Inaction was hard on Lawrence. He hated it: and he was not used
to it: his impulse was to go direct to Wanhope and break down the
door: but it was not to be done. When he reached the vicarage
Mr. Stafford had gone out after an early lunch to take a wedding
in Countisford, while Val had been obliged to ride over to a
neighbouring farm. Leaving Laura to Isabel, who startled him by
her cool "So Major Clowes has done it at last?" he hurried down
to the post office to telephone to Selincourt (aware on his way
that every eye was staring at him: no doubt the tale was already
on every lip), but Selincourt too was out, and he had to be
content with despatching colourless duplicate telegrams to his
rooms and club. From a hint let fall during the night he was
aware that no more than the most laconic wire would be needed,
but he fretted under the delay, which meant that Selincourt could
not arrive before six o'clock. After that he would have liked to
go to Wharton, but dared not, for, though Jack's grandfather was
what Yvonne called a Romantic, the Grantchesters were old-fashioned
straightlaced people who had better not hear of the scandal till it
was over. No, till Selincourt and Val appeared there was no more to
be done, and Lawrence, returned to the vicarage and flung himself
into a chair to wait. He dreaded inaction: inaction meant thought:
and thought meant such bitter realities as he knew not how to stand
up against: but what he liked or disliked was no longer to the point.
In that easy-going household, where comfort was obtained at the
expense of appearances, there was always a diningroom fire in
cold weather, and on this September morning the glow of the
flames had a lulling effect. Dead tired, he dropped asleep, to
be roused by the feeling that there was some one in the room.
There was, it was Isabel; and in the drugged heaviness that
follows daylight slumber Hyde simply held out his arms to her in
oblivion of last night. "Oh, oh!" said Isabel smiling at him
and touching his palms with the tips of her fingers, "were you
dreaming of me?" Hyde drew back, a deep flush covering his face.
What had changed Isabel? she was pure fascination. "I've been
watching you a long time while you were asleep. I thought you
would never wake. You're so, so tired! Here's a cup of coffee
for you."
"Thank you," said Lawrence, entirely subdued.
He still felt half dazed: confused and shy, emotions the harder
to disguise because they were so unfamiliar: and restless under
Isabel's merry eyes. How near she was to him, the leaping flames
flinging a dance of light and shadow over her silk shirt, and the
bloom on her cheek, and the dark hair parted on one side (a
boyish fashion which he had always disliked) and waved over her
head! So near that without rising he could have pressed his lips
to that white throat of hers. . . . Last night it had been beauty
clouded, beauty averse, but this morning it was beauty in the
most delicate and derisive and fleeting sunlight of pleasure; and
the temperament of his race delivered Lawrence hand and foot into
its power. The deep waters went over him and he ceased to
struggle--"Isabel," he heard himself saying in a level voice but
without his own volition, "should you mind if I were to kiss
you?"
What a banality to ask of a woman, his second self scoffed at
him: a woman who should be kissed or left alone, but never asked
for a kiss!
"Not very much," said Isabel, presenting her smooth cheek. "Not
if it would do you any good."
Oh irony, oh disenchantment! "Thank you." He curbed his passion
and sat still. "I am not Val."
"Shut your eyes then."
He held his breath: the thick beating of his heart was like a
muffled hammer.
"This isn't the way I kiss Val."
"Isabel!" exclaimed Lawrence. He held out his arms again but
they closed on the empty firelight: she had gone dancing off, the
most fugitive, the most insubstantial of mistresses, nothing left
of her to him but the memory of that moth's wing touch.
"Isabel, come here!" He, sprang to his feet. From the other end
of the room Isabel turned round, wistful, her head bent, glancing
up at him under her eyelashes.
"Oh must you have me?--all of me? Oh Lawrence!--well then--"
She advanced step by step, slowly. Lawrence waited, convinced
that if he tried to seize her she would be gone, such a vague
thistledown grace there was in her slender immaturity. He waited
and Isabel came to him, drifted into his arms, was lying for a
moment on his breast, and then, "Let me go: dearest, don't hold
me!"
He kept her long enough to ask "But are you mine?"
"Yes," said Isabel, sighing.
"This is a grudging gift, Isabel."
"Oh no," she whispered, "not grudging. All my heart: all of me.
Only don't hold me, I'm still afraid."
"Of me?"
"Yes: now are you triumphant?" She escaped.
"Will you sit down in a chair, you sprite, and let me kneel at
your ladyship's feet?"
"No--yes--No, you too sit down." Then as Lawrence, enchained,
relapsed into the deep easy chair by the fire, she came behind
and leant over him, wreathing her arms over his shoulders.
"There: now lie still: so: is that cosy for you? Now will you go
to sleep?"
"Circe . . ."
"You don't feel as though you were going to sleep."
"Mon Dieu!" Lawrence murmured under his breath.
"Don't say that," her voice was so soft that it was like the
voice of his own heart speaking to him, "it isn't a proper reply
to make when a lady says she loves you."
"Oh! provided that you do love me--!"
