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

But no, you must needs stick to Bernard, though you never get any thanks for it! You're an unpractical dreamer."

"I don't know what on earth you're talking about."

"And you're all in it together, damn you!" Lawrence broke out with an angry laugh. "It's all equally picturesque—feudal's the word! I never knew anything like it in my life and I wouldn't have believed it could continue to exist. What do you do with gipsies? evict 'em, I suppose." He flung a second question at Val which made the son of a vicarage knit his brows.

"As a matter of fact there's a house in Brook Lane about which Bendish and I are a good deal exercised in our minds at the present moment . . . and the percentage of children born too soon after marriage is disastrous. You're all out, Hyde. Nothing could be more commonplace than Chilmark, believe me: life is like this all over rural England, and it's only from a distance that one takes it for Arcadia."

"Folly," said Lawrence. "Good God, why should you exercise your simple minds over the house in Brook Lane? Ah! because the men who go to it are your own men, and the parsonage and the Castle are answerable for their souls." Val, irritated, suggested that if Hyde's forebears had lived in Chilmark since the time when every freeman had to swear fealty, laying his hands between the knees of his lord, Hyde might have shared this feeling. "But they didn't," said Lawrence, drily. "My grandfather was a pawnbroker in the New Cut."

"Then perhaps you're hardly in a position to judge."

"Judge? I don't judge, my good fellow—I'm lost in admiration! In an age of materialism it's refreshing to come across these simple, homespun virtues. I didn't know there was a man left in England that would exist, for choice, on three hundred a year. Are you always content with your rustic ideals, Val? Haven't you any ambition?"

"I?" said Val.

"'Carry me out of the fight,'" quoted Lawrence under his breath.
"I swear I forgot."

Silence fell again, the silence on Lawrence's part of continual conflict and adjustment, and on Val's mainly of irritation. Lawrence talked too much and too loosely, and was over-given to damning what he disliked—a trick that went with his rings and his diamond monogram. Val was not interested in a townsman's amateur satire; in so far as Lawrence was not satirical, he had probably drunk one glass more of Bernard's' champagne than was good for him! In the upshot, Val was less disinclined to credit Rowsley than half an hour ago.

Lawrence roused himself. "About your sister: I was sorry afterwards to have stayed so long. She seemed none the worse for it at the time, but no doubt she ought to keep quiet for a bit. Will you make my excuses to her?"

"I will with pleasure."

"And will you allow me to tackle Bernard about the agency?"

"To—?"

"If you won't resent my interfering? I can generally knock some sense into Bernard's head. It's an iniquitous thing that he should take advantage of your generosity, Val."

Stafford was completely taken by surprise. "I'd rather—it's most awfully kind of you," he stammered, "but I couldn't trespass on your kindness—"

"Kindness, nonsense! Bernard's my cousin: if your services are worth more in the open market than he pays you, it's up to me to see he doesn't fleece you. Otherwise you might ultimately chuck up your job, and where should we be then? In the soup: for he'd never get another man of your class—a gentleman—to put up with the rough side of his tongue. No: he must be brought to book: if you'll allow me?"

Val's disposition was to refuse; it was odious to him to accept a favour from Hyde. But pride is one of the luxuries that poor men cannot afford. "I should be most grateful. Thank you very much."

"And now go to bed: you're tired and so am I. I've had the devil of a hard day." He stretched himself, raising his wrists to the level of his shoulders, luxuriously tense under the closefitting coat. "I shall hope to see your sister again after the inquest."

"Yes," said Val, hesitating: "are you staying on, then?"

"As you advised."

"You'll be very bored."

"No, I've fallen in love." Val gave a perceptible start. "With the country," Lawrence explained with a merry laugh. "Rustic ideals. Don't misjudge me, I beg: I have no designs on Mrs. Bendish."

"Hyde . . .

"Well, my dear Val?"

"Give me back my parole."

"Not I."

"You're unjust and ungenerous," said Val with repressed passion. "But I warn you that I shall interfere none the less to protect others if necessary. Good-night."

Lawrence watched him across the lawn with a bewildered expression. But he forgot him in a minute—or remembered him only in the association with Isabel which brought Val into the radius of his good will.

CHAPTER XII

"Hadow's bringing out a new play," remarked Lawrence, looking up from the Morning Post. "A Moore comedy, They're clever stuff, Moore's comedies: always well written, and well put on when Hadow has a hand in it. You never were a playgoer, Bernard."

"Not I," said Bernard Clowes. He and his guest were smoking together in the hall after breakfast, Lawrence imparting items of news from the Morning Post, while Bernard, propped up in a sitting attitude on the latest model of invalid couch, turned over and sorted on a swing table a quantity of curios mainly in copper, steel, and iron. Both swing-table and couch had been bought in London by Lawrence, and to his vigorous protests it was also due that the great leaved doors were thrown wide to the amber sunshine: while the curios came out of one of his Eastern packing-cases, which he had had unpacked by Gaston for Bernard to take what he liked. Lawrence's instincts were acquisitive, not to say predatory. Wherever he went he amassed native treasures which seemed to stick to his fingers, and which in nine cases out of ten, thanks to his racial tact, would have fetched at Christie's more than he gave for them. Coming fresh from foreign soil, they were a godsend to Bernard, who was weary of collecting from collectors' catalogues. "Can I have this flint knife? Egyptian, isn't it? Oh, thanks awfully, I'm taking all the best." This was true. But Lawrence, like most of his nation, gave freely when he gave at all. "No, I never was one for plays except Gilbert and Sullivan and the 'Merry Widow' and things like that with catchy tunes in 'em. Choruses." He gave a reminiscent laugh.

