Nightfall - Anthony Pryde (classic novels .txt) 📗

curiously at Rowsley, whose tone was a challenge. "What is it now?"

"Do you like this chap Hyde?"

"That depends on what you mean by liking him. He's not a bad specimen of his class."

"What is his class? Do you know anything of his people?"

"Of his family I know little except that he has Jew blood in him and is very well off," Val could have told his brother where the money came from, but forbore out of consideration for Lawrence, who might not care to have his connection with the Hyde Galleries known in Chilmark. "He came here because Lucian Selincourt asked him to see if he could do anything for Bernard."

"I can't see Hyde putting himself out of his way to oblige Mr.
Selincourt."

"If you ask me, Rose, I should say he had only just got back to England and was at a loose end. But there was a dash of good nature in it: he's genuinely fond of Mrs. Clowes."

"So I gathered," said Rowsley. His tone was pregnant. Val sat silent for a moment.

"What rubbish! He hasn't seen her for eight or ten years."

"Since her marriage." Val shrugged his shoulders. "Sorry, Val, but I cannot see Hyde staying on at Wanhope out of cousinly affection for Bernard Clowes. It must be a beastly uncomfortable house to stay in. Nicely run and all that, and they do you very well, but Bernard is distinctly an acquired taste. Oh, my dear chap!" as Val's silence stiffened, "no one suggests that Laura's ever looked at the fellow! But facts are facts, and Hyde is— Hyde. I'm not a bit surprised to hear he has Jew blood in him," Rowsley continued, warming to the discussion: he was a much keener judge of character that the tolerant and easy-going Val. "That accounts for the arty strain in him. Yvonne says he's a thorough musician, and Jack told me Lord Grantchester took to him because he knew such a lot about pictures. Well, so he ought! He's a Londoner. What does he know of the country? Only what you pick up at a big country-house party or a big shoot! He's not the sort of chap to stay on at Wanhope for the pleasure of cheering up across-grained br—a fellow like Bernard. Yes, he's talking of staying on indefinitely: is going to send to town for one of his confounded cars. . . . And what other woman is there in Chilmark that he'd walk across the road to look at?"

"I'm not sure you're fair to him."

Rowsley turned up to his brother an amused, rather sweet smile.
"Val, you'd pray for the devil?"

"Oh, Hyde isn't a devil! I came pretty close to him ten years ago. He has a streak of generosity in him: no one knows that better than I do, for I'm in his debt. What? Oh! no, not in money matters: is that likely? But he's capable of . . . magnanimity, one might call it," Stafford fastidiously felt after precision: "no, he wouldn't pursue Laura; he wouldn't make her life harder than it is already."

"He might propose to make it easier." Rowsley threw a daisy at a cockchafer and missed it. "You and I are sons of a parsonage. We shouldn't run off with a married lady because it would be against our principles." His thin brown features were twisted into a faint grimace. Rowsley, like Val, possessed a satirical sense of humour, and gave it freer play than Val did. "It's so difficult to shake off early prejudices. When Fowler and I were at the club the other day, we met a horrid little sweep who waxed confidential. I said I couldn't make love to a married woman if I tried, and Fowler said he could but held rather not, and we walked off, but as I remarked to Fowler afterwards the funny thing was that it was true. I don't see anything romantic in the situation. It strikes me as immoral and disgusting. But Hyde wouldn't take a narrow view like mine. He has to live up to his tailor."

"Oh, really, Rose!" Val gave his unwilling laugh. "You're like
Isabel, who can't forgive him for sporting a diamond monogram."

"No, but I'm interested. I know Jack's limitations, and Jimmy's, and yours, but Hyde's I don't know, and he intrigues me," said Rowsley, lighting a cigarette with his agile brown fingers. "Now I'll tell you the way he really strikes me. He's not a bad sort: I shouldn't wonder if there were more decency in him than he'd care to get credit for. But I should think," he looked up at Val with his clear speculative hazel eyes, "that he's never in his life taken a thrashing. He's always had pots of money and superb health. I know nothing, of his private concerns, but at all events he isn't married, and from what Jack says he's sought safety in numbers. No wife, no kids, no near relations—that means none of the big wrenches. No: I don't believe Hyde's ever taken a licking in his life."

"You sound as if you would like to administer one."

"Only by way of a literary experiment," said Rowsley with his mischievous grin. He was of the new Army, Val of the old: it was a constant source of mild surprise to Val that his brother read books about philosophy, and psychology, and sociology, of which pre-war Sandhurst had never heard: read poetry too, not Tennyson or Shakespeare, but slim modern volumes with brown covers and wide margins: and wrote verses now and then, and sent them to orange-coloured magazines or annual anthologies, at which Val gazed from a respectful distance. "I don't owe him any grudge. I'm not Bernard's dry-nurse!"

Val turned a leaf of his paper, but he was not reading it.

"I rather wish you hadn't said all this, Rowsley. It does no good: not even if it were true."

"Val, if it weren't such a warm evening I'd get up and punch your head. You're a little too bright and good, aren't you? Yvonne Bendish says it, and she's Laura's sister."