She took his temples between her fingertips and again her
enchanting caress brushed his lips. Lawrence lay helpless. It
was like receiving the caresses of a fairy: a delight and a
torment, a serenity and a flame. "I love you. I will marry you.
I shall be a most exacting wife, 'December when I wed.' Very soon
you'll wish you had never set eyes on me. You'll have to marry
Val too and all the family." Her long lashes were fluttering
against his cheek. "As you're thirty-six and I'm only nineteen,
you'll have to be very docile or I shall tell you you're
ungenerous."
"Presuming on my income, as you said--was it last night?"
"When you were free. Does it seem so long ago?" She gave a
little laugh, airy and sweet. "Oh poor Benedict! Would you like
to cry off? Let me see: you may scratch any time before I tell
Val, which will be when he comes in at five o'clock. Now then?"
This mention of Val was like a dash of cold water, and Lawrence
tried to rouse himself. "Will you be serious for half a second,
you incarnation of mischief?"
"No--yes--no, I don't want to be serious," she turned in his
arms and the Isabel of last night pierced him with her dark,
humid, brilliant eyes. "I want to forget. Make me forget!"
"Forget what?"
"Other women."
"There are no other women, Isabel."
"There have been.--Lawrence!" the scent of the honeysuckle
pinned into her blouse seemed to narcotize all his senses with
its irresistible sweetness, "you will be true to me, won't you?
You won't love other women now? Say you never wanted to kiss any
of them so much as-- Oh!" Drunk with her Circean cup, Hyde was
more than willing to convince her, but in a fashion of his own.
Isabel gave a little sigh and faded out of his clasp: he tried to
seize her but she was gone, leaving only the scent of bruised
petals and the memory of a silken contact. "You're so--so
stormy," the gossamer voice mocked him with its magic of youth
and gaiety. "Val says--"
"Isabel, I'm sick of that formula. You're going to marry me, not
Val."
"--You're not one-third English."
"I've lived in countries where they knew how to manage women,"
Lawrence muttered.
"With a whip?"
"No."
"What a pity!"
"No, the other method is more effective."
"You terrify me," her eyes were sparkling now like a diamond.
"Don't fling any more of those dark threats at me or I shall
never marry you at all. Some day you'll be madly jealous of me like
Major Clowes--you are like him: you could be just as brutal: and I'm
not like Laura--and you'll lure me out of England and wreak a
mysterious vengeance."
"I wish we were out of England now."
"So do I. Oh Lawrence, I'd sell my soul to go to Egypt!"
"Red-hot days and blue sands in the moonlight. Shall I take you
there for our honeymoon?"
"Or Spain: or Sicily: or what about Majorea?-- Let's slip off
alone in a nom de plume and an aeroplane to some place where no
one ever goes, all roses and lemon thyme and honey-coloured
cliffs and a bay of blue sea--"
"Should you like to be alone with me?"
"Yes ... why not?"
"Good!" said Hyde laughing. "I see no reason if you don't." He
put his hand before his eyes, which were throbbing as though he
had looked too long at a bright light. But Isabel pulled down
his wrist. "Don't do that. I like to watch your eyes. I allow
no reserves, Lawrence. And isn't it rather too late to lock the
door? I've seen you--"
"Isabel!" He freed himself and stood up. "I beg your pardon, but
you must not-- I can't stand--" His face was burning. Isabel had
not realized--it is difficult for a young girl to realize,
convinced of her own insignificance--how deeply his pride had
been cut overnight, but she was under no delusion now. He was
hot with shame and anger, and had to wait to fight them down
before he could go on. "Nineteen are you--or nine? I can't
play with you today. Make allowance for me, dearest! I'm in a
most difficult position. I've done incalculable mischief, and,
to tell you the truth, I shouldn't have chosen to raise this
subject again till I'm clear of it. Your people may very fairly
object. My cousin is threatening a divorce action. He's mad:
and no decent lawyer would take his case into court: but the fact
remains that poor Laura has been turned out of doors, and for
that I am, in myself-centred carelessness, to blame. You won't
misunderstand me, will you, if I say that while this abominable
business is hanging over me we can't be formally engaged? Val
must be told--nothing would induce me to keep him in the dark
for an hour. But for all that I shan't know how to face him.
What! ask him for you, and in the same breath tell him that Laura
has been turned adrift because I've compromised her? If I were Val
there'd be the devil and all to pay. In the meantime I must--I
must be sure of you. But you change like the wind: last night you
refused me, and to-day . . ." He walked over to the window and stood
looking out into the garden, fighting down one of those tremendous
storms of memory which swept over him from time to time and made the
present seem absolutely one with the past.
"What's the matter?"
He turned, but his voice was thick. "Last time I trusted a woman
she betrayed me."
"You're thinking of your wife."
"I often think of her," Hyde said savagely, "and wonder if all
women are tarred with the same brush."
"Oh, that is brutal," said Isabel, paling: "but you're tired
out."
It was true, he was too tired to rest: heartsick and ashamed,
painfully aware of the immense harm he had done and uncertain how
to mend it. This sense of guilt was the more harassing because
he was not in the habit of regretting his actions, good or bad:
but now he could no longer fling off responsibility: it was
riveted on him by all the other emotions which Wanhope had
evoked, pity for Bernard, and affection for Laura, and humility
before Val.
