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

not fully confessed to Isabel—though only because it was not then prominent in his mind—was its scorching, its lacerating effect on his pride. But for it he would probably have flung discretion to the winds, confided in Laura, in Bernard, in Val, pursued Isabel with a hot and headstrong impetuosity: but it had left the entire tract of sex in him one seared and branded scar.

Even when they were alone together, which rarely happened—Val saw to that—he had as yet made no open love to her: it was difficult to do so when one was never secure from interruption for ten minutes together. Of late he had begun to chafe against Val's cobweb barriers. Three months is a long time! and patience was not a virtue that came natural to Lawrence Hyde.

He found Laura cutting off dead roses, a sufficiently harmless occupation, one would have thought: a trifle thinner, a trifle paler than when he came: and were those grey threads in her brown hair?

"Berns wants you," said Lawrence. "I've done such an awful thing, Laura—"

Again that flash of imperfect perception! What was going on under the surface at Wanhope, that Laura should turn as white as her handkerchief? He hurried on as if he had noticed nothing. "Bernard and I have been laying our heads together. Do you know what I'm going to do? Run you up to town to see the new Moore play at Hadow's."

"Delightful!" Already Laura had recovered herself: her smile was as sweet as ever, and as serene. "Was it your idea or Bernard's?"

"Mine. . . I say, Laura: Bernard is all right, isn't he?"

"In what way, all right?"

Lawrence reddened, regretting his indiscretion. "I've fancied his manner queer, once or twice."

"There is a close connection, of course, between the spine and the brain," said Laura quietly. "But my husband is perfectly sane. . . . Oh my dear Lawrence, of course I forgive you! what is there to forgive? I only wish I could come tonight, but I'm afraid it can't be managed—"

"She says it can't be managed," said Lawrence, standing aside for Laura to pass in. "Pitch into her, Bernard. Hear her talk like a woman of sixty! Are you frightened of the night air, Laura? Or would Chilmark chatter?"

"It might, if you and I went alone," Laura smiled.

"Make up a party then," suggested Lawrence. "Get the Bendishes to come too."

She shook her head. "They're dining with the Dean."

"And decanal dinner-parties can't be thrown over." When he made the suggestion, Lawrence had known that the Bendishes were dining with the Dean. "Some one else, then."

"Whom could I ask like this at the last moment? No, I won't go—thank you all the same. I'm not so keen on late hours and long train journeys as I used to be. Go by yourself and you can tell us all about it afterwards. Berns and I shall enjoy that as much as seeing it ourselves. Shan't we, Berns?" Clowes gave a short laugh: he could not have expressed his opinion more clearly if he had called his wife a fool to her face.

"You weren't so particular before you married me, my love. When you ran that French flat with Yvonne you jolly well knew how to amuse yourself."

"Girls do many things before they're married," said Laura vaguely. "I know better now."

"Oh, you know a lot. She ought to go, Lawrence. It'll do her good. Now you shall go, my dear, that's flat."

Lawrence began to wish he had held his tongue. He had his own ends to serve, but, to do him justice, he had not meant to serve them at Laura's expense. But he had still his trump card to play. "Surely we could find a chaperon?" he said gently, ignoring Bernard. "What about the Staffords? Hardly in Val's line, perhaps. But the child—little Miss Isabel—won't she do?"

To his relief, Laura's eyes lit up with pleasure. "Isabel? I never thought of her! Yes, she would love to come!—But, if she does, she must come as my guest. You would never have asked her of your own accord, and the Staffords are so proud, I'm sure Val wouldn't like you to pay for her." Again Bernard's short, sardonic laugh translated the silence of his cousin's constraint and dismay.

"Hark to her! I'll sort her for you, Lawrence. She shall go, and you shall be paymaster. Yes, and for the Stafford brat too. Lawrence and I don't understand these modern manners, my dear. When we take a pretty woman out we like to do the treating. Now cut along and see about the tickets, Lawrence. You can 'phone from the post office."

Lawrence had secured a box ten days ago, but he strolled out, thinking that the husband and wife might understand each other better when alone. As soon as he was out of earshot Bernard turned on Laura and seized her by the wrist, his features altering, their sardonic mask recast in deep lines of hate. "Why wouldn't you go up alone? That's what he wanted. Why have you saddled him with the little Stafford girl? You can't take her to dine in a private room."

"It was because I foresaw this that I refused. Why do you torment yourself by forcing me to go?"

"I? What do I care? Do you think I should shed many tears if you walked out of the house and never came back? Think I don't know he's your lover? you're uncommonly circumspect with your stable door! . . . A woman like you! Look here." He picked up the Persian dagger. "See it? That's been used before. I should like to use it on you. I should like to cut your tongue out with it. Don't be afraid, I'm not going to stab you."

"Afraid?" said his wife with her serene ironical smile. "My dear Bernard, you tempt me to wish you were."

