Nightfall Part 37

"I say that life's too short for quarrelling." He held out his hand. "But be gentle with her, she is very young.-- Yes, what is it, f.a.n.n.y?"

"Major Clowes's compliments, sir, and he would be glad to see Captain Hyde as soon as convenient."

At Wanhope half an hour later the sun had gone down behind a bank of purple fog, and cloud after cloud had put off its vermilion glow and faded into a vague dimness of twilight: house and garden were quiet, except for the silver rippling of the river which went on and on, ceaselessly fleeting over shallows or was.h.i.+ng along through faded sedge. These river murmurs haunted Wanhope all day and night, and so did the low river-mists: in autumn by six o'clock the gra.s.s was already ankle deep and white as a field of lilies.

The tall doors were wide open now: no lamps were lit, but a big log fire blazed on the hearth, and through the empurpled evening air the house streamed with flame-light, flinging a ruddy glow over leafless acacia and misty turf. Stretched on his couch in a warm and dark angle by the staircase, Clowes was busy with his collection, examining and sorting a number of small objects which were laid out on his tray: sparks of light winked between his fingers as iron or gold or steel turned up a reflecting edge. His face as white as his hands, the wide eyes blackened by the expansion of their pupils, he looked like a ghost, but a ghost of normal habits, washed and shaved and dressed in ordinary tweeds.

"Hullo, Bernard."

"Good evening, Lawrence. Oh, you've brought Val and-- Selincourt, is it? What years since we've met, Selincourt! Very good of you to come down, and I'm delighted to see you, one can't have too many witnesses. Mild evening, isn't it? Leave the doors open, Val, Barry has made up an immense fire, big enough for January. Now sit down all of you, will you? I shan't keep you long."

Propped high on cus.h.i.+ons, he lay like a statue, his huge shoulders squared against them as boldly as if he were in the saddle. Lawrence, so like him in frame and colouring, stood with his back to the hearth: Selincourt with his tired eyes and grey hair sat near the door, one hand slipped between his crossed knees: Val preferred to stay in the background, a spectator, interested and deeply sympathetic, but a trifle shadowy. They were three to one, but the dominant personality was that of the cripple.

"It's with you, Lawrence, that I have to do business. You pa.s.sed last night with my wife."

The heavy voice was deadened out of all heat except grossness.

How had Clowes spent the last twelve hours? In reliving over and over again his wife's fall: defiling her image and poisoning his own soul with emanations of a diseased mind, from which Selincourt, a straightforward sinner, would have turned in disgust. Men of strong pa.s.sions like Bernard need greater control than Bernard possessed to curb what they cannot indulge: and a mind full of gross imagery was nature's revenge on him for a love that had been to him "hungry, and barren, and sharp as the sea." But for the friend, the brother, and the lover it was difficult to grant him such allowances as would have been made by a physician.

"That'll do," said Lawrence, raising his hand. "Your wife is innocent. Send any one you like to the hotel--private detective if you like--and find out what rooms Miss Stafford and Laura had, or whether Selincourt and I stayed five minutes in the place after the ladies went upstairs."

"So Laura said this morning."

"There's no loophole for suspicion. I went back with Selincourt to his rooms and we sat up the rest of the night smoking and playing auction piquet. He won about five pounds off me. Ask him: he'll confirm it."

"That's what he came for, isn't it?" Bernard smiled. "My good chap, think I don't know that if you gave him a five pound note to do it Selincourt would hold the door for you?"

Selincourt's pale face was scarlet. "I say she shall not return to him!" he broke out loudly. "If this is a specimen of what he'll say to us, what does he say to her?"

"No offence, no offence,'' Bernard bore him down, insolent and jovial. "'The Lord commended the unjust steward.' I foresaw that Lawrence would lie through thick and thin, and if I'd given it a thought either way I should have known you'd be brought down to back him up. And quite right too to stand by your sister--the more so that all you Selincourts are as poor as Church rats and naturally don't want your damaged goods back on your hands. But don't get huffy, keep calm like me. You deny everything, Lawrence. Quite right: a man's not worth his salt if he won't lie to protect a woman. Laura also denies everything. Quite right again: a woman's bound to lie to save her reputation. But the husband also has his natural function, which is to exercise a decent incredulity. Perhaps it's a bit difficult for you to enter into my feelings. You're none of you married men and you don't know how it stings a man up when his wife makes him a-- Hallo!"

