"Hadow's bringing out a new play," remarked Lawrence, looking up
from the Morning Post. "A Moore comedy, They're clever stuff,
Moore's comedies: always well written, and well put on when Hadow
has a hand in it. You never were a playgoer, Bernard."
"Not I," said Bernard Clowes. He and his guest were smoking
together in the hall after breakfast, Lawrence imparting items of
news from the Morning Post, while Bernard, propped up in a
sitting attitude on the latest model of invalid couch, turned
over and sorted on a swing table a quantity of curios mainly in
copper, steel, and iron. Both swing-table and couch had been
bought in London by Lawrence, and to his vigorous protests it was
also due that the great leaved doors were thrown wide to the
amber sunshine: while the curios came out of one of his Eastern
packing-cases, which he had had unpacked by Gaston for Bernard to
take what he liked. Lawrence's instincts were acquisitive, not
to say predatory. Wherever he went he amassed native treasures
which seemed to stick to his fingers, and which in nine cases out
of ten, thanks to his racial tact, would have fetched at
Christie's more than he gave for them. Coming fresh from foreign
soil, they were a godsend to Bernard, who was weary of collecting
from collectors' catalogues. "Can I have this flint knife?
Egyptian, isn't it? Oh, thanks awfully, I'm taking all the
best." This was true. But Lawrence, like most of his nation,
gave freely when he gave at all. "No, I never was one for plays
except Gilbert and Sullivan and the 'Merry Widow' and things like
that with catchy tunes in 'em. Choruses." He gave a reminiscent
laugh.
"Legs?" suggested Lawrence.
"Exactly," said Bernard, winking at him. "Oh damn!" A mechanical
jerk of his own legs had tilted the table and sent the knife
rolling on the floor. Lawrence picked it up for him, drew his
feet down, and tucked a rug over his hips.
"Mind that box of Burmese darts, old man, they're poisoned.-- I
used to be an inveterate first-nighter. Still am, in fact, when
I'm in or near town. I can sit out anything from 'Here We Are
Again' to 'Samson Agonistes.' To be frank, I rather liked
'Samson': it does one's ears good to listen to that austere,
delicate English."
"How long would these take to polish one off?"
"Ten or twelve hours, chiefly in the form of a hoop. No, Berns,
I can't recommend them." He drew from its jewelled sheath and put
into Bernard's hands a Persian dagger nine inches long, the naked
blade damascened in wavy ripplings and slightly curved from point
to hilt. "That would do your trick better. Under the fifth rib.
I bought it of a Greek muleteer, God knows how he got hold of it,
but he was a bit of a poet: he assured me it would go in 'as soft
as a kiss.' For its softness I cannot speak, but it is as sharp
as a knife need be."
"Sharper," said Bernard, his thumb in his mouth.
"You silly ass, I warned you!-- I should rather like to see this
Moore play. I suppose Laura never goes, as you don't?"
"I don't stop her going, as you jolly well know. She's welcome
to go six nights a week if she likes."
"She couldn't very well go alone," Lawrence ignored the scowl of
his host. "Tell you what: suppose I took her tonight? I could
run her up and down in my car, or we could get back by the
midnight train. Would the feelings of Chilmark be outraged?"
"What business is it of Chilmark's? If I'm complaisant, that's
enough," said Bernard, his features relaxing into a broad grin.
"I may be planked down in a country village for the rest of my
very unnatural life, but I'll be shot if I'll regulate mine or my
wife'& behaviour by the twaddle they talk! I'll have that
dagger." Slipping it slowly into its sheath he watched it travel
home, the supple female curve gliding and yielding as a woman
yields to a man's caress. "Voluptuous, I call it. Under the
left breast, eh?" He drew it again and held it poised and
pointing at his cousin. "Come, even I could cut your heart out
with a gem of a blade like that." Lawrence held himself lightly
erect, his big frame stiffening from head to foot and the pupils
of his eyes dilating till the irids were blackened. "Call
Laura." Bernard sheathed the dagger again and laid it down.
