Part 5 (1/2)
CHAPTER IV
”How do?” Bernard Clowes was saying an hour later. ”So good of you to look us up.”
Lawrence, coming down from his own room after brus.h.i.+ng his muddy clothes, met his cousin with a good humoured smile which covered dismay. Heavens, what a wreck of manhood! And how chill it struck indoors, and how dark, after the June suns.h.i.+ne on the moor! Delicately he took the hand that Clowes held out to him-- but seized in a grip that made him wince. Clowes gave his curt ”Ha ha!”
”I can still use my arms, Lawrence. Don't be so timid, I shan't break to pieces if I'm touched. It's only these legs of mine that won't work. Awkward, isn't it? But never mind that now, it's an old story. You had a mishap on the moor, the servants tell me? Ah! while I think of it, let me apologize for leaving you to walk from the station. Laura, my wife, you know, forgot to send the car. By the by, you know her, don't you? She says she met you once or twice before she married me.”
Like most men who surrender to their temperaments, Lawrence was as a rule well served by his intuitions. Now and again they failed him as with Isabel, but when his mind was alert it was a sensitive medium. He dropped with crossed knees into his chair and glanced reflectively at Bernard Clowes, heu quantum mutatus. . . . When the body was wrecked, was there not nine times out of ten some corresponding mental warp? Bernard's fluent geniality struck him as too good to be true--it was not in Bernard's line: and why translate a close friends.h.i.+p into ”meeting once or twice”? Was Bernard misled or mistaken, or was he laying a trap?--Not misled: the Laura Selincourt of Hyde's recollection was not one to stoop to petty s.h.i.+fts.
”'Once or twice?'” Lawrence echoed: ”Oh, much oftener than that!
Mrs. Clowes and I are old friends, at least I hoped we were. She can't be so ungracious as to have forgotten me?”
”She seems to have, doesn't she?” Bernard with his inscrutable smile let the question drop. ”Just touch that bell, will you, there's a good fellow? So sorry to make you dance attendance-- Hallo, here she is!”
Laura had been waiting in the parlour, under orders not to enter till the bell rang. She had heard all, and wondered whether it was innocence or subtlety that had walked in and out of Bernard's trap. She remembered Hyde was much like other fourth-year University men except that he was not egotistical and not shy: he had altered away from his cla.s.s, but in what direction it was difficult to tell: there was no deciphering the pleasant blankness of his features or the conventional smile in his black eyes.
”I haven't seen you for fourteen years,” she said, giving him her hand. ”Oh Lawrence, how old you make me feel!”
”Shall I swear you haven't changed? It would be a poor compliment.”
”And one I couldn't return. I shouldn't have known you, unless it were by your likeness to Bernard.”
”Am I like Bernard?” said Lawrence, startled.
”That's a good joke, isn't it?” said Clowes. ”But my wife is right. If I were not paralysed, we should be a good bit alike.”
Under the casual manner, it was in that moment that Hyde saw his cousin for what he was: a rebel in agony. There was a tragedy at Wanhope then, Lucian Selincourt had not exaggerated. Though Lawrence was not naturally sympathetic, he felt an unpleasant twinge of pity, much the same as when his dog was run over in the street: a pain in the region of the heart, as well defined as rheumatism. In Sally's case, after convincing himself that she would never get on her legs again, he had eased it by carrying her to the nearest chemist's: the loving little thing had licked his hand with her last breath, but when the brightness faded out of her brown eyes, in his quality of Epicurean, Lawrence had not let himself grieve over her. Unluckily one could not pay a chemist to put Bernard Clowes out of his pain! ”This is going to be deuced uncomfortable,” was the reflection that crossed his mind in its naked selfishness. ”I wish I had never come near the place. I'll get away as soon as I can.”
Then he saw that Bernard was struggling to turn over on his side, flapping about with his slow uncouth gestures like a bird with a broken wing. ”Let me--!” Laura's ”No, Lawrence!” came too late.
Hyde had taken the cripple in his arms, lifting him like a child: ”You're light for your height,” he said softly. He was as strong as Barry and as gentle as Val Stafford. Laura had turned perfectly white. She fully expected Clowes to strike his cousin.
She could hardly believe her eyes when with a great gasp of relief he flung his arm round Hyde's neck and lay back on Hyde's shoulder. ”Thanks, that's d.a.m.ned comfortable--first easy moment I've had since last night,” he murmured: then, to Laura, ”we must persuade this fellow to stop on a bit. You're not in a hurry to get off, are you, Lawrence?”
”Not I. I'll stay as long as you and Laura care to keep me.”
”I and Laura, hey?”
Bernard's flush faded: he slipped from Hyde's arm.
”H'm, yes, you're old friends, aren't you? Met at Farringay?
I'd forgotten that.” He shut his eyes. ”And Laura's dying to renew the intimacy. It's dull for her down here. Take him into the garden, Lally. You'll excuse me now, Lawrence, I can't talk long without getting f.a.gged. Wretched state of things, isn't it?
I'm a vile bad host but I can't help it. At the present moment for example I'm undergoing grinding torments and it doesn't amuse me to make conversation, so you two can cut along and disport yourselves in any way you like. Give Lawrence a drink, will you, my love? . . . . Oh no, thanks, you've done a lot but you can't do any more, no one can, I just have to grin and bear it. Laura, would you mind ringing for Barry? I'm not sure I shall show up again before dinner-time. It's no end good of you, old chap, to come to such a beastly house. . .”
He pursued them with ba.n.a.l grat.i.tude till they were out of earshot, when Lawrence drew a deep breath as if to throw off some physical oppression. Under the weathered archway, down the flagged steps and over the lawn. . . . How still it was, and how sweet! The milk-blooms in the spire of the acacia were beginning to turn faintly brown, but its perfume still hung in the valley air, mixed with the honey-heavy breath of a great white double lime tree on the edge of the stream. There were no dense woods at Wanhope, the trees were set apart with an airy and graceful effect, so that one could trace the course of their branches; and between them were visible hayfields from which the hay had recently been carried, and the headlands of the Plain--fair sunny distances, the lowlands bloomed over with summer mist, the uplands delicately clear like those blue landscapes that in early Italian pictures lie behind the wheel of Saint Catherine or the turrets of Saint Barbara.
”A sweet pretty place you have here. I was in China nine weeks ago. Everlasting mud huts and millet fields. I must say there's nothing to beat an English June.”
”Or a French June?” suggested Laura, her accent faintly sly.
”Lucian said he met you at Auteuil.”