"What?"

"What's the matter with you?"

"Go on," said Lawrence, flinging himself into a chair: "if you have a point, come to it. I'm pretty well sick of this."

"So it seems," said Bernard staring at him. "Is it the good old-fas.h.i.+oned English word that you can't stomach? All right, after tonight I shan't offend again. That's my point and I'm coming to it as fast as I can. I won't have any one of the lot of you near me again except Val: I acquit him of complicity: he probably believes Laura innocent. Don't you, Val?"

"There's no evidence whatever against her, outside your imagination, old man."

"You're in love with her yourself," Bernard retorted brutally.

Val started, it was the second time in twelve hours. "Oh! think I haven't seen that? There's not much I don't see, that goes on around me. Cheer up, I'm not really jealous of you. Laura never cared that for you. She was my wife for ten days, after all: it takes a man to master her."

"What he wants is a medical man," said Lawrence to Selincourt in a low voice. He dared not look at Val.

"After tonight neither Selincourt nor you, Lawrence nor your lady friend will darken my doors again. Try it on and I'll have you warned off by the police."

"Bernard, you over-rate the attractions of your society."

"Pa.s.s to my second point. I don't propose to divorce Laura."

"You couldn't get a divorce, you a.s.s: you've no case."

"But equally I don't propose to take her back. If she lives alone and conducts herself decently I'll make her an allowance--say four or five hundred a year. If she lives with a lover or tries to force her way in here I won't give her a stiver. Now, Selincourt, you had better use your influence or you'll have her planted on you directly Lawrence gets sick of her. If she goes from me to Lawrence she can go from Lawrence on the streets for all I--shut that door, Val!--Keep her out!"

"Laura! go away!" cried Selincourt. The scene was rising into a nightmare and his nerves s.h.i.+vered under it. But he was too late.

The wide doorway had filled with people: Laura with her satin hair, her flying veil, her ineffaceable French grace of air and dress: Isabel bare-headed, very pale and reluctant: and Mr.

Stafford, who had come down to exercise a moderating influence in the direction of compromise. Isabel edged round towards Lawrence, while Mr. Stafford stood glancing from one to another with keen authoritative eyes, waiting a chance to strike in. But Laura after her long sleep had recovered her fighting temper and was no longer content to remain a cipher in her own house. She smiled and shook her head at Lucian, reddening under her dark skin.

"Bernard, have they told you the truth yet? No, I thought not, Lawrence was too shy." High spirited, for all her sensitiveness, she laid her slight hand on her husband's wrist. "Did you think if Lawrence stayed on at Wanhope it must be because he admired me? You forget that there are younger and prettier women in Chilmark than I am. Lawrence is going to marry Isabel. It's a romantic tale," was there a touch of pique in Laura's charming voice? "and I'm afraid they both of them took some pains to throw dust in our eyes. I've only this moment learnt it from Isabel."

Yes, undeniably a trace of pique. Women like Laura, used to the admiration of men however innocent, cannot forego it without a sigh. She did not grudge Isabel her happiness or even envy it, and she had never believed Lawrence to be in love with herself, and yet this courts.h.i.+p that had gone on under her blind eyes produced in her a faint sense of irritation, of male defection that had made her look a little silly. She was aware of it herself and faintly amused and faintly ashamed. "My time for romantic adventure has gone by. Oh my poor Berns, you forget that I'm thirty-six!"

Here was the authentic accent of truth. Clowes heard it, but he had got beyond the point where a man is capable of saying "I was wrong, forgive me." At that moment he no longer desired Laura to be innocent, he would have preferred to justify himself by proving her guilty. "Take your d.a.m.ned face out of this," he said, enveloping her in an intensity of hate before which Laura's delicate personality seemed to shrivel like a scorched leaf.

