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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Return, by Walter de la Mare
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Return
+
+Author: Walter de la Mare
+
+Posting Date: February 22, 2009 [EBook #3075]
+Release Date: February, 2002
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RETURN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Eve Sobol
+
+
+
+
+
+THE RETURN
+
+Walter de la Mare
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+  This edition has single quotation marks for direct quotes,
+  and double for indirect quotes.
+
+  There are no periods in the original text after
+  Mr
+  Mrs
+  Dr
+
+
+     "Look not for roses in Attalus his garden, or wholesome
+     flowers in a venomous plantation. And since there is scarce
+     any one bad, but some others are the worse for him; tempt
+     not contagion by proximity and hazard not thyself in the
+     shadow of corruption."
+
+           SIR THOMAS BROWNE.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+The churchyard in which Arthur Lawford found himself wandering that mild
+and golden September afternoon was old, green, and refreshingly still.
+The silence in which it lay seemed as keen and mellow as the light--the
+pale, almost heatless, sunlight that filled the air. Here and there
+robins sang across the stones, elvishly shrill in the quiet of harvest.
+The only other living creature there seemed to Lawford to be his own
+rather fair, not insubstantial, rather languid self, who at the noise
+of the birds had raised his head and glanced as if between content and
+incredulity across his still and solitary surroundings. An increasing
+inclination for such lonely ramblings, together with the feeling that
+his continued ill-health had grown a little irksome to his wife, and
+that now that he was really better she would be relieved at his absence,
+had induced him to wander on from home without much considering where
+the quiet lanes were leading him. And in spite of a peculiar melancholy
+that had welled up into his mind during these last few days, he had
+certainly smiled with a faint sense of the irony of things on lifting
+his eyes in an unusually depressed moodiness to find himself looking
+down on the shadows and peace of Widderstone.
+
+With that anxious irresolution which illness so often brings in its
+train he had hesitated for a few minutes before actually entering the
+graveyard. But once safely within he had begun to feel extremely loth to
+think of turning back again, and this not the less at remembering with
+a real foreboding that it was now drawing towards evening, that another
+day was nearly done. He trailed his umbrella behind him over the
+grass-grown paths; staying here and there to read some time-worn
+inscription; stooping a little broodingly over the dark green graves.
+Not for the first time during the long laborious convalescence that had
+followed apparently so slight an indisposition, a fleeting sense almost
+as if of an unintelligible remorse had overtaken him, a vague thought
+that behind all these past years, hidden as it were from his daily life,
+lay something not yet quite reckoned with. How often as a boy had he
+been rapped into a galvanic activity out of the deep reveries he used
+to fall into--those fits of a kind of fishlike day-dream. How often,
+and even far beyond boyhood, had he found himself bent on some distant
+thought or fleeting vision that the sudden clash of self-possession had
+made to seem quite illusory, and yet had left so strangely haunting. And
+now the old habit had stirred out of its long sleep, and, through the
+gate that Influenza in departing had left ajar, had returned upon him.
+
+'But I suppose we are all pretty much the same, if we only knew it,' he
+had consoled himself. 'We keep our crazy side to ourselves; that's all.
+We just go on for years and years doing and saying whatever happens to
+come up--and really keen about it too'--he had glanced up with a kind of
+challenge in his face at the squat little belfry--'and then, without
+the slightest reason or warning, down you go, and it all begins to wear
+thin, and you get wondering what on earth it all means.' Memory slipped
+back for an instant to the life that in so unusual a fashion seemed
+to have floated a little aloof. Fortunately he had not discussed these
+inward symptoms with his wife. How surprised Sheila would be to see him
+loafing in this old, crooked churchyard. How she would lift her dark
+eyebrows, with that handsome, indifferent tolerance. He smiled, but a
+little confusedly; yet the thought gave even a spice of adventure to the
+evening's ramble.
+
+He loitered on, scarcely thinking at all now, stooping here and there.
+These faint listless ideas made no more stir than the sunlight gilding
+the fading leaves, the crisp turf underfoot. With a slight effort he
+stooped even once again;--
+
+     'Stranger, a moment pause, and stay;
+     In this dim chamber hidden away
+     Lies one who once found life as dear
+     As now he finds his slumbers here:
+     Pray, then, the Judgement but increase
+     His deep, everlasting peace!'
+
+'But then, do you know you lie at peace?' Lawford audibly questioned,
+gazing at the doggerel. And yet, as his eyes wandered over the blunt
+green stone and the rambling crimson-berried brier that had almost
+encircled it with its thorns, the echo of that whisper rather jarred.
+He was, he supposed, rather a dull creature--at least people seemed
+to think so--and he seldom felt at ease even with his own small
+facetiousness. Besides, just that kind of question was getting
+very common. Now that cleverness was the fashion most people were
+clever--even perfect fools; and cleverness after all was often only
+a bore: all head and no body. He turned languidly to the small
+cross-shaped stone on the other side:
+
+     'Here lies the body of Ann Hard, who died in child-bed.
+                 Also of James, her infant son.'
+
+He muttered the words over with a kind of mournful bitterness. 'That's
+just it--just it; that's just how it goes!'... He yawned softly; the
+pathway had come to an end. Beyond him lay ranker grass, one and
+another obscurer mounds, an old scarred oak seat, shadowed by a few
+everlastingly green cypresses and coral-fruited yew-trees. And above and
+beyond all hung a pale blue arch of sky with a few voyaging clouds like
+silvered wool, and the calm wide curves of stubble field and pasture
+land. He stood with vacant eyes, not in the least aware how queer a
+figure he made with his gloves and his umbrella and his hat among the
+stained and tottering gravestones. Then, just to linger out his hour,
+and half sunken in reverie, he walked slowly over to the few solitary
+graves beneath the cypresses.
+
+One only was commemorated with a tombstone, a rather unusual oval-headed
+stone, carved at each corner into what might be the heads of angels,
+or of pagan dryads, blindly facing each other with worn-out, sightless
+faces. A low curved granite canopy arched over the grave, with a crevice
+so wide between its stones that Lawford actually bent down and slid in
+his gloved fingers between them. He straightened himself with a
+sigh, and followed with extreme difficulty the well-nigh, illegible
+inscription:
+
+     'Here lie ye Bones of one,
+     Nicholas Sabathier, a Stranger to this Parish,
+     who fell by his own Hand on ye
+     Eve of Ste. Michael and All Angels.
+     MDCCXXXIX
+
+Of the date he was a little uncertain. The 'Hand' had lost its 'n' and
+'d'; and all the 'Angels' rain had erased. He was not quite sure even
+of the 'Stranger.' There was a great rich 'S,' and the twisted tail of
+a 'g'; and, whether or not, Lawford smilingly thought, he is no Stranger
+now. But how rare and how memorable a name! French evidently; probably
+Huguenot. And the Huguenots, he remembered vaguely, were a rather
+remarkable 'crowd.' He had, he thought, even played at 'Huguenots'
+once. What was the man's name? Coligny; yes, of course, Coligny. 'And I
+suppose,' Lawford continued, muttering to himself, 'I suppose this poor
+beggar was put here out of the way. They might, you know,' he added
+confidentially, raising the ferrule of his umbrella, 'they might have
+stuck a stake through you, and buried you at the crossroads.' And
+again, a feeling of ennui, a faint disgust at his poor little witticism,
+clouded over his mind. It was a pity thoughts always ran the easiest
+way, like water in old ditches.
+
+'"Here lie ye bones of one, Nicholas Sabathier,"' he began murmuring
+again--'merely bones, mind you; brains and heart are quite another
+story. And it's pretty certain the fellow had some kind of brains.
+Besides, poor devil! he killed himself. That seems to hint at brains...
+Oh, for goodness' sake!' he cried out; so loud that the sound of his
+voice alarmed even a robin that had perched on a twig almost within
+touch, with glittering eye intent above its dim red breast on this other
+and even rarer stranger.
+
+'I wonder if it is XXXIX.; it might be LXXIX.' Lawford cast a cautious
+glance over his round grey shoulder, then laboriously knelt down beside
+the stone, and peeped into the gaping cranny. There he encountered
+merely the tiny, pale-green, faintly conspicuous eyes of a large spider,
+confronting his own. It was for the moment an alarming, and yet a
+faintly fascinating experience. The little almost colourless fires
+remained so changeless. But still, even when at last they had actually
+vanished into the recesses of that quiet habitation, Lawford did not
+rise from his knees. An utterly unreasonable feeling of dismay, a sudden
+weakness and weariness had come over him.
+
+'What is the good of it all?' he asked himself inconsequently--this
+monotonous, restless, stupid life to which he was soon to be returning,
+and for good. He began to realize how ludicrous a spectacle he must be,
+kneeling here amid the weeds and grass beneath the solemn cypresses.
+'Well, you can't have everything,' seemed loosely to express his
+disquiet.
+
+He stared vacantly at the green and fretted gravestone, dimly aware that
+his heart was beating with an unusual effort. He felt ill and weak. He
+leant his hand on the stone and lifted himself on to the low wooden
+seat nearby. He drew off his glove and thrust his bare hand under his
+waistcoat, with his mouth a little ajar, and his eyes fixed on the dark
+square turret, its bell sharply defined against the evening sky.
+
+'Dead!' a bitter inward voice seemed to break into speech; 'Dead!'
+The viewless air seemed to be flocking with hidden listeners. The very
+clearness and the crystal silence were their ambush. He alone seemed to
+be the target of cold and hostile scrutiny. There was not a breath to
+breathe in this crisp, pale sunshine. It was all too rare, too thin. The
+shadows lay like wings everlastingly folded. The robin that had been
+his only living witness lifted its throat, and broke, as if from the
+uttermost outskirts of reality, into its shrill, passionless song.
+Lawford moved heavy eyes from one object to another--bird--sun-gilded
+stone--those two small earth-worn faces--his hands--a stirring in the
+grass as of some creature labouring to climb up. It was useless to sit
+here any longer. He must go back now. Fancies were all very well for
+a change, but must be only occasional guests in a world devoted to
+reality. He leaned his hand on the dark grey wood, and closed his eyes.
+The lids presently unsealed a little, momentarily revealing astonished,
+aggrieved pupils, and softly, slowly they again descended....
+
+The flaming rose that had swiftly surged from the west into the zenith,
+dyeing all the churchyard grass a wild and vivid green, and the stooping
+stones above it a pure faint purple, waned softly back like a falling
+fountain into its basin. In a few minutes, only a faint orange burned in
+the west, dimly illuminating with its band of light the huddled figure
+on his low wood seat, his right hand still pressed against a faintly
+beating heart. Dusk gathered; the first white stars appeared; out of the
+shadowy fields a nightjar purred. But there was only the silence of the
+falling dew among the graves. Down here, under the ink-black cypresses,
+the blades of the grass were stooping with cold drops; and darkness lay
+like the hem of an enormous cloak, whose jewels above the breast of
+its wearer might be in the unfathomable clearness the glittering
+constellations....
+
+In his small cage of darkness Lawford shuddered and raised a furtive
+head. He stood up and peered eagerly and strangely from side to side. He
+stayed quite still, listening as raptly as some wandering night-beast to
+the indiscriminate stir and echoings of the darkness. He cocked his head
+above his shoulder and listened again, then turned upon the soundless
+grass towards the hill. He felt not the faintest astonishment or
+strangeness in his solitude here; only a little chilled, and physically
+uneasy; and yet in this vast darkness a faint spiritual exaltation
+seemed to hover.
+
+He hastened up the narrow path, walking with knees a little bent, like
+an old labourer who has lived a life of stooping, and came out into the
+dry and dusty lane. One moment his instinct hesitated as to which turn
+to take--only a moment; he was soon walking swiftly, almost trotting,
+downhill with this vivid exaltation in the huge dark night in his
+heart, and Sheila merely a little angry Titianesque cloud on a scarcely
+perceptible horizon. He had no notion of the time; the golden hands of
+his watch were indiscernible in the gloom. But presently, as he passed
+by, he pressed his face close to the cold glass of a little shop-window,
+and pierced that out by an old Swiss cuckoo-clock. He would if he
+hurried just be home before dinner.
+
+He broke into a slow, steady trot, gaining speed as he ran on, vaguely
+elated to find how well his breath was serving him. An odd smile
+darkened his face at remembrance of the thoughts he had been thinking.
+There could be little amiss with the heart of a man who could shamble
+along like this, taking even pleasure, an increasing pleasure in this
+long, wolf-like stride. He turned round occasionally to look into the
+face of some fellow-wayfarer whom he had overtaken, for he felt not only
+this unusual animation, this peculiar zest, but that, like a boy on some
+secret errand, he had slightly disguised his very presence, was going
+masked, as it were. Even his clothes seemed to have connived at this
+queer illusion. No tailor had for these ten years allowed him so
+much latitude. He cautiously at last opened his garden gate and with
+soundless agility mounted the six stone steps, his latch-key ready in
+his gloveless hand, and softly let himself into the house.
+
+Sheila was out, it seemed, for the maid had forgotten to light the
+lamp. Without pausing to take off his greatcoat, he hung up his hat, ran
+nimbly upstairs, and knocked with a light knuckle on his bedroom door.
+It was closed, but no answer came. He opened it, shut it, locked it, and
+sat down on the bedside for a moment, in the darkness, so that he could
+scarcely hear any other sound, as he sat erect and still, like some
+night animal, wary of danger, attentively alert. Then he rose from the
+bed, threw off his coat, which was clammy with dew, and lit a candle on
+the dressing-table.
+
+Its narrow flame lengthened, drooped, brightened, gleamed clearly. He
+glanced around him, unusually contented--at the ruddiness of the low
+fire, the brass bedstead, the warm red curtains, the soft silveriness
+here and there. It seemed as if a heavy and dull dream had withdrawn out
+of his mind. He would go again some day, and sit on the little hard seat
+beside the crooked tombstone of the friendless old Huguenot. He opened
+a drawer, took out his razors, and, faintly whistling, returned to the
+table and lit a second candle. And still with this strange heightened
+sense of life stirring in his mind, he drew his hand gently over his
+chin and looked unto the glass.
+
+For an instant he stood head to foot icily still, without the least
+feeling, or thought, or stir--staring into the looking-glass. Then an
+inconceivable drumming beat on his ear. A warm surge, like the onset of
+a wave, broke in him, flooding neck, face, forehead, even his hands with
+colour. He caught himself up and wheeled deliberately and completely
+round, his eyes darting to and fro, suddenly to fix themselves in
+a prolonged stare, while he took a deep breath, caught back his
+self-possession and paused. Then he turned and once more confronted the
+changed strange face in the glass.
+
+Without a sound he drew up a chair and sat down, just as he was, frigid
+and appalled, at the foot of the bed. To sit like this, with a kind of
+incredibly swift torrent of consciousness, bearing echoes and images
+like straws and bubbles on its surface, could not be called thinking.
+Some stealthy hand had thrust open the sluice of memory. And words,
+voices, faces of mockery streamed through without connection, tendency,
+or sense. His hands hung between his knees, a deep and settled frown
+darkened the features stooping out of the direct rays of the light, and
+his eyes wandered like busy and inquisitive, but stupid, animals over
+the floor.
+
+If, in that flood of unintelligible thoughts, anything clearly recurred
+at all, it was the memory of Sheila. He saw her face, lit, transfigured,
+distorted, stricken, appealing, horrified. His lids narrowed; a vague
+terror and horror mastered him. He hid his eyes in his hands and cried
+without sound, without tears, without hope, like a desolate child. He
+ceased crying; and sat without stirring. And it seemed after an age of
+vacancy and meaninglessness he heard a door shut downstairs, a distant
+voice, and then the rustle of some one slowly ascending the stairs. Some
+one turned the handle; in vain; tapped. 'Is that you, Arthur?'
+
+For an instant Lawford paused, then like a child listening for an echo,
+answered, 'Yes, Sheila.' And a sigh broke from him; his voice, except
+for a little huskiness, was singularly unchanged.
+
+'May I come in?' Lawford stood softly up and glanced once more into the
+glass. His lips set tight, and a slight frown settled between the long,
+narrow, intensely dark eyes.
+
+'Just one moment, Sheila,' he answered slowly, 'just one moment.'
+
+'How long will you be?'
+
+He stood erect and raised his voice, gazing the while impassively into
+the glass.
+
+'It's no use,' he began, as if repeating a lesson, 'it's no use your
+asking me, Sheila. Please give me a moment, a...I am not quite myself,
+dear,' he added quite gravely.
+
+The faintest hint of vexation was in the answer.
+
+'What is the matter? Can't I help? It's so very absurd--'
+
+'What is absurd?' he asked dully.
+
+'Why, standing like this outside my own bedroom door. Are you ill? I
+will send for Dr. Simon.'
+
+'Please, Sheila, do nothing of the kind. I am not ill. I merely want
+a little time to think in.' There was again a brief pause, and then a
+slight rattling at the handle.
+
+'Arthur, I insist on knowing at once what's wrong; this does not sound a
+bit like yourself. It is not even quite like your own voice.'
+
+'It is myself,' he replied stubbornly, staring fixedly into the glass.
+You must give me a few moments, Sheila. Something has happened. My face.
+Come back in an hour.'
+
+'Don't be absurd; it's simply wicked to talk like that. How do I know
+what you are doing? As if I can leave you for an hour in uncertainty!
+Your face! If you don't open at once I shall believe there's something
+seriously wrong: I shall send Ada for assistance.'
+
+'If you do that, Sheila, it will be disastrous. I cannot answer for the
+con--. Go quietly downstairs. Say I am unwell; don't wait dinner for me;
+come back in an hour; oh, half an hour!'
+
+The answer broke out angrily. 'You must be mad, beside yourself, to ask
+such a thing. I shall wait in the next room until you call.'
+
+'Wait where you please,' Lawford replied, 'but tell them downstairs.'
+
+'Then if I tell them to wait until half-past eight, you will come down?
+You say you are not ill: the dinner will be ruined. It's absurd.'
+
+Lawford made no answer. He listened a while, then he deliberately sat
+down once more to try to think. Like a squirrel in a cage his mind
+seemed to be aimlessly, unceasingly astir. 'What is it really? What
+is it really?--really?' He sat there and it seemed to him his body was
+transparent as glass. It seemed he had no body at all--only the memory
+of an hallucinatory reflection in the glass, and this inward voice
+crying, arguing, questioning, threatening out of the silence--'What is
+it really--really--REALLY?' And at last, cold, wearied out, he rose
+once more and leaned between the two long candle-flames, and stared
+on--on--on, into the glass.
+
+He gave that long, dark face that had been foisted on him tricks to
+do--lift an eyebrow, frown. There was scarcely any perceptible pause
+between the wish and its performance. He found to his discomfiture that
+the face answered instantaneously to the slightest emotion, even to his
+fainter secondary thoughts; as if these unfamiliar features were not
+entirely within control. He could not, in fact, without the glass before
+him, tell precisely what that face WAS expressing. He was still, it
+seemed, keenly sane. That he would discover for certain when Sheila
+returned. Terror, rage, horror had fallen back. If only he felt ill, or
+was in pain: he would have rejoiced at it. He was simply caught in some
+unheard-of snare--caught, how? when? where? by whom?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+But the coolness and deliberation of his scrutiny, had to a certain
+extent calmed Lawford's mind and given him confidence. Hitherto he had
+met the little difficulties of life only to vanquish them with ease and
+applause. Now he was standing face to face with the unknown. He burst
+out laughing, into a long, low, helpless laughter. Then he arose and
+began to walk softly, swiftly, to and fro across the room--from wall to
+wall seven paces, and at the fourth, that awful, unseen, brightly-lit
+profile passed as swiftly over the tranquil surface of the
+looking-glass. The power of concentration was gone again. He simply
+paced on mechanically, listening to a Babel of questions, a conflicting
+medley of answers. But above all the confusion and turmoil of his brain,
+as a boatswain's whistle rises above a storm, so sounded that same
+infinitesimal voice, incessantly repeating another question now, 'What
+are you going to do? What are you going to do?'
+
+And in the midst of this confusion, out of the infinite, as it were,
+came another sharp tap at the door, and all within sank to utter
+stillness again.
+
+'It's nearly half-past eight, Arthur; I can't wait any longer.'
+
+Lawford cast a last fleeting look into the glass, turned, and confronted
+the closed door. 'Very well, Sheila, you shall not wait any longer.' He
+crossed over to the door, and suddenly a swift crafty idea flashed into
+his mind.
+
+He tapped on the panel. 'Sheila,' he said softly, 'I want you first,
+before you come in, to get me something out of my old writing-desk in
+the smoking-room. Here is the key.' He pushed a tiny key--from off the
+ring he carried--beneath the door. 'In the third little drawer from the
+top, on the left side, is a letter; please don't say anything now. It
+is the letter you wrote me, you will remember, after I had asked you to
+marry me. You scribbled in the corner under your signature the initials
+"Y.S.O.A."--do you remember? They meant, You Silly Old Arthur!--do you
+remember? Will you please get that letter at once?'
+
+'Arthur,' answered the voice from without, empty of all expression,
+'what does all this mean, this mystery, this hopeless nonsense about
+a silly letter? What has happened? Is this a miserable form of
+persecution? Are you mad?--I refuse to get the letter.'