"She's out there snipping away at the roses. Why can't she leave
'em to Parker? She's always messing about out there dirtying her
hands, and then she comes in and paws me. Call her in."
Lawrence escaped into the sunshine. He had not liked that moment
when Bernard had held up the dagger, nor was it the first time
that Bernard had made him shiver, but these vague apprehensions
soon faded in the open air. It was a sallow sunshine, a light
wind was blowing, and the lawn was spun over with brilliancies of
gossamer and flecked with yellow leaflets of acacia and lime.
Little light clouds floated overhead, sun-smitten to a fiery
whiteness, or curling in gold and silver surf over the grey of
distant hayfields. In the borders the velvet bodies of bees hung
between the velvet petals, ruby-red, of dahlias. There had been
no frost, and yet a foreboding of frost was in the air, a
sparkle, a sting--enough to have braced Lawrence when he went
down to bathe before breakfast, standing stripped amid long
river-herbage drenched in dew, a west wind striking cold on his
wet limbs: sensations exquisite so long as the blood of health
and manhood glowed under the chilled skin! It was early autumn.
Time slips away fast in a country village, and Lawrence remained
a welcome guest at Wanhope, where Chilmark said--though with a
covert smile--that Captain Hyde had done his cousin a great deal
of good. Bernard was better behaved with Lawrence than with any
one else, less surly, less unsociable, less violently coarse:
since June there had been fewer quarrels with Val and Barry and
the servants, and less open incivility to Laura. He had even
let Laura give a few mild entertainments, arrears of hospitality
which she was glad to clear off: and he had appeared at them in
person, polite and well dressed, and on the friendliest terms
with his cousin and his wife.
Lawrence knew his own mind now. It was because he knew it that
he held his hand: meeting Isabel two or three times a week,
entering into the life of the little place because it was her
life, fighting Val's battle with Bernard--and winning it--
because Val was her brother. When he remembered his collapse he
was not abashed: shame was an emotion which he rarely felt: but
he had gone too far and too fast, and was content to mark time in
a more rational and conventional courtship.
But a courtship under the rose, for before others he hid his love
like a crime, treating Isabel as good humoured elderly men treat
pretty children. Where the astringent memory of Lizzie came
into play, Lawrence was dumb. The one aspect of that fiasco
which he had not fully confessed to Isabel--though only because
it was not then prominent in his mind--was its scorching, its
lacerating effect on his pride. But for it he would probably
have flung discretion to the winds, confided in Laura, in
Bernard, in Val, pursued Isabel with a hot and headstrong
impetuosity: but it had left the entire tract of sex in him one
seared and branded scar.
Even when they were alone together, which rarely happened--Val
saw to that--he had as yet made no open love to her: it was
difficult to do so when one was never secure from interruption
for ten minutes together. Of late he had begun to chafe against
Val's cobweb barriers. Three months is a long time! and patience
was not a virtue that came natural to Lawrence Hyde.
He found Laura cutting off dead roses, a sufficiently harmless
occupation, one would have thought: a trifle thinner, a trifle
paler than when he came: and were those grey threads in her brown
hair?
"Berns wants you," said Lawrence. "I've done such an awful
thing, Laura--"
Again that flash of imperfect perception! What was going on
under the surface at Wanhope, that Laura should turn as white as
her handkerchief? He hurried on as if he had noticed nothing.
"Bernard and I have been laying our heads together. Do you know
what I'm going to do? Run you up to town to see the new Moore
play at Hadow's."
"Delightful!" Already Laura had recovered herself: her smile was
as sweet as ever, and as serene. "Was it your idea or Bernard's?"
"Mine. . . I say, Laura: Bernard is all right, isn't he?"
"In what way, all right?"
Lawrence reddened, regretting his indiscretion. "I've fancied
his manner queer, once or twice."
"There is a close connection, of course, between the spine and
the brain," said Laura quietly. "But my husband is perfectly
sane. . . . Oh my dear Lawrence, of course I forgive you! what is
there to forgive? I only wish I could come tonight, but I'm
afraid it can't be managed--"
"She says it can't be managed," said Lawrence, standing aside
for Laura to pass in. "Pitch into her, Bernard. Hear her talk
like a woman of sixty! Are you frightened of the night air,
Laura? Or would Chilmark chatter?"
