It was a fatigued and jaded party that got out on the platform at Countisford. The mere wearing of evening dress when other people are at breakfast will damp the spirits of the most hardened, and even Lawrence had an up-all-night expression which reddened his eyelids and brought out the lines about his mouth. Isabel’s hair was rumpled and her fresh bloom all dimmed. Laura Clowes had suffered least: there was not a thread astray in her satin waves, and the finished grace of her aspect had survived a night in a chair. But even she was very pale, though she contrived to smile at Val.

“How’s Bernard?” were her first words.

“All serene. He slept most of the time. I was with him, luckily. We guessed what had happened. You missed your train?” In this question Val included Lawrence.

“It was my fault,” said Lawrence shortly. It was what he would have said if it had not been his fault.

“It was nobody’s fault!” cried Laura. “We were held up in the traffic. But Lawrence is one of those people who will feel responsible if they have ladies with them on the Day of Judgment, won’t you, Lawrence?”

“I ought to have left more time,” said Lawrence impatiently. “Let’s get home.”

In the car Val heard from Laura the details of their misadventure. Selincourt had waited with the women while Lawrence secured rooms for them in a Waterloo hotel: when they were safe, Lawrence had gone to Lucian’s rooms in Victoria Street, where the men had passed what remained of the night in a mild game of cards. They had all breakfasted together by lamplight at the hotel, and Selincourt had seen his sister into the Chilmark train. Nothing could have been more circumspect comically circumspect! between Selincourt and Isabel and the chambermaid, malice itself was put to silence. But Lawrence was fever-fretted by the secret sense of guilt.

At the lodge gates Val drew up. “It’s preposterous, but I’m under Bernard’s express orders to drive Isabel straight home. I don’t know how to apologize for turning you and Hyde out of your own car, Laura!” No apology was needed, Laura and Lawrence knew too well how direct Bernard’s orders commonly were to Val. Lawrence silently offered his hand to Mrs. Clowes. The morning air was fresh, fog was still hanging over the river, and the sun had not yet thrown off an autumn quilting of cloud. Touched by the chill of dawn, some leaves had fallen and lay in the dust, their ribs beaded with dark dew: others, yellow and shrivelling, where shaken down by the wind of the car and fluttered slowly in the eddying air. Laura drew her sable scarf close over her bare neck.

“What I should like best, Lawrence, would be for you to go home with Isabel and make our excuses to Mr. Stafford. Would you mind? Or is it too much to ask before you get out of your evening dress?”

“I should be delighted,” said Lawrence, feeling and indeed looking entirely the reverse. “But Miss Isabel has her brother to take care of her, she doesn’t want me.” Isabel gave that indefinable start which is the prelude of candour, but remained dumb. “I don’t like to leave you to walk up to Wanhope alone.” This, was as near as in civilized life he could go to saying “to face Clowes alone.”

“The length of the drive?” said Laura smiling. “I should prefer it. You know what Berns is.” This was what Lawrence had never known. “If he’s put out I’d rather you weren’t there.”

“Why, you can’t imagine I should care what Bernard said?”

Laura struck her hands together.-"There! There!” she turned to Val, “can you wonder Bernard feels it?”

“I beg your pardon,” said Lawrence from his heart.

“No, the contrast is poignant,’’ said Val coldly.

“Dear Val, you always agree with me,” said Laura. “Take Captain Hyde home and give him some breakfast. I’d rather go alone, Lawrence: it will be easier that way, believe me.”

It was impossible to argue with her. But while Val wheeled and turned in the wide cross, before they took their upward bend under the climbing beechwood, Lawrence glanced over his shoulder and saw Mrs. Clowes still standing by the gate of Wanhope, solitary, a wan gleam of sunlight striking down over her gold embroideries and ivory coat, a russet leaf or two whirling slowly round her drooping head: like a butterfly in winter, delicate, fantastic, and astray.

Breakfast at the vicarage was not a genial meal. Val was anxious and preoccupied, Isabel in eclipse, even Mr. Stafford out of humour vexed with Lawrence, and with Val for bringing Lawrence in under the immunities of a guest. Lawrence himself was in a frozen mood. As soon as they had finished he rose: “If you’ll excuse my rushing off I’ll go down to Wanhope now.”

“By all means,” said Mr. Stafford drily.

