Part 9 (1/2)

”No, my child, it wasn't about the war. It was something that stung up his vanity or his self-love. Lawrence isn't a sentimentalist like Jack or Val.” Here Jack Bendish got as far as an artless ”Oh, I say!” but his wife paid no attention.

”Lawrence never took the war seriously.”

”But he did,” insisted Isabel. ”He coloured all over his face--”

She paused, realizing that Mrs. Bendish, under her mask of scepticism, was agog with curiosity. Isabel was not fond of being drawn out. Lawrence had given her his confidence, and she valued it, for with all her ignorance of society she had seen too much of plain human nature to suppose that he was often taken off his guard as he had been by her: and was she going to expose him to Yvonne's lacerating raillery? A thousand times no! ”I misunderstood something he said about Val,” she continued with scarcely a break, and falling back on one of those explanations that deceive the sceptical by their economy of truth. ”It was stupid of me, and awkward for him, so I had to apologize.”

”I see. Come, Jack.” Yvonne rose to her feet, more like a snake than ever in her flexibility and swiftness, and held Isabel to her for a moment, her arm round her young friend's waist. ”But if you pin any more b.u.t.tonholes into Captain Hyde's coat,” the last low murmur was only for Isabel's ear, ”he will infallibly kiss you: so now you are forewarned and can choose whether or no you will continue to pay him these little attentions.”

Isabel was not disturbed. She had early formed the habit of not attending to Mrs. Bendish, and she unwound herself without even changing colour.

”You always remind me of Nettie Hills at the Clowes's lodge,” she retorted. ”Mrs. Hills says she's that flighty in the way she carries on, no one would believe what a good sensible girl she is under all her nonsense, and walks out with her own young man as regular as clockwork.”

CHAPTER VI

And that evening Val Stafford came to pay his respects to his old comrade in arms. Lawrence had travelled so much that it never took him long to settle down. Even at Wanhope he managed within a few hours to make himself at home. A trap sent over to Countisford brought back his manservant and an effeminate quant.i.ty of luggage, and by teatime his room was strewn from end to end with a litter of expensive trifles more proper to a pretty woman than to a man. Mrs. Clowes, slipping in to cast a housewifely glance to his comfort, held up her hands in mock dismay. ”You must give yourself plenty of time to dust all this tomorrow morning, Caroline,” she said to the house-maid. She laughed at the gold brushes and gold manicure set, the polished array of boots, the fine silk and linen laid out on his bed, the perfume of sandalwood and Russian leather and eau de cologne.

”And I hope you will be able to make Captain Hyde's valet comfortable. Did he say whether he liked his room?”

”I reelly don't know, ma'am,” replied the truthful Caroline.

”You see he's a foreigner, and most of what he says, well, it reelly sounds like swearing.

”Madame.” It was Gaston himself, appearing from nowhere at Laura's elbow, and saluting her with an empress.e.m.e.nt that was due, if Laura had only known it, to the harmony of her flounces.

Laura eyed the little Gaston kindly. ”You are of the South, are you not?” she said in her soft French, the French of a Frenchwoman but for a slight stiffness of disuse: ”and are you comfortable here, Gaston? You must tell me if there is anything you want.”

Gaston was grateful less for her solicitude than for the sound of his own language. When she had left the room he caught up a photograph, thrust it back into his master's dressingcase, and spat through the open window--”C'est fini avec toi, vieille b.i.+.c.he,” said he: ”allons donc! j'aime mieux celle-ci par exemple.”

But, though Laura laughed, it was with indulgence. While Isabel and Lawrence were conversing among the juniper bushes, the Bendishes had given Mrs. Clowes a sketch of Hyde which had confirmed her own impressions. Although he liked good food and wine and cigars, he liked sport and travel too, and music and painting and books. His eighty-guinea breechloaders were dearer to him than the lady of the ivory frame. Who was the lady of the ivory frame? Gaston would have been happy to define with the leer of the boulevards the relations between his master and Philippa Cleve. Gaston had no doubt of them, nor had Frederick Cleve; Philippa had high hopes; Lawrence alone hung fire. If he continued to meet her and she to offer him lavish opportunities the situation might develop, for Lawrence was not sufficiently in earnest in any direction to play what has been called the ill-favoured part of a Joseph, but in his heart of hearts, this Joseph wished Potiphar would keep his wife in order. And, strange to say, Yvonne was not far wide of the mark. She believed that Joseph was a sinner but not a willing one: and Jack Bendish, a little astray among these feminine subtleties, a.s.sented after his fas.h.i.+on--”Hyde's rather an a.s.s in some ways,” he said simply, ”but he's an all-round sportsman.”

