"Probably his spell in the army aged him. It must have been a formative experience."

This time Isabel had no doubt about it, there was certainly a touch of cruel irony in Hyde's soft voice. Her breath came fast.

"Why do you say that": she cried--"say it like that?"

The smile faded: Lawrence turned, startled out of his self-possession.

"Like what?"

"As if you we're sneering at Val!"

"I?-- My dear Miss Isabel, aren't you a little fanciful?"

Isabel supposed so too, on second thoughts: how could any man sneer at a record like Val's: unless indeed it were with that peculiarly graceless sneer which springs from jealousy? And, little as she liked Captain Hyde, she could not think him weak enough for that. She blushed again, this time without any rubric, and hung her head. "I'm sorry! But you did say it as if you didn't mean it. Perhaps you think we make too much fuss over Val? But in these sleepy country villages exciting things don't happen every day. I dare say you've had scores of adventures since that time you met Val. But Chilmark hasn't had any. That makes us remember."

"My dear child," said Lawrence with an earnest gentleness foreign to his ordinary manner, "you misunderstood me altogether. I liked your brother very much. Remember, I was there when he won his decoration--" He broke off. An intensely visual memory had flashed over him. Now he knew of whom Isabel had reminded him that morning: she had her brother's eyes.

"At the very time? Were you really? Do, do, do tell me about it! Major Clowes never will--he pretends he can't remember."

"Has Val never told you?"

"Hardly any more than was in the official account--that he was left between the lines after one of our raids, and went back in spite of his wound to bring in Mr. Dale. He had to wait till after dark?" Lawrence nodded.. "And 'under particularly trying conditions.' Why was that?"

"Because Dale was so close to the German lines. He was entangled in their wire."

Isabel shuddered. "It seems so long ago. One can't understand why such cruelties were ever allowed. Of course they will never be again." This naive voice of the younger generation made Lawrence smile. "And Val had to cut their wire?"

"To peel it off Dale, or peel Dale off it--what was left of him.

He didn't live more than twenty minutes after he was brought in."

"Did you know Dale?"

"Not well: he was in my cousin's company, not in mine."

"And was Val under fire at the time?"

"Under heavy fire. The Boches were sending up starsh.e.l.ls that made the place as light as day."

"I can't understand how Val could do it with his broken arm."

"His arm wasn't broken when he cut their wires."

"Oh! When was it then?"

Hyde flicked with his stick at the airy heads of gra.s.s that rose up thin-sown out of a burnished carpet of lady's slipper. His manner was even but his face was dark. "He had it splintered by a revolver--shot on his way home, near our lines."

"Oh! But the Army doctors said the shot must have been fired at close quarters?"

"There, you see I'm not much of an authority, am I? No doubt, if they said so, they were right. The fact is I was knocked out myself that afternoon with a rifle bullet in the ribs. It was a hot corner for the Wintons and Dorsets."

"Were you? I'm sorry." Isabel ran her eyes with a touch of whimsical solicitude over Hyde's tall easy figure and the exquisite keeping of his white clothes. Difficult to connect him with the b.l.o.o.d.y disarray of war! "Were you too left lying between the lines?"

"With a good many others, English and German.

"There was a fellow near me that hadn't a scratch. He was frightened--mad with fear: he lay up in the long gra.s.s and wept most of the day. I never hated any one so much in my life. I could have shot him with pleasure."

"German, of course?"

Hyde smiled. "German, of course."

"If he had been English he would have deserved to be shot," said Isabel briefly: then, reverting to a subject in which she was far more deeply interested, "Rowsley--my second brother--said I wasn't to cross-examine you: but it was a great temptation, because one never can get anything out of Val. And after all we've the right to be proud of him! Even then, when every one was so brave, you would say, wouldn't you, that Val earned his distinction? It really was what the Gazette called it, 'conspicuous gallantry'?"

"It was a daring piece of work," said Lawrence, reddening to his hair. He fought down a sensation so unfamiliar that he could scarcely put a name to it, and forced himself on: "We were all proud of him and we none of us forget it. Don't tell him I said so, though. It isn't etiquette. You won't think I'm trying to minimize what Val did, will you, if I say that we who were through the fighting saw so many horrible and ghastly things . . ." Again his voice failed. He was aware of Isabel's bewilderment, but he was seeing more ghosts than he had seen in all the intervening years of peace, and they came between him and the sunlit landscape and Isabel's young eyes. War! always war! human bodies torn to rags in a moment, and the flowers of the field wet with a darker moisture than rain: the very smell of the trenches was in his nostrils, their odour of blood and decay. What in heaven's name had brought it all back, and, stranger still, what had moved him to speak of it and to betray feelings whose very existence was unknown to him and which he had never betrayed before?

