Part 21 (1/2)
”Hadow's bringing out a new play,” remarked Lawrence, looking up from the Morning Post. ”A Moore comedy, They're clever stuff, Moore's comedies: always well written, and well put on when Hadow has a hand in it. You never were a playgoer, Bernard.”
”Not I,” said Bernard Clowes. He and his guest were smoking together in the hall after breakfast, Lawrence imparting items of news from the Morning Post, while Bernard, propped up in a sitting att.i.tude on the latest model of invalid couch, turned over and sorted on a swing table a quant.i.ty of curios mainly in copper, steel, and iron. Both swing-table and couch had been bought in London by Lawrence, and to his vigorous protests it was also due that the great leaved doors were thrown wide to the amber suns.h.i.+ne: while the curios came out of one of his Eastern packing-cases, which he had had unpacked by Gaston for Bernard to take what he liked. Lawrence's instincts were acquisitive, not to say predatory. Wherever he went he ama.s.sed native treasures which seemed to stick to his fingers, and which in nine cases out of ten, thanks to his racial tact, would have fetched at Christie's more than he gave for them. Coming fresh from foreign soil, they were a G.o.dsend to Bernard, who was weary of collecting from collectors' catalogues. ”Can I have this flint knife?
Egyptian, isn't it? Oh, thanks awfully, I'm taking all the best.” This was true. But Lawrence, like most of his nation, gave freely when he gave at all. ”No, I never was one for plays except Gilbert and Sullivan and the 'Merry Widow' and things like that with catchy tunes in 'em. Choruses.” He gave a reminiscent laugh.
”Legs?” suggested Lawrence.
”Exactly,” said Bernard, winking at him. ”Oh d.a.m.n!” A mechanical jerk of his own legs had tilted the table and sent the knife rolling on the floor. Lawrence picked it up for him, drew his feet down, and tucked a rug over his hips.
”Mind that box of Burmese darts, old man, they're poisoned.-- I used to be an inveterate first-nighter. Still am, in fact, when I'm in or near town. I can sit out anything from 'Here We Are Again' to 'Samson Agonistes.' To be frank, I rather liked 'Samson': it does one's ears good to listen to that austere, delicate English.”
”How long would these take to polish one off?”
”Ten or twelve hours, chiefly in the form of a hoop. No, Berns, I can't recommend them.” He drew from its jewelled sheath and put into Bernard's hands a Persian dagger nine inches long, the naked blade damascened in wavy ripplings and slightly curved from point to hilt. ”That would do your trick better. Under the fifth rib.
I bought it of a Greek muleteer, G.o.d knows how he got hold of it, but he was a bit of a poet: he a.s.sured me it would go in 'as soft as a kiss.' For its softness I cannot speak, but it is as sharp as a knife need be.”
”Sharper,” said Bernard, his thumb in his mouth.
”You silly a.s.s, I warned you!-- I should rather like to see this Moore play. I suppose Laura never goes, as you don't?”
”I don't stop her going, as you jolly well know. She's welcome to go six nights a week if she likes.”
”She couldn't very well go alone,” Lawrence ignored the scowl of his host. ”Tell you what: suppose I took her tonight? I could run her up and down in my car, or we could get back by the midnight train. Would the feelings of Chilmark be outraged?”
”What business is it of Chilmark's? If I'm complaisant, that's enough,” said Bernard, his features relaxing into a broad grin.
”I may be planked down in a country village for the rest of my very unnatural life, but I'll be shot if I'll regulate mine or my wife'& behaviour by the twaddle they talk! I'll have that dagger.” Slipping it slowly into its sheath he watched it travel home, the supple female curve gliding and yielding as a woman yields to a man's caress. ”Voluptuous, I call it. Under the left breast, eh?” He drew it again and held it poised and pointing at his cousin. ”Come, even I could cut your heart out with a gem of a blade like that.” Lawrence held himself lightly erect, his big frame stiffening from head to foot and the pupils of his eyes dilating till the irids were blackened. ”Call Laura.” Bernard sheathed the dagger again and laid it down.
”She's out there snipping away at the roses. Why can't she leave 'em to Parker? She's always messing about out there dirtying her hands, and then she comes in and paws me. Call her in.”
Lawrence escaped into the suns.h.i.+ne. He had not liked that moment when Bernard had held up the dagger, nor was it the first time that Bernard had made him s.h.i.+ver, but these vague apprehensions soon faded in the open air. It was a sallow suns.h.i.+ne, a light wind was blowing, and the lawn was spun over with brilliancies of gossamer and flecked with yellow leaflets of acacia and lime.
Little light clouds floated overhead, sun-smitten to a fiery whiteness, or curling in gold and silver surf over the grey of distant hayfields. In the borders the velvet bodies of bees hung between the velvet petals, ruby-red, of dahlias. There had been no frost, and yet a foreboding of frost was in the air, a sparkle, a sting--enough to have braced Lawrence when he went down to bathe before breakfast, standing stripped amid long river-herbage drenched in dew, a west wind striking cold on his wet limbs: sensations exquisite so long as the blood of health and manhood glowed under the chilled skin! It was early autumn.
Time slips away fast in a country village, and Lawrence remained a welcome guest at Wanhope, where Chilmark said--though with a covert smile--that Captain Hyde had done his cousin a great deal of good. Bernard was better behaved with Lawrence than with any one else, less surly, less unsociable, less violently coa.r.s.e: since June there had been fewer quarrels with Val and Barry and the servants, and less open incivility to Laura. He had even let Laura give a few mild entertainments, arrears of hospitality which she was glad to clear off: and he had appeared at them in person, polite and well dressed, and on the friendliest terms with his cousin and his wife.
Lawrence knew his own mind now. It was because he knew it that he held his hand: meeting Isabel two or three times a week, entering into the life of the little place because it was her life, fighting Val's battle with Bernard--and winning it-- because Val was her brother. When he remembered his collapse he was not abashed: shame was an emotion which he rarely felt: but he had gone too far and too fast, and was content to mark time in a more rational and conventional courts.h.i.+p.
But a courts.h.i.+p under the rose, for before others he hid his love like a crime, treating Isabel as good humoured elderly men treat pretty children. Where the astringent memory of Lizzie came into play, Lawrence was dumb. The one aspect of that fiasco which he had not fully confessed to Isabel--though only because it was not then prominent in his mind--was its scorching, its lacerating effect on his pride. But for it he would probably have flung discretion to the winds, confided in Laura, in Bernard, in Val, pursued Isabel with a hot and headstrong impetuosity: but it had left the entire tract of s.e.x in him one seared and branded scar.
Even when they were alone together, which rarely happened--Val saw to that--he had as yet made no open love to her: it was difficult to do so when one was never secure from interruption for ten minutes together. Of late he had begun to chafe against Val's cobweb barriers. Three months is a long time! and patience was not a virtue that came natural to Lawrence Hyde.
He found Laura cutting off dead roses, a sufficiently harmless occupation, one would have thought: a trifle thinner, a trifle paler than when he came: and were those grey threads in her brown hair?
”Berns wants you,” said Lawrence. ”I've done such an awful thing, Laura--”
Again that flash of imperfect perception! What was going on under the surface at Wanhope, that Laura should turn as white as her handkerchief? He hurried on as if he had noticed nothing.
”Bernard and I have been laying our heads together. Do you know what I'm going to do? Run you up to town to see the new Moore play at Hadow's.”
”Delightful!” Already Laura had recovered herself: her smile was as sweet as ever, and as serene. ”Was it your idea or Bernard's?”
”Mine. . . I say, Laura: Bernard is all right, isn't he?”