Nightfall Part 28

"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?

Chapter end