The silence was brief though to Lawrence it seemed endless. He drove the ghosts back to quarters and finished quietly: "Well, we won't talk about that, it's not a pleasant subject. Only give Val my love and tell him if he doesn't look me up soon I shall come and call on him. We're much too old friends to stand on ceremony."

"All right, I will," said Isabel.

There was a shrub of juniper close by, and she felt under its sharp branches. "Do you like honeysuckle?" She held up a fresh sprig fragrant with its pale horns, which she had tracked to covert by its scent. Lawrence was not given to wearing b.u.t.tonholes, but he understood the friendly and apologetic intention and inclined his broad shoulder for Miss Stafford to pa.s.s the stem through the lapel of his coat. Isabel had not intended to pin it in for him, but she was generally willing to do what was expected of her. She took a pin from her own dress (there were plenty in it), and fastened the flower deftly on the breast of Captain Hyde's white jacket.

And so standing before him, her head bent over her task, she unwittingly left Lawrence free to observe the texture of her skin, bloomed over with down like a peach, and the curves of her young shoulders, a little inclined to stoop, as young backs often are in the strain of growth, but so firm, so fresh, so white under the thin stuff of her bodice: below her silken plaits, on the nape of her neck, a curl or two of hair grew in close rings, so fine that it was almost indistinguishable from its own shadow.

Swiftly, without warning, Lawrence was aware of a pleasurable commotion in his veins, a thrill that shook through him like a burst of gay music. This experience was not novel, he had felt it three or four times before in his life, and on the spot, while it was sending gentle electric currents to his finger-tips, he was able to a.n.a.lyse its origin--item, to warm weather and laziness after the strain of his Chinese journey, so much: item, to Isabel's promise of beauty, so much: item, to the disparity between her age and his own, to her ignorance and immaturity, the bloom on the untouched fruit, so much more. But there was this difference between the present and previous occasions when he had fallen or thought of falling in love, that he desired no victory: no, it was he and not Isabel who was to capitulate, leaning his forehead upon her young hand. . . . And he had never seen her till that morning, and the child was nineteen, the daughter of a country vicarage, brought up to wear calico and to say her prayers! more, she was Val Stafford's sister, and she loved her brother. Lawrence gave himself a gentle shake. At six and thirty it is time to put away childish things. "Thank you very much. Is that Mrs. Clowes calling us?"

It was Laura Clowes and Yvonne Bendish, and Lawrence, as he strolled back with Isabel to the garden gate, had an uneasy suspicion that the episode of the honeysuckle had been overseen.

Laura was graver than usual, while Yvonne had a sardonic spark in her eye. "I'm afraid it's no use waiting any longer, Isabel,"

said Laura.

"What do you think, Lawrence? It's after six o'clock."

"Hasn't Val come?" said Isabel.

"No, he must have been kept at Countisford. It's a long ride for him on such a hot day. Perhaps Mrs. Bishop made him stay to tea."

"As if he would stay with any old Mrs. Bishop when he knew you were coming here!" said Isabel scornfully. "Poor old Val, I shan't tell him how you misjudged him, he'd be so hurt. But I'll send him down, shall I, to see you and Captain Hyde after supper?--Tired? Oh no, he's never too tired to go to Wanhope."

She kissed Laura, gave Lawrence her sweetest friendly smile, and returned to the lawn, where Yvonne had apparently taken root upon her tigerskin. Isabel heard Rowsley say, "Make her shut up, Jack," but before she could ask why Yvonne was to be shut up the daughter of Lilith had opened fire on the daughter of Eve. "And what did you think of Lawrence Hyde?" Mrs. Bendish asked, stretching herself out like a snake and examining Isabel out of her pale eyes, much the colour of an unripe gooseberry. "Was he very attractive? Oh Isabel! oh Isabel! I should not have thought this of one so young."

Isabel considered the point. "I can't understand him," she said honestly. "I liked parts of him. He isn't so--so h.o.m.ogeneous as most people are.

"Did he ask you for the honeysuckle?"

"No, I gave it to him for a peace offering. I hurt his feelings, and afterwards I was sorry and wanted to make it up with him.

But would you have thought he had any feelings? any, that is, that anything I said would hurt?"

"Certainly not," from Rowsley.

"Any woman can hurt any man," said Yvonne. "But, of course, you aren't a woman, Isabel. What was the trouble?"

"Oh, something about the war."