"Take it away before I kill you." He struck her hand from his wrist and dashed himself down on the pillow, his great arms and shoulders writhing above the marble waist like some fierce animal trapped by the loins. "Oh, I can't stand it, I can't stand it . . ."

"Oh dear, this is awful," said Selincourt weakly. He got up and stood in the doorway. Despair is a terrible thing to watch. Not even Lawrence dared go near Bernard. It was the priest, inured to scenes of grief and rebellion, who came forward with the cold strong common sense of the Christian stoic. "But you will have to stand it," said Mr. Stafford sternly, "it is the Will of G.o.d and rebellion only makes it worse. After all, thousands of men of all ranks have had to bear the same trial and with much less alleviation. You know now that your wife is innocent and is prepared to forgive you." It did not strike Mr. Stafford that men like Bernard Clowes do not care to be forgiven by their wives.

There was no confessional box in Chilmark church. "You have plenty of interests left and plenty of friends: so long as you don't alienate them by behaving in such an unmanly way. Lift him, Val.-- Come, Major Clowes, you're torturing your wife. This is cowardice--"

"Like Val's, eh?"

"Like--?"

"Like your precious Val behaved ten years ago." Clowes raised himself on his elbows. "Aha! how's that for a smack in the eye?"

"Val, my darling lad," said Mr. Stafford, stumbling a little in his speech, "what--what is this?"

"Poor chap!" Clowes gave his curt "Ha ha!" as he reached out a long arm to turn on all the lights. "Who was that chap, Hercules was it, that pulled the temple on his own head? By G.o.d, if my life's gone to pieces, I'll take some of you with me. You, Val, I was always fond of you: tell your daddy, or shall I, what you did in the Great War?"

"Bernard. . . ."

"Can't stand it, eh? But, like me, you'll have to stand it.

Come, come, Val, this is cowardice--"

"Lawrence, don't touch him: let it come."

But no one dared touch Clowes. "Before his sister!" Selincourt muttered. He had no idea what was coming but Val's grey pallor frightened him. "And the old man!" Lawrence added with clenched hands. Clowes ignored them both. He held the entire group in subjection by sheer savage force of personality.

"Simple little anecdote of war. Dale, you remember, was a brother officer of mine. He was shot in a raid and left hanging on the German wire. In the night when he was dying another chap in our regiment, that had been lying up all day between the lines with a bullet in his ribs, crawled across for him. The Boches opened fire but he got Dale off and started back. Three quarters of the way over they found a third casualty, a subaltern in the Dorchesters. This chap wasn't hurt but he was weeping with fear.

He had gone to ground in a sh.e.l.lhole during the advance and stayed there too frightened to move. The Winchester man was by now done to the world. He kicked the Dorchester to his feet and ordered him to carry on with Dale. The Dorchester pointed out that if he turned up without a scratch on him, he would probably be shot by court martial, so the other fellow by way of pretext put a shot through his arm. 'Now you can tell 'em it was you who fetched Dale.' 'Oh I can't, I'm frightened,' says the Dorchester boy. 'By G.o.d you shall,' says the other, 'or I'll put a second bullet through your brains.' Now, Val, you finish telling us how you did the return trip in tears with Dale on your shoulders and Lawrence at your heels chivying you with a revolver."

"You unutterable devil," said Lawrence under his breath, "who told you that?"

Bernard grinned at him almost amicably. He had got one blow home at last and felt better. "Why, I've always known it. Dale told me himself. He lived twenty minutes after you got him in."

"Val," said Mr. Stafford, "this isn't true?"

"Perfectly true, sir."

Undefended, unreserved, stripped even of pride, Val stood up before them all as if before a firing party, for the others had involuntarily fallen back leaving him alone. . . . To Lawrence the silence seemed endless, it went on and on, while through the open doorway grey shadows crept in, the leafy smell of night and the liquid river-murmur so much louder than it could have been heard by day. Suddenly, as if he could not stand the strain any longer, Val covered his eyes with his hands. The movement, full of shame galvanized Lawrence into activity. But he had not the courage to approach Val. He had but one desire which was to get out of the house.