Among the lilacs a robin was singing his delicate and bold
welcome to autumn, and over the window a branch of red roses
nodded persistently and rhythmically in a draught of wind.
Lawrence stood looking out into the garden of which he saw
nothing, and Isabel, watching him, felt tears coming into her own
eyes, the tears of that unnerving pity which a woman feels for
the man she loves, when she has never before seen him in defeat
or depression. No wonder he thought her fickle! How could he
read what was dark to her?
Isabel had not deliberately altered her mind in the night. She
had lain down free and risen up bond, waking from sound sleep,
the sleep of a child, to find that the silent inner Court of
Appeal had reversed her verdict while she slept. Her first
thought had been, "I'm going to marry Lawrence!" For he needed
her: that was what she had forgotten last night: by his parade of
wealth he had defeated his own ends, but, her first anger over,
she had realized that one should no more refuse a man for being
rich, than accept him. Far other were the grounds on which that
decision had to be made. It had been pity that carried Isabel
away. Perhaps in any case she could not have held out for long.
Did she expect to be happy? Scarcely, for she did not trust him
enough to be frank with him. Sophisticated men soon tire of candid
women: it was in this faith that Isabel had clouded herself in such
an iridescence of mystery and coquetry, laughing when she felt more
inclined to cry, eluding Lawrence when she would rather have rested
in his arms. Roses and steel: innocence in a saffron scarf:
ascendancy won and held only by surrender: such was to be the life of
the woman who married Lawrence Hyde, as she had seen it long ago on a
June evening, and as, with some necessary failings for human
weakness, she carried it out to the end. If any moralities at all
were to be fulfilled in their union, it was for her to impose them,
for Hyde had none. Within the limits of his code of honour he would
simply do as he liked. And with nine-tenths of her nature Isabel
would have liked nothing better than to shut her eyes and yield to
him as all her life she had yielded to Val, for she too loved red
roses and sunshine and the pleasure of the senses: but her innermost
self, the warder of her will, would rather have died than yield, she
the child of an ascetic and trained in Val's simple code of duty.
But there should be compromise: one must not--one need not--cheat
him of the pride of his manhood. Isabel's heart ached for
her lover. She could not defend herself against him any longer,
and in her yielding the warder of her will whispered, "You may
yield now. Not to be frank with him now would be unfair as well
as unkind."
She came softly to him in the window, and instantly by some
change of tension Lawrence discovered to his delight that Circe
had vanished. His mistress was his own now, a girl of nineteen
who had promised to be his wife, and he was carried beyond doubt
or anger by the rush of tenderness which went over him when he
began to taste the sweetness of his victory. "Have I won you?"
he whispered, his voice as unsteady as a boy's in his first
passion. "You won't fail me?"
"Oh never! never!"
"You have the most beautiful eyes in the world. I believe one
reason why I always secretly liked Val was that his eyes reminded
me of yours. I can't stand it when he looks at me under your
eyelashes. I always want to say 'Here take it Val.'"
"Take what?"
"Anything he wants. I'm going to extend a protecting wing over
my young brother-in-law. He shall not, no, I swear he shall not
come to grief. I can't stand it, he's too like you. When did you
first fall in love with me?"
"When did you?"
"The night you went to sleep in the garden at Wanhope."
"Oh! when you kissed me?"
"When I--?"
Isabel was speechless.
"How do you know I kissed you, Isabel? I thought you were
asleep."
"So I was," said Isabel, blushing deeply. "Oh! Captain Hyde, I
wasn't pretending! But I woke up directly after, and heard a
rustling in the wood, and I--I knew, don't ask me: I could feel
-"
"This?"
"Yes," Isabel murmured, resigning herself.
"How strange!" said Lawrence under his breath. "You were asleep
and you felt me kiss you?"
She looked up at him through her eyelashes. "Is that so strange?"
"Rather: because I never did kiss you."
"Not?"
"No: I bent over you to do it, but you were so defenceless and so
young, I didn't dare.-- Isabel! my darling! what have I done?"
The first days of love are supposed to be blind days, but too
often they are days of overstrained criticism, when from very
fear each sees slips and imperfections even where they do not
exist. The discovery that she had misjudged Hyde was an
exquisite joy to Isabel. This trivial, crucial scruple, of
morality or taste, whichever one liked to call it, was the sign
of a chastity of mind which could coexist, it seemed, with the
coarse and careless sins that he had never denied. After all no
marriage on earth is perfect, and husbands as well as wives have
to make allowances; but as years go on, and affection does its
daily work, the rubs are less and less felt, till the time comes
when deeper wisdom can look back smiling on the fears of youth.
Isabel at nineteen did not possess this wisdom but she had youth
itself.
The flames crackled low on the hearth: the wind, a small autumn
wind, piped weakly round white wall and high chimneypot: outside
in the garden late roses were shedding their petals loosened by a
touch of frost in the night. "Tears because you mistrusted me?"
said Hyde in his soft voice. "But why should the Gentile maiden
trust a Jew?"