"Yvonne would say anything. I wish you had given her a hint to hold her tongue. She may do most pestilent mischief if she sets this gossip going."

"It'll set itself going," said Rowsley. "And, though I know the Bendishes pretty well, I really shouldn't care to tell Mrs. Jack not to gossip about her own sister. You might see your way to it, reverend sir, but I don't."

"If it came to Bernard's ears I wouldn't answer for the consequences."

"Won't Bernard see it for himself?"

"If I thought that," said Val, "if I thought that. . . .

"You couldn't interfere, old man," said Rowsley with a shrewd glance at his brother. "Your hands are tied."

"H'm: yes, that's true." It was much truer than Rowsley knew. "I don't care," said Val, involuntarily crushing the paper in his hand: "I would not let that stand in my way: I'd speak to Hyde."

"Are you prepared to take high ground? I can't imagine any one less likely to be amenable to moral suasion, unless of course you're much more intimate with him than you ever let on to me. Perhaps you are," Rowsley added. "He certainly is interested in you."

"Hyde is?"

"Watches you like a cat after a mouse. What's at the root of it, Val? Is it the original obligation you spoke of? I'm not sure that I should care to be under an obligation to Hyde myself. Hullo, are you off?" Val had risen, folding the newspaper, laying it carefully down on his chair: in all his ways he was as neat as an old maid.

"I have to be at the managers' meeting by half past eight, and it's twenty past now."

Watching his brother across the lawn, Rowsley cudgelled his brains to account for Val's precipitate departure. The pretext was valid, for Val was always punctual, and yet it looked like a retreat—not to say a rout. But what had he said to put Val to flight?

Present at the managers' meeting were Val, still in breeches: Jack Bendish in a dinner jacket and black tie: Garrett the blacksmith, cursorily washed: Thurlow, a leading Nonconformist tradesman: and Mrs. Verney the doctor's wife. Agenda: to instruct the Correspondent to requisition a new scrubbing brush for the Infants' School. This done and formally entered in the Minutes by Mrs. Verney, the meeting resolved itself into a Committee of Ways and Means for getting rid of the boys' headmaster without falling foul of the National Union of Teachers; but these proceedings, though of extreme interest to all concerned, were recorded in no Minutes.

The meeting broke up in amity and Bendish came out into the purple twilight, taking Val's arm. It was gently withdrawn. "Neuritis again?" said Jack. "Why don't you try massage?" He always asked the same question, and, being born to fifteen thousand a year, never read between the lines of Val's vague reply. Val had a touch of neuritis in his injured arm two nights out of seven, but he could not find the shillings for his train fare to Salisbury, far less the fees of a professional masseuse. Bendish, who could have settled that difficulty out of a week's cigar bills, would have been shocked and distressed if Val had owned to it, but it was beyond the scope of his imagination, though he was a thoughtful young man and quietly did his best to protect Val from the tax of chauffeurs and gamekeepers. He understood that poor men cannot always find sovereigns. But he really did not know that sometimes they cannot even find shillings. Tonight he said, "I can't think why you don't get a woman over to massage you," and then, reverting to the peccant master, "Brown's a nuisance. He has a rotten influence on the elder boys. He's thick with all that beastly Labour crowd, and I believe Thurlow's right about his goings on with Warner's wife, though I wasn't going to say so to Thurlow. I do wish he'd do something, then we could fire him. But we don't want a row with the N.U.T."

"You can't fire a man for his political opinions."

"Why not, if they're wrong?" said Bendish placidly.

His was the creed that Labour men are so slow to understand because it is so slow to explain itself: not a blind prejudice, but the reasonable faith of one who feels himself to belong to an hereditary officer caste for whom privilege and responsibility go hand in hand. And an excellent working rule it is so long as practice is not divorced from theory: so long as the average member of the governing class acts up to the tradition of government, be he sachem or daimio or resident English squire. It amused Val: but he admired it.

"Brown is a thorn in Jimmy's side," he remarked, dropping the impersonal issue. "I never in my life heard a man make such a disagreeable noise on the organ. I tackled him about it last Sunday. He said it ciphered, but organs don't cipher in dry weather, so I went to look at it and found three or four keys glued together with candle grease."

"Filthy swine! Are you coming round to Wanhope? I have to call in on my way home, my wife's dining there."

Val made no reply. "Are you coming up or not? You look fagged,
Val," said Bendish affectionately. "Anything wrong?"

"No: I was only wondering whether I'd get you to take a message for me, but I'd better go myself."

Bendish nodded. "Just as you like. Have you settled yet about the Etchingham agency?"

"No, I'm waiting for Bernard."

"Hope you'll see your way to accepting. My only fear is that it would throw too much work on you; you're such a conscientious beggar! but of course you wouldn't do for us all the odd jobs you do for poor Bernard. Seems to me," Jack ruminated, "the best plan would be for you to have a car. One gets about quicker like that and it wouldn't be such a fag. There's that little green Napier roadster, she'd come in handy if we stabled her at Nicholson's." He