Part 37 (1/2)
”I say that life's too short for quarrelling.” He held out his hand. ”But be gentle with her, she is very young.-- Yes, what is it, f.a.n.n.y?”
”Major Clowes's compliments, sir, and he would be glad to see Captain Hyde as soon as convenient.”
At Wanhope half an hour later the sun had gone down behind a bank of purple fog, and cloud after cloud had put off its vermilion glow and faded into a vague dimness of twilight: house and garden were quiet, except for the silver rippling of the river which went on and on, ceaselessly fleeting over shallows or was.h.i.+ng along through faded sedge. These river murmurs haunted Wanhope all day and night, and so did the low river-mists: in autumn by six o'clock the gra.s.s was already ankle deep and white as a field of lilies.
The tall doors were wide open now: no lamps were lit, but a big log fire blazed on the hearth, and through the empurpled evening air the house streamed with flame-light, flinging a ruddy glow over leafless acacia and misty turf. Stretched on his couch in a warm and dark angle by the staircase, Clowes was busy with his collection, examining and sorting a number of small objects which were laid out on his tray: sparks of light winked between his fingers as iron or gold or steel turned up a reflecting edge. His face as white as his hands, the wide eyes blackened by the expansion of their pupils, he looked like a ghost, but a ghost of normal habits, washed and shaved and dressed in ordinary tweeds.
”Hullo, Bernard.”
”Good evening, Lawrence. Oh, you've brought Val and-- Selincourt, is it? What years since we've met, Selincourt! Very good of you to come down, and I'm delighted to see you, one can't have too many witnesses. Mild evening, isn't it? Leave the doors open, Val, Barry has made up an immense fire, big enough for January. Now sit down all of you, will you? I shan't keep you long.”
Propped high on cus.h.i.+ons, he lay like a statue, his huge shoulders squared against them as boldly as if he were in the saddle. Lawrence, so like him in frame and colouring, stood with his back to the hearth: Selincourt with his tired eyes and grey hair sat near the door, one hand slipped between his crossed knees: Val preferred to stay in the background, a spectator, interested and deeply sympathetic, but a trifle shadowy. They were three to one, but the dominant personality was that of the cripple.
”It's with you, Lawrence, that I have to do business. You pa.s.sed last night with my wife.”
The heavy voice was deadened out of all heat except grossness.
How had Clowes spent the last twelve hours? In reliving over and over again his wife's fall: defiling her image and poisoning his own soul with emanations of a diseased mind, from which Selincourt, a straightforward sinner, would have turned in disgust. Men of strong pa.s.sions like Bernard need greater control than Bernard possessed to curb what they cannot indulge: and a mind full of gross imagery was nature's revenge on him for a love that had been to him ”hungry, and barren, and sharp as the sea.” But for the friend, the brother, and the lover it was difficult to grant him such allowances as would have been made by a physician.
”That'll do,” said Lawrence, raising his hand. ”Your wife is innocent. Send any one you like to the hotel--private detective if you like--and find out what rooms Miss Stafford and Laura had, or whether Selincourt and I stayed five minutes in the place after the ladies went upstairs.”
”So Laura said this morning.”
”There's no loophole for suspicion. I went back with Selincourt to his rooms and we sat up the rest of the night smoking and playing auction piquet. He won about five pounds off me. Ask him: he'll confirm it.”
”That's what he came for, isn't it?” Bernard smiled. ”My good chap, think I don't know that if you gave him a five pound note to do it Selincourt would hold the door for you?”
Selincourt's pale face was scarlet. ”I say she shall not return to him!” he broke out loudly. ”If this is a specimen of what he'll say to us, what does he say to her?”
”No offence, no offence,'' Bernard bore him down, insolent and jovial. ”'The Lord commended the unjust steward.' I foresaw that Lawrence would lie through thick and thin, and if I'd given it a thought either way I should have known you'd be brought down to back him up. And quite right too to stand by your sister--the more so that all you Selincourts are as poor as Church rats and naturally don't want your damaged goods back on your hands. But don't get huffy, keep calm like me. You deny everything, Lawrence. Quite right: a man's not worth his salt if he won't lie to protect a woman. Laura also denies everything. Quite right again: a woman's bound to lie to save her reputation. But the husband also has his natural function, which is to exercise a decent incredulity. Perhaps it's a bit difficult for you to enter into my feelings. You're none of you married men and you don't know how it stings a man up when his wife makes him a-- Hallo!”
”What?”
”What's the matter with you?”
”Go on,” said Lawrence, flinging himself into a chair: ”if you have a point, come to it. I'm pretty well sick of this.”
”So it seems,” said Bernard staring at him. ”Is it the good old-fas.h.i.+oned English word that you can't stomach? All right, after tonight I shan't offend again. That's my point and I'm coming to it as fast as I can. I won't have any one of the lot of you near me again except Val: I acquit him of complicity: he probably believes Laura innocent. Don't you, Val?”
”There's no evidence whatever against her, outside your imagination, old man.”
”You're in love with her yourself,” Bernard retorted brutally.
Val started, it was the second time in twelve hours. ”Oh! think I haven't seen that? There's not much I don't see, that goes on around me. Cheer up, I'm not really jealous of you. Laura never cared that for you. She was my wife for ten days, after all: it takes a man to master her.”
”What he wants is a medical man,” said Lawrence to Selincourt in a low voice. He dared not look at Val.
”After tonight neither Selincourt nor you, Lawrence nor your lady friend will darken my doors again. Try it on and I'll have you warned off by the police.”
”Bernard, you over-rate the attractions of your society.”
”Pa.s.s to my second point. I don't propose to divorce Laura.”
”You couldn't get a divorce, you a.s.s: you've no case.”