Part 18 (2/2)
Selincourt.”
”If you ask me, Rose, I should say he had only just got back to England and was at a loose end. But there was a dash of good nature in it: he's genuinely fond of Mrs. Clowes.”
”So I gathered,” said Rowsley. His tone was pregnant. Val sat silent for a moment.
”What rubbis.h.!.+ He hasn't seen her for eight or ten years.”
”Since her marriage.” Val shrugged his shoulders. ”Sorry, Val, but I cannot see Hyde staying on at Wanhope out of cousinly affection for Bernard Clowes. It must be a beastly uncomfortable house to stay in. Nicely run and all that, and they do you very well, but Bernard is distinctly an acquired taste. Oh, my dear chap!” as Val's silence stiffened, ”no one suggests that Laura's ever looked at the fellow! But facts are facts, and Hyde is-- Hyde. I'm not a bit surprised to hear he has Jew blood in him,”
Rowsley continued, warming to the discussion: he was a much keener judge of character that the tolerant and easy-going Val.
”That accounts for the arty strain in him. Yvonne says he's a thorough musician, and Jack told me Lord Grantchester took to him because he knew such a lot about pictures. Well, so he ought!
He's a Londoner. What does he know of the country? Only what you pick up at a big country-house party or a big shoot! He's not the sort of chap to stay on at Wanhope for the pleasure of cheering up across-grained br--a fellow like Bernard. Yes, he's talking of staying on indefinitely: is going to send to town for one of his confounded cars. . . . And what other woman is there in Chilmark that he'd walk across the road to look at?”
”I'm not sure you're fair to him.”
Rowsley turned up to his brother an amused, rather sweet smile.
”Val, you'd pray for the devil?”
”Oh, Hyde isn't a devil! I came pretty close to him ten years ago. He has a streak of generosity in him: no one knows that better than I do, for I'm in his debt. What? Oh! no, not in money matters: is that likely? But he's capable of . . .
magnanimity, one might call it,” Stafford fastidiously felt after precision: ”no, he wouldn't pursue Laura; he wouldn't make her life harder than it is already.”
”He might propose to make it easier.” Rowsley threw a daisy at a c.o.c.kchafer and missed it. ”You and I are sons of a parsonage.
We shouldn't run off with a married lady because it would be against our principles.” His thin brown features were twisted into a faint grimace. Rowsley, like Val, possessed a satirical sense of humour, and gave it freer play than Val did. ”It's so difficult to shake off early prejudices. When Fowler and I were at the club the other day, we met a horrid little sweep who waxed confidential. I said I couldn't make love to a married woman if I tried, and Fowler said he could but held rather not, and we walked off, but as I remarked to Fowler afterwards the funny thing was that it was true. I don't see anything romantic in the situation. It strikes me as immoral and disgusting. But Hyde wouldn't take a narrow view like mine. He has to live up to his tailor.”
”Oh, really, Rose!” Val gave his unwilling laugh. ”You're like Isabel, who can't forgive him for sporting a diamond monogram.”
”No, but I'm interested. I know Jack's limitations, and Jimmy's, and yours, but Hyde's I don't know, and he intrigues me,” said Rowsley, lighting a cigarette with his agile brown fingers.
”Now I'll tell you the way he really strikes me. He's not a bad sort: I shouldn't wonder if there were more decency in him than he'd care to get credit for. But I should think,” he looked up at Val with his clear speculative hazel eyes, ”that he's never in his life taken a thras.h.i.+ng. He's always had pots of money and superb health. I know nothing, of his private concerns, but at all events he isn't married, and from what Jack says he's sought safety in numbers. No wife, no kids, no near relations--that means none of the big wrenches. No: I don't believe Hyde's ever taken a licking in his life.”
”You sound as if you would like to administer one.”
”Only by way of a literary experiment,” said Rowsley with his mischievous grin. He was of the new Army, Val of the old: it was a constant source of mild surprise to Val that his brother read books about philosophy, and psychology, and sociology, of which pre-war Sandhurst had never heard: read poetry too, not Tennyson or Shakespeare, but slim modern volumes with brown covers and wide margins: and wrote verses now and then, and sent them to orange-coloured magazines or annual anthologies, at which Val gazed from a respectful distance. ”I don't owe him any grudge.
I'm not Bernard's dry-nurse!”
Val turned a leaf of his paper, but he was not reading it.
”I rather wish you hadn't said all this, Rowsley. It does no good: not even if it were true.”
”Val, if it weren't such a warm evening I'd get up and punch your head. You're a little too bright and good, aren't you? Yvonne Bendish says it, and she's Laura's sister.”
”Yvonne would say anything. I wish you had given her a hint to hold her tongue. She may do most pestilent mischief if she sets this gossip going.”
”It'll set itself going,” said Rowsley. ”And, though I know the Bendishes pretty well, I really shouldn't care to tell Mrs. Jack not to gossip about her own sister. You might see your way to it, reverend sir, but I don't.”
”If it came to Bernard's ears I wouldn't answer for the consequences.”
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