Nightfall, Anthony Pryde [easy novels to read .TXT] 📗

only just come. Val is Bernard's agent, and I ought not to have omitted him from our list of country neighbours, but he's like one of the family. Bernard wants you, to meet him because he was near you in the war. But I don't know that you'll have much in common: Val was very junior to you, and he's not keen on talking about it in any case. So many men have that shrinking. Have you, I wonder?"

"I'm afraid I don't take impressions easily. Didn't your friend enjoy it?"

"He had no chance. He had only six or seven weeks at the front; he was barely nineteen, poor boy, when he was invalided out. That was why Bernard offered him the agency—he was delighted to lend a helping hand to one of his old brother officers."

"Wounded?"

"Yes, he had his right arm smashed by a revolver bullet. Then rheumatic fever set in, and the trouble went to the heart, and he was very ill for a long time. I don't suppose he ever has been so strong as he was before. What made it so sad was the splendid way he had just distinguished himself," Laura continued. She gave a little sketch of the rescue of Dale, far more vivid than Val had ever given to his family. "Perhaps you can imagine what a fuss Chilmark made over its solitary hero! We're still proud of him. Val is always in request at local shows: he appears on the platform looking very shy and bored. Poor boy! I believe he sometimes wishes he had never won that embarrassing decoration."

"What's his name?"

"Val Stafford. Why—do you remember him?"

"Er—yes, I do," said Lawrence. He took out his cigar case and turned from Laura to light a cigar. "I knew a lot of the Dorchesters. . . Amiable-looking, fair boy, wasn't he?"

"Middle height, and rather sunburnt. But that description fits such dozens! However, I'm taking you up to tea there this afternoon, if the prospect doesn't bore you, so you'll be able to judge for yourself. He has a young sister who threatens to be very pretty. Are you still interested in pretty girls, M. le capitaine?"

"Immensely." Hyde lay back on one arm, smoking rather fast. "I see no immediate prospect of my being bored, thanks. Rather fun running into Stafford again after all these years! I shall love a chat over old times." He raised his black eyes, and Laura started. Was it her fancy, or a trick of the sunlight, that conjured up in them that sparkle of smiling cruelty, gone before she could fix it? "You say he doesn't care to talk about his military exploits? He always was a modest youth, I should love to see him on a recruiting platform. Wait till I get him to myself, he won't be shy with me. Did you tell him I was coming?"

"I told his sister Isabel, who probably told him. I haven't seen him since, he hasn't happened to come in; I suppose the hay harvest has kept him extra busy—Dear me! why, there he is!"

In the field across the stream a young man on horseback had come into view. Catching sight of Laura he slipped across a low boundary wall, his brown mare, a thoroughbred, changing her feet in a ladylike way on the worn stones, and trotted down to the riverbank, raising his cap.

"Coming in to lunch, Val?" Laura called across the water.

"Thank you very much, I'm afraid I shan't have time."

"But you haven't been in since Sunday!" Laura's accent was reproachful. "Why are you forsaking us? We need you more than the farm does!"

Val's pleasant laugh was the avoidance of an answer. "So sorry! But I can't come in now, Laura: I have to go over to Countisford to talk to Bishop about the new tractor, and I want to get back by teatime. Isabel tells me you're bringing Captain Hyde up to see us." He raised his cap again, smiling directly at Lawrence, who returned the salute with such gay good humour that Laura was able to dismiss that first fleeting impression from her mind. So this was Val Stafford, was it? And a very personable fellow too! Hyde had not foreseen that ten years would work as great a change in Val as in himself, or greater.

"I was going to call on you in due form, sir, but my young sister hasn't left me the chance. You haven't forgotten me, have you?"

"No, I remember you most distinctly. Delighted to meet you again."

"Thank you. The pleasure is mutual. Now I must push on or I shall be late."

"He can use his arm, then," said Lawrence, as Val rode away, jumping his mare over a fence into the road. "Shaves himself and all that, I suppose? He rides well."

"A great deal too well! and rides to hounds too, but he ought not to do it, and I'm always scolding him. He can't straighten his right arm, and has very little power in it. He was badly thrown last winter, but directly he got up he was out again on Kitty."

"Living up to his reputation." Lawrence flicked the ash from his cigar. "I should have known him anywhere by his eyes."

"He has kept very young, hasn't he? An uneventful life without much anxiety does keep people young," philosophized Laura. "I feel like a mother to him. But you'll see more of him this afternoon."

"So I shall," said Lawrence, "if he isn't detained at
Countisford."

CHAPTER V

The reason why Lawrence found Isabel scrubbing Mrs. Drury's floor was that Dorrie's pretty, sluttish little mother had been whisked off to the Cottage Hospital with appendicitis an hour earlier. She was in great distress about Dorrie when Isabel, coming in with the parish magazine, offered to stay while Drury went to fetch an aunt from Winterbourne Stoke. When Drury drove up in a borrowed farm cart, Isabel without expecting or receiving many thanks dragged her bicycle to the top of the glen and pelted off across the moor. Her Sunbeam was worn and old, so old that it had a fixed wheel, but what was that to Isabel? She put her feet up and rattled down the hill, first on the turf and then on the road, in a happy reliance on her one serviceable brake.