"It might, if you and I went alone," Laura smiled.
"Make up a party then," suggested Lawrence. "Get the Bendishes
to come too."
She shook her head. "They're dining with the Dean."
"And decanal dinner-parties can't be thrown over." When he made
the suggestion, Lawrence had known that the Bendishes were dining
with the Dean. "Some one else, then."
"Whom could I ask like this at the last moment? No, I won't
go--thank you all the same. I'm not so keen on late hours and
long train journeys as I used to be. Go by yourself and you can
tell us all about it afterwards. Berns and I shall enjoy that as
much as seeing it ourselves. Shan't we, Berns?" Clowes gave a
short laugh: he could not have expressed his opinion more clearly
if he had called his wife a fool to her face.
"You weren't so particular before you married me, my love. When
you ran that French flat with Yvonne you jolly well knew how to
amuse yourself."
"Girls do many things before they're married," said Laura
vaguely. "I know better now."
"Oh, you know a lot. She ought to go, Lawrence. It'll do her
good. Now you shall go, my dear, that's flat."
Lawrence began to wish he had held his tongue. He had his own
ends to serve, but, to do him justice, he had not meant to serve
them at Laura's expense. But he had still his trump card to
play. "Surely we could find a chaperon?" he said gently, ignoring
Bernard. "What about the Staffords? Hardly in Val's line,
perhaps. But the child--little Miss Isabel--won't she do?"
To his relief, Laura's eyes lit up with pleasure. "Isabel? I
never thought of her! Yes, she would love to come!--But, if she
does, she must come as my guest. You would never have asked her
of your own accord, and the Staffords are so proud, I'm sure Val
wouldn't like you to pay for her." Again Bernard's short,
sardonic laugh translated the silence of his cousin's constraint
and dismay.
"Hark to her! I'll sort her for you, Lawrence. She shall go,
and you shall be paymaster. Yes, and for the Stafford brat too.
Lawrence and I don't understand these modern manners, my dear.
When we take a pretty woman out we like to do the treating. Now
cut along and see about the tickets, Lawrence. You can 'phone
from the post office."
Lawrence had secured a box ten days ago, but he strolled out,
thinking that the husband and wife might understand each other
better when alone. As soon as he was out of earshot Bernard
turned on Laura and seized her by the wrist, his features
altering, their sardonic mask recast in deep lines of hate.
"Why wouldn't you go up alone? That's what he wanted. Why have
you saddled him with the little Stafford girl? You can't take
her to dine in a private room."
"It was because I foresaw this that I refused. Why do you
torment yourself by forcing me to go?"
"I? What do I care? Do you think I should shed many tears if
you walked out of the house and never came back? Think I don't
know he's your lover? you're uncommonly circumspect with your
stable door! . . . A woman like you! Look here." He picked up the
Persian dagger. "See it? That's been used before. I should like
to use it on you. I should like to cut your tongue out with it.
Don't be afraid, I'm not going to stab you."
"Afraid?" said his wife with her serene ironical smile. "My
dear Bernard, you tempt me to wish you were."
"Oh, not before tonight. Jolly time you'll have tonight, you and
Lawrence . . . I can only trust you'll respect the Stafford
child's innocence."
"Bernard! Bernard!"
"Don't you Bernard me. You can't take me in. Stop. Where are
you off to now?"
"To tell Lawrence not to get the tickets. I shan't go with him."
"You will go with him," said Bernard Clowes, his fingers
tightening on her wrist. "Stop here: come closer." He locked his
arm round her waist. "Is he your lover yet, Lally? Tell me: I
swear I won't kill you if you do. Are you on the borderland of
virtue still, or over it?"
"Let me go," said Laura, panting for breath under his clenched
grip. "I will not answer such questions. You know you don't
mean one word of them. Take care, you're tearing my blouse. Oh,
that frightful war! what has it done to you, to turn you from the
man I married into what you are?"
"What am I?"
