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

with his brilliant eyes, irreticent and unsparing of timidity in others. "Do you think I could have leaned my head on any hands but yours?"

He came too near, he touched her. Isabel had gone through a great deal that day, but, with the cruel and sordid history of Hyde's married life fresh in her mind, none of the material horrors at Wancote had produced in her such a shuddering recoil as now. His wife had not been dead six months! "Captain Hyde, how dare you?"

"I beg your pardon."

Lawrence drew himself up, a good-humoured smile on his lips: but they were pale. "I—I didn't mean to hurt you," faltered Isabel, as the tension of his silence reached her. What right had she, a young girl, to impose her own code of delicacy on a man of Hyde's age and standing?—Lawrence looked at her searchingly and his eyes changed, the sad irony died out of them, and rapidly, imperceptibly, he returned to his normal manner.

"Nor I to frighten you. Why, what a child it is, after all! Yes, your hands are strong, but they aren't practised yet. Never mind, you shall forget or remember anything you like, except this one thing which it pleases me and may please you to remember that I'm very glad you know the worst and weakest of me—"

"Isabel, are you there?"

Thus daily life revenges itself on those who forget its existence.

"That is Val's voice," said Lawrence. He stood up, no longer pale. "Heavens, I can't face him!"

"Oh dear!" said Isabel in dismay. She was no more anxious for them to meet than Lawrence was, but Val's footstep on the turf was dangerously near. But he was making for the middle of the lilac-hedge, for the red rose archway and the asphalt walk between reddening apple trees: and Isabel was sitting near the end, close to the garden wall. She flew out of her chair, held up a branch while Lawrence squeezed between the wall and the lilacs, and flew back and curled up again. The lilac leaves had not finished twinkling and rustling when Val appeared.

"How are you, invalid? I came home early on purpose to look after you." He was in well-worn grey riding clothes, booted and spurred, his whip in one hand and his gloves in the other: a slight, cool, well-knit figure of low tones and half-lights. "Have you had a quiet afternoon?"

"So-so," said Isabel, crimson.

"You look flushed, my darling," said Val tenderly. He sat down at the foot of Isabel's Indian chair and laid a finger on her wrist. "You don't feel feverish, do you?" The light click of the wicket gate, which meant that Lawrence was safely off the premises, enabled Isabel to say no with a sigh of relief. "It must be the hot weather. Hallo! what have we here?"

He held up the gold cigarette case which had dropped from Hyde's coat when he was lying on the grass.

"Some of Mrs. Bendish's property by the look of it," remarked Val. "Diamonds, begad! I should have thought Yvonne had better taste. But it must be hers, though the cipher doesn't seem to have a B in it. I'll guarantee it isn't Rosy's." He slipped it into his pocket. "I'll give it to Jack, I shall see him tonight at the vestry-meeting."

"It belongs to Captain Hyde."

"How do you know?"

"He's been here this afternoon."

"How long did he stay?"

"What time is it?— An hour and twenty minutes."

"What brought him?" said Val, bewildered.

Isabel was mute. . . "I don't know what you're talking about, Isabel. Has he been with you all that time? Very stupid of him when I particularly wanted you to have a quiet afternoon. When did he go?"

"He has only just gone."

"Just gone? I never saw him."

"He went by the wicket gate."

"But I came in by the wicket gate myself!" said Val. His kind serene eyes rested on his sister without a shadow of any thought behind surprise.

"I left the mare with Rowsley in the village."

Isabel sat up suddenly and wound her arms round Val's neck. "I sent him away when I heard you coming. He dodged you behind the lilacs. I didn't want to tell you he'd been here. I never should have told you if you hadn't found that case."

"You got rid of him— This minute? Because I came—? Isabel!" Stafford held her off. "It is not possible—! Listen to me: I will have an answer. I know Hyde. Has he said anything to offend you?"

"No! no! oh Val, don't be so angry!"

"Lucky for him," said Val, drawing a long breath and sitting down again, his whip across his knee. "My dear little sister, you mustn't make mysteries out of nothing at all! I'm sorry I startled you, but you startled me: I didn't know what to make of it. Hyde has not a very good name. . . . In fact I'd rather you didn't see too much of him unless Rose or I were there: it was cheek of him to come up this afternoon when I was out, considering that he scarcely knows you: but I suppose he thinks the Wancote show gives him right of entry. That is the sort of thing a chap like Hyde does think. Now begin again and tell me what it's all about."

"Oh, nothing, Val, nothing!" said Isabel, laughing, though the tears were not far from her eyes. "I didn't know you could get in such a wax if you tried! It's as you say, a little mystery of nothing at all. I'd tell you like a shot if I could, but I can't because it would be breaking a promise."

"Hyde had no earthly right to make you promise."

"It was of my own accord."