“Good-bye,” said Isabel, casting about for a form of consolation, and evolving one which, in the circumstances, was possibly unique: “You’ll feel better when you’ve had a bath.”

“I’ll walk down with you to Wanhope” said Val.

“You? Oh! no, don’t bother,” said Lawrence very curtly. “I can manage my cousin, thanks.”

But Val’s only reply was to open the door for him and stroll with him across the lawn. At the wicket gate Hyde turned: “Excuse my saying so, but I prefer to go alone.”

“I’m not coming in at Wanhope. But I’ve ten words to say to you before you go there.”

“Oh?” said Lawrence. He swung through leaving Val to follow or not as he liked.

“Stop, Hyde, you must listen. You’re going into a house full of the materials for an explosion. You don’t know your own danger.”

“I dislike hints. What are you driving at?”

“Laura.”

“Mrs. Clowes?”

“Naturally,” said Val with a faint smile. “You know as well as I do how pointless that correction is. You imply by it that as I’m not her brother I’ve no right to meddle. But I told you in June that I should interfere if it became necessary to protect others.”

“And since when, my dear Val, has it become necessary? Last night?”

“Well, not that only: all Chilmark has been talking for weeks and weeks.”

“Chilmark

“Oh,” Val interrupted, flinging out his delicate hands, “what’s the good of that? Who would ever suggest that you care what Chilmark says? But she has to live in it.”

The scene had to be faced, and a secret vein of cruelty in Lawrence was not averse from facing it. This storm had been brewing all summer. They were alone, for the beechen way was used only as a short cut to the vicarage. Above them the garden wall lifted its feathery fringe of grass into great golden boughs that drooped over it: all round them the beech forest ran down into the valley, the eye losing itself among clear glades at the end of which perhaps a thicket of hollies twinkled darkly or a marbled gleam of blue shone in from overhead; the steep dark path was illumined by the golden lamplight of millions on millions of pointed leaves, hanging motionless in the sunny autumnal morning air which smelt of dry moss and wood smoke.

“And what’s the rumour? That I’m going to prevail or that I’ve prevailed already?”

“The worst of it is,” Val kept his point and his temper, “that it’s not only Chilmark. One could afford to ignore village gossip, but this has reached Wharton, my father Mrs. Clowes herself. You wouldn’t willingly do anything to make her unhappy: indeed it’s because of your consistent and delicate kindness both to her and to Bernard that I’ve refrained from giving you a hint before. You’ve done Bernard an immense amount of good. But the good doesn’t any longer counterbalance the involuntary mischief: hasn’t for some time past: can’t you see it for yourself? One has only to watch the change coming over her, to look into her eyes

“Really, if you’ll excuse my saying so, you seem to have looked into them a little too often yourself.”

Val waited to take out his case and light a cigarette. He offered one to Hyde “Won’t you?”

“No, thanks: if you’ve done I’ll be moving on.”

“Why I haven’t really begun yet. You make me nervous it’s a rotten thing to say to any man, and doubly difficult from me to you and I express myself badly, But I must chance being called impertinent. The trouble is with your cousin. If you had heard him last night. . . . He’s madly jealous.”

“Of me? Last night?” Lawrence gave a short laugh: this time he really was amused.

“Dangerously jealous.”

“There’s not room for a shadow of suspicion. Go and interview Selincourt’s servant if you like, or nose around the Continental.”

“Well,” said Val, coaxing a lucifer between his cupped palms, “I dare say it’ll come to that. I’ve done a good deal of Bernard’s dirty work. Some one has to do it for the sake of a quiet life. His suspicions aren’t rational, you know.”

“I should think you put them into his head.”

“I?” the serene eyes widened slightly, irritating Lawrence by their effect of a delicacy too fastidious for contempt. For this courtesy, of finer grain than his own sarcasm, made him itch to violate and soil it, as mobs will destroy what they never can possess. “Need we drag in personalities? He was jealous of you before you came to Wanhope. He fancies or pretends to fancy that you were in love with Mrs. Clowes when you were boy and girl. We’re not dealing with a sane or normal nature: he was practically mad last night he frightened me. May I give you, word for word, what he said? That he let you stay on because he meant to give his wife rope enough to hang herself.”

“What do you want me to do?” said Lawrence after a pause.

“To leave Wanhope.”