"A madman, or not far off it. End this horrible life: send him
away. It's killing me, and as for you, if you were sane enough
to understand what you're doing, you would blow your brains out."
"Likely enough," said Bernard Clowes.
He let her go. "Come back to me now, Laura." His wife leant
over him, unfaltering, though she had known for some time that
she was dealing with the abnormal. "Kiss me." Laura touched his
lips. "That's better, old girl. I am a cross-grained devil and
I make your life a hell to you, don't I? But don't--don't leave
me. Don't chuck me over. Let me have your love to cling to. I
don't believe in God, I don't believe in any other man, often
enough I don't believe in myself, I feel, I feel unreal . . . ."
He stopped, shut his eyes, moved his head on the pillow, and felt
about over his rug with the blind groping hands of a delirious,
almost of a dying man. Laura gathered them up and held them to
her heart. "That's better," said Bernard, his voice gaining
strength as he opened his eyes on the beautiful still face bent
over him. "Just now and again, in my lucid moments, I do--I do
believe in you, old girl. You are just the one thing I have
left. You won't forsake me, will you, ever? not whatever I do to
you."
"Never, my darling."
"Seems a bit one-sided, that bargain," said Bernard.
He lay perfectly still for a little while, his great hands softly
pressed against his wife's firm breast.
"And now get your hat and trot up to the village with Lawrence.
Yes, I should like you to go tonight. It'll do you good. Give
you a breath of fresh air after your extra dose of sulphur. Yes,
you shall take Isabel. Then you'll be safe: I can't insult you
if you and Lawrence weren't alone. Now run along, I've had
enough emotions. But don't forget. Laura," he spoke thickly and
with effort, turning his head away as he pushed her from him
"yes, get out, I've had enough of you for the present--but don't
forget all the same that you're the one thing on earth that ever
is real to me."
Isabel was up a ladder in the orchard picking plums. Waving her
hand to Laura and Lawrence Hyde, she called out to them to look
the other way while she came down. It must be owned that neither
Laura nor Lawrence obeyed her, and they were rewarded, while she
felt about for the top rung, with an unimpeded view of two very
pretty legs. Lawrence really thought she was going to fall out
of the tree, but eventually she came safe to earth, and
approached holding out a basket full of glowing fruit. "Though
you don't deserve them," she said reproachfully, "because I could
feel you looking at me. I did think I should be safe at this
hour in the morning!"
"Do I see Val?" said Laura, screwing up her eyes to peer in
through the slats of the green jalousies. "I'll go and talk him
round, while you break the news to Miss Stafford. Such do's,
Isabel! You don't know what dissipations are in store for you, if
only Val will say yes." She like every one else elevated Val to
the parental dignity vice Mr. Stafford deposed.
"He's come in for some lunch. He'll love to have you watch him
eat," said Isabel. "What's it to be, Captain Hyde? A picnic?"
Isabel's imagination had never soared beyond a picnic. When
Lawrence unfolded the London scheme her eyes grew round with
astonishment and an awed silence fell on her. "Oh, it won't
happen," she said, when she had recovered sufficiently to reply
at all. "Nothing so angelically wonderful ever would happen to
me. I'm perfectly certain Val will say no. Now we've settled
that, you can tell me all about it, because of course you and
Laura will go in any case."
"But that's precisely what we can't do." Gently and imperceptibly
Lawrence impelled her through the rose archway into the kitchen
garden, where they were partly sheltered behind the walls of
lilacs, a little thinner than they had been in June but still an
effective screen. He had not found himself alone with Isabel for
ten days. Since Val was with Laura, Lawrence drew the rather
cynical conclusion that he could count on a breathing space, and
he wondered if Isabel too were glad of it. She was in a brown
cotton dress, her right sleeve still tucked up high on her bare
arm: a rounded slender arm not much tanned even at the wrist, for
her skin was almost impervious to sunburn. Above the elbow it
was milk-white with a faint bloom on it, in texture not like
ivory, which is a dead, cold, and polished material, but like a
flower petal, one of those flowers that have a downy sheen on
them, white hyacinths or tall lilies. Lawrence fixed his eyes on
it unconsciously but so steadily that Isabel became aware of his
admiration. She blushed and was going to pull down her sleeve,
but checked herself, and turning a little away, so that she could
pretend not to know that he was looking at her, raised her arm to
smooth her hair, lifting it and pushing a loosened hairpin into
place. After all . . . This was Isabel's first venture into
coquetry. But it was half unconscious.
