“I do not like all this running about to places of amusement,” said Mr. Stafford, rumpling up his curls till they stood on end in a plume. “If you or Rowsley were to visit a theatre I should say nothing. You’re men and must judge for yourselves. But Isabel is different. I have a good mind to put my foot down once and for all. An atmosphere of luxury is not good for a young girl.”

He stretched himself out in his shabby chair; a shabby, slight man, whose delicate foot, the toes poking out of a shabby slipper, looked as if it were too small to make much impression however firmly put down. Val, smoking his temperate pipe on the other side of the diningroom hearth, temperately suggested that the amount of luxury in Isabel’s life wouldn’t hurt a fly.

“One grain of strychnine will destroy a life: and one hour of temptation may destroy a soul for ever.” Val bowed his head in assent. “Why are we all so fond of Isabel? Because she hasn’t a particle of self-consciousness in her. A single evening’s flattery may infect her with that detestable vice.”

“She must grow up some time.”

“More’s the pity,” retorted the vicar. “Another point: I’m not by any means sure I approve of that fellow Hyde. I doubt if he’s a religious man.” Val brushed away a smile. “He comes to church with Laura pretty regularly, but would he come if her influence were removed? I greatly doubt it.” So did Val, therefore he prudently held his tongue. “I hate to be uncharitable,” continued Mr. Stafford “but I doubt if he is even what one narrowly calls a moral man. Take Jack Bendish, now one can see at a glance that he’s a good fellow, right-living and clean-minded. But Hyde doesn’t inspire me with any such confidence. I know nothing of his private life

“Nor do I,” said Val rather wearily. “But what does any man know of another man’s private life? If you come to that, Jim, what do you know of Rowsley’s or mine?”

“Pouf, nonsense!” said Mr. Stafford.

At his feet lay a small black cat, curled up in the attitude of a comma. Before going on he inserted one toe under her waist, rapidly turned her upside down, and chucked her under her ruffled and indignant chin.

“Val, my boy, has any one repeated to you a nasty bit of gossip that’s going about the village?”

“This violence to a lady!” Val held out his hand and made small coaxing noises with his lips. But Amelia after a cold stare walked away and sat down in the middle of the floor, turning her back and sticking out a refined but implacable tail. “There now! you’ve hurt her feelings.”

“Of course there’s nothing in it on one side at least. But I can’t help wondering whether Hyde . . . . our dear Laura would naturally be the last to hear of it. But Hyde’s a man of the world and knows how quickly tongues begin to wag. In Laura’s unprotected position he ought to be doubly careful.”

“He ought.”

“But he is not. Now is that designed or accidental? We’ll allow him the benefit of the doubt and call it an error of judgment. Then some one ought to give him a hint.”

“Some one would be knocked down for his pains.”

“D’you think he’d knock me down?” asked Mr. Stafford, casting a comical glance over his slender elderly frame.

“Hardly,” said Val laughing. “But no, Jim, it wouldn’t do. Too formal, too official.” His real objection was that Mr. Stafford would base his appeal on ethical and spiritual grounds, which were not likely to influence Lawrence, as Val read him. “But if you like I’ll give him a hint myself. I can do it informally; and I very nearly did it as long ago as last June. Hyde is amenable to treatment if he’s taken quietly.”

Mr. Stafford, by temperament and training a member of the Church Militant, clearly felt a trifle disappointed, but he had little petty vanity and accepted Val’s amendment without a murmur. “Very well, if you think you can do it better! I don’t care who does it so long as it’s done.” The clock struck. “Half past eleven is that? Isabel can’t be home before four. Dear me, how I hate these ridiculous hours, turning night into day!” As some correspondents put the point of a letter into a postscript, so the vicar in returning to his Church Times revealed the peculiar sting that was working in his mind. “And I don’t I do not like Isabel to make one of that trio in view of what’s being said.”

“She is with Mrs. Clowes,” said Val shortly, and colouring all over his face. Fling enough mud and some of it is sure to stick! If his unworldly father could think Laura, though innocent, so far compromised that Isabel was not safe in her care, what were other people saying? Val got up. “I shall walk down and smoke a pipe with Clowes. He won’t go to bed till they come in.”

