It was a fatigued and jaded party that got out on the platform at
Countisford. The mere wearing of evening dress when other people
are at breakfast will damp the spirits of the most hardened, and
even Lawrence had an up-all-night expression which reddened his
eyelids and brought out the lines about his mouth. Isabel's hair
was rumpled and her fresh bloom all dimmed. Laura Clowes had
suffered least: there was not a thread astray in her satin waves,
and the finished grace of her aspect had survived a night in a
chair. But even she was very pale, though she contrived to smile
at Val.
"How's Bernard?" were her first words.
"All serene. He slept most of the time. I was with him, luckily.
We guessed what had happened. You missed your train?" In this
question Val included Lawrence.
"It was my fault," said Lawrence shortly. It was what he would
have said if it had not been his fault.
"It was nobody's fault!" cried Laura. "We were held up in the
traffic. But Lawrence is one of those people who will feel
responsible if they have ladies with them on the Day of Judgment,
won't you, Lawrence?"
"I ought to have left more time," said Lawrence impatiently.
"Let's get home."
In the car Val heard from Laura the details of their
misadventure. Selincourt had waited with the women while
Lawrence secured rooms for them in a Waterloo hotel: when they
were safe, Lawrence had gone to Lucian's rooms in Victoria
Street, where the men had passed what remained of the night in a
mild game of cards. They had all breakfasted together by
lamplight at the hotel, and Selincourt had seen his sister into
the Chilmark train. Nothing could have been more circumspect--
comically circumspect! between Selincourt and Isabel and the
chambermaid, malice itself was put to silence. But Lawrence was
fever-fretted by the secret sense of guilt.
At the lodge gates Val drew up. "It's preposterous, but I'm
under Bernard's express orders to drive Isabel straight home. I
don't know how to apologize for turning you and Hyde out of your
own car, Laura!" No apology was needed, Laura and Lawrence knew
too well how direct Bernard's orders commonly were to Val.
Lawrence silently offered his hand to Mrs. Clowes. The morning
air was fresh, fog was still hanging over the river, and the sun
had not yet thrown off an autumn quilting of cloud. Touched by
the chill of dawn, some leaves had fallen and lay in the dust,
their ribs beaded with dark dew: others, yellow and shrivelling,
where shaken down by the wind of the car and fluttered slowly in
the eddying air. Laura drew her sable scarf close over her bare
neck.
"What I should like best, Lawrence, would be for you to go home
with Isabel and make our excuses to Mr. Stafford. Would you
mind? Or is it too much to ask before you get out of your
evening dress?"
"I should be delighted," said Lawrence, feeling and indeed
looking entirely the reverse. "But Miss Isabel has her brother
to take care of her, she doesn't want me." Isabel gave that
indefinable start which is the prelude of candour, but remained
dumb. "I don't like to leave you to walk up to Wanhope alone."
This, was as near as in civilized life he could go to saying
"to face Clowes alone."
"The length of the drive?" said Laura smiling. "I should prefer
it. You know what Berns is." This was what Lawrence had never
known. "If he's put out I'd rather you weren't there."
"Why, you can't imagine I should care what Bernard said?"
Laura struck her hands together.-"There! There!" she turned to
Val, "can you wonder Bernard feels it?"
"I beg your pardon," said Lawrence from his heart.
"No, the contrast is poignant,'' said Val coldly.
"Dear Val, you always agree with me," said Laura. "Take Captain
Hyde home and give him some breakfast. I'd rather go alone,
Lawrence: it will be easier that way, believe me."
It was impossible to argue with her. But while Val wheeled and
turned in the wide cross, before they took their upward bend
under the climbing beechwood, Lawrence glanced over his shoulder
and saw Mrs. Clowes still standing by the gate of Wanhope,
solitary, a wan gleam of sunlight striking down over her gold
embroideries and ivory coat, a russet leaf or two whirling slowly
round her drooping head: like a butterfly in winter, delicate,
fantastic, and astray.
Breakfast at the vicarage was not a genial meal. Val was anxious
and preoccupied, Isabel in eclipse, even Mr. Stafford out of
humour--vexed with Lawrence, and with Val for bringing Lawrence
in under the immunities of a guest. Lawrence himself was in a
frozen mood. As soon as they had finished he rose: "If you'll
excuse my rushing off I'll go down to Wanhope now."
"By all means," said Mr. Stafford drily.