More at his ease than Val, in spite of the disadvantage of his evening dress, Lawrence stood looking down at him with brilliant inexpressive eyes. “Is it your own idea that I stayed on at Wanhope to make love to Laura?”

“If I answer that, you’ll tell me that I’m meddling with what is none of my business, and this time you’ll be right.”

“No: after going so far, you owe me a reply.”

“Well then, I’ve never been able to see any other reason.”

“Oh? Bernard’s my cousin.”

“Since you will have it, Hyde, I can’t see you burying yourself in a country village out of cousinly affection. You said you’d stay as long as you were comfortable. Well, it won’t be comfortable now! I’m not presuming to judge you. I’ve no idea what your ethical or social standards are. Quite likely you would consider yourself justified in taking away your cousin’s wife. Some modern professors and people who write about social questions would say, wouldn’t they, that she ought to be able to divorce him: that a marriage which can’t be fruitful ought not to be a binding tie? I’ve never got up the subject because for me it’s settled out of hand on religious grounds, but they may not influence you, nor perhaps would the other possible deterrent, pity for the weak if one can call Bernard weak. It would be an impertinence for me to judge you by my code, when perhaps your own is pure social expediency which would certainly be better served if Mrs. Clowes went to you.”

“Assuming that you’ve correctly defined my standard why should I go?”

Val shrugged his shoulders. “You know well enough. Because Mrs. Clowes is old-fashioned; her duty to Bernard is the ruling force in her life, and you could never make her give him up. Or if you did she wouldn’t live long enough for you to grow tired of her it would break her heart.”

“Really?” said Lawrence. “Before I grew tired of her?”

He had never been so angry in his life. To be brought to book at all was bad enough, but what rankled worst was the nature of the charge. Sometimes it takes a false accusation to make a man realize the esteem in which he is held, the opinions which others attribute to him and which perhaps, without examining them too closely, he has allowed to pass for his own. Lawrence had indulged in plenty of loose talk about Nietzschean ethics and the danger of altruism and the social inexpediency of sacrificing the strong for the weak, but when it came to his own honour not Val himself could have held a more conservative view. He, take advantage of a cripple? He commit a breach of hospitality? He sneak into Wanhope as his cousin’s friend to corrupt his cousin’s wife? What has been called the pickpocket form of adultery had never been to his taste. Had Bernard been on his feet, a strong man armed, Lawrence might, if he had fallen in love with Laura, have gloried in carrying her off openly; but of the baseness of which Val accused him he knew himself to be incapable.

“Really?” he said, looking down at Val out of his wide black eyes, so like Bernard’s except that they concealed all that Bernard revealed. “So now we understand each other. I know why you want me to go and you know why I want to stay.”

“If I’ve done you an injustice I’m sorry for it.”

“Oh, don’t apologize,” said Lawrence laughing. His manner bewildered Val, who could make nothing of it except that it was incompatible with any sense of guilt.

“But, then,” the question broke from Val involuntarily, “why did you stay?”

“Why do you?”

“I?”

“Yes, you. Did it never strike you that I might retort with a tu quoque?”

“How on earth ?”

“You were perhaps a little preoccupied,” said Lawrence with his deadly smile. “I suggest, Val, that whether Clowes was jealous or not you were.”

“I?”

“Yes, my dear fellow:” the Jew laughed: it gave him precisely the same satisfaction to violate Val’s reticence, as it might have given one of his ancestors to cut Christian flesh to ribbons in the markets of the East: “and who’s to blame you? Thrown so much into the society of a very pretty and very unhappy woman, what more natural than for you to how shall I put it? constitute yourself her protector? Set your mind at rest. You have only one rival, Val her husband.”

He enjoyed his triumph for a few moments, during which Stafford was slowly taking account with himself.

“I’m not such a cautious moralist as you are,” Lawrence pursued, “and so I don’t hold a pistol to your head and give you ten minutes to clear out of Wanhope, as you did to mine. On the contrary, I hope you’ll long continue to act as Bernard’s agent. I’m sure he’ll never get a better one. As for Laura, she won’t discover your passion unless you proclaim it, which I’m sure you’ll never do. She looks on you as a brother an affectionate younger brother invaluable for running errands. And you’ll continue to fetch and carry, enduring all things from her and Bernard much as you do from me. When I do go which won’t be just yet I shan’t feel the faintest compunction about leaving you behind. I’m sure Bernard’s honour will be as safe in your hands as it is in mine.”

