Part 23 (1/2)

”Every one laughs at them: Jack and Lord Grantchester, and even Jimmy.”

”And you?” said Lawrence, taking off the rings:--not visibly nettled, but a trifle regretful.

Isabel knit her brows. ”Can a thing be very beautiful and historic, and yet not in good taste?-- It can if it's out of harmony: that's what the Greeks never forgot. Men ought not to look effeminate-- Oh! O Captain Hyde, don't!”

Lawrence, standing up, had with one powerful smooth drive of the arm sent both rings skimming over the borders, under the apple trees, over the garden wall, to scatter and drop on the open moor. ”And here comes Mrs. Clowes, so now I shall learn my fate.

I thought Val would not leave us long together.-- Well, Val, what is it to be? May the young lady come?”

Isabel also sprang up, changing from woman to child as Lawrence changed from deference to patronage. Their manner to each other when alone was always different from their manner before an audience. But this change, deliberate in Lawrence, had hitherto been instinctive and almost unconscious in Isabel. It was not so now, she fled to Val and to her younger self for refuge. What a fanfaronade! Why couldn't Captain Hyde have put the rings in his pocket? But no, it must all be done with an air--and what an air! Rings worth thousands--historic mementoes--stripped off and tossed away to please--! And at that Isabel, enchanted and terrified, bundled the entire dialogue into the cellars of her mind and locked the doors on it. Later,--later,--when one was alone! ”Oh, Val, say I may go!” she cried, clasping her hands on Val's arm, so cool and firm amid a spinning world.

[Footnote]

What actually happened later that afternoon was that Isabel, who had a practical mind, spent three-quarters of an hour on the moor hunting for the rings. The turquoise she found, conspicuous on a patch of smooth turf: the other was never recovered.

[End of Footnote]

”You may,” said Val laughing. He disliked the scheme, but was incapable of refusing Laura Clowes: he gave her Isabel as he would have given her the last drops of his blood, if she had asked for them in that low voice of hers, and with those sweet eyes that never seemed to antic.i.p.ate refusal. There are women--not necessarily the most beautiful of their s.e.x--to whom men find it hard to refuse anything. And, consenting, it was not in Val to consent with an ill grace. ”Certainly you may, if Captain Hyde is kind enough to take you!” Stafford's lips, finely cut and sensitive, betrayed the sarcastic sense of humour which he ruled out of his voice: perhaps the less said about kindness the better! ”But do look over her wardrobe first, Laura: I'm never sure whether Isabel is grown up or not, but she could hardly figure at Hadow's in her present easy-going kit--”

He stopped, because Isabel was trying to waltz him round the lawn. In her reaction from a deeper excitement, she was as excited as a child. She released Val soon and hugged Laura Clowes instead, while Lawrence, looking on with his wintry smile, wondered whether she would have extended the same civility to him if she had known how much he desired it. . . . There were moments when he hated Isabel. Was she never going to grow up?

Not at present, apparently. ”What must I wear, Laura? Do people wear evening dress? Where shall we sit? What time shall we get back? How are you going? What time must I be ready? Will you have dinner before you go or take sandwiches with you?”--how long the patter of questions would have run on it is hard to say, if the extreme naivete of the last one had not drowned them in universal laughter, and Isabel in crimson.

Mrs. Jack Bendish rode up while they were talking, slipped from her saddle, and threw the reins to Val without apology, though she knew there was no one but Val to take the mare to the stable.

Yvonne was the only member of the Castle household who presumed on Val's subordinate position. She treated him like a superior servant. When she heard what was in the wind her eyes were as green as a cat's. ”How kind of Captain Hyde!” she drawled, as Lawrence, irritated by her manner, went to help Val, while Isabel was called indoors by f.a.n.n.y to listen to a tale of distress, unravel a grievance, and prescribe for anemia. ”Some one ought to warn the child.”

”Warn her of what?”

”Has it never struck you that Isabel is a pretty girl and Lawrence a good looking man?”

”But Isabel is too intelligent to have her head turned by the first handsome man she meets!” Yvonne looked as though she found her sister rather hopeless. ”Dear, you really must be sensible!”

Laura pleaded. ”It's not as if poor Lawrence had tried to flirt with her. He never even thought of asking her for tonight till I suggested it!” This was the impression left on Laura's memory.

”She isn't the sort of woman to attract him.”

”What sort of woman would attract him, I wonder?” said Mrs. Jack, blowing rings of smoke delicately down her thin nostrils.

”Oh, when he marries it will be some one older than Isabel, more sophisticated, more a woman of the world. I like Lawrence immensely, but there is just that in him: he's one of the men who expect their wives to do them credit.”

”Some one more like me,” suggested Yvonne. ”Or you.” Her face was a study in untroubled innocence. Laura eyed her rather sharply.

”But Lawrence isn't a marrying man. He won't marry till some woman raises the price on him.”

”You speak as if between men and women life were always a duel.”

”So It is.” Laura made a small inarticulate sound of dissent.

”s.e.x is a duel. Don't you know”--an infinitesimal hesitation marked the conscious forcing of a barrier: cynically frank as she was on most points, Mrs. Bendish had always left her sister's married life alone:--”that--that's what's wrong with Bernard? Oh!

Laura! Simpleton that you are. . . I'm often frightfully sorry for Bernard. It has thrown him clean off the rails. One can't wonder that he's consumed with jealousy.”

In the stillness that followed Yvonne occupied herself with her cigarette. Mrs. Clowes was formidable even to her sister in her delicately inaccessible dignity.

”Had you any special motive in saying this to me now, Yvonne?”