"Good-bye," said Isabel, casting about for a form of consolation,
and evolving one which, in the circumstances, was possibly
unique: "You'll feel better when you've had a bath."
"I'll walk down with you to Wanhope" said Val.
"You? Oh! no, don't bother," said Lawrence very curtly. "I can
manage my cousin, thanks."
But Val's only reply was to open the door for him and stroll with
him across the lawn. At the wicket gate Hyde turned: "Excuse my
saying so, but I prefer to go alone."
"I'm not coming in at Wanhope. But I've ten words to say to you
before you go there."
"Oh?" said Lawrence. He swung through leaving Val to follow or
not as he liked.
"Stop, Hyde, you must listen. You're going into a house full of
the materials for an explosion. You don't know your own danger."
"I dislike hints. What are you driving at?"
"Laura."
"Mrs. Clowes?"
"Naturally," said Val with a faint smile. "You know as well as I
do how pointless that correction is. You imply by it that as I'm
not her brother I've no right to meddle. But I told you in June
that I should interfere if it became necessary to protect
others."
"And since when, my dear Val, has it become necessary? Last
night?"
"Well, not that only: all Chilmark has been talking for weeks and
weeks."
"Chilmark--"
"Oh," Val interrupted, flinging out his delicate hands, "what's
the good of that? Who would ever suggest that you care what
Chilmark says? But she has to live in it."
The scene had to be faced, and a secret vein of cruelty in
Lawrence was not averse from facing it. This storm had been
brewing all summer.--They were alone, for the beechen way was
used only as a short cut to the vicarage. Above them the garden
wall lifted its feathery fringe of grass into great golden boughs
that drooped over it: all round them the beech forest ran down
into the valley, the eye losing itself among clear glades at the
end of which perhaps a thicket of hollies twinkled darkly or a
marbled gleam of blue shone in from overhead; the steep dark path
was illumined by the golden lamplight of millions on millions of
pointed leaves, hanging motionless in the sunny autumnal morning
air which smelt of dry moss and wood smoke.
"And what's the rumour? That I'm going to prevail or that I've
prevailed already?"
"The worst of it is," Val kept his point and his temper, "that
it's not only Chilmark. One could afford to ignore village
gossip, but this has reached Wharton, my father--Mrs. Clowes
herself. You wouldn't willingly do anything to make her unhappy:
indeed it's because of your consistent and delicate kindness both
to her and to Bernard that I've refrained from giving you a hint
before. You've done Bernard an immense amount of good. But the
good doesn't any longer counterbalance the involuntary mischief:
hasn't for some time past: can't you see it for yourself? One
has only to watch the change coming over her, to look into her
eyes--"
"Really, if you'll excuse my saying so, you seem to have looked
into them a little too often yourself."
Val waited to take out his case and light a cigarette. He
offered one to Hyde--"Won't you?"
"No, thanks: if you've done I'll be moving on."
"Why I haven't really begun yet. You make me nervous--it's a
rotten thing to say to any man, and doubly difficult from me to
you--and I express myself badly, But I must chance being called
impertinent. The trouble is with your cousin. If you had heard
him last night. . . . He's madly jealous."
"Of me? Last night?" Lawrence gave a short laugh: this time he
really was amused.
"Dangerously jealous."
"There's not room for a shadow of suspicion. Go and interview
Selincourt's servant if you like, or nose around the Continental."
"Well," said Val, coaxing a lucifer between his cupped palms,
"I dare say it'll come to that. I've done a good deal of
Bernard's dirty work. Some one has to do it for the sake of a
quiet life. His suspicions aren't rational, you know."
"I should think you put them into his head."
"I?" the serene eyes widened slightly, irritating Lawrence by
their effect of a delicacy too fastidious for contempt. For this
courtesy, of finer grain than his own sarcasm, made him itch to
violate and soil it, as mobs will destroy what they never can
possess. "Need we drag in personalities? He was jealous of you
before you came to Wanhope. He fancies or pretends to fancy that
you were in love with Mrs. Clowes when you were boy and girl.
We're not dealing with a sane or normal nature: he was
practically mad last night--he frightened me. May I give you,
word for word, what he said? That he let you stay on because he
meant to give his wife rope enough to hang herself."
"What do you want me to do?" said Lawrence after a pause.
"To leave Wanhope."