+
+Lawford stooped, black and angular, against the door. 'I am not mad. Oh,
+I am in the deadliest earnest, Sheila. You must get the letter, if only
+for your own peace of mind.' He heard his wife hesitate as she turned.
+He heard a sob. And once more he waited.
+
+'I have brought the letter,' came the low toneless voice again.
+
+'Have you opened it?'
+
+There was a rustle of paper. 'Are the letters there underlined three
+times--"Y.S.O.A."?'
+
+'The letters are there.'
+
+'And the date of the month is underneath, "April 3rd." No one else
+in the whole world, living or dead, could know of this but ourselves,
+Sheila?'
+
+'Will you please open the door?'
+
+'No one?'
+
+'I suppose not--no one.'
+
+'Then come in.' He unlocked the door and opened it. A dark, rather
+handsome woman, with sleek hair, in a silk dress of a dark rich colour
+entered. Lawford closed the door. But his face was in shadow. He had
+still a moment's respite.
+
+'I need not ask you to be patient,' he began quickly; 'if I could
+possibly have spared you--if there had been anybody in the world to go
+to... I am in horrible, horrible trouble, Sheila. It is inconceivable. I
+said I was sane: so I am, but the fact is--I went out for a walk; it
+was rather stupid, perhaps, so soon: and I think I was taken ill, or
+something--my heart. A kind of fit, a nervous fit. Possibly I am a
+little unstrung, and it's all, it's mainly fancy: but I think, I can't
+help thinking it has a little distorted--changed my face; everything,
+Sheila; except, of course, myself. Would you mind looking?' He walked
+slowly and with face averted towards the dressing-table.
+
+'Simply a nervous--to make such a fuss, to scare!...' began his wife,
+following him.
+
+Without a word he took up the two old china candlesticks, and held them,
+one in each lank-fingered hand, before his face, and turned.
+
+Lawford could see his wife--every tint and curve and line as distinctly
+as she could see him. Her cheeks never had much colour; now her whole
+face visibly darkened, from pallor to a dusky leaden grey, as she
+gazed. It was not an illusion then; not a miserable hallucination. The
+unbelievable, the inconceivable, had happened. He replaced the candles
+with trembling fingers and sat down.
+
+'Well,' he said, 'what is it really; what is it really, Sheila? What on
+earth are we to do?'
+
+'Is the door locked?' she whispered. He nodded. With eyes fixed
+stirlessly on his face, Sheila unsteadily seated herself, a little out
+of the candlelight, in the shadow. Lawford rose and put the key of
+the door on his wife's little rose-wood prayer-desk at her elbow, and
+deliberately sat down again.
+
+'You said "a fit"--where?'
+
+'I suppose--is--is it very different--hopeless? You will understand
+my being... O Sheila, what am I to do?' His wife sat perfectly still,
+watching him with unflinching attention.
+
+'You gave me to understand--"a nervous fit"; where?'
+
+Lawford took a deep breath, and quietly faced her again. 'In the old
+churchyard, Widderstone; I was looking at--at the gravestones.'
+
+'A fit; in the old churchyard, Widderstone--you were "looking at the
+gravestones"?'
+
+Lawford shut his mouth. 'I suppose so--a fit,' he said presently.
+'My heart went a little queer, and I sat down and fell into a kind of
+doze--a stupor, I suppose. I don't remember anything more. And then I
+woke; like this.'
+
+'How do you know?'
+
+'How do I know what?'
+
+'"Like that"?'
+
+He turned slowly towards the looking-glass. 'Why, here I am!'
+
+She gazed at him steadily; and a hard, incredulous, almost cunning glint
+came into her wide blue eyes. She took up the key carelessly, glanced
+at it; glanced at him. 'It has made me--I mean the first shock, you
+know--it has made me a little faint.' She walked slowly, deliberately to
+the door, and unlocked it. 'I'll get a little sal volatile.' She softly
+drew out the key, and without once removing her eyes from his face,
+opened the door and pushed the key noiselessly in on the other side.
+'Please stay there; I won't be a minute.'
+
+Lawford's face smiled--a rather desperate, yet for all that a patient,
+resolute smile. 'Oh yes, of course,' he said, almost to himself, 'I had
+not foreseen--at least--you must do precisely what you please, Sheila.
+You were going to lock me in. You will, however, before taking any final
+step, please think over what it will entail. I did not think you would,
+after such proof, in this awful trouble--I did not think you would
+simply disbelieve me, Sheila. Who else is there to help me? You have the
+letter in your hand. Isn't that sufficient proof? It was overwhelming
+proof to me. And even I doubted too; doubted myself. But never mind; why
+I should have dreamed you would believe me; or taken this awful thing
+differently, I don't know. It's rather awful to have to go on alone.
+But there, think it over. I shall not stir until I hear the voices. And
+then: honestly, Sheila, I couldn't face quite that. I'd sooner give up
+altogether. Any proof you can think of--I will... O God, I cannot bear
+it!' He covered his face with his hands; but in a moment looked up,
+unmoved once more. 'Why, for that matter,' he added slowly, and, as it
+were, with infinite pains, a faint thin smile again stealing into his
+face, 'I think,' he turned wearily to the glass, 'I think, it's almost
+an improvement!'
+
+Something deep in those dark clear pupils, out of that lean adventurous
+face, gleamed back at him, the distant flash of a heliograph, as it
+were, height to height, flashing 'Courage!' He shuddered, and shut his
+eyes. 'But I would really rather,' he aided in a quiet childlike way, 'I
+would really rather, Sheila, you left me alone now.'
+
+His wife stood irresolute. 'I understand you to explain,' she said,
+'that you went out of this house, just your usual self, this afternoon,
+for a walk; that for some reason you went to Widderstone--"to read the
+tombstones," that you had a heart attack, or, as you said at first, a
+fit, that you fell into a stupor, and came home like--like this. Am I
+likely to believe all that? Am I likely to believe such a story as that?
+Whoever you are, whoever you may be, is it likely? I am not in the least
+afraid. I thought at first it was some silly practical joke. I thought
+that at first.' She paused, but no answer came. 'Well, I suppose in a
+civilised country there is a remedy even for a joke as wicked as that.'
+
+Lawford listened patiently. 'She is pretending; she is trying me; she is
+feeling her way,' he kept repeating to himself. 'She knows I AM I, but
+hasn't the courage... Let her talk!'
+
+'I shall leave the door open,' Sheila continued. 'I am not, as you
+no doubt very naturally assumed--I am not going to do anything either
+senseless or heedless. I am merely going to ask your brother Cecil
+to come in, if he is at home, and if not, no doubt our old friend
+Mr. Montgomery would--would help us.' Her scrutiny was still and
+concentrated, like that of a cat above a mouse's hole.
+
+Lawford sat crouched together in the candle-light. 'By all means,
+Sheila,' he said slowly choosing his words, 'if you think poor old
+Cecil, who next January will have been three years in his grave, will
+be of any use in our difficulty. Who Mr. Montgomery is...' His voice
+dropped in utter weariness. 'You did it very well, my dear,' he added
+softly.
+
+Sheila gently closed the door and sat down on the bed. He heard her
+softly crying, he heard the bed shaken with her sobs. But a slow glance
+towards the steady candle-flames restrained him. He let her cry on
+alone. When she had become a little more composed he stood up. 'You have
+had no dinner,' he managed to blurt out at last, 'you will be faint.
+It's useless to talk, even to think, any more to-night. Leave me to
+myself for a while. Don't look at me any more. Perhaps I can sleep:
+perhaps if I sleep it will come right again. When the servants are
+gone up, I will come down. Just let me have some--some medical book, or
+other; and some more candles. Don't think, Sheila; don't even think!'
+
+Sheila paid him no attention for a while. 'You tell me not to think,'
+she began, in a low, almost listless voice; 'why--I wonder I am in my
+right mind. And "eat"! How can you have the heartlessness to suggest it?
+You don't seem in the least to realize what you say. You seem to have
+lost all--all consciousness. I quite agree, it is useless for me to
+burden you with my company while you are in your present condition of
+mind. But you will at least promise me that you won't take any further
+steps in this awful business.' She could not, try as she would, bring
+herself again to look at him. She rose softly, paused a moment with
+sidelong eyes, then turned deliberately towards the door, 'What, what
+have I done to deserve all this?'
+
+From behind her that voice, so extraordinarily like--and yet in some
+vague fashion more arresting, more resonant than her husband's, broke
+incredibly out once more. 'You will please leave the key, Sheila. I am
+ill, but I am not yet in the padded room. And please understand, I take
+no further steps in "this awful business" until I hear a strange voice
+in the house.' Sheila paused, but the quiet voice rang in her ear,
+desperately yet convincingly. She took the key out of the lock, placed
+it on the bed, and with a sigh, that was not quite without a hint of
+relief in its misery, she furtively extinguished the gas-light on the
+landing and rustled downstairs.
+
+She speedily returned. 'I have brought the book.' she said hastily.
+'I could only find the one volume. I have said you have taken a fresh
+chill. No one will disturb you.'
+
+Lawford took the book without a word. And once more, with eyes stonily
+averted, his wife left him to his own company and that of the face in
+the glass.
+
+When completely deserted, Lawford with fumbling fingers opened Quain's
+'Dictionary of Medicine.' He had never had much curiosity, and had
+always hated what he disbelieved, but none the less he had heard
+occasionally of absurd and questionable experiments. He remembered
+even to have glanced over reports of cases in the newspapers concerning
+disappearances, loss of memory, dual personality. Cranks... Oh yes, he
+thought now, with a sense of cold humiliating relief, there had been
+such cases as his before. They were no doubt curable. They must be
+comparatively common in America--that land of jangled nerves. Possibly
+bromide, rest, a battery. But Quain, it seemed, shared his prejudices,
+at least in this edition, or had hidden away all such apocryphal matter
+beneath technical terms, where no sensible man could find it, 'Besides,'
+he muttered angrily, 'what's the good of your one volume?' He flung
+it down and strode to the bed, and rang the bell. Then suddenly
+recollecting himself, he paused and listened. There came a tap on the
+door. 'Is that you, Sheila?' he called, doubtfully.
+
+'No, sir, it's me,' came the answer.
+
+'Oh, don't trouble; I only wanted to speak to your mistress. It's all
+right.'
+
+'Mrs. Lawford has gone out, sir,' replied the voice.
+
+'Gone out?'
+
+'Yes, sir; she told me not to mention it; but I suppose as you asked--'
+
+'Oh, that's all right; never mind; I didn't ring.' He stood with face
+uplifted, thinking.
+
+'Can I do anything, sir?' came the faint, nervous question after a long
+pause.
+
+'One moment, Ada,' he called in a loud voice. He took out his
+pocket-book, sat down, and scribbled a little note. He hardly noticed
+how changed his handwriting was--the clear round letters crabbed and
+irregular.
+
+'Are you there, Ada?' he called. 'I am slipping a note beneath the
+door; just draw back the mat; that's it. Take it at once, please, to Mr.
+Critchett's, and be sure to wait for an answer. Then come back direct
+to me, up here. I don't think, Ada, your mistress believes much in
+Critchett; but I have fully explained what I want. He has made me up
+many prescriptions. Explain that to his assistant if he is not there.
+Go at once, and you will be back before she is. I should be so very much
+obliged, tell him. "Mr Arthur Lawford."'
+
+The minutes slowly drifted by. He sat quite still in the clear
+untroubled light, waiting in the silence of the empty house. And for
+the first time he was confronted with the cold incredible horror of his
+ordeal. Who would believe, who could believe, that behind this strange
+and awful, yet how simple mask, lay himself? What test; what heaped-up
+evidence of identity would break it down? It was all a loathsome
+ignominy. It was utterly absurd. It was--
+
+Suddenly, with a kind of ape-like cunning, he deliberately raised a
+long lean forefinger and pointed it at the shadowy crystal of the
+looking-glass. Perhaps he was dead, was really and indeed changed in
+body, was fated really and indeed to change in soul, into That. 'It's
+that beastly voice again,' Lawford cried out loud, looking vacantly at
+his upstretched finger. And then, hand and arm, not too willingly, as it
+were, obeyed; relaxed and fell to his side. 'You must keep a tight hold,
+old man,' he muttered to himself. 'Once, once you lose yourself--the
+least symptom of that--the least symptom, and it's all up!' And the
+fools, the heartless, preposterous fools had brought him one volume!
+
+When on earth was Ada coming back? She was lagging on purpose. She was
+in the conspiracy too. Oh, it should be a lesson to Sheila! Oh, if only
+daylight would come! 'What are you going to do--to do--to DO?' He rose
+once more and paced his silent cage. To and fro, thinking no more;
+just using his eyes, compelling them to wander from picture to picture,
+bedpost to bedpost; now counting aloud his footsteps; now humming; only,
+only to keep himself from thinking. At last he took out a drawer and
+actually began arranging its medley of contents; ties, letters, studs,
+concert and theatre programmes--all higgledy-piggledy. And in the midst
+of this childish strategem he heard a faint sound, as of heavy water
+trickling from a height. He turned. A thief was in one of the candles.
+It was guttering out. He would be left in darkness. He turned hastily
+without a moment's heed, to call for light, flung the door open and full
+in the flare of a lamp, illuminating her pale forehead and astonished
+face beneath her black straw hat, stood face to face with Ada.
+
+With one swift dexterous movement he drew the door to after him,
+looking straight into her almost colourless steady eyes. 'Ah,' he
+said instantly, in a high faint voice, 'the powder, thank you; yes,
+Mr Lawford's powder; thank you, thank you. He must be kept absolutely
+quiet--absolutely. Mrs Lawford is following. Please tell her that I am
+here, when she returns. Mr Critchett was in, then? Thank you. Extreme,
+extreme silence, please.' Again that knotted, melodramatic finger raised
+itself on high; and within that lean, cadaverous body the soul of its
+lodger quailed at this spectral boldness. But it was triumphant. The
+maid at once left him and went downstairs. He heard faint voices in
+muffled consultation. And in a moment Sheila's silks rustled once
+more on the staircase. Lawford put down the lamp, and watched her
+deliberately close the door.
+
+'What does this mean?' she began swiftly, 'I understand that--Ada tells
+me a stranger is here; giving orders, directions. Who is he? where
+is he? You bound yourself on your solemn promise not to stir till
+I returned. You... How can I, how can we get decently through this
+horrible business if you are so wretchedly indiscreet? You sent Ada to
+the chemist's. What for? What for? I say.'
+
+Lawford watched his wife with an almost extraneous interest. She was
+certainly extremely interesting from that point of view, that very
+novel point of view. 'It's quite useless,' he said, 'to get in the least
+nervous or hysterical. I don't care for the darkness just now. That was
+all. Tell the girl I am a strange doctor--Dr Simon's new partner. You
+are clever at conventionalities, Sheila. Invent! I said our patient must
+be kept quiet--I really think he must. That is all, so far as Ada is
+concerned.... What on earth else ARE we to say?' he broke out. 'That,
+for the present to EVERYBODY, is our only possible story. It will give
+us what we must have--time. And next--where is the second volume of
+Quain? I want that. And next--why have you broken faith with me?' Mrs
+Lawford sat down. This sudden and baffling outburst had stupefied her.
+
+'I can't, I can't make head or tail of what you say. And as for having
+broken faith, as you call it, would any wife, would any sane woman face
+what you have brought on us, a situation like this, without seeking
+advice and help? Mr Bethany will be perfectly discreet--if he thinks
+discretion desirable. He is the only available friend we have close
+enough to ask at once. And things of this kind are, I suppose, if
+anybody's concern, his. It's certain to leak out. Everybody will hear
+of it. Don't flatter yourself you are going to hush up a thing like this
+for long. You can't keep living skeletons in a cupboard. You think only
+of yourself, only of your own misfortune. But who's to know, pray, that
+you really are my husband--if you are? The sooner I get the vicar on
+my side the better for us both. Who in the whole of the parish--I ask
+you--and you must have the sense left to see that--who will believe that
+a respectable man, a gentleman, a Churchman, would deliberately go out
+to seek an afternoon's amusement in a poky little country churchyard?
+Why, apart from everything else, THAT was absolutely mad to start with.
+Can you really wonder at the result?'
+
+Probably because she still steadfastly refused to look at him, her
+memory kept losing its hold on the appalling fact facing them. She
+realised fully only that she was in a great, unwarrantable, and
+insurmountable difficulty, but until she actually lifted her eyes for a
+moment she had not fully realised what that difficulty was. She got up
+with a sudden and horrible nausea. 'One moment,' she said, 'I will see
+if the servants have gone to bed.'
+
+That long saturnine face, behind which Lawford lay in a dull and
+desperate ambush, smiled. Something partaking of its clay, some reflex
+ghost of its rather remarkable features, was even a little amused at
+Sheila.
+
+She returned in a moment, and stood in profile in the doorway. 'Will you
+come down?' she remarked distantly.
+
+'One moment, Sheila,' Lawford began miserably. 'Before we take this
+irrevocable step, a step I implore you to postpone awhile--for what
+comes, I suppose, may go--what precisely have you told the vicar? I must
+in fairness know that.'
+
+'In fairness,' she began ironically, and suddenly broke off. Her husband
+had turned the flame of the lamp low down in the vacant room behind
+them; the corridor was lit obscurely by the chandelier far down in the
+hall below. A faint, inexplicable dread fell softly and coldly on her
+heart. 'Have you no trust in me?' she murmured a little bitterly. 'I
+have simply told him the truth.'
+
+They softly descended the stairs; she first, the dark figure following
+close behind her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+Mr Bethany sat awaiting them in the dining-room, a large,
+heavily-furnished room with a great benign looking-glass on the
+mantelpiece, a marble clock, and with rich old damask curtains. Fleecy
+silver hair was all that was visible of their visitor when they entered.
+But Mr Bethany rose out of his chair when he heard them, and with a
+little jerk, turned sharply round. Thus it was that the gold-spectacled
+vicar and Lawford first confronted each other, the one brightly
+illuminated, the other framed in the gloom of the doorway. Mr Bethany's
+first scrutiny was timid and courteous, but beneath it he tried to be
+keen, and himself hastened round the table almost at a trot, to obtain,
+as delicately as possible, a closer view. But Lawford, having shut
+the door behind him, had gone straight to the fire and seated himself,
+leaning his face in his hands. Mr Bethany smiled faintly, waved his hand
+almost as if in blessing, but certainly in peace, and tapped Mrs Lawford
+into the chair upon the other side. But he himself remained standing.
+
+'Mrs Lawford has, I declare, been telling family secrets,' he began,
+and paused, peering. But there, you will forgive an old friend's
+intrusion--this little confidence about a change, my dear fellow--about
+a ramble and a change?' He sat down, put up his kind little puckered
+face and peered again at Lawford, and then very hastily at his wife.
+But all her attention was centred on the bowed figure opposite to her.
+Lawford responded to this cautious advance without raising his head.
+
+'You do not wish me to repeat all that my wife tells me she has told
+you?'
+
+'Dear me, no,' said Mr Bethany cheerfully, 'I wish nothing, nothing, old
+friend. You must not burden yourself with me. If I may be of any help,
+here I am.... Oh, no, no....' he paused, with blinking eyes, but wits
+still shrewd and alert. Why doesn't the man raise his head? he thought.
+A mere domestic dispute!
+
+'I thought,' he went on ruminatingly, 'I thought on Tuesday, yes, on
+Tuesday, that you weren't looking quite the thing. Indeed, I remarked on
+it. But now, I understand from Mrs Lawford that the malady has taken
+a graver turn--eh, Lawford, an heretical turn? I hear you have been
+wandering from the true fold.' Mr Bethany leaned forward with what might
+be described as a very large smile in a very small compass. 'And that,
+of course, entailed instant retribution.' He broke off solemnly. 'I know
+Widderstone churchyard well; a most verdant and beautiful spot. The late
+rector, a Mr Strickland, was a very old friend of mine. And his wife,
+dear good Alicia, used to set out her babies, in the morning, to sleep
+and to play there, twenty, dear me, perhaps twenty-five years ago. But
+I did not know, my dear Lawford, that you--' and suddenly, without an
+instant's warning, something seemed to shout at him, 'Look, look! He is
+looking at you!' He stopped, faltered, and a slight warmth came into his
+face. 'And and you were taken ill there?' His voice had fallen flat and
+faint.
+
+'I fell asleep--or something of that sort,' came the stubborn reply.
+
+'Yes,' said Mr Bethany, brightly, 'so your wife was saying. "Fell
+asleep," so have I too--scores of times'; he beamed, with beads of sweat
+glistening on his forehead. 'And then? I'm not, I'm not persisting?'
+
+'Then I woke; refreshed, I think, as it seemed--I felt much better and
+came home.'
+
+'Ah, yes,' said his visitor. And after that there was a long, brightly
+lit, intense pause; at the end of which Lawford raised his face and
+again looked firmly at his friend.
+
+Mr Bethany was now a shrunken old man; he sat perfectly still, his head
+craned a little forward, and his veined hands clutching his bent, spare
+knees.
