Conscious to his fingertips that Selincourt was watching him with
an amused smile, Lawrence returned Mrs. Cleve's nod with less
than his usual ease. Her eye ranged on from Selincourt, to whom
she waved a butterfly salute, over the rather faded elegance of
Laura Clowes and the extremely youthful charms of Isabel:
apparently she did not admire Lawrence's ladies: she spoke to her
cavalier, an elderly, foreign-looking man with a copper complexion
and curly dark hair, and they laughed together. What ensued between
them was not difficult to follow. She made him a request, he rolled
plaintive eyeballs at her, the lady carried her point, the gentleman
left the box. Then--one saw it coming--she leaned forward till the
diamonds in her plenitude of fair hair sparkled like a crown of
flame, and beckoned Lawrence to join her.
He cursed her impertinence. Apart from leaving Isabel, he did
not want to talk to Mrs. Cleve: he had forgotten her existence,
and it was a shock to him to meet her again. Good heavens, had
he ever admired her? That white blanc-mange of a woman in her
ruby-red French gown, cut open lower than one of Yvonne's without
the saying of Yvonne's wiry slimness? Remembering the summerhouse at
Bingley Lawrence blushed with shame, not for his morals but for his
taste: he was thankful to have gone no further and wondered why he
had gone so far.--He had not yet realized that during three months
among women of a different stamp his taste had imperceptibly modified
itself from day to day.
But she had been his hostess. Impossible to refuse: and with a
vexed word of apology to Laura he went out. "Dear me, what an
opulent lady!" said Laura with lifted eyebrows. "Who's your
friend, Lulu?"
Lucian drily named her. "Queen's Gate, and Sundays at the
Metropole. They're shipping people, which is where the diamond
ta-ra-ras come from. Oh yes, there's a husband, quite a nice
fellow, crocked in the Flying Corps. No, I don't know who the
chap is she's got with her. Some dusky brother. Not Cleve." He
fell silent as Lawrence appeared in the opposite box.
It was an odd scene to watch in dumbshow. Mrs. Cleve shook
hands, and Lawrence was held for more than the conventional
moment. He remained standing till she pointed to her cavalier's
empty chair: then dropped into it, but sat forward leaning his
aim along the balcony, while she, drawn back behind her curtain,
was almost drowned in shadow except for an occasional flash of
diamonds, or an opaque gleam of white and dimpled neck. An
interlude entirely decorous, and yet, so crude was the force of
Philippa's personality, one would have had to be very young, or
very innocent, to overlook her drift.
"Well, my darling," said Laura, "and what do you think of
Madeleine Wild?" She did not wish Isabel to watch Mrs. Cleve.
"Is she as nice as your Salisbury Rosalind?"
"Angelical!" said Isabel. "And isn't it luck for me, Royalty
coming tonight? I've never seen any one Royal before. It's one
of those evenings when nothing goes wrong."
Was not Isabel a trifle too guileless for this wicked world? She
prattled on, Selincourt and Laura lending an indulgent ear,
Selincourt, like any other man of his type, touched by her
innocence, Laura faintly irritated: and meanwhile Isabel through
her black lashes watched, not the Duchess of Cumberland's rubies,
but those two in the opposite box. Between it and her stretched
a beautiful woodland drop-scene, the glitter of the stalls, and
the murmur of violins humming through the rising flames of the
Feuerzauber . . . presently the Fire Charm eddied away and the
lights went down, yet still Lawrence sat on though the interval
was over. Across the semi-dark of a "Courtyard by Moonlight" it
was hard to distinguish anything but the silhouette of his hand
and arm, and Mrs. Cleve's fair hair and immense jewelled fan.
What were they saying to each other in this public isolation
where anything might be said so long as decorum was preserved?
Selincourt gave a little laugh as the curtain rose. "An old
flame," he whispered to Laura, not dreaming that Isabel would
understand even if she heard.
"What's an old flame?" asked Isabel, examining him with her
brilliant eyes.
"Feuerzauber," said Selincourt readily. "It means fire spell.
It's often played between the acts."
"Lucian, Lucian!" said his sister laughing.
"I don't know much about music," said Isabel. "Was it well
played?"
