Nightfall | Page 4

convulsions which drove him mad
with impatience. Laura drew down the helplessly twitching knee, and
ran one firm hand over him from thigh to ankle. Her touch had a
mesmeric effect on his nerves when he could endure it, but nine times
out of ten he struck it away. He did so now. "Go to the devil! How
often have I told you not to paw me about? I wish you'd do as you're
told. What do you call him Lawrence for?"
"I always did. But I'll call him Captain Hyde if you like--"
"'Mr.,' you mean: he's probably dropped the 'Captain.' He was only a
'temporary.'"
"For all that, he has stuck to his prefix," said Laura smiling. "Lucian
chaffed him about it. But Lawrence was always rather a baby in some
ways: clocked socks to match his ties, and astonishing adventures in
jewellery, and so on. Oh yes, I knew him very well indeed when I was
a girl. Mr. and Mrs. Hyde were among the last of the old set who kept
up with us after father was turned out of his clubs. I've stayed at
Farringay."

"You never told me that!"
"I never thought of telling you. Lawrence hasn't been near us since we
came to Wanhope and I don't recollect your ever mentioning his name.
You see I tell you now."
"How old were you when you stayed at Farringay?"
"Twenty-two. Lawrence and I are the same age."
"And you knew him well, did you?"
"We were great friends," said Mrs. Clowes, tossing a lump of sugar out
of the window to a lame jackdaw. She had many such pensioners, alike
in a community of misfortune. "And, yes, Berns, you're right, we flirted
a little--only a little: wasn't it natural? It was only for fun, because we
were both young and it was such heavenly weather--it was the Easter
before war broke out. No, he didn't ask me to marry him! Nothing was
farther from his mind."
"Did he kiss you?"
Laura slowly and smilingly shook her head. "Am I, Yvonne?"
"But you liked the fellow?"
"Oh yes, he was charming. A little too much one of a class, perhaps:
there's a strong family likeness, isn't there, between Cambridge
undergraduates? But he was more cultivated than a good many of his
class. We used to go up the river together and read --what did one read
in the spring of 1914? Masefield, I suppose, or was it Maeterlinck?
Rupert Brooks came with the war. Imagine reading 'Pelleas et
Melisande' in a Canadian canoe! It makes one want to be twenty-two
again, so young and so delightfully serious." It was hard to run on
while the glow faded out of Bernard's face and a cold gloom again
came over it, but sad experience had taught Laura that at all costs,
under whatever temptation, it was wiser to be frank. It would have been
easier for the moment to paint the boy and girl friendship in neutral

tints, but if its details came out later, trivial and innocent as they were,
the economy of today would cost her dear tomorrow, Her own
impression was that Clowes had never been jealous of her in his life.
But the pretence of jealousy was one of his few diversions.
"I dare say you do wish you were twenty-two again," he said, delicately
setting down his tea cup on the tray--all his movements, so far as he
could control them, were delicate and fastidious. "I dare say you would
like a chance to play your cards differently. Can't be done, my, girl, but
what a good fellow I am to ask Lawrence to Wanhope, ain't I? No one
can say I'm not an obliging husband. Lawrence isn't a jumping doll.
He's six and thirty and as strong as a horse. You'll have no end of a
good time knitting up your severed friendship .. 'Pon my word, I've a
good mind to put him off. . I shouldn't care to fall foul of the King's
Proctor."
"Will you have another cup of tea before I ring"
"No, thanks . . . Do I lead you the deuce of a life, Lally?"
"You do now and then," said his wife, smiling with pale lips.
"It isn't that I'm sensitive for myself, because I know you don't mean a
word of it, but I rather hate it for your own sake. It isn't worthy of you,
old boy. It's so--so ungentlemanly."
"So it is. But I do it because I'm bored. I am bored, you know.
Desperately!" He stretched out his hand to her with such haggard,
hunted eyes that Laura, reckless, threw herself down by him and kissed
the heavy eyelids. Clowes put his arm round her neck, fondling her hair,
and for a