Nightfall Part 29

If that were true, Val had wasted the best years of his life on a delusion. It was a disturbing thought, but it brought a sparkle to his eyes and an electric force to his fingertips: he raised his head and looked out into the September night as if there was stirring in him the restless sap of spring. After all he was still a young man. Forty years more! If these grey ten years since the war could be taken as finite, not endless: if after them one were to break the chain, tear off the hair s.h.i.+rt, come out of one's cell into the warm sun--then, oh then--Val's shoulders remembered their military set--life might be life again and not life in death.

"What the devil are you strumming now?"

"Tipperary."

"That's not much in your line."

"Oh! I was in the Army once," said Val. "You go to sleep."

He had his wish. The heavy eyelids closed, the great chest rose and fell evenly, and some--not all--of the deep lines of pain were smoothed away from Bernard's lips. Even in sleep it was a restless, suffering head, but it was no longer so devil-ridden as when he was talking of his wife. Val played on softly: once when he desisted Bernard stirred and muttered something which sounded like "Go on, d.a.m.n you," a proof that his mind was not far from his body, only the thinnest of veils lying over its terrible activity. David would have played the clock round, if Saul would have slept on.

Saul did not. He woke--with a tremendous start, sure sign of broken nerves: a start that shook him like a fall and shook the couch too. "Hallo!" he came instantly into full possession of his faculties: "you still here? What's the time? I feel as if I'd been asleep for years. Why, it's daylight!" He dragged out his watch. "What the devil is the time?"

Val rose and pulled back a curtain. The morning sky was full of grey light, and long pale shadows fell over frost-silvered turf: mists were steaming up like pale smoke from the river, over whose surface they swept in fantastic shapes like ghosts taking hands in an evanescent arabesque: the clouds, the birds, the flowers were all awake. The house was awake too, and in fact it was the clatter of a housemaid's brush on the staircase that had roused Bernard. "It's nearly six o'clock," said Val. "You've had a long sleep, Berns. I'm afraid the others have missed their train."

"Missed their train!"

"First night performances are often slow, and they mayn't have been able to get a cab at once. It's tiresome, but there's no cause for anxiety."

"Missed their train!"

"Well, they can't all have been swallowed up by an earthquake!

Of course fire or a railway smash is on the cards, but the less thrilling explanation is more probable, don't you think, old man?"

"Missed the last train and were obliged to stay in town?"

"And a rotten time they'll have of it. It's no joke, trying to get rooms in a London hotel when you've ladies with you and no luggage."

"You think Laura would let Hyde take her to an hotel?"

"Well, Berns, what else are they to do?" said Val impatiently.

"They can't very well sit in a Waterloo waitingroom!"

"No, no," said Clowes. "Much better pa.s.s the night at an hotel.

Is that what you call a rotten time? If I were Lawrence I should call it a jolly one."

Val turned round from the window. "If I were Hyde," he said stiffly, "I should take the ladies to some decent place and go to a club myself. You might give your cousin credit for common sense if not for common decency! You seem to forget the existence of Isabel."

"Oh, all right," said Bernard after a moment. "I was only joking. No offence to your sister, Val, I'm sure Laura will look after her all right. But it is a bit awkward in a gossippy hole like Chilmark. When does the next train get in?"

No man knows offhand the trains that leave London in the small hours, but Val hunted up a timetable--its date of eighteen mouths ago a pregnant commentary on life at Wanhope--and came back with the information that if they left at seven-fifteen they could be at Countisford by ten. "Too late to keep it quiet," he owned. "The servants are a nuisance. But thank heaven Isabel's with them."

"Thank heaven indeed," Bernard a.s.sented. "Not that I care two straws for gossip myself, but Laura would hate to be talked about. Well, well! Here's a pretty kettle of fish. How would it be if you were to meet them at the station? I suppose they're safe to come by that train? Or will they wait for a second one?

Getting up early is not Laura's strong point at the best of times, and she'll be extra tired after the varied excitements of the night."

Val examined him narrowly. His manner was natural if a trifle subdued; the unhealthy glow had died down and his black eyes were frank and clear. Nevertheless Val was not at ease, this natural way of taking the mishap was for Bernard Clowes so unnatural and extraordinary: if he had stormed and sworn Val would have felt more tranquil. But perhaps after the fireworks of last night the devil had gone out of him for a season? Yet Val knew from painful experience that Bernard's devil was tenacious and wiry, not soon tired.

