. Jack's eyes glowed as they
dwelt on her. His marriage had been a trial to his family, but
no one could deny that Yvonne had made a success of it, for Jack
worshipped her.--Lawrence, leaning forward in his chair, his
forehead on his hand to shield his eyes from the light, looked
exceedingly tired, and probably was so.
"Queer chap Hyde," said Bendish to Val as they waited on the
grass for the music to finish. "Can't think what he's stopping
on for."
"Oh, Jack, for heaven's sake don't you begin on that subject!"
"Hey? Oh! No, by Jove. Seems a shame, doesn't it?" returned
Bendish, taking the point with that rapid effortless readiness of
his class which made him more soothing to Val than many a
cleverer man. "It all says itself, so what's the good of saying
it? All the same I shan't be sorry when Hyde packs his movin'
tent a day's march nearer Jerusalem." And with a casual wink at
Val he stepped over the threshold. His judgment, so vague and
shrewd and sure of itself, represented probably the kindest view
that would be taken in Chilmark.
Their entrance broke up the gathering. Jack carried off his
wife, and Barry appeared to wheel Bernard away to bed. With a
word to Laura, Val followed the cripple to his room. The Duke
was pressing for an answer, and long experience had taught Val
that for Bernard one time was as good as another: it was not
possible to count on his moods. And there was not much to be
said; all pros and cons had been thrashed out before; the five
minutes while Barry was out of the room fetching Bernard's
indispensable hot-water bottles would give Val ample time to
secure Bernard's consent.--Laura had scarcely finished putting
away her music when Val came back, humming under his breath the
jangled tune that echoes night in the streets of Granada. Laura
glanced at Lawrence, who had gone into the garden to smoke and
was passing and repassing the open window: no, he could not hear.
"Well, Val?"
"Let me do that for you, shall I?" said Val, lightly smiling, at
her. "Your ottoman has a heavy lid."
"Have you spoken to Bernard?"
"I have."
"And it's all right?"
"Yes" said Val, deftly flinging diamond-wise a glittering Chinese
cloth: "is that straight?--that is, for me. I shan't take the
agency."
"Val!"
"Bernard agrees with me that the double work would be too heavy.
Of course I should like the money and I'm awfully sorry to
disoblige Lord Grantchester and Jack, but one has one's
limitations, and I don't want to knock up."
"It is too bad--too bad of Bernard,". said Laura, lowering her
voice as Lawrence lingered near the window. "He doesn't half
deserve your goodness to him."
"Bosh!" said Val laughing. "Where do these candlesticks go? In
my heart of hearts I'm grateful to him. I'm a cowardly beggar,
Laura, and I was dreading the big financial responsibility. Oh
no, Bernard didn't put any pressure on me: simply offered me the
choice between Etchingham and Wanhope."
"They would pay you twice what you get from Bernard. Oh, Val, I
wish you would take it and throw us over!"
"That's very unkind of you."
"Is this definite?"
"Quite: Bernard had thought it well over and made up his mind. I
shouldn't speak to him about it if I were you."
"I shan't. I couldn't bear to."
"Bosh again--excuse me. I must go home. Good-night, dear." He
held out his hand, wishing, in the repressed way that had become
a second nature to him, that Laura would not wring it so warmly
and so long. In the first bitterness of disappointment--so much
the keener for his unlucky confidence to Rowsley--Val could not
stand sympathy. Not even from Laura? Least of all from Laura.
He nodded to her with a bright careless smile and went out into
the night.
But he had still one more mission to perform before he could go
home to break the bad news to Rowsley: a trying mission under
which Val fretted in repressed distaste. He came up to Lawrence
holding out the gold cigarette case. "You dropped this at our
place when you were talking to my sister this afternoon."
"Did I?" Lawrence slipped it into his pocket. His manner was
perfectly calm. "Thanks so much.--I hadn't missed it." He had
no fear of having been betrayed, in essentials, by Isabel.
"I don't want to offend you," Val continued with his direct
simplicity of manner, "but perhaps you hardly realize how young
my sister is."
"Some one said she was nineteen, but why?"
"I don't know what you said to her, probably nothing of the
slightest consequence, but she's only a child, and you managed to
upset her. To be frank, I didn't want her to see any one this
afternoon. Oh, she's all right, but her arm has run her up a bit
of a temperature, and Verney wants her to keep quiet for a few
days. It'll give her an excuse to keep clear of the inquest too.
This sounds ungrateful as well as ungracious, when we owe you so
much, but there's no ingratitude in it, only common sense."
"Oh, damn your common sense!" exclaimed Lawrence.
