"D'you think he'd knock me down?" asked Mr. Stafford, casting a comical glance over his slender elderly frame.
"Hardly," said Val laughing. "But—no, Jim, it wouldn't do. Too formal, too official." His real objection was that Mr. Stafford would base his appeal on ethical and spiritual grounds, which were not likely to influence Lawrence, as Val read him. "But if you like I'll give him a hint myself. I can do it informally; and I very nearly did it as long ago as last June. Hyde is amenable to treatment if he's taken quietly."
Mr. Stafford, by temperament and training a member of the Church Militant, clearly felt a trifle disappointed, but he had little petty vanity and accepted Val's amendment without a murmur. "Very well, if you think you can do it better! I don't care who does it so long as it's done." The clock struck. "Half past eleven is that? Isabel can't be home before four. Dear me, how I hate these ridiculous hours, turning night into day!" As some correspondents put the point of a letter into a postscript, so the vicar in returning to his Church Times revealed the peculiar sting that was working in his mind. "And I don't— I do not like Isabel to make one of that trio—in view of what's being said."
"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. . . .