Nightfall Part 39

"Probably. Do you object? You asked for it."

"Not a bit. I don't mind your telling me any thing that's a fact. Bad thoughts are different, but facts, good or bad, coa.r.s.e or refined, are the stuff the world's made of, and why should we shut our eyes to them? I like to take life as it comes without expurgation. Lawrence, Lizzie never had any children, did she?"

"By me?"

"Yes."

"No, our married life didn't last long. I should have warned you, my dear, if I had had any responsibilities of that description."

"So you would--I forgot that." Isabel lay silent a moment, nestling her closed eyelids against his throat. "Lawrence, my darling, I don't want to hurt you; but tell me, did she have any children after she left you?"

"Yes--one, a boy: Rendell's."

"What became of him after Rendell died?"

"When it became impossible to leave him with Lizzie I sent him to school. He spends his holidays with my agent here at Farringay.

He's quite a nice little chap, and good looking, like Arther, and by the gossip of the neighbourhood I'm supposed to be his father.

Do you mind leaving it at that? It's no worse for him and less ignominious for me."

"Nothing in what I've heard of your married life is ignominious for you. So you brought up Rendell's child? Essentially generous . . . . Kiss me." Isabel's pale beauty glowed like a flame. A Christian malagre lui and very much ashamed of it, Lawrence gave her the lightest of b.u.t.terfly kisses, one on either eyelid. "Oh, I suppose you'll say I am--what was it?--towardly too,"

murmured Isabel. "Don't you want to kiss me?" He shook his head.

Isabel, a trifle startled, opened her eyes, but was apparently satisfied, for she shut them again hurriedly and let her arm fall across them. "We'll go and see Rendell's boy tomorrow. You shall take me. I can say what I like to you now, can't I? . . .

Shall you like to have one of our own?"

"Isabel, Isabel!"

"But it's perfectly proper now we're married! Oh Lawrence, it'll so soon come to seem commonplace-- I want to taste the strangeness of it while I'm still near enough to Isabel Stafford to realize what a miracle it'll be. Our own! it seems so strange to say 'ours.'"

"I don't want any brats to come between you and me."

"Aren't you always in your secret soul afraid of life?"

"Afraid of life--I?"

"You have no faith . . . Everything we possess--your happiness, our love, the children you'll give me--don't you hold it all at the sword's point? You're afraid of death or change?"

"Yes."

"How frank you are!" Isabel smiled fleetingly. "Aren't there any locked doors?--no?--I may go wherever I like ?--Lawrence, are you sorry Val's dead?"

"Oh, for heaven's sake, not Val again!"

"One locked door after all?"

"I was fond of him," said Lawrence with difficult pa.s.sion. "He told me once that I broke his life, it was no one's doing but mine that he had to go through the crucifixion of that last hour at Wanhope, and he was killed for me." He left her and went to the window, flung it up and stood looking out into the night.

"I'd have given my life to save him. I'd give it now--now."

"I heard from Laura this morning."

"I wonder she dared write to you."

"Major Clowes is wonderfully better. He drives out with her every day and mixes with other people in the sanatorium and makes friends with them. He's been sleeping better than he has ever done since his accident."

"Good G.o.d!"

"He has been having a new ma.s.sage treatment, and there's just a faint hope that some day he may be able to get about on crutches."

Lawrence had an inclination to laugh. "That's enough," he said, shuddering. "I don't want to hear any more."

"She sent a message to you."

"Well, give it to me, then."

"'Don't let Lawrence suppose that Bernard has gone unpunished.'"

"He should have stood his trial," said Lawrence thickly. "It was murder."

He understood all that Laura's laconic message implied. Bernard reformed was Bernard broken by remorse: if he had shot himself-- which was what Lawrence had antic.i.p.ated--he would have deserved less pity. Yet Lawrence would have liked some swifter and less subtle form of punishment.

Out of doors in the garden an owl was hooting and the night air breathed on him its perfume of lilac and violets. How quiet it was and how fragrant and dim! one could scarcely distinguish between the dewy glimmer of turf and the dark island-like thickets of guelder-rose and other flowering shrubs. It was one of those late spring nights that are full of the promise of summer; but for Val there were no summers to come. His death had been as quiet as his life and without any struggle; his head on Lawrence's arm, he had stretched himself out with a little sigh, and was gone. Lawrence with his keen physical memory could still feel that light burden leaning on him. Isabel too had memories she was afraid of, the watch ticking on the dead man's wrist was one of them. Many tears had been shed for Val, some very bitter ones by Yvonne 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 fas.h.i.+onable. 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 dispa.s.sionate, and in yours there was an element of cruelty for cruelty's sake; wasn't there? You half enjoyed it and half s.h.i.+vered 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 a.n.a.lyse the complex of feelings that had determined his att.i.tude 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?"