Part 15 (1/2)

said Bernard staring at him.

Lawrence went on with his strawberries in an ungenial silence.

He was irritated by his momentary self betrayal. If he had cared to explain it he would have had to confess that though personally indifferent to adventures he disliked to have women mixed up in them. He was glad when Laura with her intuitive tact changed the conversation, not too abruptly.

”All modern men have nerves. I should think Lawrence had as few as any, but it must have been a frightful scene. I must run up after lunch and see Isabel. Poor child! But she's wonderfully brave. All the Staffords were brought up to be stoical: if they knocked themselves about as children they were never allowed to cry. Mr. Stafford is a fanatic on the point of personal courage.

Val told me once that the only sins for which his father ever cuffed him were telling fibs and running away.”

”Did he get cuffed often?” Lawrence enquired.

”Shouldn't wonder,” said Bernard. ”Val's one of your nervy men.”

”Not after he was ten years old,” said Laura smiling. ”But as a little boy he was always in trouble. Not the wisest treatment, was it? for a delicate, sensitive child.”

”Miss Isabel is not nervous,” said Lawrence. ”She is as cool a young lady as I have ever seen. I believe she still owes me a grudge for hitting Billy so hard.” He dipped his fingers delicately into his finger bowl. ”No, no more, thanks. Did I tell you that the brute of a Dane bit her?”

”Bit Isabel!”

”Made his teeth pretty nearly meet in her forearm. She was trying to soothe the dear dog. Mr. Stafford's theories may be ethically beautiful, but I object to their being carried to extremes. Frankly, I should describe your young friend as idiotically rash,” said Lawrence with a wintry smile. ”I couldn't prevent her doing it because I hadn't the remotest notion she was going to do it. The Dane was practically mad with rage. I could have cuffed her myself with pleasure. It was a wild thing to do and not at all agreeable for me.”

”But, my dear Lawrence, that is one way of looking at it!” Laura protested, amused by his cool egoism, though she took it with the necessary grain of salt. ”Bitten by that horrible dog? My poor Isabel! she loves dogs--I don't suppose she stopped to consider her own feelings or yours.”

”She ought to have had more sense.”

”Hear, hear!” said Bernard. ”Half the trouble in the world comes from women shoving in where they're not wanted. It's a pleasure to talk to you, Lawrence, after lying here to be s...o...b..red over by a pack of old women. I always exclude you, my dear,” he nodded to Laura, ”but the parson twaddles on till he makes me sick, and Val's not much better. What's a woman want with courage? Teach her to buy decent clothes and put 'em on properly, and she's learning something useful. I'll guarantee Isabel only got in the way. But you, Lawrence,” he measured his cousin with an admiring eye, much as a Roman connoisseur might have run over the points of a favourite gladiator, ”I should have liked to see you tackle the Dane. You're a big chap--deeper in the chest than I ever was, and longer in the reach. What's your chest measurement?-- Yes, you look it. And nothing in your hand but a stick? By Jove, it must have been worth watching! Hey, Laura?”

”Bernard, you are embarra.s.sing! You will make even Lawrence shy.

But, yes,” Laura laid her hand on Hyde's arm: ”I should have liked to watch you fight the Dane.”

How long was it since any one had spoken to Lawrence in that warm tone of affection? Not since his father died. From time to time Mrs. Cleve or other ladies had flattered his senses or his vanity, but none of them had ever looked at him with Laura's kind admiring eyes. Perhaps after all there was something to be said for family life! Tragic wreck as Clowes was, he would have been far more to be pitied but for his wife: their marriage, crippled and sterilized, was yet--as Lawrence saw it--a beautiful relation. Suppose he stood in that relation to Isabel? Sitting at table in the cool panelled diningroom, his careless pose stiffening under Laura's touch, Lawrence for the first time began to wonder whether he would not gain more in happiness than he would lose in freedom if he were to make the child his wife.

”To make the child his wife.” He was not really more of an egoist than the average man, but he did a.s.sume that if he wanted her he could win her. His mistress was very young: it was her rose of youth and her unquelled spirit that charmed him even more than her beauty: and she had not sixpence to her name, while he was a rich man. He did not, as Bernard would have done, go on to plume himself on his magnanimity, or infer that Isabel's grat.i.tude would give him a claim on her fealty over and beyond the Pauline duty of wives. In the immediate personal relation Lawrence was visited by a saving humility. But on the main issue he took, or thought he took, a practical view. A man in love cannot soberly a.n.a.lyse his own psychological state, and Lawrence did not know that he had fallen in love with Isabel at first sight or that the germ of matrimonial intentions had lain all along in his mind.

Here and now he believed that he first thought of marrying her.

Then he would have to stay on at Wanhope. And court Isabel under the eyes of all Chilmark? Under Bernard's eyes at all events; they were already watching him. Lawrence was irritated: whatever happened, he was not going to be watched by his cousin and chaffed and argued over and betted on. In most points indifferently frank, Lawrence was silent as the grave where s.e.x came into play.

”Thank you.” He touched with his lips the hand that Laura had innocently laid on his wrist. ”It can't really be fourteen years, Laura, since you were staying at Farringay.”

”Flatterer!” said Laura, smiling but startled, and rising from her chair. ”This to an old married woman!”

”Ah! when I remember that I knew you before this fellow did--!”

”Here, I say,” came Bernard's voice across the table, riotously amused, ”none o' that! none o' that!”

”Penalty for having a charming wife,” laughed Lawrence, in his preoccupation blind and deaf to danger signals. He rose to open the door for Laura. ”By the by, if you go to the vicarage this afternoon, I'll stroll up with you, if I may. I suppose I owe the young lady that much civility!”

”I can't: I'm busy,” said Laura hastily. ”That is, I don't know what time I shall get away. Go by yourself, don't wait for me.”

”Rubbish,” said Bernard. ”Much pleasanter for both of you to have the walk together. Lawrence doesn't want to go alone, do you?” (”Rather not,” said Lawrence heartily.) ”And I don't want you here, my love, if that's the trouble, I can't have you tied to the leg of my sofa.”

Later, when Lawrence had gone out on the lawn to smoke, Bernard recalled Laura. She came to him. He took hold of her wrist and lay smiling up at her. ”Nice relations.h.i.+p, isn't it, cousins-in-law?