It was one March evening six mouths later, one of those warm,
still, sunshot-and-grey March evenings when elm-root are blue
with violets and the air is full of the faint indeterminate scent
of tree flowers, that Lawrence brought his bride home to
Farringay. March weather is uncertain, and he preferred to go
where he could be sure of comfort, while Isabel, having once
consented to be married, left all arrangements to him. It was
eight o'clock before they reached the house, and Isabel never
forgot the impression which it made on her when she came in out
of the bloomy twilight; warm and dim and smelling of violets that
were set about in bowls on bookcase and cabinet, while the flames
of an immense wood fire on an open hearth flickered over the blue
and rose of porcelain or the oakleaf and gold of morocco. She
stood in the middle of an ocean of polished floor and looked
round her as if she had lost her way in it, till Lawrence came to
her and kissed her hands. "Isabel, do you like the look of your
new home?"
"Very much. Thank you."
"May I take off your furs for you?" Getting no answer he took
them off. Framed in the sable cap and scarf that Yvonne had
given her Isabel still parted her hair on one side, a fashion
which Lawrence had grown to admire immensely, but her young
throat and the fine straight masque of her features were thin and
she had lost much of her colour since the autumn. Lawrence held
her by the wrists and stood looking down at her, compelling her
to raise her eyes, though they soon fell again with a flutter of
the sensitive eyelids. "Are you tired, sweetheart?"
"Oh no, thank you."
"Cold?"
"Not now."
"Frightened?"
"A little."
"You wouldn't rather I left you for a little while?"
Isabel almost imperceptibly shook her head, but with a shade of
mockery in her smile which prevented Lawrence from taking her in
his arms. "Am I an unsatisfactory wife? Will you soon be tired
of me? No, not yet," she said, moving away from him to put down
her gloves and muff. "I've hardly had time to thank you for my
presents yet. Oh Lawrence, how you spoil me!" She held up her
watch to admire the lettering on its Roman enamel. "'I.H.' Does
that stand for me--am I really Isabel Hyde? And are those
sapphires mine, and can I drink my tea out of this roseleaf
Dresden cup? It does seem strange that saying a few words and
writing one's name in a book should make so much difference."
"Regretful?"
"A little oppressed, that's all. I shall soon get used to it.
If you were not you I should hate it. But there's something
essentially generous and careless in you, Lawrence, that makes it
easy to take from you. Come here." He came to her. "Oh, I've
made you blush!" said Isabel, naively surprised. Under her rare
and unexpected praise he had coloured against his will. "Oh
foolish one!" She kissed him sweetly. "Lawrence, are you sorry
Val died?" Lawrence freed himself and turned away. It was six
months since Val's death, but he still could not bear to think of
it and he had scarcely spoken of it to Isabel.
There had been no protracted farewell for Val. He had died in
Lawrence's arms on the steps of Wanhope without recovering
consciousness, while Verney stood by helpless, and Isabel, by a
stroke of irony, tried to convince poor agonized Laura Clowes
that the law should not touch her husband. It had not done so.
He had been saved mainly by the unscrupulous concerted perjury of
Lawrence and Selincourt, who swore that Val had stumbled and
fallen by accident with the dagger in his hand, while Verney
confined himself to drily agreeing that the wound might have been
self-inflicted. In the absence of any contrary evidence the lie
was allowed to pass, but perhaps it would hardly have done so if
it had not been universally taken for a half-truth. The day
before the inquest there appeared in the Gazette a laconic notice
that Second Lieutenant Valentine Ormsby Stafford, late of the
Dorchester Regiment, had been deprived of his distinction on
account of circumstances recently brought to light. After that,
no need to ask why Val should have had a dagger in his hand! A
jury who had known Val and his father before him were not anxious
to press the case; and perhaps even the coroner was secretly
grateful for evidence which spared him the pain of calling Mr.
Stafford.
Except in Chilmark, the scandal scarcely ran its nine days, but
there of course it raged like a fire, and no one was much
surprised when the vicar resigned his living and crept away to a
bed-sittingroom in Museum Street, a broken old man, to spend the
brief remainder of his life among black letter texts and
incunabula. He could have borne any sin in the Decalogue less
hardly than a breach of the military oath. He stopped Isabel,
Rowsley, Lawrence himself when they tried to plead for Val. "I
am not angry," he said feebly. "If my son were alive I wouldn't
shut my door on him. But it's better as it is." He even tried to
persuade Isabel to break with Lawrence. "Captain Hyde is an
honourable man and no doubt considers himself bound to you, so
you mustn't wait for him to release himself. It is very sad for
you, my dear, but you belong to a disgraced family now and you
must suffer with the rest of us." Isabel agreed, and returned
her engagement ring. Followed a rather fiery scene, in which
Lawrence lost his temper, and Isabel wept: and finally Mr.