More at his ease than Val, in spite of the disadvantage of his
evening dress, Lawrence stood looking down at him with brilliant
inexpressive eyes. "Is it your own idea that I stayed on at
Wanhope to make love to Laura?"
"If I answer that, you'll tell me that I'm meddling with what is
none of my business, and this time you'll be right."
"No: after going so far, you owe me a reply."
"Well then, I've never been able to see any other reason."
"Oh? Bernard's my cousin."
"Since you will have it, Hyde, I can't see you burying yourself
in a country village out of cousinly affection. You said you'd
stay as long as you were comfortable. Well, it won't be
comfortable now! I'm not presuming to judge you. I've no idea
what your ethical or social standards are. Quite likely you
would consider yourself justified in taking away your cousin's
wife. Some modern professors and people who write about social
questions would say, wouldn't they, that she ought to be able to
divorce him: that a marriage which can't be fruitful ought not to
be a binding tie? I've never got up the subject because for me
it's settled out of hand on religious grounds, but they may not
influence you, nor perhaps would the other possible deterrent,
pity for the weak--if one can call Bernard weak. It would be an
impertinence for me to judge you by my code, when perhaps your
own is pure social expediency--which would certainly be better
served if Mrs. Clowes went to you."
"Assuming that you've correctly defined my standard--why should
I go?"
Val shrugged his shoulders. "You know well enough. Because Mrs.
Clowes is old-fashioned; her duty to Bernard is the ruling force
in her life, and you could never make her give him up. Or if you
did she wouldn't live long enough for you to grow tired of her--
it would break her heart."
"Really?" said Lawrence. "Before I grew tired of her?"
He had never been so angry in his life. To be brought to book at
all was bad enough, but what rankled worst was the nature of the
charge. Sometimes it takes a false accusation to make a man
realize the esteem in which he is held, the opinions which others
attribute to him and which perhaps, without examining them too
closely, he has allowed to pass for his own. Lawrence had
indulged in plenty of loose talk about Nietzschean ethics and the
danger of altruism and the social inexpediency of sacrificing the
strong for the weak, but when it came to his own honour not Val
himself could have held a more conservative view. He, take
advantage of a cripple? He commit a breach of hospitality? He
sneak into Wanhope as his cousin's friend to corrupt his cousin's
wife? What has been called the pickpocket form of adultery had
never been to his taste. Had Bernard been on his feet, a strong
man armed, Lawrence might, if he had fallen in love with Laura,
have gloried in carrying her off openly; but of the baseness of
which Val accused him he knew himself to be incapable.
"Really?" he said, looking down at Val out of his wide black
eyes, so like Bernard's except that they concealed all that
Bernard revealed. "So now we understand each other. I know why
you want me to go and you know why I want to stay."
"If I've done you an injustice I'm sorry for it."
"Oh, don't apologize," said Lawrence laughing. His manner
bewildered Val, who could make nothing of it except that it was
incompatible with any sense of guilt.
"But, then," the question broke from Val involuntarily, "why did
you stay?"
"Why do you?"
"I?"
"Yes, you. Did it never strike you that I might retort with a tu
quoque?"
"How on earth--?"
"You were perhaps a little preoccupied," said Lawrence with his
deadly smile. "I suggest, Val, that whether Clowes was jealous or
not--you were."
"I?"
"Yes, my dear fellow:" the Jew laughed: it gave him precisely the
same satisfaction to violate Val's reticence, as it might have
given one of his ancestors to cut Christian flesh to ribbons in
the markets of the East: "and who's to blame you? Thrown so much
into the society of a very pretty and very unhappy woman, what
more natural than for you to--how shall I put it?--constitute
yourself her protector? Set your mind at rest. You have only
one rival, Val--her husband."
He enjoyed his triumph for a few moments, during which Stafford
was slowly taking account with himself.
"I'm not such a cautious moralist as you are," Lawrence pursued,
"and so I don't hold a pistol to your head and give you ten
minutes to clear out of Wanhope, as you did to mine. On the
contrary, I hope you'll long continue to act as Bernard's agent.
I'm sure he'll never get a better one. As for Laura, she won't
discover your passion unless you proclaim it, which I'm sure
you'll never do. She looks on you as a brother--an affectionate
younger brother invaluable for running errands. And you'll
continue to fetch and carry, enduring all things from her and
Bernard much as you do from me. When I do go--which won't be
just yet--I shan't feel the faintest compunction about leaving
you behind. I'm sure Bernard's honour will be as safe in your
hands as it is in mine."
