"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.

"I'm not such a cautious moralist as you are," Lawrence pursued, "and so I don't hold a pistol to your head and give you ten minutes to clear out of Wanhope, as you did to mine. On the contrary, I hope you'll long continue to act as Bernard's agent.

I'm sure he'll never get a better one. As for Laura, she won't discover your pa.s.sion unless you proclaim it, which I'm sure you'll never do. She looks on you as a brother--an affectionate younger brother invaluable for running errands. And you'll continue to fetch and carry, enduring all things from her and Bernard much as you do from me. When I do go--which won't be just yet--I shan't feel the faintest compunction about leaving you behind. I'm sure Bernard's honour will be as safe in your hands as it is in mine."

And thus one paved the way to pleasant relations with ones brother-in-law. The civilized second self, always a dismayed and cynical spectator of Hyde's lapses into savagery, raised its voice in vain.

"You seem a little confused, Val--you always were a modest chap.

But surely you of all men can trust my discretion--?"

"That's enough," said Val. He touched Hyde's coat with his finger-tips, an airy movement, almost a caress, which seemed to come from a long way off. "Lawrence, you're hurting yourself more than me."

It was enough and more than enough: an arrest instant and final.

Later Lawrence wondered whether Val knew what he had done, or whether it was only a thought unconsciously made visible; it was so unlike all he had seen of Val, so like much that he had felt.

It put him to silence. Not only so, but it flung a light cloud of mystery over what had seemed noonday clear. Since that first night when he had watched in a mirror the disentangling of Laura's scarf, Lawrence had entertained no doubt of Val's sentiments, but now he was left uncertain. Val had translated himself into a country to which Lawrence could not follow him, and the light of an unknown sun was on his way.

Lawrence drew back with an impatient gesture. "Oh, let's drop all this!" The civilized second self was in revolt alike against his own morbid cruelty and Val's escape into heaven: he would admit nothing except that he had gone through one trying scene after another in the last eighteen hours, and that Val had paid for the irritation produced successively by Mrs. Cleve, Isabel, a white night, and a distressed anxious consciousness of unavowed guilt. "We shall be at each other's throats in a minute, which wouldn't suit either your book or mine--you've no idea, Val, how little it would suit mine! I'm sorry I was so offensive. But you wrong me, you do indeed; I'm not in love with Laura, and, if I were, the notion of picking poor Bernard's pocket is absolutely repugnant to me. Social expediency be hanged! What! as his guest?-- But let's drop recrimination; I had no right to resent what you said after forcing you to say it, nor, in any case, to taunt you . . . I beg your pardon: there! for heaven's sake let's leave it at that."

"Will you release me from my parole?"

"Yes, and wish to heaven I'd never extracted it. I had no right to impose it on you or to hold you to it. But don't give yourself away, Val, I can't bear to think of what you'll have to face. It will be what you once called it--crucifixion."

"No, freedom," said Val. "After all these years in prison." He put up his hand to his head. "The brand--the--What's the matter?" Lawrence had seized his arm. "Am I--am I talking rubbish? I feel half asleep. But one night's sitting up aughtn't to-- Oh, this is absurd! . . ."

Lawrence waited in the patience of dismay. It was no excuse to plead that till then he had not known all the harm he had done; men should not set racks to work in ignorance of their effect on trembling human nerves.

"That's over," said Val, wiping his forehead. "Sorry to make a fuss, but it came rather suddenly. Things always happen so simply when they do happen."

"Are you going to confess?"

"Oh yes. I ought to have done it long ago. In fact last night I made up my mind to break my parole if you wouldn't let me off, but I'd rather have it this way. Remains only to choose time and place: that'll need care, for I mustn't hurt others more than I can help. But I wouldn't mind betting it'll all be as simple as sh.e.l.ling peas. The odds are that people won't believe half I say. They'll have forgotten all about the war by now, and they'll make far too much allowance for my being only nineteen."

"And for a voluntary confession: that always carries great weight. They would judge you very differently if it had come out by chance. Rightly, too: if you're going to make such a confession at your time of life, it will be difficult for any one to call you a coward."

"Thank you!" Val shrugged his shoulders with the old indolent irony. "But moral courage was always my long suit."

"How young you still are!" said Lawrence smiling at him, "young enough to be bitter. But you're under a delusion. No, let me finish-- I'm an older man than you are, I've seen a good deal of life, and I had four years out there instead of six weeks like you. So far as I can judge you never were a coward. Thousands and hundreds of thousands of men broke down like you, but they were lucky and it wasn't known, or at all events it wasn't critical. Their failure of nerve didn't coincide with the special call to action. You would have redeemed yourself if you had been able to stick to your profession. You have redeemed yourself: and you'd prove it fast enough if you got the chance, only of course in these piping times of peace unluckily you won't." He coloured suddenly to his temples. "Good G.o.d, Val! if there were any weakness left in you, could you have mastered me like this?"

CHAPTER XVII

The quickest way to Wanhope was by High Street and field path.

But Lawrence to avoid the village entered the drive by the lodge, through iron gates over which Bernard had set up the arms and motto of his family: FORTIS ET FIDELIS, faithful and strong.

Winding between dense shrubs of rhododendron under darker deodars, the road was long and gloomy, but Lawrence was thankful to be out of sight of Chilmark. He hurried on with his light swinging step--light for his build--his tired mind vacant or intent only on a bath and a change of clothes, till in the last bend, within a hundred yards of Wanhope he came on Mrs. Clowes.

He never could clearly remember his first sight of her, the shock was too great, but as he came up she put out her hands to him and he took them in his own. She was still in her evening dress but without cloak or fur, which had probably slipped off her shoulders: they were bare, and her beautiful bodice was torn.