Nightfall Part 13

The moon dipped lower over the trees while Lawrence took one of his sharp turns of self-a.n.a.lysis. Most men live in a haze, but Lawrence was naturally a clear thinker, and he had neither a warm heart nor a sentimental temperament to blind him. Cleve was safe: but with his Rabelaisian candour and cultivated want of scruple Lawrence reflected that Cleve had been anything but safe at Bingley. Whence the change? From Isabel Stafford! Lawrence shrugged his shoulders: he was accustomed to examine himself in a dry light of curiosity, and no vice or weakness shocked him, but here was pure folly.

What was he doing at Wanhope? "I'm contracting attachments," he reflected, unb.u.t.toning his silk jacket to feel the night air cool on his chest, a characteristic action: wind, suns.h.i.+ne, a wandering scent, the freshness of dew, all the small sensuous pleasures that most men neglect, Lawrence would go out of his way to procure. "I'm breaking my rule." Long ago he had resolved never to let himself get fond of any one again, because in this world of chance and change, at the mercy of a blindly striking power, the game is not worth the candle: one suffers too much.

As for Miss Stafford, one need not be a professed stole to draw the line at a little country girl, pious to insipidity and simple to the brink of silliness. Here Lawrence, not being one of those who deny facts when they are unwelcome, caught himself up: she was not insipid and her power over him was undeniable. Twice within forty-eight hours she had defeated his will, and what was stranger was that each time he had surrendered eagerly, feeling for the moment as though it didn't matter what he said or did before Isabel.--It was at this point of his a.n.a.lysis that Lawrence began to take fright. "You rascal," he said to himself, "so that's why you're off Mrs. Cleve, is it? What is it you want--to marry the child? You would be sick to death of her in six weeks--and haven't you had enough of giving hostages to Fortune?"

Hostages to fortune: that pregnant phrase frightens men who fear nothing else in heaven or earth. But not one of Hyde's friends knew that he had ever given fortune a hostage. He was not reserved as a rule: indeed he was always willing to argue creed and code with a frankness rare in the self-conscious English race: he was never shy and there was little in him that was distinctively English. But he was too subtle and inconsistent for the average h.o.m.ogeneous Englishman, and not even the comrades of trench and tent knew much about his private life. Lawrence was one of those products of a high civilization which have in them pretty strong affinities with barbarism,--but always with a difference. The n.o.ble savage tortures his enemy out of hate or revenge: Lawrence, more sophisticated in brutality, was capable of doing it by way of a psychological experiment. The savage takes a short cut from desire to possession: Lawrence though his blood ran hot curbed it from caution, because in modern life women are a burden and a drag.

This was the trained and tempered Lawrence Hyde, a personage of great good humour and numitigable egoism. This was the companion of easy morals with whom Lawrence was on familiar terms. But on that first white night at Wanhope Lawrence grew dimly aware of the upheaval of deeper forces, as if his youth were stirring in its grave. When Laura Clowes smiled at him with her gallant bearing: when Bernard gripped his hand in wis.h.i.+ng him good night: when Val in the middle of the psychological experiment pierced him with his grave tired eyes, all sorts of feelings long dormant and believed to be dead came to life in Lawrence: pity, and affection, and remorse and shame. "Hang the fellow!" Lawrence reflected. "He's too like his sister. And Isabel? She is a child." Whose voice was it that answered, "This is the woman I have been waiting for all my life?"

And then, turning at bay, he came to a sufficiently cynical conclusion. "No nonsense!" he said to himself. "Your trouble is that she's twenty and you're six and thirty, which is a dangerous age. But you don't want to marry her, and there's no middle course. Fruit defendu, mon ami: hands off! If you can't be sensible you'll have to s.h.i.+ft out of Wanhope and compromise on Mrs. Cleve."

The rain held off, and after breakfast--a cheery meal at which Bernard for the first time for many months appeared dressed and in a good temper--Lawrence fulfilled the main duty of a guest by going for a walk.

He came by footbridge and field path into the High Street, where he was immediately b.u.t.tonholed by the vicar. Lawrence had a fixed idea that all priests were hypocrites: they must be, since as educated men they could not well believe the fables they were paid to teach! But it was hard to a.s.sociate hypocrisy with Mr.