Stafford, finding Lawrence obdurate, broke down and owned that
his one last wish was to see his daughter happily married. He
refused to take her to Bloomsbury. She stayed with Rowsley or at
the Castle till Lawrence brought her to Farringay.
So there were changes at Chilmark, for the parish went to a
hot-tempered Welshman with a wife and six children, and Wanhope was
let to an American steel magnate, and Mrs. Jack Bendish, always
mischievous when she was unhappy, embroiled them with each other
first and then quarrelled with both. Yes, Wanhope was let: a
fortnight after Val's death Major Clowes went by car to Cornwall
with his wife for a change of air after the shock. He was
reported to have stood the journey very well, but Laura's letters
were not expansive.
Nor was Isabel: nor any other of those who had been eyewitnesses
of the tragedy at Wanhope. The memory of it cast a shadow and a
silence. Lawrence had never discussed it with Isabel; nor with
Selincourt, except in a hurried whispered interchange of notes to
avoid discrepancy in their evidence; nor with Bernard . . . the
murderer. Since the night when he carried Val dead over the
vicarage threshold Lawrence had not seen his cousin. He had seen
Laura and tried to comfort her, but what could one say? It was
murder. Had it not been for Laura he would have left Clowes to
stand his trial. Even for her sake he would not have kept the
secret if Rowsley, to whom alone it was revealed, had not given
his leave, in the dim blinded room where revenge and anger seemed
small things, and Val's last words, almost unremarked at the
time, took on the solemn force of a dying injunction. The grey
placidity of Val's closed eyelids and crossed hands was the last
memory that Lawrence would have chosen to evoke on his wedding
night.
"Come and get warm," said Isabel. She saw that she had startled
and distressed her husband, and she drew him down into an immense
armchair by the fire, a man's chair, spacious and soft. "Is
there room for me too?" She slipped into it beside him and threw
her arms round his neck. Lawrence held her lightly and
passively. Not once during their engagement had she so
surrendered herself to him for more than a moment, and he dared
not take advantage of his opportunities for fear of losing her
again. But Isabel smiled at him with shut eyes. "All my heart,"
she murmured; "don't be afraid, I'm not going to slip through
your fingers now . . . I love you too, too much . . . Val would
say it was wrong to care so much for any one."
Val again! Lawrence lifted her eyelashes with his finger.
"Isabel, why are you haunted by Val now? I don't want you to
think of any one but me."
"Are you jealous of the dead?"
"Not I!" his voice rang out harsh with passion: "with you in my
arms why should I be jealous of any one in heaven or earth?"
"Val would say that was wrong too. . . . Lawrence, do you
remember your first wedding night?"
"Well enough."
"Was Lizzie beautiful?"
"I thought so then. She was a tall, well-made piece: black hair,
blue eyes, buxom and plenty of colour. I was shy of her because--
it's a curious fact--she was my first experience of your sex:
but she was not shy with me, though I believe she too was--
technically--innocent. Even at the time I was conscious of
something wanting--some grace, some reserve, some economy of
effect. She was of a coming-on disposition, very amorous and
towardly."
"Val would call that coarse."
"Probably. Do you object? You asked for it."
"Not a bit. I don't mind your telling me any thing that's a
fact. Bad thoughts are different, but facts, good or bad, coarse
or refined, are the stuff the world's made of, and why should we
shut our eyes to them? I like to take life as it comes without
expurgation. Lawrence, Lizzie never had any children, did she?"
"By me?"
"Yes."
"No, our married life didn't last long. I should have warned you,
my dear, if I had had any responsibilities of that description."
"So you would--I forgot that." Isabel lay silent a moment,
nestling her closed eyelids against his throat. "Lawrence, my
darling, I don't want to hurt you; but tell me, did she have any
children after she left you?"
"Yes--one, a boy: Rendell's."
"What became of him after Rendell died?"
"When it became impossible to leave him with Lizzie I sent him to
school. He spends his holidays with my agent here at Farringay.
He's quite a nice little chap, and good looking, like Arther, and
by the gossip of the neighbourhood I'm supposed to be his father.
Do you mind leaving it at that? It's no worse for him and less
ignominious for me."
