Part 31 (1/2)
”I?” the serene eyes widened slightly, irritating Lawrence by their effect of a delicacy too fastidious for contempt. For this courtesy, of finer grain than his own sarcasm, made him itch to violate and soil it, as mobs will destroy what they never can possess. ”Need we drag in personalities? He was jealous of you before you came to Wanhope. He fancies or pretends to fancy that you were in love with Mrs. Clowes when you were boy and girl.
We're not dealing with a sane or normal nature: he was practically mad last night--he frightened me. May I give you, word for word, what he said? That he let you stay on because he meant to give his wife rope enough to hang herself.”
”What do you want me to do?” said Lawrence after a pause.
”To leave Wanhope.”
More at his ease than Val, in spite of the disadvantage of his evening dress, Lawrence stood looking down at him with brilliant inexpressive eyes. ”Is it your own idea that I stayed on at Wanhope to make love to Laura?”
”If I answer that, you'll tell me that I'm meddling with what is none of my business, and this time you'll be right.”
”No: after going so far, you owe me a reply.”
”Well then, I've never been able to see any other reason.”
”Oh? Bernard's my cousin.”
”Since you will have it, Hyde, I can't see you burying yourself in a country village out of cousinly affection. You said you'd stay as long as you were comfortable. Well, it won't be comfortable now! I'm not presuming to judge you. I've no idea what your ethical or social standards are. Quite likely you would consider yourself justified in taking away your cousin's wife. Some modern professors and people who write about social questions would say, wouldn't they, that she ought to be able to divorce him: that a marriage which can't be fruitful ought not to be a binding tie? I've never got up the subject because for me it's settled out of hand on religious grounds, but they may not influence you, nor perhaps would the other possible deterrent, pity for the weak--if one can call Bernard weak. It would be an impertinence for me to judge you by my code, when perhaps your own is pure social expediency--which would certainly be better served if Mrs. Clowes went to you.”
”a.s.suming that you've correctly defined my standard--why should I go?”
Val shrugged his shoulders. ”You know well enough. Because Mrs.
Clowes is old-fas.h.i.+oned; her duty to Bernard is the ruling force in her life, and you could never make her give him up. Or if you did she wouldn't live long enough for you to grow tired of her-- it would break her heart.”
”Really?” said Lawrence. ”Before I grew tired of her?”
He had never been so angry in his life. To be brought to book at all was bad enough, but what rankled worst was the nature of the charge. Sometimes it takes a false accusation to make a man realize the esteem in which he is held, the opinions which others attribute to him and which perhaps, without examining them too closely, he has allowed to pa.s.s for his own. Lawrence had indulged in plenty of loose talk about Nietzschean ethics and the danger of altruism and the social inexpediency of sacrificing the strong for the weak, but when it came to his own honour not Val himself could have held a more conservative view. He, take advantage of a cripple? He commit a breach of hospitality? He sneak into Wanhope as his cousin's friend to corrupt his cousin's wife? What has been called the pickpocket form of adultery had never been to his taste. Had Bernard been on his feet, a strong man armed, Lawrence might, if he had fallen in love with Laura, have gloried in carrying her off openly; but of the baseness of which Val accused him he knew himself to be incapable.
”Really?” he said, looking down at Val out of his wide black eyes, so like Bernard's except that they concealed all that Bernard revealed. ”So now we understand each other. I know why you want me to go and you know why I want to stay.”
”If I've done you an injustice I'm sorry for it.”
”Oh, don't apologize,” said Lawrence laughing. His manner bewildered Val, who could make nothing of it except that it was incompatible with any sense of guilt.
”But, then,” the question broke from Val involuntarily, ”why did you stay?”
”Why do you?”
”I?”
”Yes, you. Did it never strike you that I might retort with a tu quoque?”
”How on earth--?”
”You were perhaps a little preoccupied,” said Lawrence with his deadly smile. ”I suggest, Val, that whether Clowes was jealous or not--you were.”
”I?”
”Yes, my dear fellow:” the Jew laughed: it gave him precisely the same satisfaction to violate Val's reticence, as it might have given one of his ancestors to cut Christian flesh to ribbons in the markets of the East: ”and who's to blame you? Thrown so much into the society of a very pretty and very unhappy woman, what more natural than for you to--how shall I put it?--const.i.tute yourself her protector? Set your mind at rest. You have only one rival, Val--her husband.”
He enjoyed his triumph for a few moments, during which Stafford was slowly taking account with himself.