+
+There wasn't the least sign of devilry, or out-facingness, or insolence
+in that lean shadowy steady head; and yet he himself was compelled to
+sidle his glance away, so much the face shook him. He closed his eyes,
+too, as a cat does after exchanging too direct a scrutiny with human
+eyes. He put out towards, and withdrew, a groping hand from Mrs Lawford.
+
+'Is it,' came a voice from somewhere, 'is it a great change, sir? I
+thought perhaps I may have exaggerated--candle-light, you know.'
+
+Mr Bethany remained still and silent, striving to entertain one thought
+at a time. His lips moved as if he were talking to himself. And again
+it was Lawford's faltering voice that broke the silence. 'You see,'
+he said, 'I have never... no fit, or anything of that kind before. I
+remember on Tuesday... oh yes, quite well. I did feel seedy, very. And
+we talked, didn't we?--Harvest Festival, Mrs Wine's flowers, the new
+offertory-bags, and all that. For God's sake, Vicar, it is not as bad
+as--as they make out?'
+
+Mr Bethany woke with a start. He leaned forward, and stretched out a
+long black wrinkled sleeve, just managing to reach far enough to tap
+Lawford's knee. 'Don't worry, don't worry,' he said soothingly. 'We
+believe, we believe.'
+
+It was, none the less, a sheer act of faith. He took off his spectacles
+and took out his handkerchief. 'What we must do, eh, my dear,' he half
+turned to Mrs Lawford, 'what we must do is to consult, yes, consult
+together. And later--we must have advice--medical advice; unless, as
+I very much suspect, it is merely a little quite temporary physical
+aberration. Science, I am told, is making great strides, experimenting,
+groping after things which no sane man has ever dreamed of
+before--without being burned alive for it. What's in a name? Nerves,
+especially, Lawford.'
+
+Mrs Lawford sat perfectly still, absorbedly listening, turning her face
+first this way, then that, to each speaker in turn. 'That is what
+I thought,' she said, and cast one fleeting glance across at the
+fireplace, 'but--'
+
+The little old gentleman turned sharply with half-blind eyes, and lips
+tight shut. 'I think,' he said, with a hind of austere humour, 'I think,
+do you know, I see no "but."' He paused as if to catch the echo and
+added, 'It's our only course.' He continued to polish round and round
+his glasses. Mrs Lawford rather magnificently rose.
+
+'Perhaps if I were to leave you together awhile? I shall not be far
+off. It is,' she explained, as if into a huge vacuum, 'it is a terrible
+visitation.' She moved gravely round the table and very softly and
+firmly closed the door after her.
+
+Lawford took a deep breath. 'Of course.' he said, 'you realise my
+wife does not believe me. She thinks,' he explained naively, as if to
+himself, 'she thinks I am an imposter. Goodness knows what she does
+think. I can't think much myself--for long!'
+
+The vicar rubbed busily on. 'I have found, Lawford,' he said smoothly,
+'that in all real difficulties the only feasible plan is--is to face the
+main issue. The others right themselves. Now, to take a plunge into your
+generosity. You have let me in far enough to make it impossible for me
+to get out--may I hear then exactly the whole story? All that I know
+now, so far as I could gather from your wife, poor soul, is of course
+inconceivable: that you went out one man and came home another. You will
+understand, my dear man, I am speaking, as it were, by rote. God has
+mercifully ordered that the human brain works slowly; first the
+blow, hours afterwards the bruise. Oh, dear me, that man Hume--"on
+miracles"--positively amazing! So that too, please, you will be quite
+clear about. Credo--not quia impossible est, but because you, Lawford,
+have told me. Now then, if it won't be too wearisome to you, the whole
+story.' He sat, lean and erect in his big chair, a hand resting
+loosely on each knee, in one spectacles, in the other a dangling pocket
+handkerchief. And the dark, sallow, aquiline, formidable figure, with
+its oddly changing voice, re-told the whole story from the beginning.
+
+'You were aware then of nothing different, I understand, until you
+actually looked into the glass?'
+
+'Only vaguely. I mean that after waking I felt much better, more alert.
+And my thoughts--'
+
+'Ah, yes, your thoughts?'
+
+'I hardly know--oh, clear as if I had had a real long rest. It was just
+like being a boy again. Influenza dispirits one so.'
+
+Mr Bethany gazed without stirring. 'And yet, you know,' he said, 'I can
+hardly believe, I mean conceive, how--You have been taking no drugs, no
+quackery, Lawford?'
+
+'I never dose myself,' said Lawford, with sombre pride.
+
+'God bless me, that's Lawford to the echo,' thought his visitor. 'And
+before--?' he went on gently; 'I really cannot conceive, you see, how
+a mere fit could... Before you sat down you were quite alone?' He stuck
+out his head. 'There was nobody with you?'
+
+'With me? Oh no,' came the soft answer.
+
+'What had you been thinking of? In these days of faith-cures, and
+hypnotism, and telepathy, and subliminalities--why, the simple old world
+grows very confusing. But rarely, very rarely novel. You were thinking,
+you say; do you remember, perhaps, just the drift?'
+
+'Well,' began Lawford ruminatingly, 'there was something curious even
+then, perhaps. I remember, for instance, I knelt down to read an old
+tombstone. There was a little seat--no back. And an epitaph. The sun was
+just setting; some French name. And there was a long jagged crack in
+the stone, like the black line you know one sees after lightning, I mean
+it's as clear as that even now, in memory. Oh yes, I remember. And then,
+I suppose, came the sleep--stupid, sluggish: and then; well, here I am.'
+
+'You are absolutely certain, then,' persisted Mr Bethany almost
+querulously, 'there was no living creature near you? Bless me, Lawford,
+I see no unkindness in believing what the Bible itself relates. There
+are powers supernatural. Saul, and so on. We are all convinced of that.
+No one?'
+
+'I remember distinctly,' replied Lawford, in a calm, stubborn voice, 'I
+looked up all around me, while I was kneeling there, and there wasn't a
+soul to be seen. Because, you see, it even then occurred to me that it
+would have looked rather queer--my wandering about like that, I mean.
+Facing me there were some cypress-trees, and beyond, a low sunken
+fence, and then, just open country. Up above there were the gravestones
+toppling down the hill, where I had just strolled down, and sunshine!'
+He suddenly threw up his hand. 'Oh, marvellous! streaming in
+gold--flaming, like God's own ante-chamber.'
+
+There was a very pregnant pause. Mr Bethany shrunk back a little into
+his chair. His lips moved; he folded his spectacles.
+
+'Yes, yes,' he said. And then very quietly he stole one mole-like look
+into his sidesman's face.
+
+'What is Dr Simon's number?' he said. Lawford was gazing gloomily
+into the fire. 'Oh, Annandale,' he replied absently. 'I don't know the
+number.'
+
+'Do you believe in him? Your wife mentioned him. Is he clever?'
+
+'Oh, he's new,' said Lawford; 'old James was our doctor. He--he killed
+my father.' He laughed out shamefacedly.
+
+'A sound, lovable man,' said Mr Bethany, 'one of the kindest men I ever
+knew; and a very old friend of mine.'
+
+And suddenly the dark face turned with a shudder from the fire, and
+spoke in a low trembling voice. 'Only one thing--only one thing--my
+sanity, my sanity. If once I forget, who will believe me?' He thrust his
+long lean fingers beneath his coat. 'And mad,' he added; 'I would sooner
+die.'
+
+Mr Bethany deliberately adjusted his spectacles. 'May I, may I
+experiment?' he said boldly. There came a tap on the door.
+
+'Bless me,' said the vicar, taking out his watch, 'it is a quarter to
+twelve. 'Yes, yes, Mrs Lawford,' he trotted round to the door. 'We are
+beginning to see light--a ray!'
+
+'But I--I can see in the dark,' whispered Lawford, as if at a cue,
+turning with an inscrutable smile to the fire.
+
+The vicar came again, wrapped up in a little tight grey great-coat, and
+a white silk muffler. He looked up unflinching into Lawford's face,
+and tears stood in his eyes. 'Patience, patience, my dear fellow,'
+he repeated gravely, squeezing his hand. 'And rest, complete rest, is
+imperative. Just till the first thing to-morrow. And till then,' he
+turned to Mrs Lawford, where she stood looking in at the doorway, 'oh
+yes, complete quiet; and caution!'
+
+Mrs Lawford let him out. He shook his head once or twice, holding her
+fingers. 'Oh yes,' he whispered, 'it is your husband, not the smallest
+doubt. I tried: for MYSELF. But something--something has happened. Don't
+fret him now. Have patience. Oh yes, it is incredible... the change! But
+there, the very first thing to-morrow.' She closed the door gently
+after him, and stepping softly back to the dining-room, peered in. Her
+husband's back was turned, but he could see her in the looking-glass,
+stooping a little, with set face watching him, in the silvery stillness.
+
+'Well,' he said, 'is the old--' he doggedly met the fixed eyes facing
+him there, 'is our old friend gone?'
+
+'Yes,' said Sheila, 'he's gone.' Lawford sighed and turned round. 'It's
+useless talking now, Sheila. No more questions. I cannot tell you how
+tired I am. And my head--'
+
+'What is wrong with your head?' inquired his wife discreetly.
+
+The haggard face turned gravely and patiently. 'Only one of my old
+headaches.' he smiled, 'my old bilious headaches--the hereditary Lawford
+variety.' But his voice fell low again. 'We must get to bed.'
+
+With a rather pretty and childish movement, Sheila gently drew her hands
+across her silk skirts. 'Yes, dear,' she said, 'I have made up a bed for
+you in the large spare room. It is thoroughly aired.' She came softly
+in, hastened over to a closed work-table that stood under the curtains,
+and opened it.
+
+Lawford watched her, utterly expressionless, utterly motionless. He
+opened his mouth and shut it again, still watching his wife as she
+stooped with ridiculously too busy fingers, searching through her
+coloured silks.
+
+Again he opened his mouth. 'Yes,' he said, and stalked slowly towards
+the door. But there he paused. 'God knows,' he said, strangely and
+meekly, 'I am sorry, sorry for all this. You will forgive me, Sheila?'
+
+She looked up swiftly. 'It's very tiresome, I can't find anywhere,' she
+murmured, 'I can't find anywhere the--the little red box key.'
+
+Lawford's cheek turned more sallow than ever. 'You are only pretending
+to look for it,' he said, 'to try me. We both know perfectly well the
+lock is broken. Ada broke it.'
+
+Sheila let fall the lid; and yet for a while her eyes roved over it as
+if in violent search for something. Then she turned: 'I am so very glad
+the vicar was at home,' she said brightly. 'And mind, mind you rest,
+Arthur. There's nothing so bad but it might be worse.... Oh, I can't, I
+can't bear it!' She sat down in the chair and huddled her face between
+her hands, sobbing on and on, without a tear.
+
+Lawford listened and stared solemnly. 'Whatever it may be, Sheila, I
+will be loyal,' he said.
+
+Her sobs hushed, and again cold horror crept over her. Nobody in
+the whole world could have said that 'I will be loyal' quite like
+that--nobody but Arthur. She stood up, patting her hair. 'I don't think
+my brain would bear much more. It's useless to talk. If you will go up;
+I will put out the lamp.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+One solitary and tall candle burned on the great dressing-table. Faint,
+solitary pictures broke the blankness of each wall. The carpet was rich,
+the bed impressive, and the basins on the washstand as uninviting as the
+bed. Lawford sat down on the edge of it in complete isolation. He sat
+without stirring, listening to his watch ticking in his pocket. The
+china clock on the chimney piece pointed cheerfully to the hour of dawn.
+It was exactly, he computed carefully, five hours and seven minutes
+fast. Not the slightest sound broke the stillness, until he heard, very,
+very softly and gradually, the key of his door turn in the oiled wards,
+and realized that he was a prisoner.
+
+Women were strange creatures. How often he had heard that said, he
+thought lamely. He felt no anger, no surprise or resentment, at the
+trick. It was only to be expected. He could sit on till morning; easily
+till morning. He had never noticed before how empty a well-furnished
+room could seem. It was his own room too; his best visitors' room. His
+father-in-law had slept here, with his whiskers on that pillow. His
+wife's most formidable aunt had been all night here, alone with these
+pictures. She certainly was... 'But what are you doing here?' cried a
+voice suddenly out of his reverie.
+
+He started up and stretched himself, and taking out the neat little
+packet that the maid had brought from the chemist's, he drew up a chair,
+and sat down once more in front of the glass. He sighed vacantly, rose
+and lifted down from the wall above the fireplace a tinted photograph
+of himself that Sheila had had enlarged about twelve years ago. It was
+a brighter, younger, hairier, but unmistakably the same dull indolent
+Lawford who had ventured into Widderstone churchyard that afternoon. The
+cheek was a little plumper, the eyes not quite so full-lidded, the hair
+a little more precisely parted, the upper lip graced with a small blonde
+moustache. He tilted the portrait into the candlelight, and compared it
+with this reflection in the glass of what had come out of Widderstone,
+feature with feature, with perfect composure and extreme care, Then he
+laid down the massive frame on the table, and gazed quietly at the tiny
+packet.
+
+It was to be a day of queer experiences. He had never before realized
+with how many miracles mere everyday life is besieged. Here in this
+small punctilious packet lay a Sesame--a power of transformation beside
+which the transformation of that rather flaccid face of the noonday into
+this tense, sinister face of midnight was but as a moving from house
+to house--a change just as irrevocable and complete, and yet so very
+normal. Which should it be, that, or--his face lifted itself once more
+to the ice-like gloom of the looking-glass-that, or this?
+
+It simply gazed back with a kind of quizzical pity on its lean features
+under the scrutiny of eyes so deep, so meaningful, so desolate, and yet
+so indomitably courageous. In the brain behind them a slow and stolid
+argument was in progress; the one baffling reply on the one side to
+every appeal on the other being still simply. 'What dreams may come?'
+
+Those eyes surely knew something of dreams, else, why this violent and
+stubborn endeavour to keep awake.
+
+Lawford did indeed once actually frame the question, 'But who the
+devil are you?' And it really seemed the eyes perceptibly widened or
+brightened. The mere vexation of his unparalleled position. Sheila's
+pathetic incredulity, his old vicar's laborious kindness, the tiresome
+network of experience into which he would be dragged struggling on the
+morrow, and on the morrow after that, and after that--the thought of
+all these things faded for the moment from his mind, lost if not their
+significance, at least their instancy.
+
+He simply sat face to face with the sheer difficulty of living on
+at all. He even concluded in a kind of lethargy that if nothing had
+occurred, no 'change,' he might still be sitting here, Arthur Rennet
+Lawford, in his best visitor's room, deciding between inscrutable life
+and just--death. He supposed he was tired out. His thoughts hadn't even
+the energy to complete themselves. None cared but himself and this--this
+Silence.
+
+'But what does it all mean?' the insistent voice he was getting to know
+so well began tediously inquiring again. And every time he raised
+his eyes, or, rather, as in many cases it seemed, his eyes raised
+themselves, they saw this haunting face there--a face he no longer
+bitterly rebelled at, nor dimmed with scrutiny, but a face that was
+becoming a kind of hold on life, even a kind of refuge, an ally. It was
+a face that might have come out of a rather flashy book; or such as is
+revered on the stage. 'A rotten bad face,' he whispered at it in his own
+familiar slang, after some such abrupt encounter; a fearless, packed,
+daring, fascinating face, with even--what?--a spice of genius in it.
+Whose the devil's face was it? What on earth was the matter?... 'Brazen
+it out,' a jubilant thought cried suddenly; 'follow it up; play the
+game! give me just one opening. Think--think what I've risked!'
+
+And all these voices thought Lawford, in deadly lassitude, meant only
+one thing--insanity. A blazing, impotent indignation seized him. He
+leaned near, peering as it were out of a red dusky mist. He snatched up
+the china candlestick, and poised it above the sardonic reflection, as
+if to throw. Then slowly, with infinite pains, he drew back from the
+glass and replaced the candlestick on the table; stuffed his paper
+packet into his pocket, took off his boots and threw himself on to the
+bed. In a little while, in the faint, still light, he opened drowsily
+wondering eyes. `Poor old thing!' his voice murmured, 'Poor old Sheila!'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+
+It was but little after daybreak when Mrs Lawford, after listening at
+his door a while, turned the key and looked in on her husband. Blue-grey
+light from between the venetian blinds just dusked the room. She stood
+in a bluish dressing-gown, her hand on her bosom, looking down on the
+lean impassive face. For the briefest instant her heart had leapt with
+an indescribable surmise; to fall dull as lead once more. Breathing
+equably and quietly, the strange figure lay stretched upon the bed. 'How
+can he sleep? How can he sleep?' she whispered with a black and hopeless
+indignation. What a night she had had! And he!
+
+She turned noiselessly away. The candle had guttered to extinction. The
+big glass reflected her, voluminous and wan, her dark-ringed eyes, full
+lips, rich, glossy hair, and rounded chin. 'Yes, yes,' it seemed to
+murmur mournfully. She turned away, and drawing stealthily near stooped
+once more quite low, and examined the face on the pillow with lynx-like
+concentration. And though every nerve revolted at the thought, she was
+finally convinced, unwillingly, but assuredly, that her husband was
+here. Indeed, if it were not so, how could she for a single moment have
+accepted the possibility that he was a stranger? He seemed to haunt,
+like a ghostly emanation, this strange, detestable face--as memory
+supplies the features concealed beneath a mask. The face was still
+and stony, like one dead or imaged in wax, yet beneath it dreams were
+passing--silly, ordinary Lawford dreams. She was almost alarmed at the
+terribly rancorous hatred she felt for the face... 'It was just like
+Arthur to be so taken in!'
+
+Then she too remembered Quain, and remembered also in the slowly paling
+dusk that the house would soon be stirring. She went out and noiselessly
+locked the door again. But it was useless to begin looking for
+Quain now--her husband had a good many dull books, most of them his
+'eccentric' father's. What must the servants be thinking? and what was
+all that talk about a mysterious visitor? She would have to question
+Ada--diplomatically. She returned to her room and sat down in an
+arm-chair, and waited. In sheer weariness she fell into a doze, and woke
+at the sound of dustpan and broom. She rang the bell, and asked for hot
+water, tea, and a basin of cornflour.
+
+'And please, Ada, be as quiet as possible over your work; your master is
+in a nice sleep, and must not be disturbed on any account. In the front
+bedroom.' She looked up suddenly. 'By the way, who let Dr Ferguson in
+last night?' It was dangerous, but successful.
+
+'Dr Ferguson, ma'am? Oh, you mean... He WAS in.'
+
+Sheila smiled resignedly. 'Was in? What do you mean, "was in"? And where
+were you, then?'
+
+'I had been sent out to Critchett's, the chemist's.'
+
+'Of course, of course. So cook let Dr Ferguson in, then? Why didn't you
+say so before, Ada? And did you bring the medicine with you?'
+
+'It was a packet in an envelope, ma'am. But Cook is sure she heard
+no knock--not while I was out. So Dr Ferguson must have come in quite
+unbeknown.'
+
+'Well, really,' said Sheila, 'it seems very difficult to get at the
+truth sometimes. And when illness is in the house I cannot understand
+why there should be no one available to answer the door. You must
+have left it ajar, unsecured, when you went out. And pray, what if Dr
+Ferguson had been some common tramp? That would have been a nice thing.'
+
+'I am quite certain,' said Ada a little flatly, 'that I did shut the
+door. And cook says she never so much as stirred from the kitchen till
+I came down the area steps with the packet. And that's all I know about
+it, ma'am; except that he was here when I came back. I did not know even
+there was a Dr Ferguson; and my mother has lived here nineteen years.'
+
+'We must be thankful your mother enjoys such good health,' replied
+Mrs Lawford suavely. 'Please tell cook to be very careful with the
+cornflour--to be sure it's well mixed and thoroughly done.'
+
+Mrs Lawford's eyes followed with a certain discomfort those narrow print
+shoulders descending the stairs. And this abominable ruse was--Arthur's!
+She ran up lightly and listened with her ear to the panel of his door.
+And just as she was about to turn away again, there came a little light
+knock at the front door.
+
+Mrs Lawford paused at the loop of the staircase; and not altogether
+with gratitude or relief she heard the voice of Mr Bethany, inquiring in
+cautious but quite audible tones after her husband.
+
+She dressed quickly and went down. The little white old man looked very
+solitary in the long, fireless, drawing-room.
+
+'I could not sleep,' he said; 'I don't think I grasped in the least, I
+don't indeed, until I was nearly home, the complexity of our problem.
+I came, in fact, to a lamppost. It was casting a peculiar shadow.
+And then--you know how such thoughts seize us, my dear--like a sudden
+inspiration, I realised how tenuous, how appallingly tenuous a hold we
+every one of us have on our mere personality. But that,' he continued
+rapidly, 'that's only for ourselves--and after the event. Ours, just
+now, is to act. And first--?'
+
+'You really do, then--you really are convinced--' began Mrs Lawford.