"Nothing in what I've heard of your married life is ignominious
for you. So you brought up Rendell's child? Essentially generous
. . . . Kiss me." Isabel's pale beauty glowed like a flame. A
Christian malagre lui and very much ashamed of it, Lawrence gave
her the lightest of butterfly kisses, one on either eyelid. "Oh,
I suppose you'll say I am--what was it?--towardly too,"
murmured Isabel. "Don't you want to kiss me?" He shook his head.
Isabel, a trifle startled, opened her eyes, but was apparently
satisfied, for she shut them again hurriedly and let her arm fall
across them. "We'll go and see Rendell's boy tomorrow. You
shall take me. I can say what I like to you now, can't I? . . .
Shall you like to have one of our own?"
"Isabel, Isabel!"
"But it's perfectly proper now we're married! Oh Lawrence, it'll
so soon come to seem commonplace-- I want to taste the
strangeness of it while I'm still near enough to Isabel Stafford
to realize what a miracle it'll be. Our own! it seems so strange
to say 'ours.'"
"I don't want any brats to come between you and me."
"Aren't you always in your secret soul afraid of life?"
"Afraid of life--I?"
"You have no faith . . . Everything we possess--your happiness,
our love, the children you'll give me--don't you hold it all at
the sword's point? You're afraid of death or change?"
"Yes."
"How frank you are!" Isabel smiled fleetingly. "Aren't there any
locked doors?--no?--I may go wherever I like ?--Lawrence, are
you sorry Val's dead?"
"Oh, for heaven's sake, not Val again!"
"One locked door after all?"
"I was fond of him," said Lawrence with difficult passion. "He
told me once that I broke his life, it was no one's doing but
mine that he had to go through the crucifixion of that last hour
at Wanhope, and he was killed for me." He left her and went to
the window, flung it up and stood looking out into the night.
"I'd have given my life to save him. I'd give it now--now."
"I heard from Laura this morning."
"I wonder she dared write to you."
"Major Clowes is wonderfully better. He drives out with her
every day and mixes with other people in the sanatorium and makes
friends with them. He's been sleeping better than he has ever
done since his accident."
"Good God!"
"He has been having a new massage treatment, and there's just a
faint hope that some day he may be able to get about on
crutches."
Lawrence had an inclination to laugh. "That's enough," he said,
shuddering. "I don't want to hear any more."
"She sent a message to you."
"Well, give it to me, then."
"'Don't let Lawrence suppose that Bernard has gone unpunished.'"
"He should have stood his trial," said Lawrence thickly. "It was
murder."
He understood all that Laura's laconic message implied. Bernard
reformed was Bernard broken by remorse: if he had shot himself--
which was what Lawrence had anticipated--he would have deserved
less pity. Yet Lawrence would have liked some swifter and less
subtle form of punishment.
Out of doors in the garden an owl was hooting and the night air
breathed on him its perfume of lilac and violets. How quiet it
was and how fragrant and dim! one could scarcely distinguish
between the dewy glimmer of turf and the dark island-like
thickets of guelder-rose and other flowering shrubs. It was one
of those late spring nights that are full of the promise of
summer; but for Val there were no summers to come. His death had
been as quiet as his life and without any struggle; his head on
Lawrence's arm, he had stretched himself out with a little sigh,
and was gone. Lawrence with his keen physical memory could still
feel that light burden leaning on him. Isabel too had memories
she was afraid of, the watch ticking on the dead man's wrist was
one of them. Many tears had been shed for Val, some very bitter
ones by Yvonne Bendish, but none by Lawrence or by Isabel. It
was murder: a flash of devil's lightning, that withered where it
struck.
Isabel turned in her chair to watch her husband. He had brought
her straight into the drawingroom without staying to remove his
leathern driving coat, which set off his big frame and the
drilled flatness of his shoulders; everything he wore or used was
expensive and fashionable. There came on her suddenly the
impression of being shut up alone with a stranger, a man of whom
she knew nothing except that in upbringing and outlook he was
entirely different from her and her family. The room seemed
immense and Hyde was at the other end of it. Suddenly he turned
and came striding back to Isabel. Her instinct was to defend
herself. She checked it and kept still, her arms and hands
thrown out motionless along the arms of the chair in which her
slight figure was lying in perfect repose. Lawrence tenderly
took her head between his finger-tips and kissed her mouth.