The beechen way was dark and steep; roosting birds blundered out from overhead with a sleepy clamour of alarm-notes and a great rustle of leaf-brushed wings; one could have tracked Val’s course by the commotion they made. On the footbridge dark in alder-shadow he lingered to enjoy the cool woodland air and lulling ripple underfoot. Not a star pierced to that black water, it might have been unfathomably deep; and though the village street was only a quarter of a mile away the night was intensely quiet, for all Chilmark went to bed after closing time. It was not often that Val, overworked and popular, tasted such a profound solitude. Not a leaf stirred: no one was near: under golden stars it was chilling towards one of the first faint frosts of the year: and insensibly Val relaxed his guard: a heavy sigh broke from him, and he moved restlessly, indulging himself in recollection as a man who habitually endures pain without wincing will now and then allow himself the relief of defeat.

For it is a relief not to pretend any more nor fight: to let pain take its way, like a slow tide invading every nerve and flooding every recess of thought, till one is pierced and penetrated by it, married to it, indifferent so long as one can drop the mask of that cruel courage which exacts so many sacrifices. Val was still only twenty-nine. Forty years more of a life like this! . . . Lawrence had once compared him to a man on the rack. But, though Lawrence knew all, Val had never relaxed the strain before him: was incapable of relaxing it before any spectator. He needed to be not only alone, but in the dark, hidden even from himself: and even so no open expression was possible to him, not a movement after the first deep sigh: it was relief enough for him to be sincere with himself and own that he was unhappy. But why specially unhappy now?

Midnight: the church clock had begun to strike in a deep whirring chime, muffled among the million leaves of the wood.

That trio were in the train now, Isabel probably fast falling asleep, Hyde and Laura virtually alone for the run from Waterloo to Chilmark.

A handsome man, Hyde, and attractive to women, or so rumour and Yvonne Bendish affirmed. If even Yvonne, who was Laura’s own sister, was afraid of Hyde! ... Well, Hyde was to be given the hint to take himself off, and surely no more than such a hint would be necessary? Val smiled, the prospect was not without a wry humour. If he had been Hyde’s brother, what he had to say would not have said itself easily. “Let us hope he won’t knock me down,” Val reflected, “or the situation will really become strained; but he won’t that’s not his way.” What was his way? The worst of it was that Val was not at all sure what way Hyde would take, nor whether he would consent to go alone. A handsome man, confound him, and a picked specimen of his type: one of those high-geared and smoothly running physical machines that are all grace in a lady’s drawingroom and all steel under their skins. What a contrast between him and poor Bernard! the one so impotent and devil-ridden, the other so virile, unscrupulous, and serene.

Val stirred restlessly and gripped the rail of the bridge between his clenched hands. His mind was a chaos of loose ends and he dared not follow any one of them to its logical conclusion. What was he letting himself think of Laura? Such fears were an insult to her clear chastity and strength of will. Or, in any event, what was it to him? He was Bernard’s friend, and Laura’s but he was not the keeper of Bernard’s honour. . . . But Hyde and Laura . . . alone . . . the train with its plume of fire rushing on through the dark sleeping night. . . .

“In manus tuas . . .” Val raised his head, and shivered, the wind struck chill: he was tired out. Yet only a second or so had gone by while he was indulging himself in useless regrets for what could never be undone, and still more useless anxiety for a future which was not only beyond his control but outside his province as Bernard’s agent. That after all was his status at Wanhope, he had no other. It was still striking twelve: the last echo of the last chime trembled away on a faint, fresh sough of wind. . . . A lolloping splash off the bank into the water what was that? A dark blot among ripples on a flat and steely glimmer, the sketch of a whiskered feline mask . . . Val made a mental note to speak to Jack Bendish about it: otters are bad housekeepers in a trout stream.

“Hallo! Good man!” Major Clowes was on his back in the drawingroom, in evening dress, and playing patience. “I’ve tried Kings, Queens and Knaves, and Little Demon, and Fair Lucy, and brought every one of ’em out first round. Something must be going to happen.” With a sweep of his arm he flung all the cards on the floor. “What do you want?”

“A pipe,” said Val, going on one knee to pick up the scattered pack. “I looked in to see how you were getting on. Aren’t you going to bed?”

“Not before they come in.”

