“Tea is ready, Bernard,”
said Laura Clowes, coming in from the garden.
It was five o’clock on a June
afternoon, but the hall was so dark that she had to
grope her way. Wanhope was a large, old-fashioned
manor-house, a plain brick front unbroken except in
the middle, where its corniced roof was carried down
by steps to an immense gateway of weathered stone,
carved with the escutcheon of the family and their
Motto: Fortis et Fidelis.
Wistarias rambled over both sides, wreathing the stone
window-frames in their grape-like clusters of lilac
bloom, and flagstones running from end to end, shallow,
and so worn that a delicate growth of stonecrop fringed
them, shelved down to a lawn.
Indoors in the great hall it was dark
because floor and staircase and wall and ceiling were
all lined with Spanish chestnut-wood, while the windows
were full of Flemish glass in purple and sepia and
blue. There was nothing to reflect a glint of
light except a collection of weapons of all ages which
occupied the wall behind a bare stone hearth; suits
of inlaid armour, coats of chainmail as flexible as
silk, assegais and blowpipes, Bornean parangs and
Gurkha kukris, Abyssinian shotels with their double
blades, Mexican knives in chert and chalcedony, damascened
swords and automatic pistols, a Chinese bronze drum,
a Persian mace of the date of Rustum, and an Austrian
cavalry helmet marked with a bullet-hole and a stain.
Gradually, as her eyes grew used to
the gloom Laura found her way to her husband’s
couch. She would have liked to kiss him, but
dared not: the narrow mocking smile, habitual
on his lips, showed no disposition to respond to advances.
Dressed in an ordinary suit of Irish tweed, Bernard
Clowes lay at full length in an easy attitude, his
hands in his pockets and his legs decently extended
as Barry, his male nurse, had left them twenty minutes
ago: a big, powerful man, well over six feet
in height, permanently bronze and darkly handsome,
his immense shoulders still held back so flat that
his coat fitted without a wrinkle but a
cripple since the war.
Laura Clowes too was tall and slightly
sunburnt, but thin for her height, and rather plain
except for her sweet eyes, her silky brown hair, and rarer
gift! the vague elegance which was a prerogative
of Selincourt women. She rarely wore expensive
clothes, her maid Catherine made most of her indoor
dresses, and yet she could still hold her own, as
in old days, among women who shopped in the Rue de
la Paix. This afternoon, in her silk muslin
of the same shade as the trail of wistaria tucked
in where the frills crossed over her breast, she might
have gone astray out of the seventeenth century.
“Tea is in the parlour,”
said Mrs. Clowes. “Shall I wheel you round
through the garden? It’s a lovely day and
the roses are in their perfection, I counted eighty
blooms on the old Frau Karl. I should like you
to see her.”
“I shouldn’t. But
you can drag me into the parlour if you like,”
said Bernard Clowes a grudging concession:
more often than not he ate his food in the hall.
His wife pushed his couch, which ran on cycle wheels
and so lightly that a child could propel it, into
her sitting-room and as near as she dared to the French
windows that opened without step or ledge on the terrace
flagstones and the verdure of the lawn. Out of
doors, for some obscure reason, he refused to go,
though the garden was sweet with the scent of clover
and the gold sunlight was screened by the milky branches
of a great acacia. Still he was in the fresh
air, and Laura hastily busied herself with her flowered
Dresden teacups, pretending unconsciousness because
if she had shown the slightest satisfaction he would
probably have demanded to be taken back. Her
mild duplicity was of course mere make believe:
the two understood each other only too well: but
it was wiser to keep a veil drawn in case Bernard Clowes should suddenly return to his senses.
For this reason Laura always spoke as if his choice
of a coffined life were only a day or two old.
Had he said as he might say at any moment “Laura,
I should like to go for a drive,” Laura would
have been able without inconsistency to reply, “Yes,
dear: what time shall I order the car?”
as though they had been driving together every evening
of their married life.
“What have you been doing today?”
Clowes asked, sipping his tea and looking out of
the window. He had shut himself up in his bedroom
with a headache and his wife had not seen him since
the night before.
“This morning I motored into
Amesbury to change the library books and to enquire
after Canon Bodington. I saw Mrs. Bodington and
Phoebe and George ,”
“Who’s George?”
“Their son in the Navy, don’t
you remember? The Sapphire is in dry dock
“How old is he?”
“Nineteen,” said Mrs. Clowes.
“Oh. Go on.”
“I don’t remember doing
anything else except get some stamps at the post office.
Stay, now I come to think of it, I met Mr. Maturin,
but I didn’t speak to him. He only took
off his hat to me, Bernard. He is seventy-four.”