"Ah! I know a lot about music," said Selincourt, looking at her
very kindly. "No, it was rottenly played. But some fellers
can't tell a good tune from a bad one."
Lawrence did not return till the middle of the third act, and
offered no apology. He looked fierce and jaded and his eyes were
strained. "Past eleven," he said, hurrying Laura into her coat
while the orchestra played through the National Anthem, for which
Selincourt stood stiffly to attention. "No time for supper, our
train goes at 11:59, I hate first nights, the waits between the
acts are so infernally long." Laura's eyebrows, faintly arched,
hinted at derision. "Oh, it dragged," said Lawrence impatiently.
"Let's get out of this."
It was a clear autumn night: the air was mild, and stars were
burning overhead almost as brightly as the lamps in Shaftesbury
Avenue. What a chase of lamps, high and low, like fireflies in a
wood: green as grass, red as blood, or yellow as a naked flame!
What a sombre city, and what a fleeting crowd! Isabel had never
seen midnight London before. Coming out into the hurrying street
roofed with stars, she was seized by an impression of a solitude
lonelier than any desert, and dark, like the terror of an eerie
sunset or a dry storm on the moor.
"These taxis are waiting for us," Lawrence had come up behind her
and his hand was on her arm. "Will you bring your sister,
Selincourt?-- Miss Isabel, will you come with me?"
"Oh but--!" said Laura, startled. She was responsible to Val for
Isabel, and she was not sure that either Val or Isabel would
welcome this arrangement.
"Thank you," said Isabel, obediently getting into the second cab.
"Better come, dear," said Selincourt with a shrug, and Laura
yielded, for it would have been tiresome to make Isabel get out
again, and after all what signified a twenty minutes' run? Yet
after the Cleve incident she did not quite like it. Nor did
Selincourt; Hyde's overbearing manner set his teeth on edge; but
the gentle Lucian would sooner have faced a loaded rifle than a
dispute. He agreed with Laura, however, that her fair Arcadian
was a trifle too innocent for her years.
Alone with Isabel, Lawrence took off his hat and ran his fingers
through his thick fair hair, so thick that it might have been
grey, while the deep lines round his mouth began to soften as
though fatigue and irritation were being wiped away. "Thank
heaven that's over."
"I've enjoyed every minute of it," said Isabel smiling. "Thank
you, Captain Hyde, for giving me such a delightful treat! If I
weren't sleepy I should like to begin again."
"Oh, don't get sleepy yet," said Lawrence. He pulled up the fur
collar of her coat and buttoned it under her chin. "I can't have
you catching cold, or what will Val say? You aren't used to
driving about in evening dress and we've a long run before us.
And how I have been longing for it all the evening, haven't you?
I didn't know how to sit through that confounded play. Yes, you
can take in Selincourt and Laura but you can't take me in. I know
you must have hated it as much as I did. But it's all right now."
Sitting sideways with one knee crossed over the other, his face
turned towards Isabel, without warning he put his arm round her
waist. He had determined not to ask her to marry him till he was
sure of her answer, but he was sure of it now, intuitively sure
of it . . . the truth being that under his impassive manner
impulse was driving him along like a leaf in the wind. "I love
you, Isabel, and you love me. Don't deny it."
"Don't do that," said Isabel: "don't hold me."
"Why not? no one can see us."
"Take your arm away. I won't have you hold me. No, Captain Hyde,
I will not. I am not Mrs. Cleve."
"Isabel!" said Lawrence, turning grey under his bronze.
"O! I oughtn't to have said that," Isabel murmured. She hid her
face in her hands. "Oh Val-- I wish Val were here!"
"My darling," they were among the dark streets now that border
the river, and he leant forward making no effort to conceal his
tenderness, "what is there you can't say to me or I to you?
You're so strange, my Isabel, a child one minute and a woman the
next, I never know where to have you, but I love the woman more
than the child, and there's nothing on earth you need be ashamed
to ask me. Naturally you want to be sure. . . . But there was
nothing in it except that I hated leaving you, there never has
been; I can't discuss it, but there's no tie, no--do you
understand?"
"Yes."
"Then, dearest darling of the world, what are you crying for?"