"Why can't you? oh, I suppose people would be silly. Major
Clowes himself is silly enough for anything. Oh, I'm so sorry,
I always forget he's your cousin! Is that why you want me to
go?"
"No."
She laughed. "Never mind, you'll soon find some one else. What
play is it?"
"'She Promised to Marry.'"
"Oh ah, yes: that's by Moore, who wrote 'The Milkmaid' and
'Sheddon, M.P.' I've read some of his things. I liked them so, I
made Rowsley give me them for my last birthday. They're quite
cheap in brown paper. O! dear, I should love to see one of them
on the stage!" Isabel gave a great sigh. "A London stage too!
I've never been to a theatre except in Salisbury. And Hadow's is
the one to go to, isn't it? Where they play the clever plays
that aren't tiresome. Who's acting tonight?"
"Madeleine Wild and Peter Sennet."
"Have you ever seen them?"
Lawrence laughed outright. "I was at their wedding. Madeleine
is half French: I knew her first when she was singing in a cafe
chantant on the Champs Elysees. She is dark and pretty and Peter
is fair and pretty, and Peter is the deadliest poker player that
ever scored off an American train crook."
"Oh," said Isabel with a second sigh that nearly blew her away,
"how I should love to know actors and actresses and people who
play poker! It must make Life so intensely interesting!"
Behind her badinage was she half in earnest? Lawrence's eye
ranged over the old pale walls of the vicarage, on which the
climbing roses were already beginning to redden their leaves:
over the lavender borders: over the dry pale turf underfoot and
the silver and brown of the Plain, burnt by a hot summer. The
fruit that had been green in June was ripe now, and down the
Painted-Lady apple-trees fell such a cascade of ruby and
coral-coloured apples, from high sprig to heavy bole, that they
looked like trees in a Kate Greenaway drawing. But there was no
other change. Life at Chilmark flowed on uneventful from day to
day. He did not admonish Isabel to be content with it. "Should
you like to live in Chelsea?"
Isabel shut her eyes. "I should like fifteen thousand a year and
a yacht. Don't tell Jimmy, it would break his heart. He says
money is a curse. But he's not much of a judge, dear angel,
because he's never had any. What's your opinion--you're rich,
aren't you? Has it done you any harm?"
"Oh, I am a fairly decent sort of fellow as men go."
"But would you be a nobler character if you were poor?" Isabel
asked, pillowing her round chin on her palm and examining
Lawrence apparently in a spirit of scientific enquiry. "Because
that is Jimmy's theory, and merely to say that you're noble now
doesn't meet the case. Do you do good with your money?"
"No fear! I encourage trade. I've never touched second rate
stuff in my life."
"Oh, you are different!" Isabel exclaimed. They had been using
words for counters, to mean at once less and more than they said,
but under his irony she penetrated to a hard material egoism, as
swiftly as he had detected in her the eternal unrest of youth.
"Val was right."
"What saith the Gospel according to St. Val?"
"That you were only a bird of passage."
Lawrence waited a moment before replying. "Birds of passage
have their mating seasons." Once more Isabel, not knowing what
to make of this remark, let it alone. "But I should like to
possess Val's good opinion. What have I done to offend him?
Can't you give me any tips?"
"It isn't so much what you do as what you are. Val's very, very
English."
"But what am I?"
"Foreign," said Isabel simply.
"A Jew? Yes, I knew I should have that prejudice to live down.
But I'm not a hall-marked Israelite, am I? After all I'm half
English by birth and wholly so by breeding." Isabel was betrayed
into an involuntary and fleeting smile. "Hallo! what's this?"
"Oh, Captain Hyde--"
"Go on."
