Part 29 (1/2)

If that were true, Val had wasted the best years of his life on a delusion. It was a disturbing thought, but it brought a sparkle to his eyes and an electric force to his fingertips: he raised his head and looked out into the September night as if there was stirring in him the restless sap of spring. After all he was still a young man. Forty years more! If these grey ten years since the war could be taken as finite, not endless: if after them one were to break the chain, tear off the hair s.h.i.+rt, come out of one's cell into the warm sun--then, oh then--Val's shoulders remembered their military set--life might be life again and not life in death.

”What the devil are you strumming now?”

”Tipperary.”

”That's not much in your line.”

”Oh! I was in the Army once,” said Val. ”You go to sleep.”

He had his wish. The heavy eyelids closed, the great chest rose and fell evenly, and some--not all--of the deep lines of pain were smoothed away from Bernard's lips. Even in sleep it was a restless, suffering head, but it was no longer so devil-ridden as when he was talking of his wife. Val played on softly: once when he desisted Bernard stirred and muttered something which sounded like ”Go on, d.a.m.n you,” a proof that his mind was not far from his body, only the thinnest of veils lying over its terrible activity. David would have played the clock round, if Saul would have slept on.

Saul did not. He woke--with a tremendous start, sure sign of broken nerves: a start that shook him like a fall and shook the couch too. ”Hallo!” he came instantly into full possession of his faculties: ”you still here? What's the time? I feel as if I'd been asleep for years. Why, it's daylight!” He dragged out his watch. ”What the devil is the time?”

Val rose and pulled back a curtain. The morning sky was full of grey light, and long pale shadows fell over frost-silvered turf: mists were steaming up like pale smoke from the river, over whose surface they swept in fantastic shapes like ghosts taking hands in an evanescent arabesque: the clouds, the birds, the flowers were all awake. The house was awake too, and in fact it was the clatter of a housemaid's brush on the staircase that had roused Bernard. ”It's nearly six o'clock,” said Val. ”You've had a long sleep, Berns. I'm afraid the others have missed their train.”

”Missed their train!”

”First night performances are often slow, and they mayn't have been able to get a cab at once. It's tiresome, but there's no cause for anxiety.”

”Missed their train!”

”Well, they can't all have been swallowed up by an earthquake!

Of course fire or a railway smash is on the cards, but the less thrilling explanation is more probable, don't you think, old man?”

”Missed the last train and were obliged to stay in town?”

”And a rotten time they'll have of it. It's no joke, trying to get rooms in a London hotel when you've ladies with you and no luggage.”

”You think Laura would let Hyde take her to an hotel?”

”Well, Berns, what else are they to do?” said Val impatiently.

”They can't very well sit in a Waterloo waitingroom!”

”No, no,” said Clowes. ”Much better pa.s.s the night at an hotel.

Is that what you call a rotten time? If I were Lawrence I should call it a jolly one.”

Val turned round from the window. ”If I were Hyde,” he said stiffly, ”I should take the ladies to some decent place and go to a club myself. You might give your cousin credit for common sense if not for common decency! You seem to forget the existence of Isabel.”

”Oh, all right,” said Bernard after a moment. ”I was only joking. No offence to your sister, Val, I'm sure Laura will look after her all right. But it is a bit awkward in a gossippy hole like Chilmark. When does the next train get in?”

No man knows offhand the trains that leave London in the small hours, but Val hunted up a timetable--its date of eighteen mouths ago a pregnant commentary on life at Wanhope--and came back with the information that if they left at seven-fifteen they could be at Countisford by ten. ”Too late to keep it quiet,” he owned. ”The servants are a nuisance. But thank heaven Isabel's with them.”

”Thank heaven indeed,” Bernard a.s.sented. ”Not that I care two straws for gossip myself, but Laura would hate to be talked about. Well, well! Here's a pretty kettle of fish. How would it be if you were to meet them at the station? I suppose they're safe to come by that train? Or will they wait for a second one?

Getting up early is not Laura's strong point at the best of times, and she'll be extra tired after the varied excitements of the night.”

Val examined him narrowly. His manner was natural if a trifle subdued; the unhealthy glow had died down and his black eyes were frank and clear. Nevertheless Val was not at ease, this natural way of taking the mishap was for Bernard Clowes so unnatural and extraordinary: if he had stormed and sworn Val would have felt more tranquil. But perhaps after the fireworks of last night the devil had gone out of him for a season? Yet Val knew from painful experience that Bernard's devil was tenacious and wiry, not soon tired.

”They might,” he said cautiously, ”but I shouldn't think they will. Laura knows you, old fellow. She'll be prepared for a terrific wigging, and she'll want to get home and get it over.”