“Dull sort of morning you seem to have had,”
said Bernard Clowes.
“What did you do after lunch?”
“With a great want of intelligence,
I strolled down to Wharton to see Yvonne, but she
was out. They had all gone over to the big garden
party at Temple Brading. I forgot about it
“Why weren’t you asked?”
“I was asked but I didn’t
care to go. Now that I am no longer in my first
youth these expensive crushes cease to amuse me.”
Bernard gave an incredulous sniff but said nothing.
“On my way home I looked in at the vicarage
to settle the day for the school treat. Isabel
has made Jack Bendish promise to help with the cricket,
and she seems to be under the impression that Yvonne
will join in the games. I can hardly believe
that anything will induce Yvonne to play Nuts and
May, but if it is to be done that energetic child
will do it. No, I didn’t see Val or Mr.
Stafford. Val was over at Red Springs and Mr.
Stafford was preparing his sermon.”
“Have you written any letters?”
“I wrote to father and sent
him fifty pounds. It was out of my own allowance.
He seems even harder up than usual. I’m
afraid the latest system is not profitable.”
“I should not think it would
be, for Mr. Selincourt,” replied Bernard Clowes
politely. “Monte Carlo never does pay unless
one’s pretty sharp, and your father hasn’t
the brains of a flea. Was that the only letter
you wrote?”
“Yes will you have some more bread
and butter?”
“And what letters did you get?”
Clowes pursued his leisured catechism while he helped
himself daintily to a fragile sandwich. This
was all part of the daily routine, and Laura, if she
felt any resentment, had long since grown out of showing
it.
“One from Lucian. He’s in Paris
“With ?”
“No one, so far as I know,”
Laura replied, not affecting to misunderstand his
jibe. Lucian Selincourt was her only brother
and very dear to her, but there was no denying that
his career had its seamy side. He was not, like
her father, a family skeleton he had never
been warned off the Turf: but he was rarely solitary
and never out of debt. “Poor Lucian, he’s
hard up too. I wish I could send him fifty pounds,
but if I did he’d send it back.”
“What other letters did you have?”
Mrs. Clowes had had a sheaf of unimportant
notes, which she was made to describe in detail, her
husband listening in his hard patience. When
they were exhausted Laura went on in a hesitating
voice, “And there was one more that I want to
consult you about. I know you’ll say we
can’t have him, but I hardly liked to refuse
on my own imitative, as he’s your cousin, not
mine. It was from Lawrence Hyde, offering to
come here for a day or two.”
“Lawrence Hyde? Why, I
haven’t seen or heard of him for years,”
Clowes raised his head with a gleam of interest.
“I remember him well enough though. Good-looking
chap, six foot two or three and as strong as a horse.
Well-built chap, too. Women ran after him.
I haven’t seen him since we were in the trenches
together.”
“Yes, Bernard. Don’t
you recollect his going to see you in hospital?”
“So he did, by Jove! I’d
forgotten that. He’d ten days’ leave
and he chucked one of them away to look me up.
Not such a bad sort, old Lawrence.”
“I liked him very much,” said Laura quietly.
“Wants to come to us, does he? Why?
Where does he write from?”
“Paris. It seems he ran across Lucian
at Auteuil
“Let me see the letter.”
Laura give it over. “Calls
you Laura, does he?” Clowes read it aloud with
a running commentary of his own. “H’m:
pleasant relationship, cousins-in-law. . . ’Met
Lucian . . . chat about old times’ is
he a bird of Lucian’s feather, I wonder?
He wasn’t keen on women in the old days, but
people change a lot in ten years . . . ’Like
to come and see us while he’s in England . .
. run over for the day’ bosh, he knows
we should have to put him up for a couple of nights!
. . . ’Sorry to hear such a bad account
of Bernard’ Very kind of him, does
he want a cheque? Hallo! ’Lucian
says he is leading you a deuce of a life.’
Upon my word!” He lowered the letter and burst
out laughing the first hearty laugh she
had heard from him for many a long day. Laura,
who had given him the letter in fear and trembling
and only because she could not help herself, was exceedingly
relieved and joined in merrily. But while she
was laughing she had to wink a sudden moisture from
her eyelashes: this glimpse of the natural self
of the man she had married went to her heart.
“Is it true?” he said, still with that
friendly twinkle in his eyes. “Do I lead
you the deuce of a life, poor old Laura?”
“I don’t mind,”
said Laura, smiling back at him. She could have
been more eloquent, but she dared not. Bernard’s
moods required delicate handling.