And thus one paved the way to pleasant relations with ones brother-in-law. The civilized second self, always a dismayed and cynical spectator of Hyde’s lapses into savagery, raised its voice in vain.

“You seem a little confused, Val you always were a modest chap. But surely you of all men can trust my discretion ?”

“That’s enough,” said Val. He touched Hyde’s coat with his finger-tips, an airy movement, almost a caress, which seemed to come from a long way off. “Lawrence, you’re hurting yourself more than me.”

It was enough and more than enough: an arrest instant and final. Later Lawrence wondered whether Val knew what he had done, or whether it was only a thought unconsciously made visible; it was so unlike all he had seen of Val, so like much that he had felt.

It put him to silence. Not only so, but it flung a light cloud of mystery over what had seemed noonday clear. Since that first night when he had watched in a mirror the disentangling of Laura’s scarf, Lawrence had entertained no doubt of Val’s sentiments, but now he was left uncertain. Val had translated himself into a country to which Lawrence could not follow him, and the light of an unknown sun was on his way.

Lawrence drew back with an impatient gesture. “Oh, let’s drop all this!” The civilized second self was in revolt alike against his own morbid cruelty and Val’s escape into heaven: he would admit nothing except that he had gone through one trying scene after another in the last eighteen hours, and that Val had paid for the irritation produced successively by Mrs. Cleve, Isabel, a white night, and a distressed anxious consciousness of unavowed guilt. “We shall be at each other’s throats in a minute, which wouldn’t suit either your book or mine you’ve no idea, Val, how little it would suit mine! I’m sorry I was so offensive. But you wrong me, you do indeed; I’m not in love with Laura, and, if I were, the notion of picking poor Bernard’s pocket is absolutely repugnant to me. Social expediency be hanged! What! as his guest? But let’s drop recrimination; I had no right to resent what you said after forcing you to say it, nor, in any case, to taunt you . . . I beg your pardon: there! for heaven’s sake let’s leave it at that.”

“Will you release me from my parole?”

“Yes, and wish to heaven I’d never extracted it. I had no right to impose it on you or to hold you to it. But don’t give yourself away, Val, I can’t bear to think of what you’ll have to face. It will be what you once called it crucifixion.”

“No, freedom,” said Val. “After all these years in prison.” He put up his hand to his head. “The brand the What’s the matter?” Lawrence had seized his arm. “Am I am I talking rubbish? I feel half asleep. But one night’s sitting up aughtn’t to Oh, this is absurd! . . .”

Lawrence waited in the patience of dismay. It was no excuse to plead that till then he had not known all the harm he had done; men should not set racks to work in ignorance of their effect on trembling human nerves.

“That’s over,” said Val, wiping his forehead. “Sorry to make a fuss, but it came rather suddenly. Things always happen so simply when they do happen.”

“Are you going to confess?”

“Oh yes. I ought to have done it long ago. In fact last night I made up my mind to break my parole if you wouldn’t let me off, but I’d rather have it this way. Remains only to choose time and place: that’ll need care, for I mustn’t hurt others more than I can help. But I wouldn’t mind betting it’ll all be as simple as shelling peas. The odds are that people won’t believe half I say. They’ll have forgotten all about the war by now, and they’ll make far too much allowance for my being only nineteen.”

“And for a voluntary confession: that always carries great weight. They would judge you very differently if it had come out by chance. Rightly, too: if you’re going to make such a confession at your time of life, it will be difficult for any one to call you a coward.”

“Thank you!” Val shrugged his shoulders with the old indolent irony. “But moral courage was always my long suit.”

“How young you still are!” said Lawrence smiling at him, “young enough to be bitter. But you’re under a delusion. No, let me finish I’m an older man than you are, I’ve seen a good deal of life, and I had four years out there instead of six weeks like you. So far as I can judge you never were a coward. Thousands and hundreds of thousands of men broke down like you, but they were lucky and it wasn’t known, or at all events it wasn’t critical. Their failure of nerve didn’t coincide with the special call to action. You would have redeemed yourself if you had been able to stick to your profession. You have redeemed yourself: and you’d prove it fast enough if you got the chance, only of course in these piping times of peace unluckily you won’t.” He coloured suddenly to his temples. “Good God, Val! if there were any weakness left in you, could you have mastered me like this?”