Part 10 (1/2)
”Well, here is what brought me up tonight, when I knew Bernard would be on his way to bed. Will you--” he leaned forward, his hands clasped between his knees--”stick it out, whatever happens, for a week or two, and keep your eyes open? Life at Wanhope isn't all plain sailing.”
”Plain sailing for Bernard?”
”Or for his wife.”
”You speak as the friend of the house who sees both sides?”
”They're forced on me.”
”I'll stay as long as I'm comfortable,” said Lawrence, cynically frank. ”More I can't promise.”
Val leant back with an imperceptible shrug. He was disappointed but not surprised: there was in Hyde a vein of hard selfishness-- not a weakness, for the egoism which openly says ”I will consult my own convenience first” is too scornful of public opinion to be called weak, but an acquired defensive quality on which argument would have been thrown away. Val's arm dropped inert, he was tired, not in body alone, but by the strain of contact with another mind, hostile, and pitiless, and dominant.
And Lawrence also was content to sit silent, lulled by the rising and falling murmur of the stream, and by that agreeably cruel memory. . . . He had no inclination to recall it to Val, but it lent an emotional piquancy to their intercourse. He had the whip hand of Val through the past, and perhaps the present also.
Lawrence had been struck by Val's allusion to Mrs. Clowes. He was the friend of the house, was he? Now the position of a friend of the house who s.h.i.+elds a wife from her husband is notoriously a delicate one.
Val roused himself. ”Well, we'll drop this. I must now say two words on a different subject: I'd rather let it alone, and so I dare say would you, but we shall meet a good deal off and on while you're here, and it had better be got over. I'm sorry if I embarra.s.s you--”
”Set your mind at rest,” said Lawrence, silkenly brutal. ”You don't embarra.s.s me at all.”
He threw away his cigar and got up laughing, and as Val also rose Lawrence gently slapped him on the back. ”I know what you're driving at--that you've not forgotten that small indiscretion of yours, or ceased to regret it. Don't you worry, Val! You always were one of the worrying sort, weren't you? But you need never refer to it again, and I won't if you don't.” Surely a generous, a handsome offer! But Stafford only touched with the tips of his fingers the ringed and manicured hand of the elder man.
”Thank you! But I wasn't going to say anything of the sort. The fact is that for a long while I've been making up my mind to see you some time when you were in England: there was no hurry, because so long as my father's alive I can do nothing, but when I heard you were coming to Wanhope the opportunity was too good to be missed. Railway fares,” Val added with a preoccupied smile, ”are a consideration to me. So don't walk away yet, Hyde, please. I have such a vivid recollection of the last time we met.
Between the lines at dawn. Do you remember?”
”Everything, Val.”
”You were badly hurt, but before you fainted you dragged a promise out of me.”
”Dragged it out of you?” Lawrence repeated: ”that's one way of putting it!”
”But I made some feeble resistance at the time,” said Val mildly.
”My head wasn't clear then or for a long while after, but I had a--a presentiment that it was a mistake. You meant it kindly.”
Had he? Lawrence laughed. He had never been able, to a.n.a.lyse the complex of instincts and pa.s.sions that had determined his dealings with Stafford on that dim day between the lines.
”You were in a d.a.m.ned funk weren't you, Val?”
Stafford gave a slight start, the reaction of the prisoner under a blow. But apart from the coa.r.s.e cynicism of it, which irritated him, it was no more than he had foreseen, and from then on till the end he did not flinch.
”Yes, anything you like: you can't overstate it. But my point is that I gave you my parole. Will you release me from it?”
”Good G.o.d!” said Lawrence.
He had never been more surprised in his life. ”Come in: let us talk this over in the light.”
CHAPTER VII
Through the open windows of the drawingroom, where candlesticks of twisted silver glimmered among Laura's old, silvery brocades, and dim mirrors, and branches of pink and white rosebuds blooming deliciously in rose-coloured Dubarry jars, the two men came in together, Lawrence keenly on the watch. But observation was wasted on Stafford who had nothing to conceal, who was merely what he appeared to be, a faded and tired-looking man of middle height, with blue eyes and brown hair turning grey, and wellworn evening clothes a trifle rubbed at the cuffs. It was difficult to connect this gentle and una.s.suming person with the fiery memory of the war, and Lawrence without apology took hold of Stafford's arm like a surgeon and tried to flex the rigid elbow-muscles, and to distinguish with his fingers used to handling wounds the hard seams and hollows below its shrunken joint. The action, which was overbearing was by no means redeemed by the intention, which was brutal.
”Surely after all these years you don't propose to confess, Val?”