+
+But Mr Bethany was too quick. 'We must be most circumspect. My dear
+friend, we must be most circumspect, for all our sakes. And this, you'll
+say,' he added, smiling, stretching out his arms, his soft hat in one
+hand, his umbrella in the other--'this is being circumspect--a seven
+o'clock in the morning call! But you see, my dear, I have come, as I
+took the precaution of explaining to the maid, because it's now or
+never to-day. It does so happen that I have to take a wedding for an old
+friend's niece at Witchett; so when in need, you see, Providence enables
+us to tell even the conventional truth. Now really, how is he? has he
+slept? has he recalled himself at all? is there any change?--and, dear
+me, how are YOU?'
+
+Mrs Lawford sighed. 'A broken night is really very little to a mother,'
+she said. 'He is still asleep. He hasn't, I think, stirred all night.'
+
+'Not stirred!' Mr Bethany repeated. 'You baffle me. And you have
+watched?'
+
+'Oh no,' was the cheerful answer; 'I felt that quiet, solitude; space,
+was everything; he preferred it so. He--he changed alone, I suppose.
+Don't you think it almost stands to reason that he will be alone...when
+he comes back? Was I right? But there, it's useless, it's worse than
+useless, to talk like this. My husband is gone. Some terrible thing has
+happened. Whatever the mystery may be, he will never come back alive. My
+only fear is that I am dragging you into a matter that should from the
+beginning have been entrusted to--Oh, it's monstrous!' It appeared for a
+moment as if she were blinking to keep back her tears, yet her scrutiny
+seemed merely to harden.
+
+Only the merest flicker of the folded eyelids over the greenish eyes of
+her visitor answered the challenge. He stood small and black, peeping
+fixedly out of the window at the sunflecked laurels.
+
+'Last night,' he said slowly, 'when I said good-bye to your husband, on
+the tip of my tongue were the words I have used, in season and out of
+season, for nearly forty-five years--"God knows best." Well, my dear
+lady, a sense of humour, a sense of reverence, or perhaps even a taint
+of scepticism--call it what you will--just intercepted them. Oh no,
+not any of these, my child; just pity, overwhelming pity. God does know
+best; but in a matter like this it is not even my place to say so. It
+would be good for none of us to endanger our souls even with verbal
+cant. Now, if, do you think, I had just five minutes' talk--five
+minutes; would it disquiet him?'
+
+Only by an almost undignified haste, for the vicar was remarkably
+agile, Sheila managed to unlock the bedroom door without apparently his
+perceiving it, and with a warning finger she preceded him into the great
+bedroom. 'Oh, yes, yes,' he was whispering to himself; 'alone--well,
+well!' He hung his hat on his umbrella and leaned it in a corner, and
+then he turned.
+
+'I don't think, you know, an old friend does him any wrong; but last
+night I had no real oppor--' He firmly adjusted his spectacles, and
+looked long into the dark, dispassioned face.
+
+'H'm!' he said, and fidgeted, and peered again. Mrs Lawford watched him
+keenly.
+
+'Do you still--' she began.
+
+But at the same moment he too broke silence, suddenly stepping back with
+the innocent remark, 'Has he--has he asked for anything?'
+
+'Only for Quain.'
+
+'"Quain"?'
+
+'The medical Dictionary.'
+
+'Oh, yes; bless me; of course.... A calm, complete sleep of utter
+prostration--utter nervous prostration. And can one wonder? Poor fellow,
+poor fellow!' He walked to the window and peered between the blinds.
+'Sparrows, sunshine--yes, and here's the postman,' he said, as if to
+himself. Then he turned sharply round, with mind made up.
+
+'Now, do you leave me here,' he said. 'Take half an hour's quiet rest.
+He will be glad of a dull old fellow like me when he wakes. And as for
+my pretty bride, if I miss the train, she must wait till the next.
+Good discipline, my dear. Oh, dear me! I don't change. What a precious
+experience now this would have been for a tottery, talkative, owlish
+old parochial creature like me. But there, there. Light words make heavy
+hearts, I see. I shall be quite comfortable. No, no, I breakfasted at
+home. There's hat and umbrella; at 9.3 I can fly.'
+
+Mrs Lawford thanked him mutely. He smilingly but firmly bowed her out
+and closed the door.
+
+But eyes and brain had been very busy. He had looked at the gutted
+candle; at the tinted bland portrait on the dressing-table; at the chair
+drawn-up; at the boots; and now again he turned almost with a groan
+towards the sleeper. Then he took out an envelope, on which he had
+jotted various memoranda, and waited awhile. Minutes passed and at last
+the sleeper faintly stirred, muttering.
+
+Mr Bethany stooped quickly. 'What is it, what is it?' he whispered.
+
+Lawford sighed. 'I was only dreaming, Sheila,' he said, and softly,
+peacefully opened his eyes. 'I dreamed I was in the--, His lids
+narrowed, his dark eyes fixed themselves on the anxious spectacled face
+bending over him. 'Mr Bethany! Where? What's wrong?'
+
+His friend put out his hand. 'There, there,' he said soothingly, 'do not
+be disturbed; do not disquiet yourself.'
+
+Lawford struggled up. Slowly, painfully consciousness returned to him.
+He glanced furtively round the room, at his clothes, slinkingly at
+the vicar; licked his lips; flushed with extraordinary rapidity; and
+suddenly burst into tears.
+
+Mr Bethany sat without movement, waiting till he should have spent
+himself. 'Now, Lawford,' he said gently, compose yourself, old friend.
+We must face the music--like men.' He went to the window, drew up the
+blind, peeped out, and took off his spectacles.
+
+'The first thing to be done,' he said, returning briskly to his chair,
+'is to send for Simon. Now, does Simon know you WELL?' Lawford shook his
+head. 'Would he recognise you?... I mean...'
+
+'I have only met him once--in the evening.'
+
+'Good; let him come immediately, then. Tell him just the facts. If I am
+not mistaken, he will pooh-pooh the whole thing; tell you to keep quiet,
+not to worry, and so on. My dear fellow, if we realised, say, typhoid,
+who'd dare to face it? That will give us time; to wait a while, to
+recover our breath, to see what happens next. And if--as I don't
+believe for a moment--Why, in that case I heard the other day of a most
+excellent man--Grosser, of Wimpole Street; nerves. He would be absorbed.
+He'll bottle you in spirit, Lawford. We'll have him down quietly. You
+see? But there won't be any necessity. Oh no. By then light will have
+come. We shall remember. What I mean is this.' He crossed his legs
+and pushed out his lips. 'We are on quaky ground; and it's absolutely
+essential that you keep cool, and trust. I am yours, heart and soul--you
+know that. I own frankly, at first I was shaken. And I have, I confess,
+been very cunning. But first, faith, then evidence to bolster it up. The
+faith was absolute'--he placed one firm hand on Lawford's knee--'why,
+I cannot explain; but it was. The evidence is convincing. But there are
+others to think of. The shock, the incredibleness, the consequences; we
+must not scan too closely. Think WITH; never against: and bang go all
+the arguments. Your wife, poor dear, believes; but of course, of course,
+she is horribly--' he broke off; 'of course she is SHAKEN, you old
+simpleton! Time will heal all that. Time will wear out the mask. Time
+will tire out this detestable physical witchcraft. The mind, the self's
+the thing. Old fogey though I may seem for saying it--that must be kept
+unsmirched. We won't go wearily over the painful subject again. You
+told me last night, dear old friend, that you were absolutely alone at
+Widderstone. That is enough. But here we have visible facts, tangible
+effects, and there must have been a definite reason and a cause for
+them. I believe in the devil, in the Powers of Darkness, Lawford,
+as firmly as I believe he and they are powerless--in the long run.
+They--what shall we say?--have surrendered their intrinsicality. You can
+just go through evil, as you can go through a sewer, and come out on the
+other side too. A loathsome process too. But there--we are not speaking
+of any such monstrosities, and even if we were, you and I with God's
+help would just tire them out. And that ally gone, our poor dear old Mrs
+Grundy will at once capitulate. Eh? Eh?'
+
+Through all this long and arduous harangue, consciousness, like the
+gradual light of dawn, had been flooding that other brain. And the face
+that now confronted Mr Bethany, though with his feeble unaided sight he
+could only very obscurely discern it, was vigilant and keen, in every
+sharp-cut hungry feature.
+
+A rather prolonged silence followed, the visitor peering mutely. The
+black eyes nearly closed, the face turned slowly towards the window, saw
+burnt-out candle, comprehensive glass.
+
+'Yes, yes.' he said; 'I'll send for Simon at once.'
+
+'Good,' said Mr Bethany, and more doubtfully repeated 'good.' 'Now
+there's only one thing left,' he went on cheerfully. 'I have jotted down
+a few test questions here; they are questions no one on this earth could
+answer but you, Lawford. They are merely for external proofs. You won't,
+you can't, mistake my motive. We cannot foretell or foresee what need
+may arise for just such jog-trot primitive evidence. I propose that you
+now answer them here, in writing.'
+
+Lawford stood up and walked to the looking-glass, and paused. He put his
+hand to his head, 'es,' he said, 'of course; it's a rattling good move.
+I'm not quite awake; myself, I mean. I'll do it now.' He took out a
+pencil case and tore another leaf from his pocket-book. 'What are they?'
+
+Mr Bethany rang the bell. Sheila herself answered it. She stood on the
+threshold and looked across through a shaft of autumnal sunshine at
+her husband, and her husband with a quiet strange smile looked across
+through the sunshine at his wife. Mr Bethany waited in vain.
+
+'I am just going to put the arch-impostor through his credentials,' he
+said tartly. 'Now then, Lawford!' He read out the questions, one by one,
+from his crafty little list, pursing his lips between each; and one
+by one, Lawford, seated at the dressing-table, fluently scribbled
+his answers. Then question and answer were rigorously compared by Mr
+Bethany, with small white head bent close and spectacles poised upon the
+powerful nose, and signed and dated, and passed to Mrs Lawford without a
+word.
+
+Mrs Lawford read question and answer where she stood, in complete
+silence. She looked up. 'Many of these questions I don't know the
+answers to myself,' she said.
+
+'It is immaterial,' said Mr Bethany.
+
+'One answer is--is inaccurate. 'Yes, yes, quite so: due to a mistake in
+a letter from myself.'
+
+Mrs Lawford read quietly on, folded the papers, and held them out
+between finger and thumb. 'The--handwriting...' she remarked very
+softly.
+
+'Wonderful, isn't it?' said Mr Bethany warmly; 'all the general look and
+run of the thing different, but every real essential feature unchanged.
+Now into the envelope. And now a little wax?'
+
+Mrs Lawford stood waiting. 'There's a green piece of sealing-wax,'
+almost drawled the quiet voice, 'in the top right drawer of the nest
+in the study, which old James gave me the Christmas before last.' He
+glanced with lowered eyelids at his wife's flushed cheek. Their eyes
+met.
+
+'Thank you,' she said.
+
+When she returned the vicar was sitting in a chair, leaning his chin on
+the knobbed handle of his umbrella. He rose and lit a taper for her
+with a match from a little green pot on the table. And Mrs Lawford, with
+trembling fingers, sealed the letter, as he directed, with his own seal.
+
+'There!' he said triumphantly, 'how many more such brilliant lawyers, I
+wonder, lie dormant in the Church? And who shall keep this?... Why, all
+three, of course.' He went on without pausing. 'Some little drawer now,
+secret and undetectable, with a lock.' Just such a little drawer that
+locked itself with a spring lay by chance in the looking-glass. There
+the letter was hidden. And Mr Bethany looked at his watch. 'Nineteen
+minutes,' he said. 'The next thing, my dear child--we're getting on
+swimmingly--and it's astonishing how things are simplified by mere
+use--the next thing is to send for Simon.'
+
+Sheila took a deep breath, but did not look up. 'I am entirely in your
+hands,' she replied.
+
+'So be it,' said he crisply. 'Get to bed, Lawford; it's better so. And
+I'll look in on my way back from Witchett. I came, my dear fellow, in
+gloomy disturbance of mind. It was getting up too early; it fogs old
+brains. Good-bye, good-bye.'
+
+He squeezed Lawford's hand. Then, with umbrella under his arm, his hat
+on his head, his spectacles readjusted, he hurried out of the room. Mrs
+Lawford followed him. For a few minutes Lawford sat motionless, with
+head bent a little, and eyes restlessly scanning the door. Then he rose
+abruptly, and in a quarter of an hour was in bed, alone with his slow
+thoughts: while a basin of cornflour stood untasted on a little table
+at his bedside, and a cheerful fire burned in the best visitors' room's
+tiny grate.
+
+At half-past eleven Dr Simon entered this soundless seclusion. He sat
+down beside Lawford, and took temperature and pulse. Then he half closed
+his lids, and scanned his patient out of an unusually dark, un-English
+face, with straight black hair, and listened attentively to his rather
+incoherent story. It was a story very much modified and rounded off.
+Nor did Lawford draw Dr Simon's attention to the portrait now smiling
+conventionally above their heads from the wall over the fireplace.
+
+'It was rather bleak--the wind; and, I think, perhaps, I had had a
+touch of influenza. It was a silly thing to do. But still, Dr Simon, one
+doesn't expect--well, there, I don't feel the same man--physically. I
+really cannot explain how great a change has taken place. And yet I feel
+perfectly fit in myself. And if it were not for--for being laughed at,
+go back to town, to-day. Why my wife scarcely recognised me.'
+
+Dr Simon continued his scrutiny. Try as he would, Lawford could not
+raise his downcast eyes to meet direct the doctor's polite attention.
+
+'And what,' said Dr Simon, 'what precisely is the nature of the change?
+Have you any pain?'
+
+'No, not the least pain,' said Lawford; 'I think, perhaps, or rather my
+face is a little shrunken--and yet lengthened; at least it feels so;
+and a faint twinge of rheumatism. But my hair--well, I don't know; it's
+difficult to say one's self.' He could get on so very much better,
+he thought, if only his mind would be at peace and these preposterous
+promptings and voices were still.
+
+Dr Simon faced the window, and drew his hand softly over his head.
+'We never can be too cautious at a certain age, and especially after
+influenza,' he said. 'It undermines the whole system, and in particular
+the nervous system; leaving the mind the prey of the most melancholy
+fancies. I should astound you, Mr Lawford, with the devil influenza
+plays.... A slight nervous shock and a chill; quite slight, I hope. A
+few days' rest and plenty of nourishment. There's nothing; temperature
+inconsiderable. All perfectly intelligible. Most certainly reassure
+yourself! And as for the change you speak of'--he looked steadily at the
+dark face on the pillow and smiled amiably--'I don't think we need
+worry much about that. It certainly was a bleak wind yesterday--and a
+cemetery, my dear sir! It was indiscreet--yes, very.' He held out his
+hand. 'You must not be alarmed,' he said, very distinctly with
+the merest trace of an accent; 'air, sunshine, quiet, nourishment;
+sleep--that is all. The little window might be a few inches open,
+and--and any light reading.'
+
+He opened the door and joined Mrs Lawford on the staircase. He talked
+to her quietly over his shoulder all the way downstairs. 'It was, it was
+sporting with Providence--a wind, believe me, nearly due east, in spite
+of the warm sunshine.'
+
+'But the change--the change!' Mrs Lawford managed to murmur tragically,
+as he strode to the door. Dr Simon smiled, and gracefully tapped his
+forehead with a red-gloved forefinger.
+
+'Humour him, humour him,' he repeated indulgently. 'Rest and quiet
+will soon put that little trouble out of his head. Oh yes, I did notice
+it--the set drawn look, and the droop: quite so. Good morning.'
+
+Mrs Lawford gently closed the door after him. A glimpse of Ada, crossing
+from room to room, suggested a precaution. She called out in her
+clearest notes. 'If Dr Ferguson should call while I am out, Ada, will
+you please tell him that Dr Simon regretted that he was unable to wait?
+Thank you.' She paused with hand on the balusters, then slowly ascended
+the stairs. Her husband's face was turned to the ceiling, his hands
+clasped above his head. She took up her stand by the fireplace, resting
+one silk-slippered foot on the fender. 'Dr Simon is reassuring,' she
+said, 'but I do hope, Arthur, you will follow his advice. He looks a
+fairly clever man.... But with a big practice.... Do you think, dear, he
+quite realised the extent of the--the change?'
+
+'I told him what happened,' said her husband's voice out of the
+bed-clothes.
+
+'Yes, yes, I know,' said Sheila soothingly; 'but we must remember he is
+comparatively a stranger. He would not detect--'
+
+'What did he tell you?' asked the voice.
+
+Mrs Lawford deliberately considered. If only he would always thus keep
+his face concealed, how much easier it would be to discuss matters
+rationally. 'You see, dear,' she said softly, 'I know, of course,
+nothing about the nerves; but personally, I think his suggestion absurd.
+No mere fancy, surely, can make a lasting alteration in one's face. And
+your hair--I don't want to say anything that may seem unkind--but isn't
+it really quite a distinct shade darker, Arthur?'
+
+'Any great strain will change the colour of a man's hair,' said Lawford
+stolidly; 'at any rate, to white. Why, I read once of a fellow in India,
+a Hindoo, or something, who--'
+
+'But have you HAD any intense strain, or anxiety?' broke in Sheila. 'You
+might, at least, have confided in me; that is, unless--But there, don't
+you think really, Arthur, it would be much more satisfactory in every
+way if we had further advice at once? Alice will be home next week.
+To-morrow is the Harvest Festival, and next week, of course, the
+Dedication; and, in any case, the Bazaar is out of the question. They
+will have to find another stall-holder. We must do our utmost to avoid
+comment or scandal. Every minute must help to--to fix a thing like that.
+I own even now I cannot realise what this awful calamity means. It's
+useless to brood on it. We must, as the poor dear old vicar said only
+last night, keep our heads clear. But I am sure Dr Simon was under a
+misapprehension. If, now, it was explained to him, a little more fully,
+Arthur--a photograph. Oh, anything on earth but this dreadful wearing
+uncertainty and suspense! Besides ...is Simon quite an English name?'
+
+Lawford drew further into his pillow. 'Do as you think best, Sheila,'
+he said. 'For my own part, I believe it may be as he suggests--partly an
+illusion, a touch of nervous breakdown. It simply can't be as bad as I
+think it is. If it were, you would not be here talking like this; and
+Bethany wouldn't have believed a word I said. Whatever it is, it's no
+good crying it on the housetops. Give me time, just time. Besides, how
+do we know what he really thought? Doctors don't tell their patients
+everything. Give the poor chap a chance, and more so if he is a
+foreigner. He's'--his voice sank almost to a whisper--'he's no darker
+than this. And do, please, Sheila, take this infernal stuff away, and
+let me have something solid. I'm not ill--in that way. All I want is
+peace and quiet, time to think. Let me fight it out alone. It's been
+sprung on me. The worst's not over. But I'll win through; wait! And
+if not--well, you shall not suffer, Sheila. Don't be afraid. There are
+other ways out.'
+
+Sheila broke down. 'Any one would think to hear you talk, that I was
+perfectly heartless. I told Ada to be most careful about the cornflour.
+And as for other ways out, it's a positively wicked thing to say to me
+when I'm nearly distracted with trouble and anxiety. What motive could
+you have had for loitering in an old cemetery? And in an east wind! It's
+useless for me to remain here, Arthur, to be accused of every horrible
+thing that comes into a morbid imagination. I will leave you, as you
+suggest, in peace.'
+
+'One moment, Sheila,' answered the muffled voice. 'I have accused you
+of nothing. If you knew all; if you could read my thoughts, you would
+be surprised, perhaps, at my--But never mind that. On the other hand, I
+really do think it would be better for the present to discuss the thing
+no more. To-day is Friday. Give this miserable face a week. Talk it over
+with Bethany if you like. But I forbid'--he struggled up in bed,
+sallow and sinister--'I flatly forbid, please understand, any other
+interference till then. Afterwards you must do exactly as you please.
+Send round the Town Crier! But till then, silence!'
+
+Sheila with raised head confronted him. 'This, then, is your gratitude.
+So be it. Silence, no doubt! Until it's too late to take action. Until
+you have wormed your way in, and think you are safe. To have believed!
+Where is my husband? that is what I am asking you now. When and how you
+have learned his secrets God only knows, and your conscience! But he
+always was a simpleton at heart. I warn you, then. Until next Thursday
+I consent to say nothing provided you remain quiet; make no disturbance,
+no scandal here. The servants and all who inquire shall simply be told
+that my husband is confined to his room with--with a nervous breakdown,
+as you have yourself so glibly suggested. I am at your mercy, I own it.
+The vicar believes your preposterous story--with his spectacles off.
+You would convince anybody with the wicked cunning with which you have
+cajoled and wheedled him, with which you have deceived and fooled a
+foreign doctor. But you will not convince me. You will not convince
+Alice. I have friends in the world, though you may not be aware of it,
+who will not be quite so apt to believe any cock-and-bull story you may
+see fit to invent. That is all I have to say. To-night I tell the vicar
+all that I have just told you. And from this moment, please, we are
+strangers. I shall come into the room no more than necessity dictates.
+On Friday we resume our real parts. My husband--Arthur--to--to connive
+at... Phh!'
+
+Rage had transfigured her. She scarcely heard her own words. They poured
+out senselessly, monotonously, one calling up another, as if from the
+lips of a Cassandra. Lawford sank back into bed, clutching the sheets
+with both lean hands. He took a deep breath and shut his mouth.