"I'm not crying." She tried to face him, but he was too old for
her, and mingling in his love she discerned indulgence, the
seasoned judgment and the fixed view. Struggling in imperfect
apprehensions of life, she was not yet master of her forces--
they came near to mastering her. In his eyes it was natural for
her to be jealous. But she was not jealous. That passion can
hardly coexist with such sincere and cool contempt as she had
felt for Mrs. Cleve. What had pierced her heart and killed her
childhood in her was terror lest Lawrence should turn out to have
lowered himself to the same level. She knew now that she loved
him, and too much to care whether he was Saxon or Jew or rich or
poor, but he must--he must be what in her child's vocabulary she
called "good," or if not that he must at least see good and bad
with clear eyes: sins one can pardon, but the idea of any
essential inferiority of taste was torture to her. And meanwhile
Lawrence wide of the mark began to coax her. . "My own," his arm
stole inside her coat again, "there's nothing to get so red
about! Come, you do like me--confess now--you like me better
than Val?"
"No, no," Isabel murmured, and slowly, though she had not
strength to free herself, she turned her head away. "If you kiss
me now I never shall forgive you."
"I won't, but why are you so shy? My Isabel, what is there to be
afraid of?"
"You," Isabel sighed out. He was gratified, and betrayed it. "No,
Lawrence, you misunderstand. I am not--not shy of you . . ." Under
his mocking eyes she gave it up and tried again. "Well, I am, but
if that were all I shouldn't refuse . . . I should like you to be
happy. Oh! yes, I love you, and I'd so far rather not fight, I'd
rather--" she waited a moment like a swimmer on the sand's edge, but
his deep need of her carried her away and with a little sigh she
flung herself into the open sea--"let you kiss me, because I don't
want anything so much as to make you happy, and I believe you would
be, and besides I--I should like it myself. But I must know more.
I must know the truth. She--Mrs. Cleve--"
"I've already given you my word: do you think I would lie to
you?"
"No, I don't; they say men do, but I'm sure you wouldn't. I
don't believe you ever would deceive me. But there have been
other women, haven't there, since your wife left you?" Lawrence
assented briefly. At that moment he would have liked to see Mrs.
Cleve hanged and drawn and quartered. "Other women who were--
who--with whom--"
"Must you distress yourself like this? Wouldn't it do if I
promised to lay my record before Val, and let him be judge?"
"Would you do that?"
"If you wish it."
"Wouldn't you hate it?"
Lawrence smiled.
"And I should hate it for you,", said Isabel. "No: no one can
judge you for me and no one shall try. I know you better than
Val ever would. No, if you're to be humiliated it shall be before
me and me only." She brought the colour into his face. "There
have been others, Lawrence?"
"My dear, I've lived the life of other men."
"Do all men live so?"
"Pretty well all."
"Does Val?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "His facilities are limited!"
"He did once--might again?"
"Couldn't we confine the issue to ourselves?"
"Are you afraid of my misjudging Val? I never should: my dearest
darling Val is a fixed standard for me, and nothing could alter
the way I think of him."
"Don't challenge luck," Lawrence muttered.
"I'm not, it's true. I'm surer of Val than I am of myself, or
you, or the sun's rising tomorrow. All I want is to cheek you by
him."
"Val is genuinely religious and a bit of an ascetic. I have no
doubt that his life is now and will continue to be spotless. But
that it was always so is most unlikely. Army subalterns during
the war were given no end of a good time. And quite right too,
it was the least that could be done for us: and the most, in nine
cases out of ten: personally I had no use for munition workers in
mud-coloured overalls, but I still remember with gratitude the
nymphs who decorated my week end leaves."
Isabel shivered: the hand that he was holding had grown icy cold.
"There, you see!" said Hyde with his saddened cynicism. "You
will have it all out but you can't stand it when it comes. You
had better have left it to Val: not but what I'd rather talk to
you, but I hate to distress you, and you're not old enough yet,
my darling, to see these trivial things--yes, trivial to nine-tenths
of the world: it's only the clergy, and unmarried women, and a small
number of hyper-sensitives like Val, who attach an importance to them
that they don't deserve. But you're too young to see them in
perspective. Try to do it for my sake. Try to see me as I am."
"Well, show me then."
