The quickest way to Wanhope was by High Street and field path.
But Lawrence to avoid the village entered the drive by the lodge,
through iron gates over which Bernard had set up the arms and
motto of his family: FORTIS ET FIDELIS, faithful and strong.
Winding between dense shrubs of rhododendron under darker
deodars, the road was long and gloomy, but Lawrence was thankful
to be out of sight of Chilmark. He hurried on with his light
swinging step--light for his build--his tired mind vacant or
intent only on a bath and a change of clothes, till in the last
bend, within a hundred yards of Wanhope he came on Mrs. Clowes.
He never could clearly remember his first sight of her, the shock
was too great, but as he came up she put out her hands to him and
he took them in his own. She was still in her evening dress but
without cloak or fur, which had probably slipped off her
shoulders: they were bare, and her beautiful bodice was torn.
"Oh, here you are," she said with her faint smile. "I was afraid
you would come by the field." She looked down at herself and made
a weak and ineffective effort to gather her loosened laces
together. "I'm--I'm not very tidy, am I?"
Lawrence was carrying an overcoat on his arm. He put her into
it, and, as she did not seem able to cope with it, buttoned it
for her. "What has happened, dear?"
"Bernard has turned me out," said Laura with the same piteous,
bewildered smile. "Indeed he never let me in. I went home soon
after you left me. The door was shut, I tried the window, but
that was shut too, so I had to go back to the door. I couldn't
open it and I rang. He answered me through the door, 'Who's
there?'" She ended as if the motive power of speech had died
down in her.
"And you--?"
"Oh, I said, 'It's I--Laura.'"
"Go on, dear," Lawrence gently prompted her.
"I said 'I'm your wife.' He said 'I have no wife.' And he called
me--coarse names, words I couldn't repeat to any one. I couldn't
answer him. Then he said 'Where's Hyde? Are you there, Hyde?'
and that you were a coward or you wouldn't stand by and hear him
calling me a--what he had called me. So I told him you weren't
there, that you had gone back with Isabel and Val. He said:
after you had had all you wanted out of me--I beg your pardon?"
"Nothing. Go on, dear: tell me all about it."
"But ought I to?" said Laura, raising her dimmed eyes to his
face. "It's such a horrible story to tell a man, especially the
very man who--I feel so queer, Lawrence: don't let me say
anything I ought not!"
"Laura dear, whatever you say is sacred to me. Besides, I'm your
cousin by marriage, and it's my business to think and act for
you: let me help you into this alley." A little further on there
was a by-path through the shrubberies, and Lawrence drew her
towards it, but her limbs were giving way under her, and after a
momentary hesitation he carried her into it in his arms. "There:
sit on this bank. Lean on me," he sat down by her. "Is that
better?"
"Oh yes: thank you: I'm so glad to be out of the drive," said
Laura, letting her head fall, like a child, on his shoulder. "I
seem to have been there such a long while. I didn't know where to
go. Once a tradesman's cart drove by, the butcher's it was: you
know Bernard gets so cross because they will drive this way to
save the long round by the stables. He stared at me, but I
didn't know what to do." Lawrence repressed a groan: it would be
all over the village then, there was no help for it. "Where was
I to go in these clothes? I did wish you would come, I always
feel so safe with you."
Lawrence silently stroked her hair. His heart was riven. "So
safe?" and this was all his doing.
"Was the door locked?"
"Yes."
"And he refused to open it?"
"No, he did open it."
"He did open it, do you say?"
"Yes, because--oh, my head."
"You aren't hurt anywhere, are you?" asked Lawrence, feeling cold
to his fingertips.
"No, no," she roused herself, dimly sensible of his anxiety,
"it's only that I feel faint, but it's passing off. No, I don't
want any water! I'd far rather you stayed with me. It's such a
comfort to have you here." Lawrence was speechless. Her hands
went to her hair. "Oh dear, I wish I weren't so untidy! Never
mind, I shall be all right directly: it does me more good than
anything else just to tell you about it."
"Well, tell me then."