+
+'It reminds me, Sheila,' he began arduously, 'of our first quarrel
+before we were married, the evening after your aunt Rose died at
+Llandudno--do you remember? You threw open the window, and I think--I
+saved your life.' A pause followed. Then a queer, almost inarticulate
+voice added, 'At least, I am afraid so.'
+
+A cold and awful quietness fell on Sheila's heart. She stared fixedly
+at the tuft of dark hair, the only visible sign of her husband, on the
+pillow. Then, taking up the basin of cold cornflour, she left the room.
+In a quarter of an hour she reappeared carrying a tray, with ham and
+eggs and coffee and honey invitingly displayed. She laid it down.
+
+'There is only one other question,' she said, with perfect
+composure--'that of money. Your signature as it appears on the--the
+document drawn up this morning, would, of course, be quite useless on
+a cheque. I have taken all the money I could find; it is in safety.
+You may, however, conceivably be in need of some yourself; here is five
+pounds. I have my own cheque-book, and shall therefore have no need
+to consider the question again for--for the present. So far as you are
+concerned, I shall be guided solely by Mr Bethany. He will, I do not
+doubt, take full responsibility.'
+
+'And may the Lord have mercy on my soul!' uttered a stifled, unfamiliar
+voice from the bed. Mrs Lawford stooped. 'Arthur!' she cried faintly,
+'Arthur!'
+
+Lawford raised himself on his elbow with a sigh that was very near to
+being a sob. 'Oh, Sheila, if you'd only be your real self! What is the
+use of all this pretence? Just consider MY position a little. The fear
+and horror are not all on your side. You called me Arthur even then. I'd
+willingly do anything you wish to save you pain; you know that. Can't we
+be friends even in this--this ghastly--Won't you, Sheila?'
+
+Mrs Lawford drew back, struggling with a doubtful heart.
+
+'I think,' she said, `it would be better not to discuss that now.'
+
+The rest of the morning Lawford remained in solitude.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+
+There were three books in the room--Jeremy Taylor's 'Holy Living and
+Dying,' a volume of the Quiver, and a little gilded book on wildflowers.
+He read in vain. He lay and listened to the uproar of his thoughts on
+which an occasional sound--the droning of a fly, the cry of a milkman,
+the noise of a passing van--obtruded from the workaday world. The pale
+gold sunlight edged softly over the bed. He ate up everything on his
+tray. He even, on the shoals of nightmare, dreamed awhile. But by and
+by as the hours wheeled slowly on he grew less calm, less strenuously
+resolved on lying there inactive. Every sparrow that twittered cried
+reveille through his brain. He longed with an ardour strange to his
+temperament to be up and doing.
+
+What if his misfortune was, as he had in the excitement of the moment
+suggested to Sheila, only a morbid delusion of mind; shared too in part
+by sheer force of his absurd confession? Even if he was going mad, who
+knows how peaceful a release that might not be? Could his shrewd old
+vicar have implicitly believed in him if the change were as complete
+as he supposed it? He flung off the bedclothes and locked the door.
+He dressed himself, noticing, he fancied, with a deadly revulsion
+of feeling, that his coat was a little too short in the sleeves, his
+waistcoat too loose. In the midst of his dressing came Sheila bringing
+his luncheon. 'I'm sorry,' he called out, stooping quickly beside the
+bed, 'I can't talk now. Please put the tray down.'
+
+About half an hour afterwards he heard the outer door close, and peeping
+from behind the curtains saw his wife go out. All was drowsily quiet in
+the house. He devoured his lunch like a schoolboy. That finished to the
+last crumb, without a moment's delay he covered his face with a towel,
+locked the door behind him, put the key in his pocket, and ran lightly
+downstairs. He stuffed the towel into an ulster pocket, put on a soft,
+wide-brimmed hat, and noiselessly let himself out. Then he turned
+with an almost hysterical delight and ran--ran like the wind, without
+pausing, without thinking, straight on, up one turning, down another,
+until he reached a broad open common, thickly wooded, sprinkled with
+gorse and hazel and may, and faintly purple with fading heather. There
+he flung himself down in the beautiful sunlight, among the yellowing
+bracken, to recover his breath.
+
+He lay there for many minutes, thinking almost with composure. Flight,
+it seemed, had for the moment quietened the demands of that other feebly
+struggling personality which was beginning to insinuate itself into his
+consciousness, which had so miraculously broken in and taken possession
+of his body. He would not think now. All he needed was a little quiet
+and patience before he threw off for good and all his right to be free,
+to be his own master, to call himself sane.
+
+He scrambled up and turned his face towards the westering sun. What was
+there in the stillness of its beautiful splendour that seemed to sharpen
+his horror and difficulty, and yet to stir him to such a daring and
+devilry as he had never known since he was a boy? There was little sound
+of life; somewhere an unknown bird was singing, and a few late bees were
+droning in the bracken. All these years he had, like an old blind horse,
+stolidly plodded round and round in a dull self-set routine. And now,
+just when the spirit had come for rebellion, the mood for a harmless
+truancy, there had fallen with them too this hideous enigma. He sat
+there with the dusky silhouette of the face that was now drenched with
+sunlight in his mind's eye. He set off again up the stony incline.
+
+Why not walk on and on? In time real wholesome weariness would come; he
+could sleep at ease in some pleasant wayside inn, without once meeting
+the eyes that stood as it were like a window between himself and a
+shrewd incredulous scoffing world that would turn him into a monstrosity
+and his story into a fable. And in a little while, perhaps in three
+days, he would awaken out of this engrossing nightmare, and know he
+was free, this black dog gone from his back, and (as the old saying
+expressed it without any one dreaming what it really meant) his own
+man again. How astonished Sheila would be; how warmly she would welcome
+him!... Oh yes, of course she would.
+
+He came again to a standstill. No voice answered him out of that
+illimitable gold and blue. Nothing seemed aware of him. But as he stood
+there, doubtful as Cain on the outskirts of the unknown, he caught the
+sound of a footfall on the lonely and stone-strewn path.
+
+The ground sloped steeply away to the left, and slowly mounting the
+hillside came mildly on an old lady he knew, a Miss Sinnet, an old
+friend of his mother's. There was just such a little seat as that
+other he knew so well, on the brow of the hill. He made his way to it,
+intending to sit quietly there until the little old lady had passed by.
+Up and up she came. Her large bonnet appeared, and then her mild white
+face, inclined a little towards him as she ascended. Evidently this very
+seat was her goal; and evasion was impossible. Evasion!... Memory rushed
+back and set his pulses beating. He turned boldly to the sun, and the
+old lady, with a brief glance into his face, composed herself at the
+other end of the little seat. She gazed out of a gentle reverie into the
+golden valley. And so they sat a while. And almost as if she had
+felt the bond of acquaintance between them, she presently sighed, and
+addressed him: 'A very, very, beautiful view, sir.'
+
+Lawford paused, then turned a gloomy, earnest face, gilded with
+sunshine. 'Beautiful, indeed,' he said, 'but not for me. No, Miss
+Sinnet, not for me.'
+
+The old lady gravely turned and examined the aquiline profile. 'Well, I
+confess,' she remarked urbanely, 'you have the advantage of me.'
+
+Lawford smiled uneasily. 'Believe me, it is little advantage.'
+
+'My sight,' said Miss Sinnet precisely, 'is not so good as I might wish;
+though better perhaps than I might have hoped; I fear I am not much
+wiser; your face is still unfamiliar to me.'
+
+'It is not unfamiliar to me,' said Lawford. Whose trickery was this? he
+thought, putting such affected stuff into his mouth.
+
+A faint lightening of pity came into the silvery and scrupulous
+countenance. 'Ah, dear me, yes,' she said courteously.
+
+Lawford rested a lean hand on the seat. 'And have you,' he asked, 'not
+the least recollection in the world of my face?'
+
+'Now really,' she said, smiling blandly, 'is that quite fair? Think of
+all the scores and scores of faces in seventy long years; and how very
+treacherous memory is. You shall do me the service of REMINDING me of
+one whose name has for the moment escaped me.'
+
+'I am the son of a very old friend of yours, Miss Sinnet,' said Lawford
+quietly 'a friend that was once your schoolfellow at Brighton.'
+
+'Well, now,' said the old lady, grasping her umbrella, 'that is
+undoubtedly a clue; but then, you see, all but one of the friends of my
+girlhood are dead; and if I have never had the pleasure of meeting her
+son, unless there is a decided resemblance, how am I to recollect HER by
+looking at HIM?'
+
+'There is, I believe, a likeness,' said Lawford.
+
+She nodded her great bonnet at him with gentle amusement. 'You are
+insistent in your fancy. Well, let me think again. The last to leave
+me was Fanny Urquhart, that was--let me see--last October. Now you are
+certainly not Fanny Urquhart's son,' she stooped austerely, 'for she
+never had one. Last year, too, I heard that my dear, dear Mrs Jameson
+was dead. HER I hadn't met for many, many years. But, if I may venture
+to say so, yours is not a Scottish face; and she not only married a
+Scottish husband, but was herself a Dunbar. No, I am still at a loss.'
+
+A miserable strife was in her chance companion's mind, a strife of anger
+and recrimination. He turned his eyes wearily to the fast declining sun.
+'You will forgive my persistency, but I assure you it is a matter of
+life or death to me. Is there no one my face recalls? My voice?'
+
+Miss Sinnet drew her long lips together, her eyebrows lifted with the
+faintest perturbation. 'But he certainly knows my name,' she said to
+herself. She turned once more, and in the still autumnal beauty, beneath
+that pale blue arch of evening, these two human beings confronted
+one another again. She eyed him blandly, yet with a certain grave
+directness.
+
+'I don't really think,' she said, 'you can be Mary Lawford's son. I
+could scarcely have mistaken HIM.'
+
+Lawford gulped and turned away. He hardly knew what this surge of
+feeling meant. Was it hope, despair, resentment; had he caught even the
+echo of an unholy joy? His mind for a moment became confused as if
+in the tumult of a struggle. He heard himself expostulate, 'Ah, Miss
+Bennett, I fear I set you too difficult a task.'
+
+The old lady drew abruptly in, like a trustful and gentle snail into its
+shocked house. 'Bennett, sir; but my name is not Bennett.'
+
+And again Lawford accepted the miserable prompting. 'Not Bennett!... How
+can I ever then apologise for so frantic a mistake?'
+
+The little old lady took firm hold of her umbrella. She did not answer
+him. 'The likeness, the likeness!' he began unctuously, and stopped,
+for the glance that dwelt fleetingly on him was cold with the formidable
+dignity and displeasure of age. He raised his hat and turned miserably
+home. He strode on out of the last gold into the blue twilight. What
+fantastic foolery of mind was mastering him? He cast a hurried look
+over his shoulder at the kindly and offended old figure sitting there,
+solitary, on the little seat, in her great bonnet, with back turned
+resolutely upon him--the friend of his dead mother who might have proved
+in his need a friend indeed to him. And he had by this insane caprice
+hopelessly estranged her.
+
+She would remember this face well enough now, he thought bitterly,
+and would take her place among his quiet enemies, if ever the day of
+reckoning should come. It was scandalous, it was banal to have abused
+her trust and courtesy. Oh, it was hopeless to struggle any more! The
+fates were against him. They had played him a trick. He was to be their
+transitory sport, as many a better man he could himself recollect had
+been before him. He would go home and give in; let Sheila do with him
+what she pleased. No one but a lunatic could have acted as he had, with
+just that frantic hint of method so remarkable in the insane.
+
+He left the common. A lamplighter was lighting the lamps. A thin
+evening haze was on the air. If only he had stayed at home that fateful
+afternoon! Who, what had induced him, enticed him to venture out? And
+even with the thought welled up into his mind an intense desire to go
+to the old green time-worn churchyard again; to sit there contentedly
+alone, where none heeded the completest metamorphosis, down beside the
+yew-trees. What a fool he had been. There alone, of course, lay his only
+possible chance of recovery. He would go to-morrow. Perhaps Sheila had
+not yet discovered his absence; and there would be no difficulty in
+repeating so successful a stratagem.
+
+Remembrance of his miserable mistake, of Miss Sinnet, faintly returned
+to him as he swiftly mounted the steps to his porch. Poor old lady. He
+would make amends for his discourtesy when he was quite himself again.
+She should some day hear, perhaps, his infinitely tragic, infinitely
+comic experience from his own lips. He would take her some flowers, some
+old keepsake of his mother's. What would he not do when the old moods
+and brains of the stupid Arthur Lawford, whom he had appreciated so
+little and so superficially, came back to him.
+
+He ran up the steps and stopped dead, his hand in his pocket, chilled
+and aghast. Sheila had taken his keys. He stood there, dazed and still,
+beneath the dim yellow of his own fanlight; and once again that inward
+spring flew back. 'Brazen it out; brazen it out! Knock and ring!'
+
+He knocked flamboyantly, and rang.
+
+There came a quiet step and the door opened. 'Dr Simon, of course, has
+called?' he inquired suavely.
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'Ah, and gone'--as I feared. And Mrs Lawford?'
+
+'I think Mrs Lawford is in, sir.'
+
+Lawford put out a detaining hand. 'We will not disturb her; we will not
+disturb her. I can find my way up; oh yes, thank you!'
+
+But Ada still palely barred the way. 'I think, sir,' she said, 'Mrs
+Lawford would prefer to see you herself; she told me most particularly
+"all callers." And Mr Lawford was not to be disturbed on any account.'
+
+'Disturbed? God forbid!' said Lawford, but his dark eyes failed to
+move these lightest hazel. 'Well,' he continued nonchalantly,
+'perhaps--perhaps it--WOULD be as well if Mrs Lawford should know that
+I am here. No, thank you, I won't come in. Please go and tell--'
+But even as the maid turned to obey, Sheila herself appeared at the
+dining-room door in hat and veil.
+
+Lawford hesitated an immeasurable moment. In one swift glance
+he perceived the lamplit mystery of evening, beckoning, calling,
+pleading--Fly, fly! Home's here for you. Begin again, begin again. And
+there before him in quiet and hostile decorum stood maid and mistress.
+He took off his hat and stepped quickly in.
+
+'So late, so very late, I fear,' he began glibly. 'A sudden call, a
+perfectly impossible distance. Shall we disturb him, do you think?'
+
+'Wouldn't it,' began Sheila softly, 'be rather a pity perhaps? Dr Simon
+seemed to think.... But, of course, you must decide that.'
+
+Ada turned quiet small eyes.
+
+'No, no, by no means,' he almost mumbled.
+
+And a hard, slow smile passed over Sheila's face. 'Excuse me one
+moment,' she said; 'I will see if he is awake.' She swept swiftly
+forward, superb and triumphant, beneath the gaze of those dark, restless
+eyes. But so still was home and street that quite distinctly a clear
+and youthful laughter was heard, and light footsteps approaching. Sheila
+paused. Ada, in the act of closing the door, peered out. 'Miss Alice,
+ma'am,' she said.
+
+And in this infinitesimal advantage of time Dr Ferguson had seized his
+vanishing opportunity, and was already swiftly mounting the stairs. Mrs
+Lawford stood with veil half raised and coldly smiling lips and, as if
+it were by pre-arrangement, her daughter's laughing greeting from the
+garden, and from the landing above her, a faint 'Ah, and how are we
+now?' broke out simultaneously. And Ada, silent and discreet, had thrown
+open the door again to the twilight and to the young people ascending
+the steps.
+
+Lawford was still sitting on his bed before a cold and ashy hearth when
+Sheila knocked at the door.
+
+'Yes?' he said; 'who's there?' No answer followed. He rose with a
+shuddering sigh and turned the key. His wife entered.
+
+'That little exhibition of finesse was part of our agreement, I
+suppose?'
+
+'I say--' began Lawford.
+
+'To creep out in my absence like a thief, and to return like a
+mountebank; that was part of our compact?'
+
+'I say,' he stubbornly began again, 'did you wire for Alice?'
+
+'Will you please answer my question? Am I to be a mere catspaw in your
+intrigues, in this miserable masquerade before the servants? To set the
+whole place ringing with the name of a doctor that doesn't exist, and
+a bedridden patient that slips out of the house with his bedroom key in
+his pocket! Are you aware that Ada has been hammering at your door
+every half-hour of your absence? Are you aware of that? How much,'
+she continued in a low, bitter voice, 'how much should I offer for her
+discretion?'
+
+'Who was that with Alice?' inquired the same toneless voice.
+
+'I refuse to be ignored. I refuse to be made a child of. Will you please
+answer me?'
+
+Lawford turned. 'Look here, Sheila,' he began heavily, 'what about
+Alice? If you wired: well, it's useless to say anything more. But if you
+didn't, I ask you just this one thing. Don't tell her!'
+
+'Oh, I perfectly appreciate a father's natural anxiety.'
+
+Her husband drew up his shoulders as if to receive a blow. 'Yes, yes,'
+he said, 'but you won't?'
+
+The sound of a young laughing voice came faintly up from below. 'How did
+Jimmie Fortescue know she was coming home to-day?'
+
+'Will you not inquire of Jimmie Fortescue for yourself?'
+
+'Oh, what is the use of sneering?' began the dull voice again. 'I am
+horribly tired, Sheila. And try how you will, you can't convince me that
+you believe for a moment that I am not myself, that you are as hard
+as you pretend. An acquaintance, even a friend might be deceived; but
+husband and wife--oh no! It isn't only a man's face that's himself--or
+even his hands.' He looked at them, straightened them slowly out, and
+buried them in his pockets. 'All I care about now is Alice. Is she, or
+is she not going to be told? I am simply asking you to give her just a
+chance.'
+
+'"Simply asking me to give Alice a chance"; now isn't that really just a
+little...?'
+
+Lawford slowly shook his head. 'You know in your heart it isn't, Sheila;
+you understand me quite well, although you persistently pretend not to.
+I can't argue now. I can't speak up for myself. I am just about as far
+down as I can go. It's only Alice.'
+
+'I see; a lucid interval?' suggested his wife in a low, trembling voice.
+
+'Yes, yes, if you like,' said her husband patiently, '"a lucid
+interval." Don't please look at my face like that, Sheila. Think--think
+that it's just lupus, just some horrible disfigurement.'
+
+Not much light was in the large room, and there was something so
+extraordinarily characteristic of her husband in those stooping
+shoulders, in the head hung a little forward, and in the preternaturally
+solemn voice, that Sheila had to bend a little over the bed to catch a
+glimpse of the sallow and keener face again. She sighed; and even on her
+own strained ear her sigh sounded almost like one of relief.
+
+'It's useless, I know, to ask you anything while you are in this mood,'
+continued Lawford dully; 'I know that of old.'
+
+The white, ringed hands clenched, '"Of old!"'
+
+'I didn't mean anything. Don't listen to what I say. It's only--it's
+just Alice knowing, that was all; I mean at once.'
+
+'Don't for a moment suppose I am not perfectly aware that it is only
+Alice you think of. You were particularly anxious about my feelings,
+weren't you? You broke the news to me with the tenderest solicitude. I
+am glad our--our daughter shares my husband's love.'
+
+'Look here,' said Lawford densely, 'you know that I love you as much as
+ever; but with this--as I am; what would be the good of my saying so?'
+Mrs Lawford took a deep breath.
+
+And a voice called softly at the door, 'Mother, are you there? Is father
+awake? May I come in?'
+
+In a flash the memory returned to her; twenty-four hours ago she was
+asking that very question of this unspeakable figure that sat hunched-up
+before her.
+
+'One moment, dear,' she called. And added in a very low voice, 'Come
+here!'
+
+Lawford looked up. 'What?' he said.
+
+'Perhaps, perhaps,' she whispered, 'it isn't quite so bad.'
+
+'For mercy's sake, Sheila,' he said, 'don't torture me; tell the poor
+child to go away.'
+
+She paused. 'Are you there, Alice? Would you mind, father says, waiting
+a little? He is so very tired.'
+
+'Too tired to.... Oh, very well, mother.'
+
+Mrs Lawford opened the door, and called after her, 'Is Jimmie gone?'
+
+'Oh, yes, hours.'
+
+'Where did you meet?'
+
+'I couldn't get a carriage at the station. He carried my dressing-bag;
+I begged him not to. The other's coming on. You know what Jimmie is.
+How very, very lucky I did come home. I don't know what made me; just an
+impulse; they did laugh at me so. Father dear--do speak to me; how are
+you now?'
+
+Lawford opened his mouth, gulped, and shook his head.
+
+'Ssh, dear!' whispered Sheila, 'I think he has fallen asleep. I will
+be down in a minute.' Mrs Lawford was about to close the door when Ada
+appeared.
+
+'If you please, ma'am,' she said, 'I have been waiting, as you told me,
+to let Dr Ferguson out, but it's nearly seven now; and the table's not
+laid yet.'
+
+'I really should have thought, Ada,' Sheila began, then caught back the
+angry words, and turned and looked over her shoulder into the room.
+'Do you think you will need anything more, Dr Ferguson?' she asked in a
+sepulchral voice.
+
+Again Lawford's lips moved; again he shook his head.
