CHAPTER XVI

It was a fatigued and jaded party that got out on the platform at Countisford. The mere wearing of evening dress when other people are at breakfast will damp the spirits of the most hardened, and even Lawrence had an up-all-night expression which reddened his eyelids and brought out the lines about his mouth. Isabel's hair was rumpled and her fresh bloom all dimmed. Laura Clowes had suffered least: there was not a thread astray in her satin waves, and the finished grace of her aspect had survived a night in a chair. But even she was very pale, though she contrived to smile at Val.

"How's Bernard?" were her first words.

"All serene. He slept most of the time. I was with him, luckily.

We guessed what had happened. You missed your train?" In this question Val included Lawrence.

"It was my fault," said Lawrence shortly. It was what he would have said if it had not been his fault.

"It was n.o.body's fault!" cried Laura. "We were held up in the traffic. But Lawrence is one of those people who will feel responsible if they have ladies with them on the Day of Judgment, won't you, Lawrence?"

"I ought to have left more time," said Lawrence impatiently.

"Let's get home."

In the car Val heard from Laura the details of their misadventure. Selincourt had waited with the women while Lawrence secured rooms for them in a Waterloo hotel: when they were safe, Lawrence had gone to Lucian's rooms in Victoria Street, where the men had pa.s.sed what remained of the night in a mild game of cards. They had all breakfasted together by lamplight at the hotel, and Selincourt had seen his sister into the Chilmark train. Nothing could have been more circ.u.mspect-- comically circ.u.mspect! between Selincourt and Isabel and the chambermaid, malice itself was put to silence. But Lawrence was fever-fretted by the secret sense of guilt.

At the lodge gates Val drew up. "It's preposterous, but I'm under Bernard's express orders to drive Isabel straight home. I don't know how to apologize for turning you and Hyde out of your own car, Laura!" No apology was needed, Laura and Lawrence knew too well how direct Bernard's orders commonly were to Val.

Lawrence silently offered his hand to Mrs. Clowes. The morning air was fresh, fog was still hanging over the river, and the sun had not yet thrown off an autumn quilting of cloud. Touched by the chill of dawn, some leaves had fallen and lay in the dust, their ribs beaded with dark dew: others, yellow and shrivelling, where shaken down by the wind of the car and fluttered slowly in the eddying air. Laura drew her sable scarf close over her bare neck.

"What I should like best, Lawrence, would be for you to go home with Isabel and make our excuses to Mr. Stafford. Would you mind? Or is it too much to ask before you get out of your evening dress?"

"I should be delighted," said Lawrence, feeling and indeed looking entirely the reverse. "But Miss Isabel has her brother to take care of her, she doesn't want me." Isabel gave that indefinable start which is the prelude of candour, but remained dumb. "I don't like to leave you to walk up to Wanhope alone."

This, was as near as in civilized life he could go to saying "to face Clowes alone."

"The length of the drive?" said Laura smiling. "I should prefer it. You know what Berns is." This was what Lawrence had never known. "If he's put out I'd rather you weren't there."

"Why, you can't imagine I should care what Bernard said?"

Laura struck her hands together.-"There! There!" she turned to Val, "can you wonder Bernard feels it?"

"I beg your pardon," said Lawrence from his heart.

"No, the contrast is poignant,'' said Val coldly.

"Dear Val, you always agree with me," said Laura. "Take Captain Hyde home and give him some breakfast. I'd rather go alone, Lawrence: it will be easier that way, believe me."

It was impossible to argue with her. But while Val wheeled and turned in the wide cross, before they took their upward bend under the climbing beechwood, Lawrence glanced over his shoulder and saw Mrs. Clowes still standing by the gate of Wanhope, solitary, a wan gleam of sunlight striking down over her gold embroideries and ivory coat, a russet leaf or two whirling slowly round her drooping head: like a b.u.t.terfly in winter, delicate, fantastic, and astray.

Breakfast at the vicarage was not a genial meal. Val was anxious and preoccupied, Isabel in eclipse, even Mr. Stafford out of humour--vexed with Lawrence, and with Val for bringing Lawrence in under the immunities of a guest. Lawrence himself was in a frozen mood. As soon as they had finished he rose: "If you'll excuse my rus.h.i.+ng off I'll go down to Wanhope now."

"By all means," said Mr. Stafford drily.

"Good-bye," said Isabel, casting about for a form of consolation, and evolving one which, in the circ.u.mstances, was possibly unique: "You'll feel better when you've had a bath."

"I'll walk down with you to Wanhope" said Val.

"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."