"The door was locked," she continued languidly but a thought more
clearly, "and the chain was up and Bernard's couch was drawn
across inside. He must have got Barry to wheel it over. When I
begged him to let me in he unlocked the door but left it on the
chain so that it would only open a few inches. I tried to push my
way in, but he held me back."
"Laura, did he strike you?"
"No, no," said Laura with greater energy than she had yet shown.
Lawrence drew a breath of relief. He had felt a horrible fear
that her faintness might be the result of a blow or a fall. "Oh,
how could you think that? All he did was to put his hand out
flat against my chest and push me back."
"But your dress is torn" said Lawrence, sickening over the
question yet feeling that he must know all.
"His ring caught in it. These crepe de chine dresses tear if you
look at them."
"Well, did you give it up after that?"
"No, oh no: I never can be angry with Berns because it--it isn't
Berns really," she glanced up at Lawrence with her pleading eyes.
"It's a possession of the devil. He suffers so frightfully,
Lawrence: he never ceases to rebel, and no one can soothe him but
me. So that I hadn't the heart to leave him. You'll think it
poor-spirited of me, but I--I can't help loving the real
Bernard, a Bernard you've never seen. So I waited because--I
never can make Yvonne understand--I am so sorry for him: he
hurts himself more than me--"
Lawrence started. The echo struck strangely on his ear. "I
understand."
"You always understand. So I tried again; I said: would he at
least let me go to my room and change my clothes and get some
money. But he said it was your turn to buy my clothes now. When
I'd convinced myself that he was unapproachable, I thought of
trying to get in by a side door or through the kitchen. It would
have been ignominious, but anything was better than standing on
the steps; Bernard was talking at the top of his voice, and the
maids were at the bedroom windows overhead. I didn't look up but
I saw the curtains flutter."
"Servants don't matter much. But you did quite right. What
happened?"
"He held me by the arm as I turned to go, and told me that all
the doors and windows were locked and that he had given orders
not to admit me: not to admit either of us."
"Either you or--?"
"Yourself. If we liked to stay out all night together we could
stay out for ever."
"And then?"
"Don't ask me." She shuddered and drooped, and the colour came up
into her face, a rose-pink patch of fever. "I can't remember any
more."
"He must have gone raving mad."
"He is not mad, Lawrence. But he has indulged his imagination
too long and now it has the mastery of him," said Laura slowly.
"It's fatal to do that. 'Withstand the beginning: after-remedies
come too late.' Ever since you came he's been nursing an
imaginary jealousy of you: though he knew it was imaginary, he
indulged it as though it were genuine: and now it has turned on
him and got him by the throat. Oh, he is so unhappy? But what
can I do?"
What, indeed? Lawrence, recalling Val's warning, subdued a curse
or a groan. "A house full of the materials for an explosion."
And he had lived in that house--blind fool!--week after week
and had noticed nothing! "Why--why did no one warn me before?"
he stammered. "My poor Laura! Why didn't you send me away?"
"But if it hadn't been you it would have been someone else!" said
Mrs. Clowes simply. "At one time it was Val: then it was Dr.
Verney's junior partner, who attended me for influenza while Dr.
Verney was away: and once it was a young chauffeur we had, who
happened to be a University man. I did get rid of him, because
he found out, and that made everything so awkward. But I
couldn't get rid of Val, and in many ways I was most unwilling to
let you go,--you did him so much good. But I'd made up my mind
to turn you out: Yvonne was at me--" she paused--"yes, it
really was only yesterday! I promised her to speak to you this
morning. Well, I've done it!"
"Did you explain to Bernard that Selincourt and Isabel were with
us all the time?"
"He talked me down."
"He must be made to listen to reason."
"He won't: not yet. Later, perhaps, but not in time to save the
situation. Never mind, you're not married, and if he does
divorce me people will only say 'Another Selincourt gone wrong.'"
A dreary and rather cynical gleam of humour played over Laura's
lips. "I'm sorry mainly for Yvonne, Jack's people are so
particular; they hated the marriage, and now, when she's lived it
all down and made them fond of her, I must needs go and
compromise myself and drag our wretched family into the mud
again!"
"Good heavens! he can't propose to divorce you?"