+
+'One moment, Ada,' she said closing the door. 'Some more medicine--what
+medicine? Quick! She mustn't suspect.'
+
+'"What medicine?"' repeated Lawford stolidly.
+
+'Oh, vexing, vexing; don't you see we must send her out? Don't you see?
+What was it you sent to Critchett's for last night? Tell him that's
+gone: we want more of that.'
+
+Lawford stared heavily. Oh, yes, yes,' he said thickly, 'more of
+that....'
+
+Sheila, with a shrug of extreme distaste and vexation, hastily opened
+the door. 'Dr Ferguson wants a further supply of the drug which Mr
+Critchett made up for Mr Lawford yesterday evening. You had better go at
+once, Ada, and please make as much haste as you possibly can.'
+
+'I say, I say,' began Lawford; but it was too late, the door was shut.
+
+'How I detest this wretched falsehood and subterfuge. What could have
+induced you....?'
+
+'Yes,' said her husband, 'what! I think I'll be getting to bed again,
+Sheila; I forgot I had been ill. And now I do really feel very tired.
+But I should like to feel--in spite of this hideous--I should like to
+feel we are friends, Sheila.'
+
+Sheila almost imperceptibly shuddered, crossed the room, and faced
+the still, almost lifeless mask. 'I spoke,' she said, in a low, cold,
+difficult voice--'I spoke in a temper this morning. You must try to
+understand what a shock it has been to me. Now, I own it frankly, I
+know you are--Arthur. But God only knows how it frightens me,
+and--and--horrifies me.' She shut her eyes beneath her veil. They waited
+on in silence a while.
+
+'Poor boy!' she said at last, lightly touching the loose sleeve; 'be
+brave; it will all come right, soon. Meanwhile, for Alice's sake, if
+not for mine, don't give way to--to caprices, and all that. Keep quietly
+here, Arthur. And--and forgive my impatience.'
+
+He put out his hand as if to touch her. 'Forgive you!' he said humbly,
+pushing it stubbornly back into his pocket again. 'Oh, Sheila, the
+forgiveness is all on your side. You know I have nothing to forgive.' A
+long silence fell between them.
+
+'Then, to-night,' at last began Sheila wearily, drawing back, 'we
+say nothing to Alice, except that you are too tired--just nervous
+prostration--to see her. What we should do without this influenza, I
+cannot conceive. Mr Bethany will probably look in on his way home; and
+then we can talk it over--we can talk it over again. So long as you
+are like this, yourself, in mind, why I--What is it now?' she broke off
+querulously.
+
+'If you please, ma'am, Mr Critchett says he doesn't know Dr Ferguson,
+his name's not in the Directory, and there must be something wrong with
+the message, and he's sorry, but he must have it in writing because
+there was more even in the first packet than he ought by rights to send.
+What shall I do, if you please?'
+
+Still looking at her husband. Sheila listened quietly to the end, and
+then, as if in inarticulate disdain, she deliberately shrugged her
+shoulders, and went out to play her part unaided.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN
+
+Her husband turned wearily once more, and drawing up a chair sat down in
+front of the cold grate. He realised that Sheila thought him as much
+of a fool now as she had for the moment thought him an impostor, or
+something worse, the night before. That was at least something gained.
+He realised, too, in a vague way that the exuberance of mind that had
+practically invented Dr Ferguson, and outraged Miss Sinnet, had quite
+suddenly flickered out. It was astonishing, he thought, with gaze
+fixed innocently on the black coals, that he should ever have done such
+things. He detested that kind of 'rot'; that jaunty theatrical pose so
+many men prided their jackdaw brains on.
+
+And he sat quite still, like a cat at a cranny, listening, as it
+were, for the faintest remotest stir that might hint at any return of
+this--activity. It was the first really sane moment he had had since
+the 'change.' Whatever it was that had happened at Widderstone was now
+distinctly weakening in effect. Why, now, perhaps? He stole a thievish
+look over his shoulder at the glass, and cautiously drew finger and
+thumb down that beaked nose. Then he really quietly smiled, a smile he
+felt this abominable facial caricature was quite unused to, the superior
+Lawford smile of guileless contempt for the fanatical, the fantastic,
+and the bizarre: He wouldn't have sat with his feet on the fender before
+a burnt-out fire.
+
+And the animosity of that 'he,' uttered only just under his breath,
+surprised even himself. It actually did seem as if there were a chance;
+if only he kept cool and collected. If the whole mind of a man was bent
+on being one thing, surely no power on earth, certainly not on earth,
+could for long compel him to look another, any more (followed the
+resplendent thought) than vice versa.
+
+That, in fact, was the trick that had been in fitful fashion played him
+since yesterday. Obviously, and apart altogether from his promise to
+Sheila, the best possible thing he could do would be to walk quietly
+over to Widderstone to-morrow and like a child that has lost a penny,
+just make the attempt to reverse the process: look at the graves, read
+the inscriptions on the weather-beaten stones, compose himself once more
+to sleep on the little seat.
+
+Magic, witchcraft, possession, and all that--well, Mr Bethany might
+prefer to take it on the authority of the Bible if it was his duty. But
+it was at least mainly Old Testament stuff, like polygamy, Joshua, and
+the 'unclean beasts.' The 'unclean beasts.' It was simply, as Simon had
+said, mainly an affair of the nerves, like Indian jugglery. He had heard
+of dozens of such cases, or similar cases. And it was hardly likely
+that cases even remotely like his own would be much bragged about, or
+advertised. All those mysterious 'disappearances,' too, which one
+reads about so repeatedly? What of them? Even now, he felt (and glanced
+swiftly behind him at the fancy), it would be better to think as softly
+as possible, not to hope too openly, certainly not to triumph in the
+least degree, just in case of--well--listeners.
+
+He would wrap up too. And he wouldn't tell Sheila of the project till
+he had come safely back. What an excellent joke it would be to confess
+meekly to his escapade, and to be scolded, and then suddenly to reveal
+himself. He sat back and gazed with an almost malignant animosity at the
+face in the portrait, comely and plump.
+
+An inarticulate, unfathomable depression rolled back on him, like a
+mist out of the sea. He hastily undressed, put watch and door-key and
+Critchett's powder under his pillow, paused, vacantly ruminated, and
+then replaced the powder in his waistcoat pocket, said his prayers, and
+got shivering to bed. He did not feel hurt at Sheila's leaving him like
+this. So long as she really believed in him. And now--Alice was home. He
+listened, trying not to shiver, for her voice; and sometimes heard, he
+fancied, the clear note. It was this beastly influenza that made him
+feel so cold and lifeless. But all would soon come right--that is, if
+only that face, luminous against the floating darkness within, would not
+appear the instant he closed his eyes.
+
+But legions of dreams are Influenza's allies. He fell into a chill doze,
+heard voices innumerable, and one above the rest, shouting them down,
+until there fell a lull. And another, as it were, from afar said quite
+clearly and distinctly, 'But surely, my dear, you have heard the story
+of the poor old charwoman who talked Greek in her delirium? A little
+school French need not alarm us.' And Lawford opened his eyes again on
+Mr Bethany standing at his bed.
+
+'Tt, tt! There, I've been and waked him. And yet they say men make such
+excellent nurses in time of war. But you see, Lawford, what did I tell
+you? Wasn't I now an infallible prophet? Your wife has been giving me a
+most glowing account. Quite your old self, she tells me, except for just
+this--this touch of facial paralysis. And I think, do you know' (the
+kind old creature stooped over the bed, but still, Lawford noticed
+bitterly, still without his spectacles)--'yes, I really think there is
+a decided improvement. Not quite so--drawn. We must make haste slowly.
+Wedderburn, you know, believes profoundly in Simon; he pulled his
+wife through a dangerous confinement. And here's pills and tonics and
+liniments--a whole chemist's shop. Oh, we are getting on swimmingly.'
+
+Flamelight was flickering in the candled dusk. Lawford turned his head
+and saw Sheila's coiled, beautiful hair in the firelight.
+
+'You haven't told Alice?' he asked.
+
+'My dear good man,' said Mr Bethany, 'of course we haven't. You shall
+tell her yourself on Monday. What an incredible tradition it will be!
+But you mustn't worry; you mustn't even think. And no more of these
+jaunts, eh? That Ferguson business--that was too bad. What are we going
+to do with the fellow now we have created him? He will come home to
+roost--mark my words. And as likely as not down the Vicarage chimney.
+I wouldn't have believed it of you, my dear fellow.' He beamed, but
+looked, none the less, very lean and fagged and depressed.
+
+'How did the wedding go off?' Lawford managed to think of inquiring.
+
+'Oh, A1,' said Mr Bethany. 'I've just been describing it to Alice--the
+bride, her bridegroom, mother, aunts, cake, presents, finery, blushes,
+tears, and everything that was hers. We've been in fits, haven't we, Mrs
+Lawford? And Alice says I'm a Worth in a clerical collar--didn't she?
+And that it's only Art that has kept me out of an apron. Now look here;
+quiet, quiet, quiet; no excitement, no pranks. What is there to worry
+about, pray? And now Little Dorrit's down with influenza too. And Craik
+and I will have double work to do. Well, well; good-bye, my dear. God
+bless you, Lawford. I can't tell you how relieved, how unspeakably
+relieved I am to find you so much--so much better. Feed him up, my other
+dear; body and mind and soul and spirit. And there goes the bell. I must
+have a biscuit. I've swallowed nothing but a Cupid in plaster of Paris
+since breakfast. Goodnight; we shall miss you both--both.'
+
+But when Sheila returned, her husband was sunk again into a quiet sleep,
+from which not even the many questions she fretted to put to him seemed
+weighty enough to warrant his disturbance.
+
+So when Lawford again opened his eyes he found himself lying wide awake,
+clear and refreshed, and eager to get up. But upon the air lay the still
+hush of early morning. He tried in vain to catch back sleep again.
+A distant shred of dream still floated in his mind, like a cloud
+at evening. He rarely dreamed, but certainly something immensely
+interesting had but a moment ago eluded him. He sat up and looked at
+the clear red cinders and their maze of grottoes. He got out of bed and
+peeped through the blinds. To the east and opposite to him gardens and
+an apple-orchard lay, and there in strange liquid tranquillity hung the
+morning star, and rose, rifling into the dusk of night, the first grey
+of dawn. The street beneath its autumn leaves was vacant, charmed,
+deserted.
+
+Hardly since childhood had Lawford seen the dawn unless over his winter
+breakfast-table. Very much like a child now he stood gazing out of his
+bow-window--the child whom Time's busy robins had long ago covered over
+with the leaves of numberless hours. A vague exultation fumed up into
+his brain. Still on the borders of sleep, he unlocked the great wardrobe
+and took out an old faded purple and crimson dressing-gown that had
+belonged to his grandfather, the chief glory of every Christmas charade.
+He pulled the cowl-like hood over his head and strode majestically over
+to the looking-glass.
+
+He looked in there a moment on the strange face, like a child dismayed
+at its own excitement, and a fit of sobbing that was half uncontrollable
+laughter swept over him. He threw off the hood and turned once more to
+the window. Consciousness had flooded back indeed. What would Sheila
+have said to see him there? The unearthly beauty and stillness, and
+man's small labours, garden and wall and roof-tree idle and smokeless in
+the light of daybreak--there seemed to be some half-told secret between
+them. What had life done with him to leave a reality so clouded? He
+put on his slippers, and, gently opening the door, crept with extreme
+caution up the stairs. At a long, narrow landing window he confronted
+a panorama of starry night-gardens, sloping orchards; and beyond them
+fields, hills, Orion, the Dogs, in the clear and cloudless darkness.
+
+'My God, how beautiful!' a voice whispered. And a cock crowed mistily
+afar. He stood staring like a child into the wintry brightness of a
+pastry-cook's. Then once more he crept stealthily on. He stooped and
+listened at a closed door, until he fancied that above the beating of
+his own heart he could hear the breathing of the sleeper within. Then,
+taking firm hold of the handle with both hands, he slowly noiselessly
+turned it, and peeped in on Alice.
+
+The moon was long past her faint shining here. The blind was down. And
+yet it was not pitch dark. He stood with eyes fixed, waiting. Then he
+edged softly forward and knelt down beside the bed. He could hear her
+breathing now: long, low, quiet, unhastening--the miracle of life. He
+could just dimly discern the darkness of her hair against the pillow.
+Some long-sealed spring of tenderness seemed to rise in his heart with a
+grief and an ache he had never known before. Here at least he could find
+a little peace, a brief pause, however futile and stupid all his hopes
+of the night had been. He leant his head on his hands on the counterpane
+and refused to think. He felt a quick tremor, a startled movement, and
+knew that eyes wide open with fear were striving to pierce the gloom
+between them.
+
+'There, there, dearest,' he said in a low whisper, 'it's only me, only
+me.' He stroked the narrow hand and gazed into the shadowiness. Her
+fingers lay quiet and passive in his, with that strange sense of
+immateriality that sleep brings to the body.
+
+'You, you!' she answered with a deep sigh. 'Oh, dearest, how you
+frightened me. What is wrong? why have you come? Are you worse, dearest,
+dearest?'
+
+He kissed her hand. 'No, Alice, not worse. I couldn't sleep, that was
+all.'
+
+'Oh, and I came so utterly miserable to bed because you would not see
+me. And Mother would tell me only so very little. I didn't even know
+you had been ill.' She pressed his hand between her own. 'But this, you
+know, is very, very naughty--you will catch cold, you bad thing. What
+would Mother say?'
+
+'I think we mustn't tell her, dear. I couldn't help it; I felt much I
+wanted to see you. I have been rather miserable.'
+
+'Why?' she said, stroking his hand from wrist to fingertips with one
+soft finger. 'You mustn't be miserable. You and me have never done such
+a thing before; have we? Was it that wretched old Flu?'
+
+It was too dark in the little fragrant room even to see her face so
+close to his own. And yet he feared. 'Dr Simon,' she went on softly,
+'said it was. But isn't your voice a little hoarse, and it sounds so
+melancholy in the dark. And oh'--she squeezed his wrist--'you have grown
+so thin! You do frighten me. Whatever should I do if you were really
+ill? And it was so odd, dear. When first I woke I seemed to be still
+straining my eyes in a dream, at such a curious, haunting face--not very
+nice. I am glad, I am glad you were here.'
+
+'What was the dream-face like?' came the muttered question.
+
+'Dark and sharp, and rather dwelling eyes; you know those long faces one
+sees in dreams: like a hawk, like a conjuror's.'
+
+Like a conjuror's!--it was the first unguarded and ungarbled criticism.
+'Perhaps, dear, if you find my voice different, and my hand shrunk up,
+you will find my face changed, too--like a conjuror's.... What then?'
+
+She laughed gaily and tenderly. 'You silly silly; I should love you more
+than ever. Your hands are icy cold. I can't warm them nohow.'
+
+Lawford held tight his daughter's hand. 'You do love me, Alice? You
+would not turn against me, whatever happened? Ah, you shall see, you
+shall see.' A sudden burning hope sprang up in him. Surely when all was
+well again, these last few hours would not have been spent in vain.
+Like the shadow of death they had been, against whose darkness the green
+familiar earth seems beautiful as the plains of paradise. Had he but
+realized before how much he loved her--what years of life had been
+wasted in leaving it all unsaid! He came back from his reverie to find
+his hand wet with her tears. He stroked her hair, and touched gently her
+eyelids without speaking.
+
+'You will let me come in to-morrow?' she pleaded; 'you won't keep me
+out?'
+
+'Ah, but, dear, you must remember your mother. She gets so anxious, and
+every word the doctor says is law. How would you like me to come again
+like this, perhaps?--like Santa Claus?'
+
+'You know how I love having you,' she said, and stopped. 'But--but...'
+He leaned closer. 'Yes, yes, come,' she said, clutching his hand and
+hiding her eyes; 'it is only my dream--that horrible, dwelling face in
+the dream; it frightened me so.'
+
+Lawford rose very slowly from his knees. He could feel in the dark his
+brows drawn down; there came a low, sullen beating on his ear; he saw
+his face as it were in dim outline against the dark. Rage and rebellion
+surged up in him; even his love could be turned to bitterness. Well, two
+could play at any game! Alice sprang up in bed and caught his sleeve.
+'Dearest, dearest, you must not be angry with me now!'
+
+He flung himself down beside the bed. Anger, resentment died away. 'You
+are all I have left,' he said.
+
+He stole back, as he had come, in the clear dawn to his bedroom.
+
+It was not five yet. He put a few more coals on his fire and blew out
+the night-light, and lay down. But it was impossible to rest, to remain
+inactive. He would go down and search for that first volume of Quain.
+Hallucination, Influenza, Insanity--why, Sheila must have purposely
+mislaid it. A rather formidable figure he looked, descending the stairs
+in the grey dusk of daybreak. The breakfast-room was at the back of
+the house. He tilted the blind, and a faint light flowed in from the
+changing colours of the sky. He opened the glass door of the little
+bookcase to the right of the window, and ran eye and finger over the few
+rows of books. But as he stood there with his back to the room, just as
+the shadow of a bird's wing floats across the moonlight of a pool, he
+became suddenly conscious that something, somebody had passed across the
+doorway, and in passing had looked in on him.
+
+He stood motionless, listening; but no sound broke the morning
+slumbrousness, except the faraway warbling of a thrush in the first
+light. So sudden and transitory had been the experience that it seemed
+now to be illusory; yet it had so caught him up, it had with so furtive
+and sinister a quietness broken in on his solitude, that for a moment he
+dared not move. A cold, indefinite sensation stole over him that he was
+being watched; that some dim, evil presence was behind him biding its
+time, patient and stealthy, with eyes fixed unmovingly on him where
+he stood. But, watch and wait as silently as he might, only the day
+broadened at the window, and at last a narrow ray of sunlight stole
+trembling up into the dusky bowl of the sky.
+
+At any rate Quain was found, with all the ills of life, from A to I; and
+Lawford turned back to his bondage with the book under his arm.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT
+
+The Sabbath, pale with September sunshine, and monotonous with chiming
+bells, had passed languidly away. Dr Simon had come and gone, optimistic
+and urbane, yet with a faint inward dissatisfaction over a patient
+behind whose taciturnity a hint of mockery and subterfuge seemed to
+lurk. Even Mrs Lawford had appeared to share her husband's reticence.
+But Dr Simon had happened on other cases in his experience where tact
+was required rather than skill, and time than medicine.
+
+The voices and footsteps, even the frou-frou of worshippers going to
+church, the voices and footsteps of worshippers returning from church,
+had floated up to the patient's open window. Sunlight had drawn across
+his room in one pale beam, and vanished. A few callers had called.
+Hothouse flowers, waxen and pale, had been left with messages of
+sympathy. Even Dr Critchett had respectfully and discreetly made
+inquiries on his way home from chapel.
+
+Lawford had spent most of his time in pacing to and fro in his soft
+slippers. The very monotony had eased his mind. Now and again he had
+lain motionless, with his face to the ceiling. He had dozed and had
+awakened, cold and torpid with dream. He had hardly been aware of
+the process, but every hour had done something, it seemed, towards
+clarifying his point of view. A consciousness had begun to stir in him
+that was neither that of the old, easy Lawford, whom he had never been
+fully aware of before, nor of this strange ghostly intelligence that
+haunted the hawklike, restless face, and plucked so insistently at his
+distracted nerves. He had begun in a vague fashion to be aware of them
+both, could in a fashion discriminate between them, almost as if there
+really were two spirits in stubborn conflict within him. It would, of
+course, wear him down in time. There could be only one end to such a
+struggle--THE end.
+
+All day he had longed for freedom, on and on, with craving for the open
+sky, for solitude, for green silence, beyond these maddening walls. This
+heedful silken coming and going, these Sunday voices, this reiterant
+yelp of a single peevish bell--would they never cease? And above all,
+betwixt dread and an almost physical greed, he hungered for night. He
+sat down with elbows on knees and head on his hands, thinking of night,
+its secrecy, its immeasurable solitude.
+
+His eyelids twitched; the fire before him had for an instant gone black
+out. He seemed to see slow-gesturing branches, grass stooping beneath
+a grey and wind-swept sky. He started up; and the remembrance of the
+morning returned to him--the glassy light, the changing rays, the
+beaming gilt upon the useless books. Now, at last, at the windows;
+afternoon had begun to wane. And when Sheila brought up his tea, as if
+Chance had heard his cry, she entered in hat and stole. She put down the
+tray, and paused at the glass, looking across it out of the window.
+
+'Alice says you are to eat every one of those delicious sandwiches, and
+especially the tiny omelette. You have scarcely touched anything to-day,
+Arthur. I am a poor one to preach, I am afraid; but you know what that
+will mean--a worse breakdown still. You really must try to think of--of
+us all.'
+
+'Are you going to church?' he asked in a low voice.
+
+'Not, of course, if you would prefer not. But Dr Simon advised me most
+particularly to go out at least once a day. We must remember, this is
+not the beginning of your illness. Long-continued anxiety, I suppose,
+does tell on one in time. Anyhow, he said that I looked worried and
+run-down. I AM worried. Let us both try for each other's sakes, or even
+if only for Alice's, to--to do all we can. I must not harass you; but is
+there any--do you see the slightest change of any kind?'