Stafford, whose fond ambition it was to nail Lawrence Hyde to lecture on his Chinese travels before the Bible Cla.s.s. "Oh, nothing religious," he explained, holding his victim firmly by the coat as Lawrence edged away. "Only half an hour's story-telling to put a few new ideas into their heads--as if you were talking to a young brother of your own. I'm always trying to get them to emigrate, but they need a great deal of shoving." Lawrence said they could not emigrate to China, and, further, that he didn't regard them as brothers. "How narrow you are, some of you University men!" sighed Mr. Stafford.

"What a concept of society! But," brightening, "you're not so bad as you're painted. Come, come! a fifth-of-August recruit can't very well deny that we're all brothers in arms?" Before Lawrence escaped he was not sure that he hadn't pledged himself to an address on "Fringes of the Empire," with special reference to the C.U.M.C.A.

It was too sunny to fish, but the trout lured him, and from the cross-roads by the stone bridge he struck into a footpath that led upstream into the hills, behind whose green spurs Chilmark before long was out of sight. Here it was lonely country.

Sometimes on a headland the sun flashed white over a knot of labourers, scything the hay where no machine could go: sometimes a shepherd's cote gleamed far off above the pale wattlings of a fold: but as he wound on--and on into the Plain there was no sign of man in all the hot landscape, and no motion but the bicker of the stream over its stony bed, and the hum of insect life busy on its millions of dark and tiny vibrant wings. Not a breath of wind stirred among these gra.s.sy valleys, and Lawrence, feeling warm, had sat down by a pool under a sapling birchtree, when he heard a step on the path. It was Isabel Stafford.

He had hardly seen her again overnight, for Val had carried his young sister away before ten o'clock. He waited for her in the rare shadow of the birchtree, a tall powerful figure in a white drill suit of the tropics, his fair skin and black eyes shaded by a wide Panama hat. Isabel as she drew near was vexed to find herself blus.h.i.+ng. She was a little shy of Captain Hyde, a little averse to meet his sparkling eyes.

"Isn't it hot?" she said, frankly wiping her face with a large handkerchief. "This is a favourite pool of mine, I often sit here when I come this way. I never saw such beautiful dragonflies, did you? They must be nearly as big as hummingbirds."

Over the brown mirror of the pool a troop of great dragonflies were ceaselessly darting to and fro, their metallic wings making a faint whirr as they looped in blinding mazes through the air that glowed blue with their splendour. "Very beautiful," said Lawrence.

"Are you out for a walk? I'm on my way to Wancote." Here panic fell on Isabel, the panic that lies in wait for young girls: if he were to think she thought he ought to offer to escort her!

"I'm late, I must go on now. Good-bye!"

Lawrence stood looking down at her, impa.s.sive, almost sombre, but for the hot glow in his eyes. His caution had gone overboard.

"Mayn't I come too?"

"Oh. . . ."

"Do let me."

"If you--if you like."

The valley narrowed as it receded, the upland air began to sparkle with a myriad prismatic needles that glittered from the wings of flies and beetles, and from dewdrops on patches of turf still as grey as h.o.a.rfrost in the shadow on the edge of a wood, and from wayside hollies whose leaf-points were all starred in silver. The blue bow overhead was stainless, not a cloud in it nor a mist: azure, azure, and unfathomable, like the heart of man, or the justice of G.o.d.--Isabel was not shy now but alert and radiant, as if she had caught a sparkle from the air: and expansive, as women are when they are sure of pleasing. "'For the jaded man of the world at her side, the young girl's rustic freshness was her chief charm. She was so different from the beautiful but heartless mondaines he had known in Town. No diamonds glittered round her slender throat, and her hands, though small and well-shaped, were tanned by the summer sun. But for the jaded-man-of-the-world, weary of sparkling epigram or caustic repartee, her simple chatter held a fascination of its own.' I don't believe," reflected Isabel, coming down mentally to plain prose, "he'd mind if I talked to him about the dinner or last week's was.h.i.+ng bill."