“He’s a cool hand anyhow
to write like that to a woman about her husband.
But Lawrence always was a cool hand. I remember
the turn-up we had in the Farringay woods when I was
twelve and he was fourteen. He nearly murdered
me. But I paid him out,” said Bernard in
a glow of pleasurable reminiscence. “He
was too heavy for me. Old Andrew Hyde came and
dragged him off. But I marked him: he was
banished from his mother’s drawingroom for a
week not that he minded that much . . .
Aunt Helen was a pretty woman. Gertrude and
I never could think why she married Uncle Andrew,
but I believe they got on all right, though she was
a big handsome woman a Clowes all over while
old Andrew looked like any little scrub out of Houndsditch.
Never can tell why people marry each other, can you?”
Bernard was becoming philosophical. I suppose
if you go to the bottom it’s Nature that takes
them by the scruff of the neck and gives them a gentle
shove and says ‘More babies, please.’
She doesn’t always bring it off though, witness
you and me, my love. But I say, Laura,
I like the way you handed over that letter!
Thought it would do me good, didn’t you?
Look here, I can’t have my character taken
away behind my back! You tell him to come and
judge for himself.”
“You’ll get very tired
of him, Berns,” said Laura doubtfully.
“You always say you get sick of people in twenty-four
hours: and I can’t take him entirely off
your hands you’ll have to do your
share of entertaining him. He’s your cousin,
not mine, and it’ll be you he comes to see.”
“I shan’t see any more
of him than I want to, my dear, on that you may depend,”
said Bernard with easy emphasis. “If he
invites himself he’ll have to put with what he
can get. But I can stand a good deal of him.
Regimental shop is always amusing, and Lawrence will
know heaps of fellows I used to know, and tell me
what’s become of them all. Besides, I’m
sick to death of the local gang and Lawrence will
be a change. He’s got more brains than
Jack Bendish, and from the style of his letter he
can’t be so much like a curate as Val is.”
Val Stafford was agent for the Wanhope property.
“Oh, by George!”
“What’s the matter?”
Bernard threw back his head and grinned
broadly with half shut eyes. “Ha, ha!
by Gad, that’s funny that’s
very funny. Why, Val knows him!”
“Knows Lawrence? I never
heard Val mention his name.”
“No, my love, but one can’t
get Val to open his lips on that subject. Lawrence
and I were in the same battalion. He was there
when Val got his ribbon.”
“Really? That will be
nice for Val, meeting him again.”
“Oh rather!” said Bernard
Clowes. “On my word it’s a shame and
I’ve half a mind . . .. No, let him come:
let him come and be damned to the pair of them!
Straighten me out, will you?” He was liable
like most paralytics to mechanical jerks and convulsions
which drove him mad with impatience. Laura drew
down the helplessly twitching knee, and ran one firm
hand over him from thigh to ankle. Her touch
had a mesmeric effect on his nerves when he could
endure it, but nine times out of ten he struck it
away. He did so now. “Go to the devil!
How often have I told you not to paw me about?
I wish you’d do as you’re told.
What do you call him Lawrence for?”
“I always did. But I’ll
call him Captain Hyde if you like
“‘Mr.,’ you mean:
he’s probably dropped the ‘Captain.’
He was only a ‘temporary.’”
“For all that, he has stuck
to his prefix,” said Laura smiling. “Lucian
chaffed him about it. But Lawrence was always
rather a baby in some ways: clocked socks to
match his ties, and astonishing adventures in jewellery,
and so on. Oh yes, I knew him very well indeed
when I was a girl. Mr. and Mrs. Hyde were among
the last of the old set who kept up with us after father
was turned out of his clubs. I’ve stayed
at Farringay.”
“You never told me that!”
“I never thought of telling
you. Lawrence hasn’t been near us since
we came to Wanhope and I don’t recollect your
ever mentioning his name. You see I tell you
now.”
“How old were you when you stayed at Farringay?”
“Twenty-two. Lawrence and I are the same
age.”
“And you knew him well, did you?”
“We were great friends,”
said Mrs. Clowes, tossing a lump of sugar out of the
window to a lame jackdaw. She had many such pensioners,
alike in a community of misfortune. “And,
yes, Berns, you’re right, we flirted a little only
a little: wasn’t it natural? It was
only for fun, because we were both young and it was
such heavenly weather it was the Easter
before war broke out. No, he didn’t ask
me to marry him! Nothing was farther from his
mind.”
“Did he kiss you?”
Laura slowly and smilingly shook her head. “Am
I, Yvonne?”
“But you liked the fellow?”