Her father was locked in his study writing a sermon: Isabel however tumbled in by the window. She sidled up to Mr. Stafford, sat on his knee, and wound one arm round his neck. "Jim darling," she murmured in his ear, "have you any money?"

"Isabel," said Mr. Stafford, "how often have I told you that I will not be interrupted in the middle of my morning's work? You come in like a whirlwind, with holes in your stockings—"

Isabel giggled suddenly. "Never mind, darling, I'll help you with your sermon. Whereabouts are you? Oh!—'I need not tell you, my friends, the story we all know so well'—Jim, that's what my tutor calls 'Redundancy and repetition.' You know quite well you're going to tell us every word of it. Darling take its little pen and cross it out—so—with its own nasty little cross-nibbed J—"

"What do you mean by saying you want money," Mr. Stafford hurriedly changed the subject, "and how much do you want? The butcher's bill came to half a sovereign this week, and I must keep five shillings to take to old Hewitt—"

"I want pounds and pounds."

"My dear!" said Mr. Stafford aghast. He took off his spectacles to polish them, and then as he put them on again, "If it's for that Appleton boy I really can't allow it. There's nothing whatever wrong with him but laziness"

"It isn't for Appleton. It's for me myself." Isabel sat up straight, a little flushed. "I'm growing up. Isn't it a nuisance? I want a new dress! I did think I could carry on till the winter, but I can't. Could you let me have enough to buy one ready-made? Chapman's have one in their window that would fit me pretty well. It's rather dear, but somehow when I make my own they never come right. And Rowsley says I look like a scarecrow, and even Val's been telling me to put my hair up!"

"Put your hair up, my child? Why, how old are you? I don't like little girls to be in a hurry to turn into big ones"

"I'm not a little girl," said Isabel shortly. "I'm nineteen."

"Nineteen? no, surely not!"

"Twenty next December."

"Dear me!" said Mr. Stafford, quite overcome. "How time flies!" He set her down from his knee and went to his cash box. "If Val tells you to put your hair up, no doubt you had better do it." He paused. "I don't know whether Val said you ought to have a new frock, though? I can't bear spending money on fripperies when even in our own parish so many people—" Some glimmering perception reached him of the repressed anguish in Isabel's eyes. "But of course you must have what you need. How much is it?"

"1. 11. 6."

"Oh, my dear! That seems a great deal."

"It isn't really much for a best dress," said poor Isabel.

"But you mustn't be extravagant, darling," said Mr. Stafford tenderly. "I see other girls running about in little cotton dresses or bits of muslin or what not that look very nice—much nicer on a young girl than 'silksand fine array.' Last time Yvonne came to tea she wore a little frock as simple as a child's"

"She did," said Isabel. "She picked it up in a French sale. It was very cheap—only 275 francs."

"Eleven pounds!" Mr. Stafford held up his hands. "My dear, are you sure?"

"Quite," said Isabel. Mr. Stafford sighed. "I must speak to Yvonne. 'How hardly shall they…'" He took a note out of his cash box. "Can't you make that do—?" he was beginning when a qualm of compunction came upon him. After all it was a long time since he had given Isabel any money for herself, and there must be many little odds and ends about a young girl's clothing that an elderly man wouldn't understand. He took out a second note and pressed them both hurriedly into Isabel's palm. "There! now run off and don't ask me for another penny for the next twelvemonth!" he exclaimed, beaming over his generosity though more than half ashamed of it. "You extravagant puss, you! dear, dear, who'd have a daughter?"

Isabel gave him a rather hasty though warm embrace (she was terribly afraid that his conscience would prick him and that he would take the second note away again), and flew out of the window faster than she had come in. The clock was striking a quarter past one, and she had to scamper down to Chapman's to buy the dress, and a length of lilac ribbon for a sash, and a packet of bronze hairpins, and be back in time to lay the cloth for two o'clock lunch. If it is only for idle hands that Satan finds mischief, he could not have had much satisfaction out of Isabel Stafford.

Soon after four Mrs. Clowes stepped from her car, shook out her soft flounces, and led the way across the lawn, Lawrence Hyde in attendance. The vicarage was an old-fashioned house too large for the living, its long front, dotted with rosebushes, rising up honey-coloured against the clear green of a beech grove. There are grand houses that one sees at once will never be comfortable, and there are unpretentious houses that promise to be cool in summer and warm in winter and restful all the year round: of such was Chilmark vicarage, sunning itself in the afternoon clearness, while faded green sunblinds filled the interior with verdant shadow, and the smell of sweetbrier and Japanese honeysuckle breathed round the rough-cast walls.

Isabel had laid tea on the lawn, and Mrs. Clowes smiled to herself when she saw seven worn deck chairs drawn up round the table; she was always secretly amused at Isabel in her character of hostess, at the naive natural confidence with