She did not in fact enter on any such intimate topic, but conversed sedately about parish politics and the beauties of the Plain. "This is a very lonely part," she said, "there are scarcely any houses. I'm taking the magazine to one of Major Clowes' shepherds. It's rather interesting going there. He's mad."

"Mad!"

"As a March hare. He's perfectly harmless of course, and an excellent shepherd. In lambing time he looks after the ewes like a mother, Val says his flock hardly ever lose a lamb. But he's a thrilling person to district-visit. Last time I went he had the Prince of Wales staying with him."

"Why on earth don't they put him in an asylum?"

"Do you know much about country villages?" Isabel enquired. "I thought not. They never put any one in an asylum till after he's got into trouble, and not always then if he doesn't want to go: just as they never build a bridge over a level crossing till one or two people have been killed. We had a woman in Chilmark that was much madder than poor dear Ben is. She took a knife out of her drawer once when I was there and told me she was going to cut her throat with it. She made me feel the edge to see how sharp it was. At last she cut the children's throats instead of her own, and then they put her away, but none of them died and she's out again now. She's supposed to be cured. You see a County asylum doesn't keep people longer than it must because the money comes out of the rates."

"Do you mean to say," Lawrence fastened on the point that struck him most forcibly, "that your father lets you go to such places by yourself?"

"Oh yes: why not? He would think it showed want of faith to prevent me. He's very sensible about things like that," said Isabel without affectation. "There are always typhoid and diphtheria about in the autumn, but Jimmy never fusses. It wouldn't be much use if he did, with him and Val always in and out of infected houses."

"Pure fatalism--" said Lawrence, hitting with his stick at the flowers by their path. "Your brother ought to put his foot down--" Isabel seized his arm.

"Take care!-- There was a bee in it. You really are most careless Captain Hyde! I shan't take you for any more walks if you do that. I dare say it was one of my own bees, and he had the very narrowest escape! And Val wouldn't dream of interfering.

Ben and I are the best of friends. Besides, it's Mrs. Janaway I really go to see, poor dear, she don't ever hear a bit o' news from week's end to week's end. Wouldn't you be glad to see me," her eyes were dest.i.tute of challenge but not of humour, "if you lived three miles deep in the Plain, alone with your husband and the Prince of Wales?"

"I should be delighted to see you at any time."

Isabel, not knowing what to do with this speech, let it alone.

"And the dog: I mustn't forget the dog. They have a thoroughbred Great Dane. Mr. Bendish gave Ben the puppy because it was the worst of the litter and they thought it would die: but it didn't die--no animal does that Ben gets hold of--and he's too fond of it now to part with it, though a dog fancier from Amesbury has offered him practically his own price for it."

"I should like to see the Dane."

"Well, you will, if you come with me. There's the cottage."

They had turned a bend and the head of the dale lay before them, a mere dimpling depression between b.r.e.a.s.t.s of chalky gra.s.s. Set close by the way on a cross-track, which forded the brook by stepping stones and went on over the downs to Amesbury, stood a small, square, tumbledown cottage, its door opening on primeval turf, though behind it a plot of garden enclosed in a quickset hedge provided Mrs. Janaway with cabbages and gooseberries and sour apples and room to hang out the clothes.

"Ben won't be in, but Billy will be looking after Clara. Billy is no good with the sheep, but he's death on tramps. In fact if I weren't here it wouldn't be too safe for you to go to the door.

A Dane can pull any man down: I've heard even Jack Bendish say he wouldn't care to tackle him--"

Even Jack Bendis.h.!.+ Lawrence smiled. He felt the p.r.i.c.k of Isabel's blade, it amused him, automatically he reacted to it, she made him want to fight the Dane first and Jack Bendish afterwards--but he retained just too much of the ascendancy of his six and thirty years to gratify her by self-betrayal.

"You're a very brave young lady," he said cheerfully, "but if I were Val--"

He stopped short. From the cottage window, now not twenty yards off, there had come a burst of the most appalling screams he had ever heard in his life, the mechanical screaming of mortal agony.