It was as laconic a warning-off as civility allowed: and it
irritated Lawrence beyond bearing to be rebuked by young
Stafford, whose social life stood in his danger, whom he could at
pleasure strip to universal crucifying shame. But there was
neither defiance nor fear in Val: tranquil and unpretentious, in
his force of character he reminded Lawrence of Laura Clowes. She
too had been attacked once or twice that evening by her husband,
and Lawrence had admired the way in which she either foiled or
evaded the rapier point, or took it to her bosom without
flinching. This same silken courage, it seemed, Val also
possessed. Both would stand up to a blow with the same grave
dignity and--perhaps--secret scorn.
Minutes passed. Val waited because he chose not to be the first
to break silence, Lawrence because he was absorbing fresh
impressions with that intensity which wipes out time and place.
He was in the mood to receive them: tired, softened, and
quickened, from the tears of the afternoon. After all Val was
Isabel's brother and possessed Isabel's eyes! This drew Lawrence
to him by a double cord: practically, because it is inconvenient
to be on bad terms with one's brother-in-law, and mystically,
because in his profound romantic passion he loved whatever was
associated with her, down to the very sprig of honeysuckle that
she had pinned into his coat. But for this cord his relations
with Stafford would have begun and ended in a casual regret for
the casual indulgence of a cruel impulse. But Isabel's brother
had ex officio a right of entry into Hyde's private life, and,
the doors once opened, he was dazed by the light that Val let in.
It was after ten o'clock and dews were falling, falling from a
clear night. "One faint eternal eventide of gems," beading the
dark turf underfoot and the pale faces of roses that had bloomed
all day in sunshine: now prodigal of scent only they hung their
heads like ghosts of flowers among dark glossy leaves. Stars
hung sparkling on the dark field of heaven, stars threw down
their spears on the dark river fleeting to the star-roofed
distant Channel. Stream and grass and leaf-buds were ephemeral
and eternal, ever passing and ever renewed, old as the stars, or
the waste ether in which they range: the green, sappy stem, the
dew-bead that hung on it, the shape of a ripple were the same now
as when Nineveh was a queen of civilization and men's flesh was
reddening alive in osier cages over altar fires on Wiltshire
downs. And all the sweetness, all the romance of an English
midsummer night seized the heart of Lawrence, a nomad, a returned
exile, and a man in love--as if he had never known England
before.
Or her inhabitants either! Lawrence, without country, creed,
profession, or territorial obligation, was one of those sons of
rich men who form, in any social order, its loosest and most
self-centred class. In his set, frank egoism was the only motive
for which one need not apologize. But in Chilmark it was not
so. Far other forces were in play in the lives of the Stafford
family, and Laura Clowes, and Lord Grantchester and his wife and
Jack Bendish. What were these forces? Lawrence thought in
flashes, by imagery, scene after scene flitting before him out of
the last forty-eight hours. Homespun virtues: unselfishness,
indifference to money values, the constant sense of filial,
fraternal, social responsibility . . . the glow in Jack's eyes
when they rested on his wife: Verney's war on cesspools: Leverton
Morley as scoutmaster: the Chinese lecture: rosebushes in the
churchyard, by the great stone cross with its list of names
beginning "George Potts, Wiltshire Rifles, aged 49," and ending
"Robert Denis Bendish, Grenadier Guards, aged 19: Into Thy Hands,
O Lord": old, old feudal England, closeknit, no pastoral of easy
virtues, yet holding together in a fellowship which underlies
class disunion: whose sons, from days long before the Conquest,
have always desired to go to sea when the cuckoo sang, and to
come home again when they were tired of the hail and salt
showers, because they could not bear to be landless and lordless
men. . . .
[Footnote]
"Swylce geac mona geomran reorde, singe sumeres
weard, sorge beade bittre in breosthord; pset se
beorn ne wat, secg esteadig, hwset pa sume dreoga,
pe pa wrseclastas widost lecga! . . . . pince him
on mode pset he his monndryhten clyppe and cysse
andon cneo lecge honda and heafod; ponne onwsecne,
gesihp him beforan fealwe wegas, bapian brimfuglas."
"Even so the cuckoo warns him with its sad voice,
Summer's warden sings foreboding sorrow, bitter grief
of heart. Little knows the prosperous fellow what
others are doing who follow far and wide the tracks
of exile . . . Then dreams the seafarer that he clasps
his lord and kisses him, and on his knee lays hand and
head; but he awakes and sees before him the fallow
waterways and the sea-fowls bathing."
[End of Footnote]
Lawrence flung off the impression with a jerk of his shoulders,
as if it were a physical weight. It was too heavy to be endured.
Not even to marry Isabel was he going to impose on his own
unbroken egoism the restricting code of a country village.
