Part 11 (2/2)
”I can only stay for one cigarette, Laura: I must get home to bed.”
”But, my dear boy, how tired you look!” exclaimed Laura. ”You do too much--I'm sure you do too much. He wears himself out, Lawrence--oh! my scarf!” She was wearing a silver scarf over her black dress, and as she moved it fluttered up and caught on the chain round her throat. ”Unfasten me, please, Val,” she said, bending her fair neck, and Val was obliged laboriously to disentangle the silken cobweb from the spurs of her clear-set diamonds, a process which fascinated Lawrence, whose mind was more French than English in its permanent interest in women.
Certainly Val's office of friend of the family was not less delicate because Laura, secure in her few years seniority, treated him like a younger brother! Watching, not Val, but Val's reflection in a mirror, Lawrence overlooked no shade of constraint, no effort that Val made to avoid touching with his finger-tips the satin allure of Laura's exquisite skin. ”Poor miserable Val!” Suspicion was crystallizing into certainty. ”Or is it poor Bernard? No, I swear she doesn't know. Does he know himself?”
A servant had brought in coffee, and Lawrence in his quality of cousin poured out two cups and carried them over to Laura and to Val. ”Well, I'm d.a.m.ned!” murmured Lawrence as Val refastened the clasp of the chain. ”Picturesque, all this.-- Here, Val, here's your coffee.”
”But do you know each other so well as that?” exclaimed Laura, arching her wren's-feather eyebrows.
”I was an infant subaltern when Hyde knew me,” said Val laughing, ”and he was a howling swell of a captain. Do you remember that night you all dined with us, sir, when we were in billets? We stood you champagne--”
”Purchased locally. I remember the champagne.”
”Dine with us tomorrow night,” said Laura. ”Do! and bring Isabel.” Lawrence gave an imperceptible start: for the last hour he had forgotten Isabel's existence except when her eyes had looked at him out of her brother's face. ”The child will enjoy it, I never knew any one so easily pleased; and you and Lawrence and Bernard can rag one another to your heart's content. Yes, you will, I know you will, Army men always do when they get together; and you're all boys, even Bernard, even you with your grey hair, my dear Val; as for Lawrence, he's only giving himself airs.”
”Yes, do bring your sister,” said Lawrence. ”She is the most charming young girl I've met for years, if a man of my mature age may say so. She is so natural, a rare thing nowadays: the modern jeune fille is a sophisticated product.”
”Bravo, Lawrence!” cried Mrs. Clowes, clapping her hands. ”Now, Val, didn't I tell you Isabel was going to be very, very pretty?
That's settled, then, you'll both come: and, to please me,” she looked not much older than Isabel as she took hold of the lapel of Val's coat, ”will you wear your ribbon? I know you hate wearing it in civilian kit! But I do so love to see you in it: and it's not as if there would be any one here but ourselves.”
Lawrence swung round on his heel and walked away. One may enjoy the pleasures of the chase and yet draw the line at watching an application of the rack, and it sickened him to remember that his own hand had given a turn to the screw. It had needed that brief colloquy to let him see what Stafford's life was like at Wanhope, and in what slow nerve-by-nerve laceration amends were being made. He admired the gallantry of Stafford's reply.
”My dear Laura, I would tie myself up in ribbon from head to foot if it would give you pleasure. I'll wear it if you like, though my superior officer will certainly rag me if I do.”
”No, I shan't,” said Lawrence shortly.
CHAPTER VIII
”And now tell me,” murmured Mrs. Clowes in the mischievously caressing tone that she kept for Isabel, ”did mamma's little girl enjoy her party?”
”Rather!” said Isabel--with a great sigh, the satisfied sigh of a dog curling up after a meal. ”They were lovely strawberries.
And what do you call that French thing? Oh, that's what a vol-au-vent is, is it? I wish I knew how to make it, but probably it's one of those recipes that begin 'Take twelve eggs and a quart of cream.' I wish nice things to eat weren't so dear, Jimmy would love it. Captain Hyde took two helps--did you see?--big ones! If he always eats as much as he did tonight he'll be fat before he's fifty, which will be a pity. He ate three times what Val did.”
”Is that what you were thinking of all the time? I noticed you didn't say very much.”
”Well, I was between Captain Hyde and Major Clowes, and they neither of them think I'm grown up,” explained Isabel. ”They talked to each other over the top of me. Oh no, not rudely, Major Clowes was as nice as he could be” (Isabel salved her conscience by reflecting that this was verbally true since Major Clowes could never he nice), ”and Captain Hyde asked me if I was fond of dolls--”
”My dear Isabel!”
”Or words to that effect. Oh! it's perfectly fair, I'm not grown up, or only by fits and starts. Some of me is a weary forty-five but the rest is still in pigtails. It's curious, isn't it?
considering that I'm nearly twenty. Let's go through the wood, my stockings are coming down.” Out of sight of the house in a clearing of the loosely planted alder-coppice by the bridge, she pulled them up, slowly and candidly: white cotton stockings supported by garters of black elastic. ”After all,” she continued, ”I'm housekeeper, and in common politeness we shall have to dine you back, so I really did want to see what sort of things Captain Hyde likes. But it's no use, he won't like anything we give him. Not though we strain our resources to the uttermost. Laura! would Mrs. Fryar give me the receipt for that vol-au-vent? I don't suppose we could run to it, but I should love to try.”
”Mrs. Fryar would be flattered,” said Laura, finding a chair in the forked stem of a wild apple-tree, while Isabel sat plump down on the net of moss-fronds and fine ivy and grey wood-violets at her feet. ”But, my darling, you're not to worry your small head over vol-au-vents! Lawrence will like one of your own roast chickens just as well, or any simple thing--”
”Oh no, Lawrence won't!” Isabel gave a little laugh. ”Excuse my contradicting you, but Lawrence isn't a bit fond of simple things. That's why he doesn't like me, because I'm simple, simple as a daisy. I don't mind--much,” she added truthfully.
”I can survive his most extended want of interest. After all what can you expect if you go out to dinner in the same nun's veiling frock you wore when you were confirmed, with the tucks let down and the collar taken out? O! Laura, I wish someone would give me twenty pounds on condition that I spent it all on dress! I'd buy--I'd buy--oh,--silk stockings, and long gloves, and French cambric underclothes, and chiffon nightgowns like those Yvonne wears (but they aren't decent: still that doesn't matter so long as you're not married, and they are so pretty)! And a homespun tailor-made suit with a seam down the back and open tails: and--and--one of those real Panamas that you can pull through a wedding ring: and--oh! dear, I am greedy!
It must be because I never have any clothes at all that I'm always wanting some. I ache all over when I look at catalogues.
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