Part 30 (2/2)
”You? Oh! no, don't bother,” said Lawrence very curtly. ”I can manage my cousin, thanks.”
But Val's only reply was to open the door for him and stroll with him across the lawn. At the wicket gate Hyde turned: ”Excuse my saying so, but I prefer to go alone.”
”I'm not coming in at Wanhope. But I've ten words to say to you before you go there.”
”Oh?” said Lawrence. He swung through leaving Val to follow or not as he liked.
”Stop, Hyde, you must listen. You're going into a house full of the materials for an explosion. You don't know your own danger.”
”I dislike hints. What are you driving at?”
”Laura.”
”Mrs. Clowes?”
”Naturally,” said Val with a faint smile. ”You know as well as I do how pointless that correction is. You imply by it that as I'm not her brother I've no right to meddle. But I told you in June that I should interfere if it became necessary to protect others.”
”And since when, my dear Val, has it become necessary? Last night?”
”Well, not that only: all Chilmark has been talking for weeks and weeks.”
”Chilmark--”
”Oh,” Val interrupted, flinging out his delicate hands, ”what's the good of that? Who would ever suggest that you care what Chilmark says? But she has to live in it.”
The scene had to be faced, and a secret vein of cruelty in Lawrence was not averse from facing it. This storm had been brewing all summer.--They were alone, for the beechen way was used only as a short cut to the vicarage. Above them the garden wall lifted its feathery fringe of gra.s.s into great golden boughs that drooped over it: all round them the beech forest ran down into the valley, the eye losing itself among clear glades at the end of which perhaps a thicket of hollies twinkled darkly or a marbled gleam of blue shone in from overhead; the steep dark path was illumined by the golden lamplight of millions on millions of pointed leaves, hanging motionless in the sunny autumnal morning air which smelt of dry moss and wood smoke.
”And what's the rumour? That I'm going to prevail or that I've prevailed already?”
”The worst of it is,” Val kept his point and his temper, ”that it's not only Chilmark. One could afford to ignore village gossip, but this has reached Wharton, my father--Mrs. Clowes herself. You wouldn't willingly do anything to make her unhappy: indeed it's because of your consistent and delicate kindness both to her and to Bernard that I've refrained from giving you a hint before. You've done Bernard an immense amount of good. But the good doesn't any longer counterbalance the involuntary mischief: hasn't for some time past: can't you see it for yourself? One has only to watch the change coming over her, to look into her eyes--”
”Really, if you'll excuse my saying so, you seem to have looked into them a little too often yourself.”
Val waited to take out his case and light a cigarette. He offered one to Hyde--”Won't you?”
”No, thanks: if you've done I'll be moving on.”
”Why I haven't really begun yet. You make me nervous--it's a rotten thing to say to any man, and doubly difficult from me to you--and I express myself badly, But I must chance being called impertinent. The trouble is with your cousin. If you had heard him last night. . . . He's madly jealous.”
”Of me? Last night?” Lawrence gave a short laugh: this time he really was amused.
”Dangerously jealous.”
”There's not room for a shadow of suspicion. Go and interview Selincourt's servant if you like, or nose around the Continental.”
”Well,” said Val, coaxing a lucifer between his cupped palms, ”I dare say it'll come to that. I've done a good deal of Bernard's dirty work. Some one has to do it for the sake of a quiet life. His suspicions aren't rational, you know.”
”I should think you put them into his head.”
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