"He said he would."
Bit by bit it was all coming out, the cruel and sordid drama
played before an audience of housemaids, as one admission led to
another and her strength revived for the ordeal. Lawrence
shuddered and sat silent, trying to gauge the extent of the
mischief. "What can I do?" said Laura. She looked down at
herself and blushed again. "I do feel so--so disreputable in
these clothes. I haven't even been able to wash my face and hands
or tidy my hair since I left the hotel."
"Have you been wandering about in the drive all this time?"
"I suppose so. I was afraid to go into the road in such a
pickle."
"These infernal clothes!" Lawrence burst out exasperated. Their
wretched plight was reduced to farce by the fact that they were
locked out of their bedrooms, unable to get at their wardrobes,
their soaps and sponges and brushes, his collars, her hairpins,
all those trifles of the toilette without which civilized man can
scarcely feel himself civilized. Most of these wants the
vicarage could supply; but to reach the vicarage they had to
cross the road. Lawrence got up and stood looking down at Laura.
"Can you trust your maid?"
"Trust her? I can't trust her not to gossip. She's a nice girl
and a very good maid, but I've only had her a year."
"Silly question! One doesn't trust servants nowadays. My man's
a scamp, but I can depend on him up to a certain point because I
pay him well. Anyhow we must make the best of a bad job. If I
cut straight down from here I shall get into the tradesmen's
drive, shan't I?"
"But you can't go to the back door!"
"Apparently I can't go to the front," said Lawrence with his
wintry smile. He promised himself to go to the front by and by,
but not while Laura was shivering in torn clothes under a bush.
"But what are you going to do?"
"Simply to get us a few necessaries of life. You can't be seen
like this, and you can't stand here forever, catching cold with
next to nothing on: besides, you've had no food since five
o'clock this morning--and not much then."
"But the servants--if they have orders--"
"Servants!" He laughed.
"But you don't mean to force your way in?"
"Not past Bernard, dear. Don't be afraid: I shall skulk in by
the rear."
It was easy to say "Don't be afraid": doubly easy for Lawrence,
who had never known Bernard's darker temper. But there was no
coward blood in Mrs. Clowes, and she steadied herself under the
rallying influence of Hyde's firm look and tone.
"Go, then, but don't be long. And, Lawrence promise me. . ."
"Anything, dear."
"You won't touch Bernard, will you?" Lawrence was dumb, from wonder,
not from indecision. "No one can do that," said Laura under her
breath. "Oh, I know you wouldn't dream of it. But yet--if he
insulted you, if he struck you . . . if he insulted me. . . ?"
"No, on my honour."
He touched her hand with his lips--a ceremony performed by
Lawrence only once beforehand in what different circumstances!--
and left her: more like a winter butterfly than ever, with her
shining hair, pale face, and gallant eyes, and the silver threads
of her embroidered skirt flowing round her over the sunburnt
turf.
Wanhope was an old-fashioned house, and the domestic premises
were much the same as they had been in the eighteenth century, except
that Clowes had turned one wing of the stables into a garage and
rooms for the chauffeur. He kept no indoor menservants except Barry,
the groom and gardener living in the village, while three or four
maids were ample to wait on that quiet family. Pursuing the
tradesman's drive between coach-house, tool shed, coal shed, and
miscellaneous outbuildings, Lawrence emerged on a brick yard, ducked
under a clothes-line, made for an open doorway, and found himself in
the scullery. It was empty, and he went on into a big old-fashioned
kitchen, draughty enough with its high roof and blue plastered walls.
Here, too, there was not a soul to be seen: a kettle was furiously
boiling over on the hob, a gas ring was running to waste near by,
turned on but left unlit and volleying evil fumes. His next
researches carried him into a flagged passage, on his right a sunlit
pantry, on his left a dingy alcove evidently dedicated to the
trimming of lamps and the cleaning of boots. He began to wonder if
every one had run away. But no: a sharp turn, a couple of steps, and
he came on an inner door, comfortably covered with green baize,
through which issued a perfect hubbub of voices all talking at once.