"It is all wrong," said Val. "Promises and silly secrets between a child like you and a fellow like Hyde!" He was more grave and vexed than Isabel had ever seen him. "There must be no more of it."

"There won't if I can help it!" said Isabel. "I like Captain Hyde—yes, I do: I know you don't, and I can quite see that he's what Rose would call a bit of an outsider, but I'm sorry for him and there's a great deal I like in him. But I don't want to see him again for years and years." She gave a little shiver of distaste: if anything had been wanting to heighten the reaction of her youth against Hyde's stained middle age, the evasions in which he had involved her would have done it. "Now don't scold me any more! I'm innocent, and I feel rather sad. The world looks unhomely this afternoon. All except you! You stay there where I can watch you: you're so comfortably English, so nice and cool and quiet! There's no one like you, no one: the more I see of other people the more I like you! I'm so glad you don't wear linen clothes and a Panama hat and rings. I'd give you away if you did with half a pound of tea. No, it's no use asking me any more questions because I shan't answer them: a promise is all the more binding if one would rather not keep it. No, and it's no use fishing either, I can keep a secret as well as you can—"

She broke off before the white alteration in Val's face.

"Has—.

"No," said Isabel slowly: "no, he never mentioned your name."

CHAPTER XI

"Val"

"M'm."

"I say"

"What, then?"

"What's all this about the Etchingham agency?"

Val Stafford, smoking a well-earned pipe some hours later in the evening sunlight on the vicarage lawn, looked up at his brother over the Chronicle with a faint frown. "Who?"

"Ah! who?" said Rowsley, squatting cross-legged on the turf.

"Jack began on it this afternoon, and I had to switch him off, for
I didn't care to own that it was news to me."

"There's nothing in it at present."

"The duke has offered me the management of his Etchingham property," said Val unwillingly. "Oh no, not to give up Bernard: Etchingham, you see, marches with Wanhope and the two could be run together. He was awfully nice about it: would take what time I could give him: quite saw that Wanhope would have to come first."

"How much?"

"Four hundred and an allowance for a house. Five, to be precise, which is what he is giving Mills: but of course I couldn't take full time pay for a part-time job."

Rowsley whistled.

"Yes, it would be very nice," said Val, always temperate. "It would practically be 300 pounds, for I couldn't go on taking my full 300 pounds from Bernard. I should get him to put on a young fellow to work under me."

"It would make a lot of difference to you, even so."

"To us," Val corrected him. "Another pound a week would oil the wheels of Isabel's housekeeping. And—" he hesitated, but having gone so far one might as well go on—"it would enable me to do two things I've long set my heart on, only it was no use saying so: give you another hundred and fifty a year and insure my life in Isabel's favour. It would lift a weight off my mind if I could do that. Suppose I were to die suddenly—one never knows what would become of her? She'll be able to earn her own living after taking her degree in October, but women's posts are badly paid and it's uncommonly hard to save. Oh yes, old boy, I know you'd look after her! But I don't want her to be a drag on you: it's bad enough now—you never grumble, but I know what it's like never to have a penny to spare. Times have changed since I was in the Army, but nothing alters the fact that it's uncommonly unpleasant to be worse off than other fellows. I hate it for you—all the more because you don't grumble. It is a constant worry to me not to be able to put you in a better position."

Rowsley had been too long inured to this paternal tenderness to be sensible of its touching absurdity on the lips of a man not much older than himself. But he was not a selfish youth, and he remonstrated with Val, though more like a son than a brother. "Yes, I dare say, but where do you come in? A stiff premium for Isabel and 50 pounds for Jim and 150 pounds for me doesn't leave much change out of 300 pounds!"

"Oh, I've all I want. Living at home, I don't get the chance of spending a lot of pocket money."

"Why don't you close at once?"

"Because I can't get an answer out of Bernard. I've spoken to him but he won't decide one way or the other. And he's my master, and I can't take on another job if he objects. That's why I kept it dark at home: what's the good of raising hopes that may be disappointed?"

"Pity you can't chuck Bernard and take on Etchingham and the five hundred."

"I should never do that," said Val in the rare tone of decision which in him was final. "After all these years I could never leave Bernard in the lurch. I owe him too much."

"As if the boot weren't on the other leg!" Rowsley muttered. He was not mercenary—none of Mr. Stafford's children were: he saw eye to eye with Val in Val's calm preference of six to eight hundred a year: but when Val carried his financial principles into the realm of sentiment Rowsley now and then lost his temper. His brother smiled at him, amused by his irritation, unmoved by it: other men's opinions rarely had any weight with Val Stafford.

"Pax till it happens, at all events! Honestly I don't think Bernard means to object: he's been all smiles the last day or two—Hyde's coming has shaken him up and done him good—"

"Oh! Hyde!"

Val let fail his paper and looked