“Nor will Jimmy, I left him sitting up for Isabel. You’re both of you very silly, you’ll be dead tired tomorrow, and what’s the object of it?”

“To make sure they do come in,” Bernard explained with a broad grin. Val sprang up: intolerable, this reflection of his own fear in Bernard’s distorting mirror! “Ha ha! Suppose they didn’t? Laura was rather fond of larks before she married me. She was, I give you my word she and the other girl. You wouldn’t think it of Laura, would you? Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. But she might like a fling for a change. Who’d blame her? I’m no good as a husband, and Lawrence is a picked specimen. Quelle type, eh?”

“Very good-looking.”

“‘Very good-looking!’” Bernard mocked at him. “You and your Army vocabulary! And I’m a nice chap, and Laura’s quite a pretty woman, and this is a topping knife, isn’t it, and life’s a jolly old beano Pity I can’t get out of it, by the by: if physiology is the basis of marriage, those two would run well in harness.”

“There’s an otter in the river,” remarked Val, examining the little dagger, the same that Lawrence had given Bernard. “I heard him from the bridge. They come down from the upper reaches. Remind me to tell Jack, he’s always charmed to get a day’s sport with his hounds.” He laid the dagger on a side-table.

“Have one of my cigars? You can’t afford cigars, can you? poor devil! They’re on that shelf. Not those: they’re Hyde’s.” Val put back the box as if it had burnt his fingers. “Leaves his things about as if the place were a hotel!” grumbled Major Clowes. “That’s one of his books. Pick it up. What is it?” Val read out the title. “Poetry? Good Lord deliver us! Do you read poetry, Val?”

“I occasionally dip into Tennyson,” Val replied, settling himself in an easy chair. “I can’t understand modern verse as a rule, it’s too clever for me, and the fellows who write it always seem to go in for such gloomy subjects. I don’t like gloomy books, I like stuff that rests and refreshes you. There are enough sad things in life without writing stories about them. I can read the ‘Idylls of the King,’ but I can’t read Bernard Shaw.”

“Nor anybody else,” said Bernard. He fixed his eyes on Val: eyes like his cousin’s in form and colour, large, and so black under their black lashes that the pupil was almost indistinguishable from the iris, but smouldering in a perpetual glow, while Hyde’s were clear and indifferent. “You’re a good sort to have come down to look after me. I don’t feel very brash tonight. Oh Val! oh Val! I know I’m a brute, a coarse-minded, foul-mouthed brute. I usedn’t to be. When I was twenty-five, if any man had said before me what I say of Laura, I’d have kicked him out of his own house. Why don’t you kick me?”

“I am not violent.”

“Ain’t you? I am.” He flung out his arm. “Give me your hand.” Val complied, amused or touched: as often happened when they were alone, he remained on the borderline. But it was taken in no affectionate clasp. Bernard’s grip closed on him, tighter and tighter, till the nails were driven into his palm. “Is that painful?” Clowes asked with his Satanic grin. “Glad of it. I’m in pain too. I’ve got neuritis in my spine and I can’t sleep for it. I haven’t had any proper sleep for a week. Oh my God, my God, my God! do you think I’d grumble if that were all? I can’t, I can’t lie on my back all my life playing patience or fiddling over secondhand penknives! I was born for action. Action, Val! I’m not a curate. I’d like to smash something crush it to a jelly.” Val mincingly pointed out that such a consummation was not far off, but he was ignored. “Oh damn the war! and damn England too what did we go to fight for? What asses we were! Did we ever believe in a reason? Give me these ten years over again and I wouldn’t be such a fool. Who cares whether we lick Germany or Germany licks England? I don’t.”

“I do.”

Bernard stared at him, incredulous. “What ’freedom and honour’ and all the rest of it?”

“In a defensive war

“Oh for God’s sake! I’ve just had my supper.”

“ any man who won’t fight for his country deserves to be shot.”

“You combine the brains of a rabbit with the morals of a eunuch.”

Val crossed his legs and withdrew his cigar to laugh.

“Ah! I apologize.” Clowes shrugged his shoulders. “‘Eunuch’ is the wrong word for you as a breed they’re a cowardly lot. But I used the term in the sense of a Palace favourite who swallows all the slop that’s pumped into him. ’Lloyd George for ever and Britannia rules the waves.’ Dare say I should sing it myself if I’d come out covered with glory like you did.”