“Oh yes, he was charming.
A little too much one of a class, perhaps: there’s
a strong family likeness, isn’t there, between
Cambridge undergraduates? But he was more cultivated
than a good many of his class. We used to go
up the river together and read what did
one read in the spring of 1914? Masefield, I
suppose, or was it Maeterlinck? Rupert Brooks
came with the war. Imagine reading ‘Pelleas
et Melisande’ in a Canadian canoe! It makes
one want to be twenty-two again, so young and so delightfully
serious.” It was hard to run on while the
glow faded out of Bernard’s face and a cold
gloom again came over it, but sad experience had taught
Laura that at all costs, under whatever temptation,
it was wiser to be frank. It would have been
easier for the moment to paint the boy and girl friendship
in neutral tints, but if its details came out later,
trivial and innocent as they were, the economy of
today would cost her dear tomorrow, Her own impression
was that Clowes had never been jealous of her in his
life. But the pretence of jealousy was one of
his few diversions.
“I dare say you do wish you
were twenty-two again,” he said, delicately
setting down his tea cup on the tray all
his movements, so far as he could control them, were
delicate and fastidious. “I dare say you
would like a chance to play your cards differently.
Can’t be done, my, girl, but what a good fellow
I am to ask Lawrence to Wanhope, ain’t I?
No one can say I’m not an obliging husband.
Lawrence isn’t a jumping doll. He’s
six and thirty and as strong as a horse. You’ll
have no end of a good time knitting up your severed
friendship .. ’Pon my word, I’ve
a good mind to put him off. . I shouldn’t
care to fall foul of the King’s Proctor.”
“Will you have another cup of tea before I ring”
“No, thanks . . . Do I lead you the deuce
of a life, Lally?”
“You do now and then,” said his wife,
smiling with pale lips.
“It isn’t that I’m
sensitive for myself, because I know you don’t
mean a word of it, but I rather hate it for your own
sake. It isn’t worthy of you, old boy.
It’s so so ungentlemanly.”
“So it is. But I do it
because I’m bored. I am bored, you know.
Desperately!” He stretched out his hand to her
with such haggard, hunted eyes that Laura, reckless,
threw herself down by him and kissed the heavy eyelids.
Clowes put his arm round her neck, fondling her hair,
and for a little while peace, the peace of perfect
mutual tenderness, fell on this hard-driven pair.
But soon, a great sigh bursting from his breast,
Clowes pushed her away, his features settling back
into their old harsh lines of savage pain and scorn.
“Get away! get up! do you want
Parker to see you through the window? If there’s
a thing on earth I hate it’s a dishevelled crying
woman. Write to Lawrence. Say I shall be
delighted to see him and that I hope he’ll give
us at least a week. Stop. Warn him that
I shan’t be able to see much of him because of
my invalid habits, and that I shall depute you to entertain
him. That ought to fetch him if he remembers
you when you were twenty-two.”
Laura was neither dishevelled nor
in tears: perhaps such scenes were no novelty
to her. She leant against the frame of the open
window, looking out over the sunlit garden full of
flowers, over the wide expanse of turf that sloped
down to a wide, shallow river all sparkling in western
light, and over airy fields on the other side of it
to the roofs of the distant village strung out under
a break of woody hill.
“Are you sure you want him?
He used to have a hot temper when he was a young
man, and you know, Berns, it would be tiresome if
there were any open scandal.”
“Scandal be hanged,”
said Bernard Clowes. “You do as you’re
told.” His wife gave an almost imperceptible
shrug of the shoulders as if to disclaim further responsibility.
She was breathing rather hurriedly as if she had
been running, and her neck was so white that the shadow
of her sunlit wistaria threw a faint lilac stain on
the warm, fine grain of her skin. And the haggard
look returned to Bernard’s eyes as he watched
her, and with it a wistfulness, a weariness of desire,
“hungry, and barren, and sharp as the sea.”
Laura never saw that hunger in his eyes. If
he spared her nothing else he spared her that.
“You do as I tell you, old girl,”
his harsh voice had softened again. “There
won’t be any row. Honestly I’d like
to have old Lawrence here for a bit, I’m not
rotting now. He had almost four years of it almost
as long as I had. I’ll guarantee it put
a mark on him. It scarred us all. It’ll
amuse me to dine him and Val together, and make them
talk shop, our own old shop, and see what the war’s
done for each of us: three retired veterans,
that’s what we shall be, putting our legs under
the same mahogany: three old comrades in arms.”
He gave his strange, jarring laugh. “Wonder
which of us is scarred deepest?”