He listened long enough to hear himself characterized by a baritone
as a stinking Jew, and by a treble as not her style and a bit too gay
but quite the gentleman, before he raised the latch and stepped in.
His appearance produced a perfect hush. Except Barry and his own
valet they were all there, the entire domestic staff of Wanhope:
and to face them was not the least courageous act that Lawrence
had ever performed. It was a large, comfortable room, lit by
large windows overlooking the kitchen garden; a cheerful fire
burnt in the grate this autumn morning, and in a big chair before
it sat a cheerful, comely person in a print gown, in whom he
recognized Mrs. Fryar the cook. Gordon the chauffeur, a
pragmatic young man from the Clyde, in this levelling hour was
sitting on the edge of the table with a glass of beer in his
hand. Caroline, the Baptist housemaid, held the floor: she was
declaiming, when Lawrence entered, that it was a shame of Major
Clowes and she didn't care who heard her say so, but apparently
Lawrence was an exception, for like all the rest she was
instantly stricken dumb as the grave.
Lawrence remained standing in the open doorway. He would have
given a thousand pounds to be in morning attire, but no
constraint was perceptible in the big, careless, impassive figure
framed against the sunlit yard.
"Are you Mrs. Clowes's maid?" he singled out a tall, rather
stiff, quiet-looking girl in the plain black dress of her
calling. "Is your name Catherine? I want to speak to you."
She stood up--they were all standing by now except Gordon--but
she looked at him very oddly, as if she were half frightened and
half inclined to be familiar. "I suppose you can tell me where
my lady is, sir?"
"She is waiting for you," said Lawrence. "I say that I want to
speak to you by yourself. Come in here, please." Catherine
continued to look as if she felt inclined to flounce and toss her
head, but under his cold and steady eyes she thought better of it
and followed him into the pantry. Lawrence shut the door.
"I'd have gone to my lady, sir, if I'd known where she was."
"You're going to her now," said Lawrence. "I want you, please,
to run up to her room and fetch some clothes, the sort of clothes
she would wear to go out walking: you understand what I mean? A
jacket and dress and hat, walking boots, a veil--" Catherine
intimated that she did understand: much better than any
gentleman, her smile implied.
"Perhaps," she suggested, "what you would like is for me to pack
a small box for her, sir? My lady will want a lot of things that
gentlemen don't think of: underskirts and--"
"Good God, what do I care?" said Lawrence impatiently. "No,
nothing of that sort: take just what she wants to change out of
evening dress into morning dress. It'll be only for a few hours.
Go and get them, and be as quick and quiet as you can. Say
nothing to Major Clowes." He laid his hand on her shoulder.
"Are you a decent girl, I wonder?"
She drew up and for the first time looked him straight in the
eyes. "If you mean, sir, that you're going to take my poor lady
away, why, I think it's high time too. I was always brought up
respectable, but when it comes to a gentleman calling his own
married wife such names, why, it's time some one did interfere.
I heard him with my own ears call her a--"
"That'll do," said Lawrence.
"And struck her, that he did, which you ought to know," Catherine
persisted eagerly: "put his arm out through the door and gave her
a great blow! and it's not the first time neither. Many's the
night when I've undressed my lady but perhaps you've seen for
yourself--"
She stopped short and put her hand over her mouth.
"Go and get the things," said Lawrence, "then wait for me in the
yard."
Catherine retired in disorder and Lawrence followed her out. He
found Barry waiting to speak to him. "Where's my man?" Lawrence
asked. "Send him to me, will you?"
"Beg pardon, sir, but are you going to speak to Major Clowes?"
"Why?"
Barry looked down. "His orders was that you weren't to be
admitted, sir."
"How is Major Clowes?"
"Very queer. I took it on myself to send for the doctor, but he
was out: but they sent word that he'd step round as soon as he
came in. I'd have liked to catch Mr. Val, but he slipped off
while I was waiting on the Major."
"But Major Clowes isn't ill?"
"Oh no, sir. But I don't care for so much responsibility."
"Shall I have a look at him?"
"Oh no," a much more decided negative. "I wouldn't go near the
Major, sir, not if I was you."