"No: it's the tiniest trifle, and besides I've no right."
"Ask me anything you like, I give you the right."
Isabel blushed. "You must be descended from Jephthah!-- O! dear,
I didn't mean that!"
"Never mind," said Lawrence, unable to help laughing. "My
feelings are not sensitive. But do finish--you fill me with
curiosity. What shibboleth do I fail in?"
Faithful are the wounds of a friend. "Englishmen don't wear
jewellery," murmured Isabel apologetic.
"Sac a papier!" said Lawrence. "My rings?"
He stretched out his hand, a characteristic hand, strong and
flexible, but soft from idleness and white from Gaston's daily
attentions: a diamond richly set in a cluster of diamonds and
emeralds sparkled on the second finger, and a royal turquoise
from Iran, an immense stone the colour of the Mediterranean in
April, on the third. "Does Val object to them? Certainly Val
is very English. My pocket editions of beauty! That diamond was
presented by one of the Rothschilds in gratitude for the help old
Hyde-and-seek gave him in getting together his collection of
early English watercolours: as for the other, it never ought to
have left the Persian treasury, and there'd have been trouble in
the royal house if my father had worn it at the Court. Have you
ever seen such a blue? On a dull railway journey I can sit and
watch those stones by the hour together. But Val would rather
read the Daily Mail"
"Every one laughs at them: Jack and Lord Grantchester, and even
Jimmy."
"And you?" said Lawrence, taking off the rings:--not visibly
nettled, but a trifle regretful.
Isabel knit her brows. "Can a thing be very beautiful and
historic, and yet not in good taste?-- It can if it's out of
harmony: that's what the Greeks never forgot. Men ought not to
look effeminate-- Oh! O Captain Hyde, don't!"
Lawrence, standing up, had with one powerful smooth drive of the
arm sent both rings skimming over the borders, under the apple
trees, over the garden wall, to scatter and drop on the open
moor. "And here comes Mrs. Clowes, so now I shall learn my fate.
I thought Val would not leave us long together.-- Well, Val, what
is it to be? May the young lady come?"
Isabel also sprang up, changing from woman to child as Lawrence
changed from deference to patronage. Their manner to each other
when alone was always different from their manner before an
audience. But this change, deliberate in Lawrence, had hitherto
been instinctive and almost unconscious in Isabel. It was not so
now, she fled to Val and to her younger self for refuge. What a
fanfaronade! Why couldn't Captain Hyde have put the rings in his
pocket? But no, it must all be done with an air--and what an
air! Rings worth thousands--historic mementoes--stripped off
and tossed away to please--! And at that Isabel, enchanted and
terrified, bundled the entire dialogue into the cellars of her
mind and locked the doors on it. Later,--later,--when one was
alone! "Oh, Val, say I may go!" she cried, clasping her hands on
Val's arm, so cool and firm amid a spinning world.
[Footnote]
What actually happened later that afternoon was that Isabel, who
had a practical mind, spent three-quarters of an hour on the moor
hunting for the rings. The turquoise she found, conspicuous on a
patch of smooth turf: the other was never recovered.
[End of Footnote]
"You may," said Val laughing. He disliked the scheme, but was
incapable of refusing Laura Clowes: he gave her Isabel as he would
have given her the last drops of his blood, if she had asked for them
in that low voice of hers, and with those sweet eyes that never
seemed to anticipate refusal. There are women--not necessarily the
most beautiful of their sex--to whom men find it hard to refuse
anything. And, consenting, it was not in Val to consent with an ill
grace. "Certainly you may, if Captain Hyde is kind enough to take
you!" Stafford's lips, finely cut and sensitive, betrayed the
sarcastic sense of humour which he ruled out of his voice: perhaps
the less said about kindness the better! "But do look over her
wardrobe first, Laura: I'm never sure whether Isabel is grown up or
not, but she could hardly figure at Hadow's in her present easy-going
kit--"
He stopped, because Isabel was trying to waltz him round the
lawn. In her reaction from a deeper excitement, she was as
excited as a child. She released Val soon and hugged Laura
Clowes instead, while Lawrence, looking on with his wintry smile,
wondered whether she would have extended the same civility to him
if she had known how much he desired it. . . . There were moments
when he hated Isabel. Was she never going to grow up?