Isabel went as white as chalk and even Hyde felt the blood turn cold at his heart. Next moment the door was torn open and out of it came a big red-bearded man, dressed in a brown tweed jacket and velveteen trousers tied at the knees, and prancing high in a solemn jig. In one hand he held up an iron stake and in the other a rag of red and black carpet . . . the body of a woman in a black dress, her arms and legs hanging down, her face a scarlet mask that had ceased to scream.

"Keep back, Isabel," said Lawrence: then, running across the turf, "Drop that, Janaway! drop her!" in the hard authoritative voice of the barrack square. With the fitful docility of the mad, Janaway obeyed, and directly he did so Lawrence checked and stood on the defensive, taking a moment to collect his wits--he had need of them: he had to make his head guard his hands. He was a tall powerful man, but so was the shepherd: to offset Hyde's science, Janaway was mad and would be stopped by no punishment short of a knock-out blow: and Lawrence carried only an ordinary walking-stick, while Janaway had hold of an upright from a bit of iron railing, five feet long and barbed like a spear.

"If he whacks me over the head with that or jabs it into my stomach, I'm done," Lawrence thought, and pat to the moment Janaway, his mouth open and his teeth bare, rushed on him and struck at his eyes. Lawrence parried and sprang aside: but his arm was jarred to the elbow. "That was a close call. Ha! my chance now . . ." Like a flash, as Janaway turned, Lawrence ran in to meet him body to body, seized him by the lapels of his coat, pinned down his arms, set one foot against his thigh, and with no great exertion of strength, by the Samurai's trick of falling with one's enemy, heaved him up and shot him clean over his own shoulder: then, as they dropped together, struck with his wrist a paralysing blow at the base of the spine. Janaway's yell of fury was choked into a rattling groan.

Lawrence was up in a twinkling, but the shepherd lay where he had fallen, and Lawrence let him lie: he knew that, so handled, the victim could be counted out of action, perhaps for good and all.

He stood erect, breathing deep. Ben could wait, but what of Mrs.

Ben? He was shocked to find Isabel already at her side on the reddened turf.

Mechanically Lawrence picked up his stick before he went to join her. Clara was huddled up over a pool of blood, her head between her knees: not a pleasant sight for a young girl. But Isabel, though white and trembling, was collected. "I can't feel her heart, I--I'm afraid--"

She broke off. Her glance had travelled beyond Lawrence and her features were stiffening into a mask of fear. "Oh, the dog, the dog!" she pointed past him. "Billy, Billy, down, sir!"

From some eyrie on the hillside the Dane had watched without emotion the legitimate spectacle of his master beating his mistress: in the war of the s.e.xes, a dog is ever on the man's side. But when the tables were turned Billy went to the rescue.

He was coming round the corner of the cottage when Isabel caught sight of him, travelling in great bounds at the pace of a wolf, but silent. Lawrence had but just time to swing Isabel behind him before the Dane leapt for his throat. Lawrence struck him over the head, but the blow glanced: so sudden, so thundering came the impact that Lawrence all but went down under it: and once down. . . .

The great jaws snapped one inch from his cheek, and before the Dane could recover Lawrence had seized him by the throat and fought him off. Then Lawrence set his back against the cottage wall and felt safer. A second blow got home, and spoilt Billy's beauty for ever: it laid open his left eye and the left side of his jaw. Undaunted, the Dane gave himself an angry shake, which spattered Lawrence with blood, and gathered his haunches for a second spring. But by now Lawrence had clubbed his stick and was beating him about the head with its heavy k.n.o.bbed handle. Swift as the dog was, the man was swifter: they fought eye to eye, the man forestalling every motion of the dog's whipcord frame: Lawrence's blood was up, he would have liked to fight it out bare-handed. They would not have been ill-matched, for when the Dane reared Lawrence overtopped him only by an inch or so, and the weight of the steelclad paws on his breast tore open his clothes and pinned him to the wall. But Lawrence thrashed him off his feet whenever he tried to rise, till at length the lean muzzle sank with a low baffled moan.

Even then there was such fell strength in him that Lawrence dared not spare him, and blow rained on blow.--"Don't kill him," said Isabel. "Put this over his head."