Nightfall Part 23

"Every one laughs at them: Jack and Lord Grantchester, and even Jimmy."

"And you?" said Lawrence, taking off the rings:--not visibly nettled, but a trifle regretful.

Isabel knit her brows. "Can a thing be very beautiful and historic, and yet not in good taste?-- It can if it's out of harmony: that's what the Greeks never forgot. Men ought not to look effeminate-- Oh! O Captain Hyde, don't!"

Lawrence, standing up, had with one powerful smooth drive of the arm sent both rings skimming over the borders, under the apple trees, over the garden wall, to scatter and drop on the open moor. "And here comes Mrs. Clowes, so now I shall learn my fate.

I thought Val would not leave us long together.-- Well, Val, what is it to be? May the young lady come?"

Isabel also sprang up, changing from woman to child as Lawrence changed from deference to patronage. Their manner to each other when alone was always different from their manner before an audience. But this change, deliberate in Lawrence, had hitherto been instinctive and almost unconscious in Isabel. It was not so now, she fled to Val and to her younger self for refuge. What a fanfaronade! Why couldn't Captain Hyde have put the rings in his pocket? But no, it must all be done with an air--and what an air! Rings worth thousands--historic mementoes--stripped off and tossed away to please--! And at that Isabel, enchanted and terrified, bundled the entire dialogue into the cellars of her mind and locked the doors on it. Later,--later,--when one was alone! "Oh, Val, say I may go!" she cried, clasping her hands on Val's arm, so cool and firm amid a spinning world.

[Footnote]

What actually happened later that afternoon was that Isabel, who had a practical mind, spent three-quarters of an hour on the moor hunting for the rings. The turquoise she found, conspicuous on a patch of smooth turf: the other was never recovered.

[End of Footnote]

"You may," said Val laughing. He disliked the scheme, but was incapable of refusing Laura Clowes: he gave her Isabel as he would have given her the last drops of his blood, if she had asked for them in that low voice of hers, and with those sweet eyes that never seemed to antic.i.p.ate refusal. There are women--not necessarily the most beautiful of their s.e.x--to whom men find it hard to refuse anything. And, consenting, it was not in Val to consent with an ill grace. "Certainly you may, if Captain Hyde is kind enough to take you!" Stafford's lips, finely cut and sensitive, betrayed the sarcastic sense of humour which he ruled out of his voice: perhaps the less said about kindness the better! "But do look over her wardrobe first, Laura: I'm never sure whether Isabel is grown up or not, but she could hardly figure at Hadow's in her present easy-going kit--"

He stopped, because Isabel was trying to waltz him round the lawn. In her reaction from a deeper excitement, she was as excited as a child. She released Val soon and hugged Laura Clowes instead, while Lawrence, looking on with his wintry smile, wondered whether she would have extended the same civility to him if she had known how much he desired it. . . . There were moments when he hated Isabel. Was she never going to grow up?

Not at present, apparently. "What must I wear, Laura? Do people wear evening dress? Where shall we sit? What time shall we get back? How are you going? What time must I be ready? Will you have dinner before you go or take sandwiches with you?"--how long the patter of questions would have run on it is hard to say, if the extreme naivete of the last one had not drowned them in universal laughter, and Isabel in crimson.

Mrs. Jack Bendish rode up while they were talking, slipped from her saddle, and threw the reins to Val without apology, though she knew there was no one but Val to take the mare to the stable.

Yvonne was the only member of the Castle household who presumed on Val's subordinate position. She treated him like a superior servant. When she heard what was in the wind her eyes were as green as a cat's. "How kind of Captain Hyde!" she drawled, as Lawrence, irritated by her manner, went to help Val, while Isabel was called indoors by f.a.n.n.y to listen to a tale of distress, unravel a grievance, and prescribe for anemia. "Some one ought to warn the child."

"Warn her of what?"

"Has it never struck you that Isabel is a pretty girl and Lawrence a good looking man?"

"But Isabel is too intelligent to have her head turned by the first handsome man she meets!" Yvonne looked as though she found her sister rather hopeless. "Dear, you really must be sensible!"

Laura pleaded. "It's not as if poor Lawrence had tried to flirt with her. He never even thought of asking her for tonight till I suggested it!" This was the impression left on Laura's memory.

"She isn't the sort of woman to attract him."

"What sort of woman would attract him, I wonder?" said Mrs. Jack, blowing rings of smoke delicately down her thin nostrils.

"Oh, when he marries it will be some one older than Isabel, more sophisticated, more a woman of the world. I like Lawrence immensely, but there is just that in him: he's one of the men who expect their wives to do them credit."

"Some one more like me," suggested Yvonne. "Or you." Her face was a study in untroubled innocence. Laura eyed her rather sharply.

"But Lawrence isn't a marrying man. He won't marry till some woman raises the price on him."

"You speak as if between men and women life were always a duel."