Not at present, apparently. "What must I wear, Laura? Do people
wear evening dress? Where shall we sit? What time shall we get
back? How are you going? What time must I be ready? Will you
have dinner before you go or take sandwiches with you?"--how
long the patter of questions would have run on it is hard to say,
if the extreme naivete of the last one had not drowned them in
universal laughter, and Isabel in crimson.
Mrs. Jack Bendish rode up while they were talking, slipped from
her saddle, and threw the reins to Val without apology, though
she knew there was no one but Val to take the mare to the stable.
Yvonne was the only member of the Castle household who presumed
on Val's subordinate position. She treated him like a superior
servant. When she heard what was in the wind her eyes were as
green as a cat's. "How kind of Captain Hyde!" she drawled, as
Lawrence, irritated by her manner, went to help Val, while Isabel
was called indoors by Fanny to listen to a tale of distress,
unravel a grievance, and prescribe for anemia. "Some one ought
to warn the child."
"Warn her of what?"
"Has it never struck you that Isabel is a pretty girl and
Lawrence a good looking man?"
"But Isabel is too intelligent to have her head turned by the
first handsome man she meets!" Yvonne looked as though she found
her sister rather hopeless. "Dear, you really must be sensible!"
Laura pleaded. "It's not as if poor Lawrence had tried to flirt
with her. He never even thought of asking her for tonight till I
suggested it!" This was the impression left on Laura's memory.
"She isn't the sort of woman to attract him."
"What sort of woman would attract him, I wonder?" said Mrs. Jack,
blowing rings of smoke delicately down her thin nostrils.
"Oh, when he marries it will be some one older than Isabel, more
sophisticated, more a woman of the world. I like Lawrence
immensely, but there is just that in him: he's one of the men who
expect their wives to do them credit."
"Some one more like me," suggested Yvonne. "Or you." Her face was
a study in untroubled innocence. Laura eyed her rather sharply.
"But Lawrence isn't a marrying man. He won't marry till some
woman raises the price on him."
"You speak as if between men and women life were always a duel."
"So It is." Laura made a small inarticulate sound of dissent.
"Sex is a duel. Don't you know"--an infinitesimal hesitation
marked the conscious forcing of a barrier: cynically frank as she
was on most points, Mrs. Bendish had always left her sister's
married life alone:--"that--that's what's wrong with Bernard? Oh!
Laura! Simpleton that you are. . . I'm often frightfully sorry
for Bernard. It has thrown him clean off the rails. One can't
wonder that he's consumed with jealousy."
In the stillness that followed Yvonne occupied herself with her
cigarette. Mrs. Clowes was formidable even to her sister in her
delicately inaccessible dignity.
"Had you any special motive in saying this to me now, Yvonne?"
"This theatre business."
"I don't contemplate running away with Lawrence, if that is what
you mean."
"Wish you would!" confessed Mrs. Bendish frankly. "Then Bernard
could divorce you and you could start fair again. I'm fed up
with Bernard. I'm sorry for him, poor devil, but he never was
much of a joy as a husband, and he's going from bad to worse.
Think I'm blind? Of course he's jealous. High dresses and lace
cuffs aren't the fashion now, Lal."
Her sister slowly turned back the frill from her wrist and
examined the scarlet stain of Bernard's finger-print. "Does it
show so plainly? I hope other people haven't noticed. Bernard
doesn't remember how strong his hands still are."
"Doesn't care, you mean."
"Do you want me quite naked?" said Laura. "Well, doesn't care,
then."
Yvonne was not accustomed to the smart of pity. She winced under
it, and her tongue, an edge-tool of intelligence or passion, but
not naturally prone to express tenderness, became more than ever
articulate. "Sorry!" she said with difficulty, and then, "Didn't
want to rake all this up. But I'm fond of you. We've always
been pals, you and I, Lulu."
"Say whatever you like."