But what he showed her was not himself but the aspect of himself
that he wished her to see--a very different matter. "I'm too
old for you. I'm the son of a Jew, and a Houndsditch Jew at
that. But I'm rich--what's called rich in my set--and when I
marry I shan't keep my wife dependent on me. Ah! don't
misunderstand me--yours is a rich manysided nature, and you're
too intelligent to underrate the value of money. It means a wide
life and lots of interests, books, pictures, music, travel,
mixing with the men and women best worth knowing. You're
ambitious, my dear, and as my wife you can build yourself up any
social position you like. Farringay's not as big as Wharton, but
on my soul it's more perfect in its way. I've never seen such
panelling in my life, and the gardens are admittedly the most
beautiful in Dorsetshire. There are Sevres services more
precious than gold plate, and if you come to that there's gold
plate into the bargain. Can't I see you there as chatelaine,
entertaining the county! You'll wear the sapphires my mother
wore; the old man couldn't have been more happily inspired,
they're the very colour of your eyes. And there'll be no price
to pay, for since I'm a Jew and a cosmopolitan, and not a country
squire, you'll keep your personal freedom inviolate. You'll give
what you will, when you will, as you will. Any other terms are
to my mind unthinkable--a brutalizing of what ought to be the
most delicate of things. Heavens, how I hate a middleclass
English marriage! Ah! but I'm not so accommodating as I sound,
for you won't be a grudging giver; you're not an ascetic like
Val, there's passion in you though you've been trained to repress
it, you'll soon learn what love means as we understand it in the
sunny countries. . . . Isabel, my Isabel, when we get away from
these grey English skies you won't refuse to let me kiss
you. . ."
Isabel had ceased to listen. Without her own will a scene had sprung
up before her eyes: an imaginary scene, like one of those romantic
adventures that she had invented a thousand times before--but this
was not romantic nor was she precisely the heroine. A foreign hotel
with long corridors and many rooms: a door thoughtlessly left ajar:
and through it a glimpse of Lawrence--her husband--holding another
woman in his arms. It was lifelike, she could have counted the buds
embroidered on the girl's blouse, their rose-pink reflected in the
hot flush on Hyde's cheek and the glow in his eyes as he stooped over
her. And then the imaginary Isabel with a pain at her heart like the
stab of a knife, and a smile of inexpressible self-contempt on her
lips, noiselessly closed the door so that no one else might see what
she had seen, and left him. . . . It would all happen one day, if not
that way, some other way; and he would come to her by and by without
explanation--she was convinced that he would not lie to her--smiling,
the hot glow still on his face, a subdued air of well-being diffused
over him from head to foot--and then? The vision faded; her
clairvoyance, which had already carried her far beyond her
experience, broke down in sheer anguish. But reason took it up and
told her that she would speak to him, and that he would apologize and
she would forgive him--and that it would all happen again the next
time temptation met him in a weak hour.
Faithful? it was not in him to be faithful: with so much that was
generous and gallant, there was this vice of taste in him which
had offended her that first morning on the moor and again at
night in Laura's garden, and which now led him to make love to
her when she was under his protection and while the scent of Mrs.
Cleve's flowers still clung to his coat. And what love! if he
had simply spoken to her out of his need of her, one would not
have known how to resist, but it was he who was to be the giver,
and what he offered was the measure of what he desired--a lesson
in passion and a liberal allowance. . . .
"O no, no, no, I can't!" Isabel cried out, turning from him.
"Yes, I love you, but I don't trust you, and I won't marry you.
I'm too much afraid."
"Afraid of me?"
"Afraid of the pain."
"What pain?"
"And the--wickedness of it." Lawrence, frozen with astonishment--he
had foreseen resistance, but not of this quality--let fall her hand.
"Yes, we'll part now. We can part now. I love you, but not too much
to get over it in a year or so; and you? you'll forget sooner,
because I'm not worth remembering."
"Forget you?"
"Oh! yes, it's not as if you really cared for me; you wouldn't
talk to me of money if you did. But I suppose you've known so
many. . . . Val warned me long ago that you had not a good name
with women."
"Val said that? Val!"
"And now you're angry with Val; I repeat what I oughtn't to
repeat, and make mischief. Lawrence, this isn't Val's doing; it
isn't even Mrs. Cleve's: it's my own cowardice. I daren't marry
you."
