Nightfall. Anthony Pryde
quiet of movement, friendly-mannered and as inconspicuous as his own rather worn grey tweeds: one of a class, till he raised his eyes: and then? There was something strange in Val's eyes when they were fully raised, an indrawn arresting brilliance difficult to analyse: imaginative and sympathetic, as if he were at home in dark places: the quality of acceptance of pain.
Adepts in old days knew by his eyes a man who had been on the rack. Stafford had been racked: and by the pain that is half shame, the keenest, the most lacerating and destructive of wounds. He had suffered till he could suffer no more, and tonight in the starlit garden he, suffered still, without hope, or rebellion, or defence.
Indoors Rowsley and Isabel, with the rapidity of long use, laid the cloth, and Isabel fetched cold beef from the larder and butter and eggs from the dairy, while Rowsley went down the cellar with a jug and a candle and drew from the cask a generous allowance of beer. "Come along in, old Val," said Isabel, reappearing at the open window, "You and Rose are both famishing and I'm not," this was a pious fiction, "so you can begin and I'll wait for Jimmy. I dare say he's gone wandering off somewhere and won't be in till ten."
Val came across the dark, cool lawn and climbed over the window sill. A shabby room, large and low: a faded paper, grey toning to blue: a carpet of faded roses on a grey ground: the shaded Dresden lamp and roselit supper table shining like an island in a pool of shadow, and those two beloved heads, both so dark and smooth and young, tam cara capita! Neither of them suspected that Val was unhappy. His feeling for them was more fatherly than fraternal, and Rowsley, strange to say, fell in with Val's attitude, coming to his brother for money as naturally as most young men go to their parents. Val sat at the head of the table because Mr. Stafford could not carve. "There!" said Isabel, giving him his plate. "Mustard? I've just made it so you needn't look to see if it's fresh. Watercress: I picked it myself. Lettuce. Cream and vinegar and sugar. Beer. Now do you feel happy? Lord love you, dear, I like to see you eat."
She sat on the arm of Mr. Stafford's mahogany chair. "What time do you want breakfast? Seven o'clock? Major Clowes wouldn't come down at seven if he were your agent. Can you get back to tea tomorrow? Laura may bring the cousin up to tea with her and she wants him to meet you."
"Very good of her. Why?"
"Oh, because he was in the Army too and all through the war. He went out with the first hundred thousand. He's much older than you are—the same age as Laura. Oh, wait a minute!" exclaimed Isabel in the tone in which a Frenchwoman says Tenez. I forgot. She thinks you must have met him, Val."
"Possibly," said Val.
"Was he in the Dorchesters?" asked Rowsley—much more interested than his brother, no doubt because he was not so hungry as Val, who was giving all his attention to his supper.
"No, in the Winchesters," said Isabel. "Do I mean the
Winchesters, Val? What was Major Clowes' old regiment?"
"Clowes was in the Wintons."
Isabel nodded. "Then so was the cousin. And Laura says he was out there when the Wintons were in the next bit of trench north of the Dorchesters. He was there when—when you were wounded." Such was Val Stafford's modesty that in the family circle it was not in etiquette to refer in other terms to that famous occasion.
"I don't remember any fellow named Clowes and I never knew Bernard Clowes had a cousin out there," said Val, mixing himself a salad.
"Oh, his name isn't Clowes. It's Ryde or Pride or something like that. I'm sorry to be so vague, but Jack Bendish and Yvonne and Mrs. Morley were all talking at once. Lawrence Pied—Fried—"
"Lawrence Hyde?"
"Yes, that's it! Then you really do remember him?"
"Er—yes. Is that lamp smoking, Rowsley? You might turn it down a trifle, I can't reach."
"Let me, let me?—What was he like?"
"Who—Hyde? Oh," said Val vaguely, "he was like the rest of us—very tired."
"Tired?" echoed Isabel with a blank face, "but, Val darling, he couldn't have been only tired! What should you think he was like when he wasn't tired?"
"That is a question I have occasionally asked myself," Val answered with his faint indecipherable smile. "My dear child, I only saw him once or twice. He was a senior captain and commanded his company. I was a very junior lieutenant."
"Still he was there at the time," reflected Isabel. "O Rose! if he's anything like nice, which is almost past praying for in Major Clowes' cousin, let's beguile him into the gooseberry bushes and make him tell us all about it! Val is very dear to his family, but no one, however tenderly attached to him, could call him a brilliant raconteur. Now Mr. Hyde won't have any modest scruples. Val, if there is a slug in that lettuce I wish you would say so. It would hurt my feelings less than for you to sit looking at it in a stony silence. Was he good-looking?"
"Possibly he might be," said Val, "when he scraped the dirt off."
After a moment he added, "He was very decent to me."
"Was he? Then he was nice?"
"Gnat," said Rowsley from the middle of his third egg. Isabel rounded him indignantly.
"I'm not gnatting! I'm not asking Val anything about himself, am I? Val can't possibly mind telling me about another man in another regiment. You eat your eggs, there's a good boy, before they get cold.— Laura says the Dorchesters dined the Winchesters once when they were in billets. Was that when you and Mr. Hyde were there?"
"Captain Hyde," Val corrected his young sister. "Yes, we both graced the festive board. It was too festive for me. We had Buszard's soup and curried chicken and real cream, and more champagne than was good for us. But it was not on that occasion that Hyde was so decent to me. The day I—the day Dale went down—" Rowsley nodded to him as he raised his glass of beer to his lips—"thank you, Rose.— As I was saying, that evening I ran across Hyde between the lines. The Dorsets and Wintons had gone over the top together, and he had been left behind with a bullet in his chest. I was done to the world, but he had some brandy left and shared it with me. If it had not been for Hyde I should never have brought Dale in."
"Well, I've never heard that before," said Rowsley to his fourth egg.
Isabel was silent, and her eyes in the shadow of a momentary gravity were the eyes of a woman and not of a child. She raised them to look out at the evening sky, indigo blue against the lamplit interior, or faintly primrose in the west, and wondered for the thousandth time why it was still such an effort to Val to refer to his brief military experience. Soft country noises came in, peaceful and soothing: the short shrill shriek of a bat, the rustle of a branch of rose-leaves moving like a hand over the window panes, a faint breathing of wind from the moor. Surely the scar of war ought to be healed by now! Isabel kept these thoughts to herself: young as she was, her solitary life—for a woman alone among men is always to some extent solitary—had trained her to a clear perception of what had better not be said.
"When is Hyde coming?" asked Val, going on with his salad.
"Tomorrow, didn't you hear me say Laura is going to bring him here to tea? He's staying at his own place, Farringay—I think from the way Laura spoke it is what one calls a place—and they expect him by the morning train. Laura's to meet him in the car."
"Did you ask her to bring him in to tea," said Rowsley, frowning over the marmalade jar, "when Val is safe to be out and you didn't know I should be here?"
"Yes: oughtn't I to have?"
"No."
"Is there anything else you would like to speak to me about?" said Isabel after a pregnant silence. "Dear Rowsley, you seem determined to look after my manners and morals! I asked him to please Laura. She's nervous of Major Clowes. Jack and Yvonne are coming too."
"Oh I don't see that it signifies," said Val. Mrs. Clowes wouldn't have accepted if it weren't all right. I don't see that you or I need worry if she doesn't. Isabel is old enough to pour out tea for herself. In any case, as it happens, you'll