And thus one paved the way to pleasant relations with ones
brother-in-law. The civilized second self, always a dismayed and
cynical spectator of Hyde's lapses into savagery, raised its
voice in vain.
"You seem a little confused, Val--you always were a modest chap.
But surely you of all men can trust my discretion--?"
"That's enough," said Val. He touched Hyde's coat with his
finger-tips, an airy movement, almost a caress, which seemed to
come from a long way off. "Lawrence, you're hurting yourself
more than me."
It was enough and more than enough: an arrest instant and final.
Later Lawrence wondered whether Val knew what he had done, or
whether it was only a thought unconsciously made visible; it was
so unlike all he had seen of Val, so like much that he had felt.
It put him to silence. Not only so, but it flung a light cloud
of mystery over what had seemed noonday clear. Since that first
night when he had watched in a mirror the disentangling of
Laura's scarf, Lawrence had entertained no doubt of Val's
sentiments, but now he was left uncertain. Val had translated
himself into a country to which Lawrence could not follow him,
and the light of an unknown sun was on his way.
Lawrence drew back with an impatient gesture. "Oh, let's drop
all this!" The civilized second self was in revolt alike against
his own morbid cruelty and Val's escape into heaven: he would
admit nothing except that he had gone through one trying scene
after another in the last eighteen hours, and that Val had paid
for the irritation produced successively by Mrs. Cleve, Isabel, a
white night, and a distressed anxious consciousness of unavowed
guilt. "We shall be at each other's throats in a minute, which
wouldn't suit either your book or mine--you've no idea, Val, how
little it would suit mine! I'm sorry I was so offensive. But
you wrong me, you do indeed; I'm not in love with Laura, and, if
I were, the notion of picking poor Bernard's pocket is absolutely
repugnant to me. Social expediency be hanged! What! as his
guest?-- But let's drop recrimination; I had no right to resent
what you said after forcing you to say it, nor, in any case, to
taunt you . . . I beg your pardon: there! for heaven's sake let's
leave it at that."
"Will you release me from my parole?"
"Yes, and wish to heaven I'd never extracted it. I had no right
to impose it on you or to hold you to it. But don't give
yourself away, Val, I can't bear to think of what you'll have to
face. It will be what you once called it--crucifixion."
"No, freedom," said Val. "After all these years in prison." He
put up his hand to his head. "The brand--the--What's the
matter?" Lawrence had seized his arm. "Am I--am I talking
rubbish? I feel half asleep. But one night's sitting up
aughtn't to-- Oh, this is absurd! . . ."
Lawrence waited in the patience of dismay. It was no excuse to
plead that till then he had not known all the harm he had done;
men should not set racks to work in ignorance of their effect on
trembling human nerves.
"That's over," said Val, wiping his forehead. "Sorry to make a
fuss, but it came rather suddenly. Things always happen so
simply when they do happen."
"Are you going to confess?"
"Oh yes. I ought to have done it long ago. In fact last night I
made up my mind to break my parole if you wouldn't let me off,
but I'd rather have it this way. Remains only to choose time and
place: that'll need care, for I mustn't hurt others more than I
can help. But I wouldn't mind betting it'll all be as simple as
shelling peas. The odds are that people won't believe half I
say. They'll have forgotten all about the war by now, and
they'll make far too much allowance for my being only nineteen."
"And for a voluntary confession: that always carries great
weight. They would judge you very differently if it had come out
by chance. Rightly, too: if you're going to make such a
confession at your time of life, it will be difficult for any one
to call you a coward."
"Thank you!" Val shrugged his shoulders with the old indolent
irony. "But moral courage was always my long suit."
"How young you still are!" said Lawrence smiling at him, "young
enough to be bitter. But you're under a delusion. No, let me
finish-- I'm an older man than you are, I've seen a good deal of
life, and I had four years out there instead of six weeks like
you. So far as I can judge you never were a coward. Thousands
and hundreds of thousands of men broke down like you, but they
were lucky and it wasn't known, or at all events it wasn't
critical. Their failure of nerve didn't coincide with the
special call to action. You would have redeemed yourself if you
had been able to stick to your profession. You have redeemed
yourself: and you'd prove it fast enough if you got the chance,
only of course in these piping times of peace unluckily you
won't." He coloured suddenly to his temples. "Good God, Val! if
there were any weakness left in you, could you have mastered me
like this?"