"But why not?"
"You're not trying to be good."
"The language of the nursery defeats me, Isabel."
She flushed. "That means I've hurt you."
"Naturally."
"I can't help it." That was truer than he realized, for she could
hardly help crying. She could not soften her refusal, because she
was so shaken and exhausted by the strain of it that she dared
not venture on more than one sentence at a time.
"I'm very sorry."
"But as my wife you could be as 'good' as you liked?"
"You would not leave me strength for it."
"I should corrupt you?"
"Yes, I think you would deliberately tempt me. . . . I think you
have tonight."
"Do you care for no one but yourself?" he flung at her in his
vertigo of humiliation and anger.
"No: I care for God."
"For God!" Lawrence repeated stupidly: "what has that to do with
your marrying me?"
He heard his own betise as it left his lips, and felt the
immeasurable depth of it, but he had not time to retract before
every personal consideration was wiped from his mind by a cry
from Isabel in a very different accent--"Lawrence! oh! look at
the time!"
She pointed to the dial of an illuminated clock, hanging high in
the soft September night. It was eight minutes to twelve. "What
time did you say our train went?"
They were in Whitehall. Lawrence caught up the speaking tube.
"Waterloo main entrance--and drive like the devil, please, we're
late."
"I thought we had plenty of time?"
"So we had: so much so that I told the man to drive round and
round for a bit."
"And have we still time?"
"No."
"We shan't lose the train?"
"Unless it's delayed in starting, which isn't likely."
"Will the others go on and leave us?"
"Hardly!"
"You don't mean that Laura won't get home till tomorrow? Oh!"
"No. But don't look so frightened, no one will blame you--the
responsibility is mine entirely."
Isabel's lip curled. It was for Laura that she felt afraid and
not for herself, and surely he might have guessed as much as
that! "Did you do it on purpose?"
"No."
"I beg your pardon. That was stupid of me."
"Very," said Lawrence with his keen sarcastic smile.
At Waterloo he sprang out, tossed a sovereign to the driver, and
made Isabel catch up her skirts and run like a deer. But before
they reached the platform it was after twelve and the rails
beyond were empty. Selincourt and Laura were waiting by the
barrier, Selincourt red with impatience, Laura very pale.
"Are you aware you've lost the last train down?" said the elder
man with ill-concealed anger, as Lawrence, shortening his step,
strolled up in apparent tranquillity with Isabel on his arm.
"What on earth has become of you? We've been waiting here for
half an hour!"
"We were held up in the traffic," said Lawrence deliberately.
Isabel turned scarlet. The truth would have been insupportable,
but so was the lie. "Although it was no fault of mine, Laura,
I'm more sorry than I can say. Will you let me telephone for my
own car and motor you down? I could get you to Chilmark in the
small hours--long before the first morning train."
Laura hesitated: but Selincourt's brow was dark. The streets that
night had not been unusually crowded, ample time had been allowed
to cover any ordinary delay, and Isabel was cruelly confused. In
his simple code Hyde had committed at least one if not two
unpardonable sins--he had neglected one of the ladies in his
care if he had not affronted the other.
"That wouldn't do at all," he said with decision. "You've been
either careless or unlucky once, Lawrence. It might happen
again."
It was a direct challenge, and cost him an effort, but it was not
resented. "It would not. From my soul I regret this contretemps,
Lucian. Do you settle what's to be done: you're Laura's brother, I
put myself unreservedly in your hands."
"My dear fellow!" the gentle Lucian was instantly disarmed.
"After all we needn't make a mountain out of a molehill--they'll
know we're all right, four of us together!"
"At all events it can't be helped," said Mrs. Clowes, smiling at
Lawrence with her kind trustful eyes, "so don't distress
yourself. My sweet Isabel too, so tired!" she took Isabel's cold
hand. "Never mind, Val won't let your father worry, and we shall
be home by ten or eleven in the morning. It is only to go to an
hotel for a few hours. Come, dear Lawrence, don't look so
subdued! It wasn't your fault, so you mustn't trouble even if--"
"Even if what?"
"Even if Bernard locks the door in my face," she finished
laughing. "He'll be fearfully cross! but I dare say Val will go
down and smooth his ruffled plumage."