"So It is." Laura made a small inarticulate sound of dissent.

"s.e.x is a duel. Don't you know"--an infinitesimal hesitation marked the conscious forcing of a barrier: cynically frank as she was on most points, Mrs. Bendish had always left her sister's married life alone:--"that--that's what's wrong with Bernard? Oh!

Laura! Simpleton that you are. . . I'm often frightfully sorry for Bernard. It has thrown him clean off the rails. One can't wonder that he's consumed with jealousy."

In the stillness that followed Yvonne occupied herself with her cigarette. Mrs. Clowes was formidable even to her sister in her delicately inaccessible dignity.

"Had you any special motive in saying this to me now, Yvonne?"

"This theatre business."

"I don't contemplate running away with Lawrence, if that is what you mean."

"Wish you would!" confessed Mrs. Bendish frankly. "Then Bernard could divorce you and you could start fair again. I'm fed up with Bernard. I'm sorry for him, poor devil, but he never was much of a joy as a husband, and he's going from bad to worse.

Think I'm blind? Of course he's jealous. High dresses and lace cuffs aren't the fas.h.i.+on now, Lal."

Her sister slowly turned back the frill from her wrist and examined the scarlet stain of Bernard's finger-print. "Does it show so plainly? I hope other people haven't noticed. Bernard doesn't remember how strong his hands still are."

"Doesn't care, you mean."

"Do you want me quite naked?" said Laura. "Well, doesn't care, then."

Yvonne was not accustomed to the smart of pity. She winced under it, and her tongue, an edge-tool of intelligence or pa.s.sion, but not naturally p.r.o.ne to express tenderness, became more than ever articulate. "Sorry!" she said with difficulty, and then, "Didn't want to rake all this up. But I'm fond of you. We've always been pals, you and I, Lulu."

"Say whatever you like."

"Then--" she sat up, throwing away her cigarette-"I'm going to warn you. All Chilmark believes Lawrence is your lover."

"And do you?"

"No. I know you wouldn't run an intrigue."

"Thank you."

"But Jack and I both think, if you don't want to cut and run with him, you ought to pack him off. Mind, if you do want to, you can count me in, and Jack too. I'm not religious: Jack is, but he's not narrow. As for the social bother of it--marriage is a useful inst.i.tution and all that, but it's perfectly obvious that one can get--over the rails and back again if one has money.

There aren't twenty houses (worth going to) in London that would cut you if you turned up properly remarried to a rich man."

"Are you . . . recommending this course?"

"I'd like you to be happy."

"And what about Bernard?"

"Put in a couple of good trained nurses who wouldn't give him his head as you do, and he'd be a different man by the spring."

"He certainly would," said Laura drily. "He would be dead."

"Not he. He's far too strong to die of being made uncomfortable.

As a matter of fact it would do him all the good in the world,"

pursued Yvonne calmly. "He cries out to be bullied. What's so irritating in the present situation is that though you let him rack you to pieces you never give him what he wants! You don't s.h.i.+ne as a wife, my dear."

"It will end in my sending Lawrence away," said Laura with a subdued sigh. "I didn't want to because in many ways he has done Bernard so much good; no one else has ever had the same influence over him; besides, I liked having him at Wanhope for my own sake--he freshened us up and gave us different things to talk about, outside interests, new ideas. And after all, so far as Bernard himself is concerned, one is as good as another. He always has been jealous and always will be. But if all Chilmark credits us with the rather ignominious feat of betraying him, Lawrence will have to go."

"Lawrence may have something to say to that."

"He's not in love with me." Yvonne's eyes widened in genuine scepticism.--"Oh dear, as if I shouldn't know!" Laura broke out petulantly. Might not Yvonne have remembered that, in the days when they were living together in a French appartement, Laura's experience had been pretty nearly as wide as her own? "He is not, I tell you! nor I with him. But, if we were, I shouldn't desert Bernard. I do not believe in your two highly trained nurses. I don't think you much believe in them yourself. They might break him in, because nurses are drilled to deal with tiresome and unmanageable patients, but it would be worse for him, not better. He rebels fiercely enough now, but if I weren't there he would rebel still more fiercely, and all the rage and humiliation would have no outlet. You want me to be happy? We Selincourts are so quick to seize happiness! Father did it . . .

and Lucian does it: dear Lulu! We both love him, but it's difficult to be proud of him. Yet he has good qualities, good abilities. He's far cleverer than I am, and so are you," Laura's tone was diffident, "but oh, you are wrong in thinking so much of mere happiness. There is an immense amount of pain in the world, and if one doesn't bear one's own share it falls on some one else. My life with Bernard isn't--always easy," she found a momentary difficulty in controlling her voice, "but he's my husband and I shall stick to him. The more so for being deeply conscious that a different woman might manage him better. No I don't mind your saying it. Oh, how often I've felt the truth of it! But, such as I am, I'm all he has."