"Why, what's the matter with him?" Lawrence asked curiously. But
Barry refused to commit himself beyond repeating that the Major
was very queer, and after promising to send Val to the rescue
Lawrence dismissed him, as Gaston came hurrying up. Something
suspiciously like a grin twinkled over the little Frenchman's
face when he found his master waiting for him on the sill of
Caroline's pantry, silhouetted against row on row of shining
glass and silver, and wearing at noon-day the purple and fine
linen, the white waistcoat and thin boots of last night. But his
French breeding triumphed and he remained, except for that one
furtive twinkle, the conscientious valet, nescient and urbane.
Lawrence did not give him even so much explanation as he had
given Catherine. "Is there a back staircase?" he asked, and
then, "Take me up by it. I'm going to my room."
Gaston led the way through the servants' hall. Lawrence,
following, had to fight down a nausea of humiliation that was
almost physical: he had never before done anything that so
sickened him as this sneaking progress through the kitchen
quarters in another man's house. At length Gaston, holding up a
finger to enjoin silence, brought him out on the main landing
overlooking the hall.
There was no carpet on the polished floor but Lawrence when he
chose could tread like a cat. He stepped to the balustrade. It
was as dark as a dark evening, for the great doors were still
fast shut, and what scanty light filtered through the painted
panes was absorbed, not reflected, by raftered roof, panelled
walls, and Jacobean stair. But as he grew used to the gloom he
could distinguish Bernard's couch and the powerful prostrate
figure stretched out on it like a living bar. Bernard's arms
were crossed over his breast: his features were the colour of
stone: he might have been dead.
Lawrence was startled. But he could do no good now, and the
Frenchman was fidgeting at his bedroom door. Later . . .
Secure of privacy Gaston's decorum relaxed a trifle, for it was
clear to him that confidences must be at least tacitly exchanged:
M'sieur le captaine could not hope to keep him in the dark, there
never was an elopement yet of which valet and lady's maid were
not cognizant. Like Catherine, "You wish I pack for you, Sare?"
he asked in his lively imperfect English. He was naturally a
chatterbox and brimful of a Parisian's salted malice, even after
six years in the service of Captain Hyde, who did not encourage
his attendants to be communicative.
Lawrence was tearing off his accursed evening clothes. (All day
it had been the one drop of sweetness in his bitter cup that he
had borrowed Lucian's razor and shaved in Lucian's rooms.) "Get
me a tweed suit and boots."
Gaston frowned, wrinkling his nose: if M'sieur imagined that that
nose had no scent for an affair of gallantry--! But still he
persisted, even he, though the snub was a bitter pill: himself a
gallant man, could allow for jaded nerves. "You wish I pack,
yes?" he deprecated reticence by his insinuatingly sympathetic
tone.
"No," said Lawrence, tying his tie before a mirror. "I'm coming
back."
"'Ere? Back--so--'ere, m'sieur?"
"Yes, before tonight."
It was more than flesh and blood could stand. "Sir Clowes 'e say
no," remarked Gaston in a detached and nonchalant tone, as he
gathered up the garments which his master had strewn over the
floor. "'E verree angree. 'E say 'Zut! m'sieur le captaine est
parti!--il ne revient plus.'"
"Gaston." The Frenchman turned from the press in which he was
hanging up Lawrence's coat. "You're a perfect scamp, my man,"
Lawrence spoke over his shoulder as he ran through the contents
of a pocketbook, "and I should be sorry to think you were
attached to me. But your billet is comfortable, I believe: I pay
you jolly good wages, you steal pretty much what you like, and
you have the additional pleasure of reading all my letters. Now
listen: I'm coming back to Wanhope before tonight and so is Mrs.
Clowes. I'm not going to run away with her, as Major Clowes gave
you all to understand. What you think is of no importance
whatever to any one, what you say is equally trilling, but I
don't choose to have my servant say it: so, if you continue to
drop these interesting hints, I shall not only boot you out, but"
--he turned "I shall give you such a thrashing in the rear,
Gaston--in this direction, Gaston--that you won't be able to
sit down comfortably for a month."