"Why did you raise a ghost you can't lay?" he said. "My cousin
killed your brother." Isabel smiled at him without moving. Her
eyes were mysteriously full of light. Lawrence knelt down and
threw his arms round her waist and let his head fall against her
bosom. What strength there was in this immature personality
neither yielded nor withdrawn! Lawrence was entirely disarmed
and subdued. He uttered a deep sigh and gave up to Isabel with
the simplicity of a child the secret of his tormented restlessness.
"I am unhappy, Isabel."
"I know you are, my darling, and that's why I raised the ghost.
What is it troubles you?"
"My own guilt. I never knew what remorse meant before, but your
Christian ethics have mastered me this time. I had no right to
extract that promise from Val."
"No. Why did you? It seems so motiveless."
"Because it amused me to get a man into my power." Isabel felt
him shuddering. "Is this what you call the sense of sin? I used
to hear it described as a theological fiction. But it tears
one's heart out. Bernard killed him: but who put the weapon into
Bernard's hand?"
"Val did."
"I don't understand you."
"The original fault was Val's, and you and Major Clowes were
entangled in the consequences of it. Let us two face the truth
once and for all! Val can stand it--can't you, Val? . . . He
broke his military oath. He deserved a sharp stinging punishment,
and if you had reported him he would have had it; perhaps a worse one
than you exacted, except for that last awful hour at Wanhope, and for
that Major Clowes, not you, was responsible. Oh, I won't say he
deserved precisely what he got! because judgment ought to be
dispassionate, and in yours there was an element of cruelty for
cruelty's sake; wasn't there? You half enjoyed it and half shivered
under it . . ."
"More than half enjoyed it," said Hyde under his breath.
"But I do not believe that was your only motive. I think you
were sorry for Val. Haven't I seen you watching him at Wanhope?
with such a strange half-unwilling pity, as if you hated yourself
for it. Oh Lawrence, it's for that I love you!" Lawrence shook
his head. He had never been able to analyse the complex of
feelings that had determined his attitude to Val. "Well, in any
case it was not your fault only. A coward is an irresistible
temptation to a bully."
"Do you call Val a coward? Nervous collapses were not so
uncommon as you may have gathered from the Daily Mail."
"Did Major Clowes describe the scene truthfully?"
"Yes."
"Did you ever break down like Val?"
"I was older."
"There were plenty of boys of nineteen, officers and men. Did
you ever know such another case so complete, so prolonged?"
"I've commanded a firing party."
"For cowardice?"
"For cowardice."
"A worse exhibition than Val's?"
"Isabel, you are pitiless!"
"Because Val deserves justice not mercy. It's his due: he died
to earn it."
Hyde was silent, not thoroughly understanding her.
"He wasn't a coward when he died," said Isabel with her sweet
half melancholy smile. "He fought under a heavy handicap, and
won: he paid his debt, paid it to the last farthing; and now do
you grudge him his sleep? 'He hates him, that would upon the
rack of this tough world stretch him out longer. . . .'" Her
beautiful voice dropped to a murmur which was almost lost in the
rustling of flames on the hearth and the stir of wind among
budded branches in the garden.
The clock struck ten and Lawrence raised his head. "It's growing
late, Isabel. Aren't you tired?"
"A little. I got up at five to say good-bye to all the animals."
"All the--?"
"My cocks and hens and Val's mare and Dodor and Zou-zou and
Rowsley's old rabbits. They're at the Castle, don't you
remember? Jack Bendish offered to take charge of them when we
turned out of the vicarage."
"I hope you put your pinafore on," said her husband.
He took her by the hands and raised her to her feet, and Isabel
with irreproachable docility began to collect her scattered
belongings, her sable scarf and mull and veil. Lawrence
forestalled her. "Mayn't I even carry my own gloves?" Isabel
pleaded. "No, you're so slow," said Lawrence laughing down at
her. Isabel's cheeks flew their scarlet flag before the invading
enemy. "Isabel," Lawrence murmured, "are you shy of me?"
"A little. I'm only twenty," Isabel excused herself.
"And I'm not gentle. I shall brush the bloom off. . . . Yet I
love the bloom."
He went to close the window. A breath of night wind shook
through the bushes on the lawn and blew off a snow of petals
through the soft air. He was not a believer in the immortality
of the soul, but tonight he would have given much to know that
Val was near him, a spirit of smiling tenderness. But no: the
night was empty of everything except moonlight and petals and the
sighing of wind over diapered turf. Youth passes, and beauty, and
bloom: it is of the essence of their sweetness that they cannot
last. Yet, while they last, how sweet they are!