+
+'You always look pretty, Sheila; to-night you look prettier: THAT is the
+only change, I think.'
+
+Mrs Lawford's attitude intensified in its stillness. 'Now, speaking
+quite frankly, what is it in you suggests these remarks at such a time?
+That's what baffles me. It seems so childish, so needlessly blind.'
+
+'I am very sorry, Sheila, to be so childish. But I'm not, say what
+you like, blind. You ARE pretty: I'd repeat it if I was burning at the
+stake.'
+
+Sheila lowered her eyes softly on to the rich-toned picture in the
+glass. 'Supposing,' she said, watching her lips move, 'supposing--of
+course, I know you are getting better and all that--but supposing you
+don't change back as Mr Bethany thinks, what will you do? Honestly,
+Arthur, when I think over it calmly, the whole tragedy comes back on me
+with such a force it sweeps me off my feet; I am for the moment scarcely
+my own mistress. What would you do?'
+
+'I think, Sheila,' replied a low, infinitely weary voice, 'I think I
+should marry again.' It was the same wavering, faintly ironical voice
+that had slightly discomposed Dr Simon that same morning.
+
+'"Marry again"!' exclaimed incredulously the full lips in the
+looking-glass. 'Who?'
+
+'YOU, dear!'
+
+Sheila turned softly round, conscious in a most humiliating manner that
+she had ever so little flushed.
+
+Her husband was pouring out his tea, unaware, apparently, of her change
+of position. She watched him curiously. In spite of all her reason, of
+her absolute certainty, she wondered even again for a moment if this
+really could be Arthur. And for the first time she realised the power
+and mastery of that eager and far too hungry face. Her mind seemed to
+pause, fluttering in air, like a bird in the wind. She hastened rather
+unsteadily to the door.
+
+'Will you want anything more, do you think, for an hour?' she asked.
+
+Her husband looked up over his little table. 'Is Alice going with you?'
+
+'Oh yes; poor child, she looks so pale and miserable. We are going to
+Mrs Sherwin's, and then on to Church. You will lock your door?'
+
+'Yes, I will lock my door.'
+
+'And I do hope Arthur--nothing rash!'
+
+A change, that seemed almost the effect of actual shadow, came over his
+face. 'I wish you could stay with me,' he said slowly. 'I don't think
+you have any idea what--what I go through.'
+
+It was as if a child had asked on the verge of terror for a candle in
+the dark. But an hour's terror is better than a lifetime of timidity.
+Sheila sighed.
+
+'I think,' she said, 'I too might say that. But there; giving way will
+do nothing for either of us. I shall be gone only for an hour, or two
+at the most. And I told Mr Bethany I should have to come out before the
+sermon: it's only Mr Craik.'
+
+'But why Mrs Sherwin? She'd worm a secret out of one's grave.'
+
+'It's useless to discuss that, Arthur; you have always consistently
+disliked my friends. It's scarcely likely that you would find any
+improvement in them now.'
+
+'Oh, well--' he began. But the door was already closed.
+
+'Sheila!' he called in a burst of anger.
+
+'Well, Arthur?'
+
+'You have taken my latchkey.'
+
+Sheila came hastily in again. 'Your latchkey?'
+
+'I am going out.'
+
+'"Going out!"--you will not be so mad, so criminal; and after your
+promise!'
+
+He stood up. 'It is useless to argue. If I do not go out, I shall
+certainly go mad. As for criminal--why, that's a woman's word. Who on
+earth is to know me?'
+
+'It is of no consequence, then, that the servants are already gossiping
+about this impossible Dr Ferguson; that you are certain to be seen
+either going or returning; that Alice is bound to discover that you are
+well enough to go out, and yet not even enough to say good-night to your
+own daughter--oh, it's monstrous, it's a frantic, a heartless thing to
+do!' Her voice vaguely suggested tears.
+
+Lawford eyed her coldly and stubbornly--thinking of the empty room
+he would leave awaiting his return, its lamp burning, its fire-flames
+shining. It was almost a physical discomfort, this longing unspeakable
+for the twilight, the green secrecy and the silence of the graves. 'Keep
+them out of the way,' he said in a low voice; 'it will be dark when I
+come in.' His hardened face lit up. 'It's useless to attempt to dissuade
+me.'
+
+'Why must you always be hurting me? why do you seem to delight in trying
+to estrange me?' Husband and wife faced each other across the clear-lit
+room. He did not answer.
+
+'For the last time,' she said in a quiet, hard voice, 'I ask you not to
+go.'
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. 'Ask me not to come back,' he said; 'that's
+nearer your hope.' He turned his face to the fire. Without moving
+he heard her go out, return, pause, and go out again. And when he
+deliberately wheeled round in his chair the little key lay conspicuous
+there on the counterpane.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINE
+
+The last light of sunset lay in the west; and a sullen wrack of cloud
+was mounting into the windless sky when Lawford entered the country
+graveyard again by its dark weather-worn lych-gate. The old stone church
+with its square tower stood amid trees, its eastern window faintly aglow
+with crimson and purple. He could hear a steady, rather nasal voice
+through its open lattices. But the stooping stones and the cypresses
+were out of sight of its porch. He would not be seen down there. He
+paused a moment, however; his hat was drawn down over his eyes; he was
+shivering. Far over the harvest fields showed a growing pallor in
+the solitary seat beneath the cypresses. He stood hesitating, gazing
+steadily and yet half vacantly at the motionless figure, and in a while
+a face was lifted in his direction, and undisconcerted eyes calmly
+surveyed him.
+
+'I am afraid,' called Lawford rather nervously--'I hope I am not
+intruding?'
+
+'Not at all, not at all,' said the stranger. 'I have no privileges here;
+at least as yet.'
+
+Lawford again hesitated, then slowly advanced. 'It's astonishingly quiet
+and beautiful,' he said.
+
+The stranger turned his head to glance over the fields. 'Yes, it is,
+very,' he replied. There was the faintest accent, a little drawl of
+unfriendliness in the remark.
+
+'You often sit here?' Lawford persisted.
+
+The stranger raised his eyebrows. 'Oh yes, often.' He smiled. 'It is
+my own modest fashion of attending divine service. The congregation is
+rapt.'
+
+'My visits,' said Lawford, 'have been very few--in fact, so far as I
+know, I have only once been here before.'
+
+'I envy you the novelty.' There was again the same faint unmistakable
+antagonism in voice and attitude; and yet so deep was the relief in
+talking to a fellow creature who hadn't the least suspicion of anything
+unusual in his appearance that Lawford was extremely disinclined to turn
+back. He made another effort--for conversation with strangers had always
+been a difficulty to him--and advanced towards the seat. 'You mustn't
+please let me intrude upon you,' he said, 'but really I am very
+interested in this queer old place. Perhaps you would tell me something
+of its history?' He sat down. His companion moved slowly to the other
+side of the broken gravestone.
+
+'To tell you the truth,' he replied, picking his way as it were from
+word to word, 'it's "history," as people call it, does not interest me
+in the least. After all, it's not when a thing is, but what it is, that
+much matters. What this is'--he glanced, with head bent, across the
+shadowy stones, 'is pretty evident. Of course, age has its charms.'
+
+'And is this very old?'
+
+'Oh yes, it's old right enough, as things go; but even age, perhaps,
+is mainly an affair of the imagination. There's a tombstone near that
+little old hawthorn, and there are two others side by side under the
+wall, still even legibly late seventeenth century. That's pretty
+good weathering.' He smiled faintly. 'Of course, the church itself is
+centuries older, drenched with age. But she's still sleep-walking while
+these old tombstones dream. Glow-worms and crickets are not such bad
+bedfellows.'
+
+'What interested me most, I think,' said Lawford haltingly, 'was this.'
+He pointed with his stick to the grave at his feet.
+
+'Ah, yes, Sabathier's,' said the stranger; 'I know his peculiar history
+almost by heart.'
+
+Lawford found himself staring with unusual concentration into the
+rather long and pale face. 'Not, I suppose,' he resumed faintly--'not, I
+suppose, beyond what's there.'
+
+His companion leant his hand on the old stooping tombstone. 'Well, you
+know, there's a good deal there'--he stooped over--'if you read between
+the lines. Even if you don't.'
+
+'A suicide,' said Lawford, under his breath.
+
+'Yes, a suicide; that's why our Christian countrymen have buried him
+outside of the fold. Dead or alive, they try to keep the wolf out.'
+
+'Is this, then, unconsecrated ground?' said Lawford.
+
+'Haven't you noticed,' drawled the other, 'how green the grass grows
+down here, and how very sharp are poor old Sabathier's thorns? Besides,
+he was a stranger, and they--kept him out.'
+
+'But, surely,' said Lawford, 'was it so entirely a matter of choice--the
+laws of the Church? If he did kill himself, he did.'
+
+The stranger turned with a little shrug. 'I don't suppose it's a matter
+of much consequence to HIM. I fancied I was his only friend. May I
+venture to ask why you are interested in the poor old thing?'
+
+Lawford's mind was as calm and shallow as a millpond. 'Oh, a rather
+unusual thing happened to me here,' he said. 'You say you often come?'
+
+'Often,' said the stranger rather curtly.
+
+'Has anything--ever--occurred?'
+
+'"Occurred?"' He raised his eyebrows. 'I wish it had. I come here
+simply, as I have said, because it's quiet; because I prefer the company
+of those who never answer me back, and who do not so much as condescend
+to pay me the least attention.' He smiled and turned his face towards
+the quiet fields.
+
+Lawford, after a long pause, lifted his eyes. 'Do you think,' he said
+softly, 'it is possible one ever could?'
+
+'"One ever could?"'
+
+'Answer back?'
+
+There was a low rotting wall of stone encompassing Sabathier's grave;
+on this the stranger sat down. He glanced up rather curiously at his
+companion. 'Seldom the time and the place and the revenant altogether.
+The thought has occurred to others,' he ventured to add.
+
+'Of course, of course,' said Lawford eagerly. 'But it is an absolutely
+new one to me. I don't mean that I have never had such an idea, just in
+one's own superficial way; but'--he paused and glanced swiftly into the
+fast-thickening twilight--'I wonder: are they, do you think, really, all
+quite dead?'
+
+'Call and see!' taunted the stranger softly.
+
+'Ah, yes, I know,' said Lawford. 'But I believe in the resurrection of
+the body; that is what we say; and supposing, when a man dies--supposing
+it was most frightfully against one's will; that one hated the awful
+inaction that death brings, shutting a poor devil up like a child
+kicking against the door in a dark cupboard; one might surely one
+might--just quietly, you know, try to get out? wouldn't you?' he added.
+
+'And, surely,' he found himself beginning gently to argue again,
+'surely, what about, say, him?' He nodded towards the old and broken
+grave that lay between them.
+
+'What, Sabathier?' the other echoed, laying his hand upon the stone.
+
+And a sheer enormous abyss of silence seemed to follow the unanswerable
+question.
+
+'He was a stranger; it says so. Good God!' said Lawford, 'how he must
+have wanted to get home! He killed himself, poor wretch, think of the
+fret and fever he must have been in--just before. Imagine it.'
+
+'But it might, you know,' suggested the other with a smile--'might have
+been sheer indifference.'
+
+'"Nicholas Sabathier, Stranger to this parish"--no, no,' said Lawford,
+his heart beating as if it would choke him, 'I don't fancy it was
+indifference.'
+
+It was almost too dark now to distinguish the stranger's features but
+there seemed a faint suggestion of irony in his voice. 'And how do
+you suppose your angry naughty child would set about it? It's narrow
+quarters; how would he begin?'
+
+Lawford sat quite still. 'You say--I hope I am not detaining you--you
+say you have come here, sat here often, on this very seat; have you ever
+had--have you ever fallen asleep here?'
+
+'Why do you ask?' inquired the other curiously.
+
+'I was only wondering,' said Lawford. He was cold and shivering. He felt
+instinctively it was madness to sit on here in the thin gliding mist
+that had gathered in swathes above the grass, milk-pale in the rising
+moon. The stranger turned away from him.
+
+'"For in that sleep of death what dreams may come must give us pause,"'
+he said slowly, with a little satirical catch on the last word. 'What
+did you dream?'
+
+Lawford glanced helplessly about him. The moon cast lean grey beams
+of light between the cypresses. But to his wide and wandering eyes it
+seemed that a radiance other than hers haunted these mounds and leaning
+stones. 'Have you ever noticed it?' he said, putting out his hand
+towards his unknown companion; 'this stone is cracked from head to
+foot?... But there'--he rose stiff and chilled--'I am afraid I have
+bored you with my company. You came here for solitude, and I have been
+trying to convince you that we are surrounded with witnesses. You will
+forgive my intrusion?' There was a kind of old-fashioned courtesy in his
+manner that he himself was dimly aware of. He held out his hand.
+
+'I hope you will think nothing of the kind,' said the other earnestly;
+'how could it be in any sense an intrusion? It's the old story of
+Bluebeard. And I confess I too should very much like a peep into his
+cupboard. Who wouldn't? But there, it's merely a matter of time, I
+suppose.' He paused, and together they slowly ascended the path already
+glimmering with a heavy dew. At the porch they paused once more. And now
+it was the stranger that held out his hand.
+
+'Perhaps,' he said, 'you will give me the pleasure of some day
+continuing our talk. As for our friend below, it so happens that I have
+managed to pick up a little more of his history than the sexton seems to
+have heard of--if you would care some time or other to share it. I live
+only at the foot of the hill, not half a mile distant. Perhaps you could
+spare the time now?'
+
+Lawford took out his watch, 'You are really very kind,' he said. 'But,
+perhaps--well, whatever that history may be, I think you would agree
+that mine is even--but, there, I've talked too much about myself
+already. Perhaps to-morrow?'
+
+'Why, to-morrow, then,' said his companion. 'It's a flat wooden house,
+on the left-hand side. Come at any time of the evening'; he paused again
+and smiled--'the third house after the Rectory, which is marked up on
+the gate. My name is Herbert--Herbert Herbert to be precise.'
+
+Lawford took out his pocket-book and a card. 'Mine,' he said, handing
+it gravely to his companion. 'is Lawford--at least...' It was really the
+first time that either had seen the other's face at close quarters and
+clear-lit; and on Lawford's a moon almost at the full shone
+dazzlingly. He saw an expression--dismay, incredulity, overwhelming
+astonishment--start suddenly into the dark, rather indifferent eyes.
+
+'What is it?' he cried, hastily stooping close.
+
+'Why,' said the other, laughing and turning away, 'I think the moon must
+have bewitched me too.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TEN
+
+Lawford listened awhile before opening his door. He heard voices in the
+dining-room. A light shone faintly between the blinds of his bedroom. He
+very gently let himself in, and unheard, unseen, mounted the stairs. He
+sat down in front of the fire, tired out and bitterly cold in spite
+of his long walk home. But his mind was wearier even than his body. He
+tried in vain to catch up the thread of his thoughts. He only knew for
+certain that so far as his first hope and motives had gone his errand
+had proved entirely futile. 'How could I possibly fall asleep with that
+fellow talking there?' he had said to himself angrily; yet knew in his
+heart that their talk had driven every other idea out of his mind. He
+had not yet even glanced into the glass. His every thought was vainly
+wandering round and round the one curious hint that had drifted in, but
+which he had not yet been able to put into words.
+
+Supposing, though, that he had really fallen into a deep sleep, with
+none to watch or spy--what then? However ridiculous that idea, it was
+not more ridiculous, more incredible than the actual fact. If he had
+remained there, he might, it was just possible that he would by now,
+have actually awakened just his own familiar every-day self again. And
+the thought of that--though he hardly realised its full import--actually
+did send him on tip-toe for a glance that more or less effectually set
+the question at rest. And there looked out at him, it seemed, the
+same dark sallow face that had so much appalled him only two nights
+ago--expressionless, cadaverous, with shadowy hollows beneath the
+glittering eyes. And even as he watched it, its lips, of their own
+volition, drew together and questioned him--'Whose?'
+
+He was not to be given much leisure, however, for fantastic reveries
+like this. As he leaned his head on his hands, gladly conscious that he
+could not possibly bear this incessant strain for long, Sheila opened
+the door. He started up.
+
+'I wish you would knock,' he said angrily; 'you talk of quiet; you tell
+me to rest, and think; and here you come creeping and spying on me as
+if I was a child in a nursery. I refuse to be watched and guarded and
+peeped on like this.' He knew that his hands were trembling, that he
+could not keep his eyes fixed, that his voice was nearly inarticulate.
+
+Sheila drew in her lips. 'I have merely come to tell you, Arthur, that
+Mr Bethany has brought Mr Danton in to supper. He agrees with me it
+really would be advisable to take such a very old and prudent and
+practical friend into our confidence. You do nothing I ask of you. I
+simply cannot bear the burden of this incessant anxiety. Look, now, what
+your night walk has done for you! You look positively at death's door.'
+
+'What--what an instinct you have for the right word,' said Lawford
+softly. 'And Danton, of all people in the world! It was surely rather a
+curious, a thoughtless choice. Has he had supper?'
+
+'Why do you ask?'
+
+'He won't believe: too--bloated.'
+
+'I think,' said Sheila indignantly, 'it is hardly fair to speak of a
+very old and a very true friend of mine in such--well, vulgar terms as
+that. Besides, Arthur, as for believing--without in the least desiring
+to hurt your feelings--I must candidly warn you, some people won't.'
+
+'Come along,' said Lawford, with a faint gust of laughter; 'let's see.'
+
+They went quickly downstairs, Sheila with less dignity, perhaps, than
+she had been surprised into since she had left a slimmer girlhood
+behind. She swept into the gaze of the two gentlemen standing together
+on the hearthrug; and so was caught, as it were, between a rain of
+conflicting glances, for her husband had followed instantly, and stood
+now behind her, stooping a little, and with something between contempt
+and defiance confronting an old fat friend, whom that one brief
+challenging instant had congealed into a condition of passive and
+immovable hostility.
+
+Mr Danton composed his chin in his collar, and deliberately
+turned himself towards his companion. His small eyes wandered, and
+instantaneously met and rested on those of Mrs Lawford.
+
+'Arthur thought he would prefer to come down and see you himself.'
+
+'You take such formidable risks, Lawford,' said Mr Bethany in a dry,
+difficult voice.
+
+'Am I really to believe,' Danton began huskily. 'I am sure, Bethany,
+you will--My dear Mrs Lawford!' said he, stirring vaguely, glancing
+restlessly.
+
+'It was not my wish, Vicar, to come at all,' said a voice from the
+doorway. 'To tell you the truth, I am too tired to care a jot either
+way. And'--he lifted a long arm--'I must positively refuse to produce
+the least, the remotest proof that I am not, so far as I am personally
+aware, even the Man in the Moon. Danton at heart was always an
+incorrigible sceptic. Aren't you, T. D.? You pride your dear old brawn
+on it in secret?'
+
+'I really--' began Danton in a rich still voice.
+
+'Oh, but you know you are,' drawled on the slightly hesitating
+long-drawn syllables; 'it's your parochial metier. Firm, unctuous,
+subtle, scepticism; and to that end your body flourishes. You were born
+fat; you became fat; and fat, my dear Danton, has been deliberately
+thrust on you--in layers! Lampreys! You'll perish of surfeit some day,
+of sheer Dantonism. And fat, postmortem, Danton. Oh, what a basting's
+there!'
+
+Mr Bethany, with a convulsive effort, woke. He turned swiftly on Mrs
+Lawford. 'Why, why, could you not have seen?' he cried.
+
+'It's no good, Vicar. She's all sheer Laodicean. Blow hot, blow cold.
+North, south, east, west--to have a weathercock for a wife is to marry
+the wind. There's nothing to be got from poor Sheila but....
+
+'Lawford!' the little man's voice was as sharp as the crack of a whip;
+'I forbid it. Do you hear me? I forbid it. Some self-command; my dear
+good fellow, remember, remember it's only the will, the will that keeps
+us breathing.'
+
+Lawford peered as if out of a gathering dusk, that thickened and
+flickered with shadows before his eyes. 'What's he mean, then,' he
+muttered huskily, 'coming here with his black, still carcase--peeping,
+peeping--what's he mean, I say?' There was a moment's silence. Then with
+lifted brows and wide eyes that to every one of his three witnesses
+left an indelible memory of clear and wolfish light within their glassy
+pupils, he turned heavily, and climbed back to his solitude.
+
+'I suppose,' began Danton, with an obvious effort to disentangle himself
+from the humiliation of the moment, 'I suppose he was--wandering?'
+
+'Bless me, yes,' said Mr Bethany cordially--'fever. We all know what
+that MEANS.'
+
+'Yes,' said Danton, taking refuge in Mrs Lawford's white and intent
+gaze.
+
+'Just think, think, Danton--the awful, incessant strain of such an
+ordeal. Think for an instant what such a thing means!'
+
+Danton inserted a plump, white finger between collar and chin. 'Oh yes.
+But--eh?--needlessly abusive? I never SAID I disbelieved him.'
+
+'Do you?' said Mrs Lawford's voice.