"M'sieur is so droll," murmured Gaston, removing himself with
dignified agility and an unabashed grimace.
Lawrence let himself out by the back stairs again and the kitchen
--now in a state of great activity, the gas ring lit and
preparations for lunch going on apace--and forth into the yard.
Out in the open air he drew a long breath: safe in tweeds and a
felt hat, he was his own man again, but he felt as though he had
been wading in mud. The mystified Catherine followed him at a
sign into the drive. There Hyde stood still. "Take that path to
the left. You'll find your mistress waiting for you. Help her
to dress, and tell her I shall be at the lodge gates when she's
ready. And, Catherine--"
He paused, feeling an almost insuperable distaste for his job.
But it had to be done, the girl must not find him tight with his
money: that she would hold her tongue was beyond expectation, but
if well tipped at least she might not invent lies. It went
against the grain of his temper to bribe one of Bernard's maids,
but fate was not now consulting his likes or dislikes. He thrust
his hand into his pocket--"Look after your mistress, will you?"
The respectably brought up Catherine turned scarlet. She put her
hand behind her back. "I'm sure, sir, I don't want your money to
make me do that!"
"If you prick us shall we not bleed?" It was the first time that
Lawrence had ever discovered a servant to be a human being: and
his philosophical musings were chequered, till he moved out of
earshot, by the clamour of Catherine's irrepressible dismay.
"Oh madam!" he heard, and, "Well, if I ever-!" and then in a
tone suddenly softened from horror to sympathy, "there now,
there, let me get your dress off . . . ." From Mrs. Clowes came
no answer, or none audible to him.
Laura joined him in ten minutes' time, neatly dressed, gloved,
and veiled, her hair smoothed--it had never been rough so far as
Lawrence could observe--her complexion regulated by Catherine's
powder puff. "Are you better?" said Lawrence, examining her
anxiously: "able to walk as far as the vicarage?"
"The vicarage?"
"Wharton's too far off. You're dead tired: You'll have to lie
down and keep quiet. Isabel will look after you." It speaks to
the complete overthrow of Lawrence's ideas that for the last hour
he had not recollected Isabel's existence. "And we shall have to
wait till Bernard raises the siege: one can't bawl explanations
through a keyhole. Besides, I must wire to Lucian." He slipped
his hand under her arm. "Would you like this good girl of yours
to come with you?"
"I will come, madam, directly I've fetched my hat," said
Catherine eagerly. "You must have some one to look after you,
and your hair never brushed and all."
But Laura shook her head, Catherine must not defy her master.
"If you want to please me," she said not without humour "--I
can't help it, Lawrence--try to look after Major Clowes. You
had better not go near him yourself, because as you know he isn't
very pleased with me just now, but see that Mrs. Fryar sends him
in a nice lunch and ask Barry to try to get him to eat it. I
ordered some oysters to come this morning, and Major Clowes will
enjoy those when he won't touch anything else."
Catherine watched her lady up the road with a disappointed eye.
It was a tame conclusion to a promising adventure. Although
respectably brought up, her sympathies were all with Captain Hyde:
she had foreseen herself, the image of regretful discretion,
sacrificing her lifelong principles to escort Mrs. Clowes to
Brighton, or Switzerland, or that place where they had the little
horses that Mr. Duval made such a 'mysterious joke about--it would
have been amusing to do foreign parts with Mr. Duval. But when Laura
took the turning to the vicarage Catherine was invaded by a creeping
chill of doubt. Was it possible that Captain Hyde was not Mrs.
Clowes's lover after all?
"I know which I'd choose," she said to Gordon. "I've no patience
with the Major. Such a way to behave! and my poor lady with the
patience of an angel, putting up and putting up-- No man's worth
it, that's what I say."
"Well, it is a bit thick," said Gordon: "calling his own wife a--"
"Mr. Gordon!"
The son of the Clyde was a contentious young man, and a jealous
one. "You didn't seem to mind when the French chap was talking
about a fille de joy. What d'ye suppose a fille de joy is in
English? but there's some of us can do no wrong."
"French sounds so much more refined," said Catherine firmly.