"Then--" she sat up, throwing away her cigarette-"I'm going to
warn you. All Chilmark believes Lawrence is your lover."
"And do you?"
"No. I know you wouldn't run an intrigue."
"Thank you."
"But Jack and I both think, if you don't want to cut and run with
him, you ought to pack him off. Mind, if you do want to, you can
count me in, and Jack too. I'm not religious: Jack is, but he's
not narrow. As for the social bother of it--marriage is a
useful institution and all that, but it's perfectly obvious that
one can get--over the rails and back again if one has money.
There aren't twenty houses (worth going to) in London that would
cut you if you turned up properly remarried to a rich man."
"Are you . . . recommending this course?"
"I'd like you to be happy."
"And what about Bernard?"
"Put in a couple of good trained nurses who wouldn't give him his
head as you do, and he'd be a different man by the spring."
"He certainly would," said Laura drily. "He would be dead."
"Not he. He's far too strong to die of being made uncomfortable.
As a matter of fact it would do him all the good in the world,"
pursued Yvonne calmly. "He cries out to be bullied. What's so
irritating in the present situation is that though you let him
rack you to pieces you never give him what he wants! You don't
shine as a wife, my dear."
"It will end in my sending Lawrence away," said Laura with a subdued
sigh. "I didn't want to because in many ways he has done Bernard so
much good; no one else has ever had the same influence over him;
besides, I liked having him at Wanhope for my own sake--he freshened
us up and gave us different things to talk about, outside interests,
new ideas. And after all, so far as Bernard himself is concerned,
one is as good as another. He always has been jealous and always
will be. But if all Chilmark credits us with the rather ignominious
feat of betraying him, Lawrence will have to go."
"Lawrence may have something to say to that."
"He's not in love with me." Yvonne's eyes widened in genuine
scepticism.--"Oh dear, as if I shouldn't know!" Laura broke out
petulantly. Might not Yvonne have remembered that, in the days
when they were living together in a French appartement, Laura's
experience had been pretty nearly as wide as her own? "He is
not, I tell you! nor I with him. But, if we were, I shouldn't
desert Bernard. I do not believe in your two highly trained
nurses. I don't think you much believe in them yourself. They
might break him in, because nurses are drilled to deal with
tiresome and unmanageable patients, but it would be worse for
him, not better. He rebels fiercely enough now, but if I weren't
there he would rebel still more fiercely, and all the rage and
humiliation would have no outlet. You want me to be happy? We
Selincourts are so quick to seize happiness! Father did it . . .
and Lucian does it: dear Lulu! We both love him, but it's
difficult to be proud of him. Yet he has good qualities, good
abilities. He's far cleverer than I am, and so are you," Laura's
tone was diffident, "but oh, you are wrong in thinking so much of
mere happiness. There is an immense amount of pain in the world,
and if one doesn't bear one's own share it falls on some one
else. My life with Bernard isn't--always easy," she found a
momentary difficulty in controlling her voice, "but he's my
husband and I shall stick to him. The more so for being deeply
conscious that a different woman might manage him better. No I
don't mind your saying it. Oh, how often I've felt the truth of
it! But, such as I am, I'm all he has."
"You're a thousand times too good for him. Why are you so good?"
"I'm not good and no more is Lulu." Mrs. Bendish sighed,
impressed perhaps by Laura's alien moralities, certainly by her
determination. "However, if you won't you won't, and in a way
I'm glad, selfishly that is, because of Jack's people. But in
that case, dear girl, do get rid of Lawrence! The situation
strikes me as fraught with danger. One of those situations where
every one says something's sure to happen, and then they're all
flabbergasted when it does."
"Bernard is not a formidable enemy," said Mrs. Clowes drily.
"But, yes, Lawrence must go. I'll speak to him tomorrow."
"Why not today?"
"It would spoil our evening."
"Give it up."
"And disappoint Isabel?"
"I don't like it."
"Nor I. But I was forced into it, and I can't break my word to
Lawrence and the child. After all, there's no great odds between
today and tomorrow. What can happen in twenty-four hours?"