"Legs?" suggested Lawrence.

"Exactly," said Bernard, winking at him. "Oh damn!" A mechanical jerk of his own legs had tilted the table and sent the knife rolling on the floor. Lawrence picked it up for him, drew his feet down, and tucked a rug over his hips.

"Mind that box of Burmese darts, old man, they're poisoned.— I used to be an inveterate first-nighter. Still am, in fact, when I'm in or near town. I can sit out anything from 'Here We Are Again' to 'Samson Agonistes.' To be frank, I rather liked 'Samson': it does one's ears good to listen to that austere, delicate English."

"How long would these take to polish one off?"

"Ten or twelve hours, chiefly in the form of a hoop. No, Berns, I can't recommend them." He drew from its jewelled sheath and put into Bernard's hands a Persian dagger nine inches long, the naked blade damascened in wavy ripplings and slightly curved from point to hilt. "That would do your trick better. Under the fifth rib. I bought it of a Greek muleteer, God knows how he got hold of it, but he was a bit of a poet: he assured me it would go in 'as soft as a kiss.' For its softness I cannot speak, but it is as sharp as a knife need be."

"Sharper," said Bernard, his thumb in his mouth.

"You silly ass, I warned you!— I should rather like to see this
Moore play. I suppose Laura never goes, as you don't?"

"I don't stop her going, as you jolly well know. She's welcome to go six nights a week if she likes."

"She couldn't very well go alone," Lawrence ignored the scowl of his host. "Tell you what: suppose I took her tonight? I could run her up and down in my car, or we could get back by the midnight train. Would the feelings of Chilmark be outraged?"

"What business is it of Chilmark's? If I'm complaisant, that's enough," said Bernard, his features relaxing into a broad grin. "I may be planked down in a country village for the rest of my very unnatural life, but I'll be shot if I'll regulate mine or my wife'& behaviour by the twaddle they talk! I'll have that dagger." Slipping it slowly into its sheath he watched it travel home, the supple female curve gliding and yielding as a woman yields to a man's caress. "Voluptuous, I call it. Under the left breast, eh?" He drew it again and held it poised and pointing at his cousin. "Come, even I could cut your heart out with a gem of a blade like that." Lawrence held himself lightly erect, his big frame stiffening from head to foot and the pupils of his eyes dilating till the irids were blackened. "Call Laura." Bernard sheathed the dagger again and laid it down. "She's out there snipping away at the roses. Why can't she leave 'em to Parker? She's always messing about out there dirtying her hands, and then she comes in and paws me. Call her in."

Lawrence escaped into the sunshine. He had not liked that moment when Bernard had held up the dagger, nor was it the first time that Bernard had made him shiver, but these vague apprehensions soon faded in the open air. It was a sallow sunshine, a light wind was blowing, and the lawn was spun over with brilliancies of gossamer and flecked with yellow leaflets of acacia and lime. Little light clouds floated overhead, sun-smitten to a fiery whiteness, or curling in gold and silver surf over the grey of distant hayfields. In the borders the velvet bodies of bees hung between the velvet petals, ruby-red, of dahlias. There had been no frost, and yet a foreboding of frost was in the air, a sparkle, a sting—enough to have braced Lawrence when he went down to bathe before breakfast, standing stripped amid long river-herbage drenched in dew, a west wind striking cold on his wet limbs: sensations exquisite so long as the blood of health and manhood glowed under the chilled skin! It was early autumn.

Time slips away fast in a country village, and Lawrence remained a welcome guest at Wanhope, where Chilmark said—though with a covert smile—that Captain Hyde had done his cousin a great deal of good. Bernard was better behaved with Lawrence than with any one else, less surly, less unsociable, less violently coarse: since June there had been fewer quarrels with Val and Barry and the servants, and less open incivility to Laura. He had even let Laura give a few mild entertainments, arrears of hospitality which she was glad to clear off: and he had appeared at them in person, polite and well dressed, and on the friendliest terms with his cousin and his wife.

Lawrence knew his own mind now. It was because he knew it that he held his hand: meeting Isabel two or three times a week, entering into the life of the little place because it was her life, fighting Val's battle with Bernard—and winning it— because Val was her brother. When he remembered his collapse he was not abashed: shame was an emotion which he rarely felt: but he had gone too far and too fast, and was content to mark time in a more rational and conventional courtship.

But a courtship under the rose, for before others he hid his love like a crime, treating Isabel as good humoured elderly men treat pretty children. Where the astringent memory of Lizzie came into play, Lawrence was dumb. The one aspect of that fiasco which he had