"You are a dreamer, Val! Why don't you throw over Bernard and
take the Etchingham agency? Yes, I heard every word you said to
Laura: you made a gallant effort, but the facts speak for
themselves, and your terminological inexactitudes wouldn't
deceive a babe at the breast. Bernard pays you 300 pounds a year
and orders you about like a groom, Grautchester would give you
six and behave like a gentleman. But no, you must needs stick to
Bernard, though you never get any thanks for it! You're an
unpractical dreamer."
"I don't know what on earth you're talking about."
"And you're all in it together, damn you!" Lawrence broke out
with an angry laugh. "It's all equally picturesque--feudal's
the word! I never knew anything like it in my life and I
wouldn't have believed it could continue to exist. What do you
do with gipsies? evict 'em, I suppose." He flung a second
question at Val which made the son of a vicarage knit his brows.
"As a matter of fact there's a house in Brook Lane about which
Bendish and I are a good deal exercised in our minds at the
present moment . . . and the percentage of children born too soon
after marriage is disastrous. You're all out, Hyde. Nothing
could be more commonplace than Chilmark, believe me: life is like
this all over rural England, and it's only from a distance that
one takes it for Arcadia."
"Folly," said Lawrence. "Good God, why should you exercise your
simple minds over the house in Brook Lane? Ah! because the men
who go to it are your own men, and the parsonage and the Castle
are answerable for their souls." Val, irritated, suggested that
if Hyde's forebears had lived in Chilmark since the time when
every freeman had to swear fealty, laying his hands between the
knees of his lord, Hyde might have shared this feeling. "But
they didn't," said Lawrence, drily. "My grandfather was a
pawnbroker in the New Cut."
"Then perhaps you're hardly in a position to judge."
"Judge? I don't judge, my good fellow--I'm lost in admiration!
In an age of materialism it's refreshing to come across these
simple, homespun virtues. I didn't know there was a man left in
England that would exist, for choice, on three hundred a year.
Are you always content with your rustic ideals, Val? Haven't you
any ambition?"
"I?" said Val.
"'Carry me out of the fight,'" quoted Lawrence under his breath.
"I swear I forgot."
Silence fell again, the silence on Lawrence's part of continual
conflict and adjustment, and on Val's mainly of irritation.
Lawrence talked too much and too loosely, and was over-given to
damning what he disliked--a trick that went with his rings and
his diamond monogram. Val was not interested in a townsman's
amateur satire; in so far as Lawrence was not satirical, he had
probably drunk one glass more of Bernard's' champagne than was
good for him! In the upshot, Val was less disinclined to credit
Rowsley than half an hour ago.
Lawrence roused himself. "About your sister: I was sorry
afterwards to have stayed so long. She seemed none the worse for
it at the time, but no doubt she ought to keep quiet for a bit.
Will you make my excuses to her?"
"I will with pleasure."
"And will you allow me to tackle Bernard about the agency?"
"To--?"
"If you won't resent my interfering? I can generally knock some
sense into Bernard's head. It's an iniquitous thing that he
should take advantage of your generosity, Val."
Stafford was completely taken by surprise. "I'd rather--it's
most awfully kind of you," he stammered, "but I couldn't trespass
on your kindness--"
"Kindness, nonsense! Bernard's my cousin: if your services are
worth more in the open market than he pays you, it's up to me to
see he doesn't fleece you. Otherwise you might ultimately chuck
up your job, and where should we be then? In the soup: for he'd
never get another man of your class--a gentleman--to put up
with the rough side of his tongue. No: he must be brought to
book: if you'll allow me?"
Val's disposition was to refuse; it was odious to him to accept a
favour from Hyde. But pride is one of the luxuries that poor men
cannot afford. "I should be most grateful. Thank you very much."
"And now go to bed: you're tired and so am I. I've had the devil
of a hard day." He stretched himself, raising his wrists to the
level of his shoulders, luxuriously tense under the closefitting
coat. "I shall hope to see your sister again after the inquest."
"Yes," said Val, hesitating: "are you staying on, then?"
"As you advised."
"You'll be very bored."
"No, I've fallen in love." Val gave a perceptible start. "With
the country," Lawrence explained with a merry laugh. "Rustic
ideals. Don't misjudge me, I beg: I have no designs on Mrs.
Bendish."
"Hyde . . .
"Well, my dear Val?"
"Give me back my parole."
"Not I."
"You're unjust and ungenerous," said Val with repressed passion.
"But I warn you that I shall interfere none the less to protect
others if necessary. Good-night."
Lawrence watched him across the lawn with a bewildered
expression. But he forgot him in a minute--or remembered him
only in the association with Isabel which brought Val into the
radius of his good will.