Chapter 8

"And now tell me," murmured Mrs. Clowes in the mischievously caressing tone that she kept for Isabel, "did mamma's little girl enjoy her party?"

"Rather!" said Isabel--with a great sigh, the satisfied sigh of a dog curling up after a meal. "They were lovely strawberries. And what do you call that French thing? Oh, that's what a vol-au-vent is, is it? I wish I knew how to make it, but probably it's one of those recipes that begin 'Take twelve eggs and a quart of cream.' I wish nice things to eat weren't so dear, Jimmy would love it. Captain Hyde took two helps--did you see?--big ones! If he always eats as much as he did tonight he'll be fat before he's fifty, which will be a pity. He ate three times what Val did."

"Is that what you were thinking of all the time? I noticed you didn't say very much."

"Well, I was between Captain Hyde and Major Clowes, and they neither of them think I'm grown up," explained Isabel. "They talked to each other over the top of me. Oh no, not rudely, Major Clowes was as nice as he could be" (Isabel salved her conscience by reflecting that this was verbally true since Major Clowes could never he nice), "and Captain Hyde asked me if I was fond of dolls--"

"My dear Isabel!"

"Or words to that effect. Oh! it's perfectly fair, I'm not grown up, or only by fits and starts. Some of me is a weary forty-five but the rest is still in pigtails. It's curious, isn't it? considering that I'm nearly twenty. Let's go through the wood, my stockings are coming down." Out of sight of the house in a clearing of the loosely planted alder-coppice by the bridge, she pulled them up, slowly and candidly: white cotton stockings supported by garters of black elastic. "After all," she continued, "I'm housekeeper, and in common politeness we shall have to dine you back, so I really did want to see what sort of things Captain Hyde likes. But it's no use, he won't like anything we give him. Not though we strain our resources to the uttermost. Laura! would Mrs. Fryar give me the receipt for that vol-au-vent? I don't suppose we could run to it, but I should love to try."

"Mrs. Fryar would be flattered," said Laura, finding a chair in the forked stem of a wild apple-tree, while Isabel sat plump down on the net of moss-fronds and fine ivy and grey wood-violets at her feet. "But, my darling, you're not to worry your small head over vol-au-vents! Lawrence will like one of your own roast chickens just as well, or any simple thing--"

"Oh no, Lawrence won't!" Isabel gave a little laugh. "Excuse my contradicting you, but Lawrence isn't a bit fond of simple things. That's why he doesn't like me, because I'm simple, simple as a daisy. I don't mind--much," she added truthfully. "I can survive his most extended want of interest. After all what can you expect if you go out to dinner in the same nun's veiling frock you wore when you were confirmed, with the tucks let down and the collar taken out? O! Laura, I wish someone would give me twenty pounds on condition that I spent it all on dress! I'd buy--I'd buy--oh,--silk stockings, and long gloves, and French cambric underclothes, and chiffon nightgowns like those Yvonne wears (but they aren't decent: still that doesn't matter so long as you're not married, and they are so pretty)! And a homespun tailor-made suit with a seam down the back and open tails: and--and--one of those real Panamas that you can pull through a wedding ring: and--oh! dear, I am greedy! It must be because I never have any clothes at all that I'm always wanting some. I ache all over when I look at catalogues. Isn't it silly?"

If so it was a form of silliness with which Mrs. Clowes was in full sympathy. In her world, to be young and pretty gave a woman a claim on Fate to provide her with pretty dresses and the admiration of men. As for Yvonne, till she married Jack Bendish she had never been out of debt in her life. "No, it's the most natural thing on earth," said Laura. "How I wish--!"

"No, no," said Isabel hastily. "It's very, very sweet of you, but even Jimmy wouldn't like it: and as for Val I don't know what he'd say! Poor old Val, he wants some new evening clothes himself, and it's worse for him than for me because men do so hate to look shabby and out at elbows. He's worn that suit for ten years. My one consolation is that Captain Hyde couldn't wear a suit he wore ten years ago. It would burst."

"Isabel! really! you ridiculous child, why have you such a spite against poor Lawrence? Any one would think he was a perfect Daniel Lambert! Do you know he's a pukka sportsman and has shot all over the world? Lions and tigers, and rhinoceros, and grizzly bears, and all sorts of ferocious animals! He's promised me a black panther skin for my parlour and he's persuaded Bernard to call in Dr. Verney for his neuritis, so I won't hear another word against him!"

