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

Bendish, but none by Lawrence or by Isabel. It was murder: a flash of devil's lightning, that withered where it struck.

Isabel turned in her chair to watch her husband. He had brought her straight into the drawingroom without staying to remove his leathern driving coat, which set off his big frame and the drilled flatness of his shoulders; everything he wore or used was expensive and fashionable. There came on her suddenly the impression of being shut up alone with a stranger, a man of whom she knew nothing except that in upbringing and outlook he was entirely different from her and her family. The room seemed immense and Hyde was at the other end of it. Suddenly he turned and came striding back to Isabel. Her instinct was to defend herself. She checked it and kept still, her arms and hands thrown out motionless along the arms of the chair in which her slight figure was lying in perfect repose. Lawrence tenderly took her head between his finger-tips and kissed her mouth. "Why did you raise a ghost you can't lay?" he said. "My cousin killed your brother." Isabel smiled at him without moving. Her eyes were mysteriously full of light. Lawrence knelt down and threw his arms round her waist and let his head fall against her bosom. What strength there was in this immature personality neither yielded nor withdrawn! Lawrence was entirely disarmed and subdued. He uttered a deep sigh and gave up to Isabel with the simplicity of a child the secret of his tormented restlessness. "I am unhappy, Isabel."

"I know you are, my darling, and that's why I raised the ghost.
What is it troubles you?"

"My own guilt. I never knew what remorse meant before, but your Christian ethics have mastered me this time. I had no right to extract that promise from Val."

"No. Why did you? It seems so motiveless."

"Because it amused me to get a man into my power." Isabel felt him shuddering. "Is this what you call the sense of sin? I used to hear it described as a theological fiction. But it tears one's heart out. Bernard killed him: but who put the weapon into Bernard's hand?"

"Val did."

"I don't understand you."

"The original fault was Val's, and you and Major Clowes were entangled in the consequences of it. Let us two face the truth once and for all! Val can stand it—can't you, Val? . . . He broke his military oath. He deserved a sharp stinging punishment, and if you had reported him he would have had it; perhaps a worse one than you exacted, except for that last awful hour at Wanhope, and for that Major Clowes, not you, was responsible. Oh, I won't say he deserved precisely what he got! because judgment ought to be dispassionate, and in yours there was an element of cruelty for cruelty's sake; wasn't there? You half enjoyed it and half shivered under it . . ."

"More than half enjoyed it," said Hyde under his breath.

"But I do not believe that was your only motive. I think you were sorry for Val. Haven't I seen you watching him at Wanhope? with such a strange half-unwilling pity, as if you hated yourself for it. Oh Lawrence, it's for that I love you!" Lawrence shook his head. He had never been able to analyse the complex of feelings that had determined his attitude to Val. "Well, in any case it was not your fault only. A coward is an irresistible temptation to a bully."

"Do you call Val a coward? Nervous collapses were not so uncommon as you may have gathered from the Daily Mail."

"Did Major Clowes describe the scene truthfully?"

"Yes."

"Did you ever break down like Val?"

"I was older."

"There were plenty of boys of nineteen, officers and men. Did you ever know such another case so complete, so prolonged?"

"I've commanded a firing party."

"For cowardice?"

"For cowardice."

"A worse exhibition than Val's?"

"Isabel, you are pitiless!"

"Because Val deserves justice not mercy. It's his due: he died to earn it."

Hyde was silent, not thoroughly understanding her.

"He wasn't a coward when he died," said Isabel with her sweet half melancholy smile. "He fought under a heavy handicap, and won: he paid his debt, paid it to the last farthing; and now do you grudge him his sleep? 'He hates him, that would upon the rack of this tough world stretch him out longer. . . .'" Her beautiful voice dropped to a murmur which was almost lost in the rustling of flames on the hearth and the stir of wind among budded branches in the garden.

The clock struck ten and Lawrence raised his head. "It's growing late, Isabel. Aren't you tired?"

"A little. I got up at five to say good-bye to all the animals."

"All the—?"

"My cocks and hens and Val's mare and Dodor and Zou-zou and Rowsley's old rabbits. They're at the Castle, don't you remember? Jack Bendish offered to take charge of them when we turned out of the vicarage."

"I hope you put your pinafore on," said her husband.

He took her by the hands and raised her to her feet, and Isabel with irreproachable docility began to collect her scattered belongings, her sable scarf and mull and veil. Lawrence forestalled her. "Mayn't I even carry my own gloves?" Isabel pleaded. "No, you're so slow," said Lawrence laughing down at her. Isabel's cheeks flew their scarlet flag before the invading enemy. "Isabel," Lawrence murmured, "are you shy of me?"

"A little. I'm only twenty," Isabel excused herself.

"And I'm not gentle. I shall brush the bloom off. . . . Yet I love the bloom."

He went to close the window. A breath of night wind shook through the bushes on the lawn and blew off a snow of petals through the soft air. He was not a believer in the immortality of the soul, but tonight he would have given much to know that Val was near him, a spirit of smiling tenderness. But no: the night was empty of everything except moonlight and petals and the sighing of wind over diapered turf. Youth passes, and beauty, and bloom: it is of the essence of their sweetness that they cannot last. Yet, while they last, how sweet they are!

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