Thus primed, Laura was able to draw out her guest, and dinner pa.s.sed off gaily, for Bernard Clowes was no dog in the manger, and listened with sparkling eyes to adventures that ranged from Atlantic sailing in a thirty-ton yacht to a Nigerian rhinoceros shoot. Nor was Lawrence the focus of the lime-light-he was unaffectedly modest; but when, in expatiating on a favourite rifle, he confessed to having held fire till a charging rhinoceros bull was within eight and twenty yards of him, Bernard could supply the footnotes for himself. ”I knew she wouldn't let me down,” said Lawrence apologetically. ”Ah! she was a bonnie thing, that old gun of mine. Ever shoot with a cordite rifle?”

Bernard shook his head. ”I'd like you to see my guns,” Lawrence continued, too shrewd to be tactful. ”I'll have them sent down, shall I? Or Gaston shall run up and fetch 'em. He loves a day in town.”

Under this bracing treatment Bernard became more natural than Laura had seen him for a long time, and he stayed in the drawingroom after dinner, chatting with Lawrence and listening to his wife at the piano, till Laura thought the Golden Age had come again. How long would it last? Philosophers like Laura never ask that question. At all events it lasted till half past nine, when the sick man was honestly tired and the lines of no fict.i.tious pain were drawn deep about his mouth and eyes.

Mrs. Clowes went away with her husband, who liked to have her at hand while Barry was getting him to bed, and Lawrence had strolled out on the lawn, when a shutter was thrown down in Bernard's room and Laura reappeared at the open window.

”Lawrence, are you there?” she asked, shading her eyes between her hands.

”Here,” said Lawrence removing his cigar.

”Will you be so very kind as to unlock the gate over the footbridge? If Val does look us up tonight he's sure to scramble over it, which is awkward for him with his stiff arm.”

She dropped a key down to Lawrence. A voice--Bernard's called from within, ”Good night, old fellow, thanks for a pleasant evening. I'm being washed now.”

The night was overcast, warm, quiet, and very dark under the trees: there was husbandry in heaven, their candles were all out.

And by the bridge under the pleated and ta.s.selled branches of an alder coppice the river ran quiet as the night, only uttering an occasional murmur or a deep sucking gurgle when a rotten stick, framed in foam, span down the silken whirl of an eddy: but down-stream, where waifs of mist curled like smoke off a grey mirror, there was a continual talking of open water, small cold river voices that chattered over a pebbly channel, or heaped themselves up and died down again in the harsh distant murmur of the weir. The quant.i.ty of water that pa.s.sed through the lock gates should have been constant from minute to minute, but the roar of it was not constant, nor the pitch of its note, which fell when Lawrence stood erect, but rose to a shrill overtone when he bent his head: sometimes one would have thought the river was going down in spate, and then the volume of sound dwindled to a mere thread, a lisp in the air. Lawrence was observing these phenomena with a mind vacant of thought when he heard footsteps brus.h.i.+ng through the gra.s.s by the field path from the village. Val had come, then, after all!

Val had naturally no idea that any one was near him. He had reached the gate and was preparing to vault it when out of the dense alder-shadow a hand seized his arm. ”So sorry if I startled you.” But Val was not visibly startled. ”Mrs. Clowes sent me, down to let you in.”

”Did she? Very good of her, and of you,” returned Val's voice, pleasant and friendly. ”She always expects me to walk into the river. But, after all, I shouldn't be drowned if I did. Is Clowes gone to bed?”

”He's on his way there. Did you want to see him?”