"They might," he said cautiously, "but I shouldn't think they will. Laura knows you, old fellow. She'll be prepared for a terrific wigging, and she'll want to get home and get it over."

A dim gleam of mirth relieved Val's mind a trifle: when the devil of jealousy was in possession he always cast out Bernard's sense of humour, a subordinate imp at the best of times and not of a healthy breed. "Besides, there's Isabel to consider. She'll be in a great state of mind, poor child, though it probably isn't in the least her fault. By the bye, if there's no more I can do for you, I ought to go home and see after Jim. He expressed his intention of sitting up for Isabel, and I only wonder he hasn't been down here before now. Probably he went to sleep over his Church Times, or else buried himself in some venerable volume of patristic literature and forgot about her. But when f.a.n.n.y gets down he'll be tearing his hair."

"Go by all means," said Bernard. "You must be f.a.gged out, Val; have you been at the piano all these hours? How you spoil me, you and Laura! Get some breakfast, lie down for a nap, and after that you can go on to Countisford and meet them in the car."

"All right!" In face of Bernard's thoughtful and practical good humour Val's suspicions had faded. "Shall I come back or will you send the car up for me?" Neither he nor Clowes saw anything unusual in these demands on his time and energy: it was understood that the duties of the agency comprised doing anything Bernard wanted done at any hour of day or night.

"I'll send her up. Stop a bit." Clowes knit his brows and looked down, evidently deep in thought. "Yes, that's the ticket. You take Isabel home and send Lawrence and Laura on alone. Drop them at the lodge before you drive her up. She'll be tired out and it's a good step up the hill. And you must apologize for me to your father for giving him so much anxiety. Lawrence must have been abominably careless to let them lose their train: they ought to have had half an hour to spare."

"He is casual."

"Oh very: thinks of nothing but himself. Pity you and he can't strike a balance! Good-bye. Mind you take your sister straight home and apologize to your father for Hyde's antics. Say I'm sorry, very sorry to mix her up in such a pickle, and I wouldn't have let her in for it if it could have been avoided. Touch the bell for me before you go, will you? I want Barry."

Val let himself out by the window and the impa.s.sive valet entered. But it was some time before Bernard spoke to him.

"Is that you, Barry? I didn't hear you come in."

"Now what's in the wind?" speculated Barry behind his professional mask. "Up all night and civil in the morning? Oh no, I don't think."

"Shall I wheel you to your room, sir?"

"Not yet," said Clowes. He waited to collect his strength.

"Shut all those windows." Barry obeyed. "Turn on the electric light . . . .Put up the shutters and fasten them securely . . . .

Now I want you to go all over the house and shut and fasten all the other ground floor windows: then come back to me."

"Am I to turn on the electric light everywhere, sir?" Barry asked after a pause.

"Where necessary. Not in the billiard room; nor in Mrs. Clowes'

parlour." Barry had executed too many equally singular orders to raise any demur. He came back in ten minutes with the news that it was done.

"Now wheel me into the hall," said Clowes. Barry obeyed. "Shut the front doors. . . . Lock them and put up the chain."

This time Barry did hesitate. "Sir, if I do that no one won't be able to get in or out except by the back way: and it's close on seven o'clock."

"You do what you're told."

Barry obeyed.

"Now wheel my couch in front of the doors."

"Mad as a March hare!" was Barry's private comment. "Lord, I wish Mr. Stafford was here."

"That will do," said Clowes.

He settled his great shoulders square and comfortable on his pillow and folded his arms over his breast.

"I want you to take an important message from me to the other servants. Tell them that if Mrs. Clowes or Captain Hyde come to the house they're not to be let in. Mrs. Clowes has left me and I do not intend her to return. If they force their way in I'll deal with them, but any one who opens the door will leave my service today. Now get me some breakfast. I'll have some coffee and eggs and bacon. Tell Fryar to see that the boiled milk's properly hot."

Barry, stupefied, went out without a word, leaving the big couch, and the big helpless body stretched out upon it, drawn like a bar across the door.