"Oh, not before tonight. Jolly time you'll have tonight, you and Lawrence . . . I can only trust you'll respect the Stafford child's innocence."

"Bernard! Bernard!"

"Don't you Bernard me. You can't take me in. Stop. Where are you off to now?"

"To tell Lawrence not to get the tickets. I shan't go with him."

"You will go with him," said Bernard Clowes, his fingers tightening on her wrist. "Stop here: come closer." He locked his arm round her waist. "Is he your lover yet, Lally? Tell me: I swear I won't kill you if you do. Are you on the borderland of virtue still, or over it?"

"Let me go," said Laura, panting for breath under his clenched grip. "I will not answer such questions. You know you don't mean one word of them. Take care, you're tearing my blouse. Oh, that frightful war! what has it done to you, to turn you from the man I married into what you are?"

"What am I?"

"A madman, or not far off it. End this horrible life: send him away. It's killing me, and as for you, if you were sane enough to understand what you're doing, you would blow your brains out."

"Likely enough," said Bernard Clowes.

He let her go. "Come back to me now, Laura." His wife leant over him, unfaltering, though she had known for some time that she was dealing with the abnormal. "Kiss me." Laura touched his lips. "That's better, old girl. I am a cross-grained devil and I make your life a hell to you, don't I? But don't—don't leave me. Don't chuck me over. Let me have your love to cling to. I don't believe in God, I don't believe in any other man, often enough I don't believe in myself, I feel, I feel unreal . . . ." He stopped, shut his eyes, moved his head on the pillow, and felt about over his rug with the blind groping hands of a delirious, almost of a dying man. Laura gathered them up and held them to her heart. "That's better," said Bernard, his voice gaining strength as he opened his eyes on the beautiful still face bent over him. "Just now and again, in my lucid moments, I do—I do believe in you, old girl. You are just the one thing I have left. You won't forsake me, will you, ever? not whatever I do to you."

"Never, my darling."

"Seems a bit one-sided, that bargain," said Bernard.

He lay perfectly still for a little while, his great hands softly pressed against his wife's firm breast.

"And now get your hat and trot up to the village with Lawrence. Yes, I should like you to go tonight. It'll do you good. Give you a breath of fresh air after your extra dose of sulphur. Yes, you shall take Isabel. Then you'll be safe: I can't insult you if you and Lawrence weren't alone. Now run along, I've had enough emotions. But don't forget. Laura," he spoke thickly and with effort, turning his head away as he pushed her from him "yes, get out, I've had enough of you for the present—but don't forget all the same that you're the one thing on earth that ever is real to me."

Isabel was up a ladder in the orchard picking plums. Waving her hand to Laura and Lawrence Hyde, she called out to them to look the other way while she came down. It must be owned that neither Laura nor Lawrence obeyed her, and they were rewarded, while she felt about for the top rung, with an unimpeded view of two very pretty legs. Lawrence really thought she was going to fall out of the tree, but eventually she came safe to earth, and approached holding out a basket full of glowing fruit. "Though you don't deserve them," she said reproachfully, "because I could feel you looking at me. I did think I should be safe at this hour in the morning!"

"Do I see Val?" said Laura, screwing up her eyes to peer in through the slats of the green jalousies. "I'll go and talk him round, while you break the news to Miss Stafford. Such do's, Isabel! You don't know what dissipations are in store for you, if only Val will say yes." She like every one else elevated Val to the parental dignity vice Mr. Stafford deposed.

"He's come in for some lunch. He'll love to have you watch him eat," said Isabel. "What's it to be, Captain Hyde? A picnic?"

Isabel's imagination had never soared beyond a picnic. When Lawrence unfolded the London scheme her eyes grew round with astonishment and an awed silence fell on her. "Oh, it won't happen," she said, when she had recovered sufficiently to reply at all. "Nothing so angelically wonderful ever would happen to me. I'm perfectly certain Val will say no. Now we've settled that, you can tell me all about it, because of course you and Laura will go in any case."

"But that's precisely what we can't do." Gently and imperceptibly Lawrence impelled her through the rose archway into the kitchen garden, where they were partly sheltered behind the walls of lilacs, a little thinner than they had been in June but still an effective screen. He had not found himself alone with Isabel for ten days. Since Val was with Laura, Lawrence drew the rather cynical conclusion that he could count on a breathing space, and he wondered if Isabel too were glad of it. She was in a brown cotton dress, her right sleeve still tucked up high on her bare arm: a rounded slender arm not much tanned even at the wrist, for her skin was almost impervious to sunburn. Above the elbow it was milk-white with a faint bloom on it, in texture not like ivory, which is a dead, cold, and polished material, but like a flower petal, one of those flowers that have a downy sheen on them, white hyacinths or tall lilies. Lawrence fixed his eyes on it unconsciously but so steadily that Isabel became aware of his admiration. She blushed and was going