“I met Gainsford today. He says the longacre fences ought to be renewed before winter. Parts of them are so rotten that the first gale will bring them down.”

“Damn Gainsford and damn the fences and damn you.”

“Really, really!” Val stretched himself out and put his feet up. “You’re very monotonous tonight.”

“And you, you’re tired: I wear you both out, you and Laura and yet you’re the only people on earth. . . . Why can’t I die? Sometimes I wonder if it’s anything but cowardice that prevents me from cutting my throat. But my life is infernally strong in me, I don’t want to die: what I want is to get on my legs again and kick that fellow Hyde down the steps. What does he stop on here for?”

“Well, you’re always pressing him to stay, aren’t you? Why do you do it, if this is the way you feel towards him?”

“Because I’ve always sworn I’d give Laura all the rope she wanted,” said Clowes between his teeth. “If she wants to hang herself, let her. I should score in the long run. Hyde would chuck her away like an old shoe when he got sick of her.” There was a fire not far from madness burning now in the wide, dilated eyes. “Afterwards she’d have to come back, because those Selincourts haven’t got twopence between the lot of them, and if she did she’d be mine for good and all. Hyde would break her in for me.”

“You don’t realize what you’re saying, Berns, old man. You can’t,” said Val gently, “or you wouldn’t say it. It is too unutterably beastly.”

“Ah! perhaps the point of view is a bit warped,” Bernard returned carelessly to sanity. “It shocks you, does it? But the fact is Laura has the whip hand of me and I can’t forgive her for it. She’s the saint and I’m the sinner. She’s a bit too good. If Hyde broke her in and sent her home on her knees, I should have the whip hand of her, and I’d like to reverse the positions. Can you follow that? Yes! A bit warped, I own. But I am warped bound to be. Give the body such a wrench as the Saxons gave mine and you’re bound to get some corresponding wrench in the mind.”

“That’s rank materialism.”

“Bosh! it’s common sense. Look at your own case! Do you never analyze your own behaviour? You would if you lay on your back year in year out like me. You’re maimed too.”

“No, am I?” Val reached for a fourth cushion. “Think o’ that, now.”

“Or you wouldn’t be content to hang on in Chilmark, riding over another man’s property and squiring another man’s wife. The shot that broke your arm broke your life. You had the makings of a fine soldier in you, but you were knocked out of your profession and you don’t care for any other. With all your ability you’ll never be worth more than six or seven hundred a year, for you’ve no initiative and you’re as nervous as a cat. You’re not married and you’ll never marry: you’re too passive, too continent, too much of a monk to attract a healthy woman. No: don’t you flatter yourself that you’ve escaped any more than I have. The only difference is that the Saxons mucked up my life and you’ve mucked up your own. You fool! you high-minded, over-scrupulous fool! . . . You and I are wreckage of war, Val: cursed, senseless devilry of war. Go and play a tune, I’m sick of talking.”

Val was not any less sick of listening. He went to the piano, but not to play a tune. Impossible to insult that crippled tempest on the sofa with the sweet eternal placidities of Mozart or Bach. His fingers wandered over the lower register, improvising, modulating from one minor key to another in a cobweb of silver harmony spun pale and low from a minimum of technical attention. For once Bernard had struck home. “The shot that broke your arm broke your life.” Stripped of Bernard’s rhetoric, was it true?

Val could not remember the time when his ambition had not been set on soldiering: regiments of Hussars and Dragoons had deployed on his earliest Land of Counterpane: he had never cared for any other toys. But as soon as war was over he had resigned his commission, a high sense of duty driving him from a field in which he felt unfit to serve. He had pitilessly executed his own judgment: no man can do more. But what if in judgement itself had been unhinged warped deflected by the interaction of splintered bone and cut sinew and dazed, ghost-ridden mind? Have not psychologists said that few fighting men were strictly normal in or for some time after the war?

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 shirt, 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, damn 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 pass 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 assented. “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 Fanny gets down he’ll be tearing his hair.”

“Go by all means,” said Bernard. “You must be fagged 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 impassive 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.