"Has he? H'm. . . . No, I haven't any prejudice against him: in fact I like him," said Isabel, smiling to herself. "But he reminds me of Tom Wallis at the Prince of Wales's Feathers. Do you remember Tom? 'Poor Tom,' Mrs. Wallis always says, 'he went from bad to worse. First it was a drop too much of an evening: and then he began getting drunk mornings: and then he 'listed for a soldier!' Not that Captain Hyde would get drunk, but he has the same excitable temperament. . . . Laura!"

"What is it?" said Mrs. Clowes, framing the young face between her hands as Isabel rose up kneeling before her. In the quivering apple-tree shadow Isabel's eyes were very dark, and penetrating and reflective too, as if she had just undergone one of those transitions from childhood to womanhood which are the mark and the charm of her variable age. Laura was puzzled by her judgment of Lawrence Hyde, so keen, yet so wide of the truth as Laura saw it: "excitable" was the last thing that Laura would have called him, and she couldn't see any likeness to Tom Wallis. But one can't argue over a man's character with a child. "Why so serious?"

"This evening, at dinner, weren't there some queer undercurrents?"

"Undercurrents!" Laura drew her hands away. She looked startled and nervous. "What sort of undercurrents?"

"When they were chaffing Val about his ribbon. Oh, I don't know," said Isabel vaguely. Laura drew a breath of relief. "I was sorry you made him wear it. But he'd cut his hand off to please you, darling. You don't really realize the way you can make Val do anything you like."

"Nonsense," said Laura, but with an indulgent smile, which was her way of saying that it was true but did not signify. She was no coquette, but she preferred to create an agreeable impression. Always in France, where women are the focus of social interest, there had been men who did as Laura Selincourt pleased, and the incense which Val alone continued to burn was not ungrateful to her altar. "As if Val would mind about a little thing like that."

Isabel shook her head. "Perhaps you weren't attending. Major Clowes was very down on him for wearing it--chaffing him, of course, but chaffing half in earnest: a snowball with a stone in it. Naturally Val wasn't going to say you made him--"

"No, but Lawrence did: or I should have cut in myself."

"Yes, after a minute, he interfered, and then Major Clowes shut up, but it was all rather--rather queer, and I'm sure Val hated it. You won't make him do it again, will you? Val's so odd. Laura--don't tell any one--I sometimes think Val's very unhappy."

"Val, unhappy? You fanciful child, this is worse than Tom Wallis! What should make Val unhappy? He might be dull," said Laura ruefully. "Life at Wanhope isn't exciting! But he's keen on his work and very fond of the country. Val is one of the most contented people I know."

A shadow fell over Isabel's face, the veil that one draws down when one has offered a confidence to hands that are not ready to receive it. "Then it must be all my imagination." She abandoned the subject as rapidly as she had introduced it. "O! dear, I am sleepy." She stretched herself and yawned, opening her mouth wide and shutting it with a little snap like a kitten. "I was up at six to give Val his breakfast, and I've been running about all day, what with the school treat next week, and Jimmy's new night-shirts that I had to get the stuff for and cut them out, and choir practice, and Fanny taking it into her head to make rhubarb jam. How can London people stay up till twelve or one o'clock every night? But of course they don't get up at six."

"Have a snooze in my hammock," suggested Laura. "I see Barry coming, which means that Bernard is going off and I shall have to run away and leave you, and probably the men won't come out for some time. Take forty winks, you poor child, it will freshen you up."

"I never, never go to sleep in the daytime," said Isabel firmly. "It's a demoralizing habit. But I shouldn't mind tumbling into your hammock, thank you very much." And, while Mrs. Clowes went away with Barry, she slipped across to Laura's large comfortable cot, swung waist-high between two alders that knelt on the river brink.

Isabel sprawled luxuriously at full length, one arm under her head and the other dropped over the netting: her young frame was tired, little flying aches of fatigue were darting pins and needles through her knees and shoulders and the base of her spine. The evening was very warm and the stars winked at her, they were green diamonds that sparkled through chinks in the alder leafage overhead: round dark leaves like coins, and scattered in clusters, like branches of black bloom. Near at hand the river ran in silken blackness, but below the coppice, where it widened into shallows, it went whispering and rippling over a pebbly bottom on its way to the humming thunder of the