+
+He poised himself, as if it were, on the monolithic stability of his
+legs. 'Eh?' he said.
+
+Mr Bethany sat down at the table. 'I rather feared some such temporary
+breakdown as this, Danton. I think I foresaw it. And now, just while we
+are all three alone here together in friendly conclave, wouldn't it be
+as well, don't you think, to confront ourselves with the difficulties?
+I know--we all know, that that poor half-demented creature IS Arthur
+Lawford. This morning he was as sane, as lucid as I hope I am now. An
+awful calamity has suddenly fallen upon him--this change. I own frankly
+at the first sheer shock it staggered me as I think for the moment it
+has staggered you. But when I had seen the poor fellow face to face,
+heard him talk, and watched him there upstairs in the silence stir and
+awake and come up again to his trouble out of his sleep. I had no more
+doubt in my own mind and heart that he was he than I have in my mind
+that I--am I. We do in some mysterious way, you'll own at once, grow so
+accustomed, so inured, if you like, to each other's faces (masks
+though they be) that we hardly realise we see them when we are speaking
+together. And yet the slightest, the most infinitesimal change is
+instantly apparent.'
+
+'Oh yes, Vicar; but you see--'
+
+Mr Bethany raised a small lean hand: 'One moment, please. I have heard
+Lawford's own account. Conscious or unconscious, he has been through
+some terrific strain, some such awful conflict with the unseen powers
+that we--thank God!--have only read about, and never perhaps, until
+death is upon us, shall witness for ourselves. What more likely, more
+inevitable than that such a thing should leave its scar, its cloud, its
+masking shadow?--call it what you will. A smile can turn a face we dread
+into a face we'd die for. Some experience, which would be nothing but
+a hideous cruelty and outrage to ask too closely about--one, perhaps,
+which he could, even if he would, poor fellow, give no account of--has
+put him temporarily at the world's mercy. They made him a nine days'
+wonder, a byword. And that, my dear Danton, is just where we come in.
+We know the man himself; and it is to be our privilege to act as a
+buffer-state, to be intermediaries between him and the rest of this
+deadly, craving, sheepish world--for the time being; oh yes, just for
+the time being. Other and keener and more knowledgeable minds than mine
+or yours will some day bring him back to us again. We don't attempt to
+explain; we can't. We simply believe.'
+
+But Danton merely continued to stare, as if into the quiet of an
+aquarium.
+
+'My dear good Danton,' persisted Mr Bethany with cherubic patience, 'how
+old are you?'
+
+'I don't see quite...' smiled Danton with recovered ease, and
+rapidly mobilising forces. 'Excuse the confidence, Mrs Lawford, I'm
+forty-three.'
+
+'Good,' said Mr Bethany; 'and I'm seventy-one, and this child here'--he
+pointed an accusing finger at Sheila--is youth perpetual. So,' he
+briskly brightened, 'say, between us we're six score all told. Are
+we--can we, deliberately, with this mere pinch of years at our command
+out of the wheeling millions that have gone--can we say, "This is
+impossible," to any single phenomenon? CAN we?'
+
+'No, we can't, of course,' said Danton formidably. 'Not finally. That's
+all very well, but'--he paused, and nodded, nodding his round head
+upward as if towards the inaudible overhead, 'I suppose he can't HEAR?'
+
+Mr Bethany rose cheerfully. 'All right, Danton; I am afraid you are
+exactly what the poor fellow in his delirium solemnly asseverated.
+And, jesting apart, it is in delirium that we tell our sheer, plain,
+unadulterated truth: you're a nicely covered sceptic. Personally, I
+refuse to discuss the matter. Mere dull, stubborn prejudice; bigotry, if
+you like. I will only remark just this--that Mrs Lawford and I, in our
+inmost hearts, know. You, my dear Danton, forgive the freedom, merely
+incredulously grope. Faith versus Reason--that prehistoric Armageddon.
+Some day, and a day not far distant either, Lawford will come back
+to us. This--this shutter will be taken down as abruptly as by some
+inconceivably drowsy heedlessness of common Nature it has been put
+up. He'll win through; and of his own sheer will and courage. But now,
+because I ask it, and this poor child here entreats it, you will say
+nothing to a living soul about the matter, say, till Friday? What
+step-by-step creatures we are, to be sure! I say Friday because it
+will be exactly a week then. And what's a week?--to Nature scarcely
+the unfolding of a rose. But still, Friday be it. Then, if nothing has
+occurred, we will, we shall HAVE to call a friendly gathering, we shall
+be compelled to have a friendly consultation.'
+
+'I'm not, I hope, a brute, Bethany,' said Danton apologetically; 'but,
+honestly, speaking for myself, simply as a man of the world, it's a
+big risk to be taking on--what shall we call it?--on mere intuition.
+Personally, and even in a court of law--though Heaven forbid it ever
+reaches that stage--personally, I could swear that the fellow that stood
+abusing me there, in that revolting fashion, was not Lawford. It would
+be easier even to believe in him, if there were not that--that glaze,
+that shocking simulation of the man himself, the very man. But then, I
+am a sceptic; I own it. And 'pon my word, Mrs Lawford, there's plenty of
+room for sceptics in a world like this.'
+
+'Very well,' said Mr Bethany crisply, 'that's settled, then. With your
+permission, my dear,' he added, turning untarnishably clear childlike
+eyes on Sheila, 'I will take all risks--even to the foot of the gibbet:
+accessory, Danton, AFTER the fact.' And so direct and cloudless was his
+gaze that Sheila tried in vain to evade it and to catch a glimpse
+of Danton's small agate-like eyes, now completely under mastery, and
+awaiting confidently the meeting with her own.
+
+'Of course,' she said, 'I am entirely in your hands, dear Mr Bethany.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN
+
+Lawford slept far into the cloudy Monday morning, to wake steeped in
+sleep, lethargic, and fretfully haunted by inconclusive remembrances
+of the night before. When Sheila, with obvious and capacious composure,
+brought him his breakfast tray, he watched her face for some time
+without speaking.
+
+'Sheila,' he began, as she was about to leave the room again.
+
+She paused, smiling.
+
+'Did anything happen last night? Would you mind telling me, Sheila? Who
+was it was here?'
+
+Her lids the least bit narrowed. 'Certainly, Arthur; Mr Danton was
+here.'
+
+'Then it was not a dream?'
+
+'Oh no,' said Sheila.
+
+'What did I say? What did HE say? It was hopeless, anyhow.'
+
+'I don't quite understand what you mean by "hopeless," Arthur. And must
+I answer the other questions?'
+
+Lawford drew his hand over his face, like a tired child. 'He
+didn't--believe?'
+
+'No, dear,' said Sheila softly.
+
+'And you, Sheila?' came the subdued voice.
+
+Sheila crossed slowly to the window. 'Well, quite honestly, Arthur, I
+was not very much surprised. Whatever we are agreed about on the whole,
+you were scarcely yourself last night.'
+
+Lawford shut his eyes, and re-opened them full on his wife's calm
+scrutiny, who had in that moment turned in the light of the one drawn
+blind to face him again.
+
+'Who is? Always?'
+
+'No,' said Sheila; 'but--it was at least unfortunate. We can't, I
+suppose, rely on Dr Bethany alone.'
+
+Lawford crouched over his food. 'Will he blab?'
+
+'Blab! Mr Danton is a gentleman, Arthur.'
+
+Lawford rolled his eyes as if in temporary vertigo. 'Yes,' he said. And
+Sheila once more prepared to make a reposeful exit.
+
+'I don't think I can see Simon this morning.'
+
+'Oh. Who, then?'
+
+'I mean I would prefer to be left alone.'
+
+'Believe me, I had no intention to intrude.' And this time the door
+really closed.
+
+'He is in a quiet, soothing sleep,' said Sheila a few minutes later.
+
+'Nothing could be better,' said Dr Simon; and Lawford, to his
+inexpressible relief, heard the fevered throbbing of the doctor's car
+reverse, and turned over and shut his eyes, dulled and exhausted in
+the still unfriendliness of the vacant room. His spirits had sunk,
+he thought, to their lowest ebb. He scarcely heeded the fragments of
+dreams--clear, green landscapes, amazing gleams of peace, the
+sudden broken voices, the rustling and calling shadowiness of
+subconsciousness--in this quiet sunlight of reality. The clouds had
+broken, or had been withdrawn like a veil from the October skies. One
+thought alone was his refuge; one face alone haunted him with its
+peace; one remembrance soothed him--Alice. Through all his scattered
+and purposeless arguments he strove to remember her voice, the
+loving-kindness of her eyes, her untroubled confidence.
+
+In the afternoon he got up and dressed himself. He could not bring
+himself to stand before the glass and deliberately shave. He even smiled
+at the thought of playing the barber to that lean chin. He dressed by
+the fireplace.
+
+'I couldn't rest,' he told Sheila, when she presently came in on one
+of her quiet, cautious, heedful visits; 'and one tires of reading even
+Quain in bed.'
+
+'Have you found anything?' she inquired politely.
+
+'Oh yes,' said Lawford wearily; 'I have discovered that infinitely
+worse things are infinitely commoner. But that there's nothing quite so
+picturesque.'
+
+'Tell me,' said Sheila, with refreshing naivete. 'How does it feel? does
+it even in the slightest degree affect your mind?'
+
+He turned his back and looked up at his broad gilt portrait for
+inspiration. 'Practically, not at all,' he said hollowly. 'Of course,
+one's nerves--that fellow Danton--when one's overtired. You have'--his
+voice, in spite of every effort, faintly quavered--'YOU haven't noticed
+anything? My mind?'
+
+'Me? Oh dear, no! I never was the least bit observant; you know
+that, Arthur. But apart from that, and I hope you will not think me
+unsympathetic--but don't you think we must sooner or later be thinking
+of what's to be done? At present, though I fully agree with Mr Bethany
+as to the wisdom of hushing this unhappy business up as long as
+possible, at least from the gossiping outside world, still we are only
+standing still. And your malady, dear, I suppose, isn't. You WILL help
+me, Arthur? You will try and think? Poor Alice!'
+
+'What about Alice?'
+
+'She mopes, dear, rather. She cannot, of course, quite understand why
+she must not see her father, and yet his not being, or, for the matter
+of that, even if he was, at death's door.'
+
+'At death's door,' murmured Lawford under his breath; 'who was it
+was saying that? Have you ever, Sheila, in a dream, or just as one's
+thoughts go sometimes, seen that door?...its ruinous stone lintel carved
+into lichenous stone heads...stonily silent in the last thin sunlight,
+hanging in peace unlatched. Heated, hunted, in agony--in that cold,
+green-clad shadowed porch is haven and sanctuary....But beyond--O God,
+beyond!'
+
+Sheila stood listening with startled eyes. 'And was all that in Quain?'
+she inquired rather flutteringly.
+
+Lawford turned a sidelong head, and looked steadily at his wife.
+
+She shook herself, with a slight shiver. 'Very well, then,' she said and
+paused in the silence.
+
+Her husband yawned, and smiled, and almost as if lit with that thin last
+sunshine seemed the smile that passed for an instant across the reverie
+of his shadowy face. He drew a hand wearily over his eyes. 'What has he
+been saying now?' he inquired like a fretful child.
+
+Sheila stood very quiet and still, as if in fear of scaring some rare,
+wild, timid creature by the least stir. 'Who?' she merely breathed.
+
+Lawford paused on the hearth-rug with his comb in his hand. 'It's just
+the last rags of that beastly influenza,' he said, and began vigorously
+combing his hair. And yet, simple and frank though the action was, it
+moved Sheila, perhaps, more than any other of the congested occurrences
+of the last few days. Her forehead grew suddenly cold, the palms of
+her hands began to ache, she had to hasten out of the room to avoid
+revealing the sheer physical repulsion she had experienced.
+
+But Lawford, quite unmindful of the shock, continued in a kind of
+heedless reverie to watch, as he combed, the still visionary thoughts
+that passed in tranced stillness before his eyes. He longed beyond
+measure for freedom that until yesterday he had not even dreamed existed
+outside the covers of some old impossible romance--the magic of the
+darkening sky, the invisible flocking presences of the dead, the shock
+of imaginations that had no words, of quixotic emotions which the
+stranger had stirred in that low, mocking, furtive talk beside the
+broken stones of the Huguenot. Was the 'change' quite so monstrous, so
+meaningless? How often, indeed, he remembered curiously had he seemed to
+be standing outside these fast-shut gates of thought, that now had been
+freely opened to him.
+
+He drew ajar the door, and leant his ear to listen. From far away came
+a rich, long-continued chuckle of laughter, followed by the clatter of a
+falling plate, and then, still more uncontrollable laughter. There was a
+faint smell of toast on the air. Lawford ventured out on to the landing
+and into a little room that had once, in years gone by, been Alice's
+nursery. He stood far back from the strip of open window that showed
+beneath the green blind, craning forward to see into the garden--the
+trees, their knotted trunks, and then, as he stole nearer, a flower-bed,
+late roses, geraniums, calceolarias, the lawn and--yes, three wicker
+chairs, a footstool, a work-basket, a little table on the smooth grass
+in the honey-coloured sunshine; and Sheila sitting there in the autumnal
+sunlight, her hands resting on the arms of her chair, her head bent,
+evidently deeply engrossed in her thoughts. He crept an inch or two
+forward, and stooped. There was a hat on the grass--Alice's big garden
+hat--and beside it lay Flitters, nose on paws, long ears sagging. He
+had forgotten Flitters. Had Flitters forgotten him? Would he bark at the
+strange, distasteful scent of a--Dr Ferguson? The coast was clear, then.
+He turned even softlier yet, to confront, rapt, still, and hovering
+betwixt astonishment and dread, the blue calm eyes of his daughter,
+looking in at the door. It seemed to Lawford as if they had both been
+suddenly swept by some unseen power into a still, unearthly silence.
+
+'We thought,' he began at last, 'we thought just to beckon Mrs Lawford
+from the window. He--he is asleep.'
+
+Alice nodded. Her whole face was in a moment flooded with red. It ebbed
+and left her pale. 'I will go down and tell mother you want to see her.
+It was very silly of me. I did not quite recognise at first...I suppose,
+thinking of my father--' The words faltered, and the eyes were lifted to
+his face again with a desolate, incredulous appeal. Lawford turned away
+heartsick and trembling.
+
+'Certainly, certainly, by no means,' he began, listening vaguely to the
+glib patter that seemed to come from another mouth. 'Your father,
+my dear young lady, I venture to think is now really on the road to
+recovery. Dr Simon makes excellent progress. But, of course--two heads,
+we know, are so much better than one when there's the least--the least
+difficulty. The great thing is quiet, rest, isolation, no possibility of
+a shock, else--' His voice fell away, his eloquence failed.
+
+For Alice stood gazing stirlessly on and on into this infinitely
+strange, infinitely familiar shadowy, phantasmal face. 'Oh yes,' she
+replied, 'I quite understand, of course; but if I might just peep even,
+it would--I should be so much, much happier. Do let me just see him,
+Dr Ferguson, if only his head on the pillow! I wouldn't even breathe.
+Couldn't it possibly help--even a faith-cure?' She leant forward
+impulsively, her voice trembling, anal her eyes still shining beneath
+their faint, melancholy smile.
+
+'I fear, my dear...it cannot be. He longs to see you. But with his mind,
+you know, in this state, it might--?'
+
+'But mother never told me,' broke in the girl desperately, 'there was
+anything wrong with his MIND. Oh, but that was quite unfair. You don't
+mean, you don't mean--that--?'
+
+Lawford scanned swiftly the little square beloved and memoried room that
+fate had suddenly converted for him into a cage of unspeakable pain
+and longing. 'Oh no; believe me, no! Not his brain, not that, not even
+wandering; really: but always thinking, always longing on and on for
+you, dear, only. Quite, quite master of himself, but--'
+
+'You talk,' she broke in again angrily, 'only in pretence! You are
+treating me like a child; and so does mother, and so it has been ever
+since I came home. Why, if mother can, and you can, why may not I? Why,
+if he can walk and talk in the night....'
+
+'But who--who "can walk and talk in the night?"' inquired a low stealthy
+voice out of the quietness behind her.
+
+Alice turned swiftly. Her mother was standing at a little distance, with
+all the calm and moveless concentration of a waxwork figure, looking up
+at her from the staircase.
+
+'I was--I was talking to Dr Ferguson, mother.'
+
+'But as I came up the stairs I understood you to be inquiring something
+of Dr Ferguson, "if," you were saying, "he can walk and talk in the
+night": you surely were not referring to your father, child? That could
+not possibly be, in his state. Dr Ferguson, I know, will bear me out
+in that at least. And besides, I really must insist on following out
+medical directions to the letter. Dr Ferguson I know, will fully concur.
+Do, pray, Dr Ferguson,' continued Sheila, raising her voice even now
+scarcely above a rapid murmur--'do pray assure my daughter that she must
+have patience; that however much even he himself may desire it, it is
+impossible that she should see her father yet. And now, my dear child,
+come down, I want to have a moment's talk with Dr Ferguson. I feared
+from his beckoning at the window that something was amiss.'
+
+Alice turned, dismayed, and looked steadily, almost with hostility,
+at the stranger, so curiously transfixed and isolated in her small old
+play-room. And in this scornful yet pleading confrontation her eye fell
+suddenly on the pin in his scarf--the claw and the pearl she had known
+all her life. From that her gaze flitted, like some wild demented
+thing's, over face, hair, hands, clothes, attitude, expression, and her
+heart stood still in an awful, inarticulate dread of the unknown. She
+turned slowly towards her mother, groped forward a few steps, turned
+once more, stretching out her hands towards the vague still figure
+whose eyes had called so piteously to her out of their depths, and fell
+fainting in the doorway. Lawford stood motionless, vacantly watching
+Sheila, who knelt, chafing the cold hands. 'She has fainted?' he said;
+'oh, Sheila, tell me--only fainted?'
+
+Sheila made no answer; did not even raise her eyes.
+
+'Some day, Sheila' he began in a dull voice, and broke off, and without
+another word, without even another glance at the still face and blue,
+twitching lids, he passed her rapidly by, and in another instant Sheila
+heard the house-door shut. She got up quickly, and after a glance into
+the vacant bedroom turned the key; then she hastened upstairs for sal
+volatile and eau de cologne....
+
+It was yet clear daylight when Lawford appeared beneath the portico of
+his house. With a glance of circumspection that almost seemed to suggest
+a fear of pursuit, he descended the steps, only to be made aware in so
+doing that Ada was with a kind of furtive eagerness pointing out the
+mysterious Dr Ferguson to a steadily gazing cook. One or two well-known
+and many a well-remembered face he encountered in the thin stream of
+City men treading blackly along the pavement. It was a still, high
+evening, and something very like a forlorn compassion rose in his mind
+at sight of their grave, rather pretentious, rather dull, respectable
+faces.
+
+He found himself walking with an affectation of effrontery, and smiling
+with a faint contempt on all alike, as if to keep himself from slinking,
+and the wolf out of his eyes. He felt restless, and watchful, and
+suspicious, as if he had suddenly come down in the world. His, then, was
+a disguise as effectual as a shabby coat and a glazing eye. His
+heart sickened. Was it even worth while living on a crust of social
+respectability so thin and so exquisitely treacherous? He challenged
+no one. One or two actual acquaintances raised and lowered a faintly
+inquiring eyebrow in his direction. One even recalled in his confusion
+a smile of recognition just a moment too late. There was, it seemed,
+a peculiar aura in Lawford's presence, a shadow of a something in his
+demeanour that proved him alien.
+
+None the less green Widderstone kept calling him, much as a bell in the
+imagination tolls on and on, the echo of reality. If the worst should
+come to the worst, why--there is pasture in the solitary by-ways for
+the beast that strays. He quickened his pace along lonelier streets,
+and soon strode freely through the little flagged and cobbled village of
+shops, past the same small jutting window whose clock had told him the
+hour on that first dark hurried night. All was pale and faint with dying
+colours now; and decay was in the leaf, and the last swallows filled
+the gold air with their clashing stillness. No one heeded him here. He
+looked from side to side, exulting in the strangeness. Shops were
+left behind, the last milestone passed, and in a little while he was
+descending the hill beneath the elm boughs, which he remembered had
+stood like a turreted wall against the sunset when first he had wandered
+down into the churchyard.
+
+At the foot of the hill he passed by the green and white Rectory, and
+there was the parson, a short fat, pursy man with wrists protruding from
+his jacket sleeves as he stood on tip-toe tying up a rambling rose-shoot
+on his trim cedared lawn. The next house barely showed its old red
+chimney-tops, above its bowers; the next was empty, with windows
+vacantly gazing, its paths peopled with great bearded weeds that stood
+mutely watching and guarding the seldom-opened gate. Then came more
+lofty grandmotherly elms, a dense hedge of every leaf that pricks, and
+then Lawford found himself standing at the small canopied gate of
+the queer old wooden house that the stranger of his talk had in part
+described.
+
+It stood square and high and dark in a small amphitheatre of verdure.
+Roses here and there sprang from the grass, and a narrow box-edged path
+led to a small door in a low green-mantled wing, with its one square
+window above the porch. And while, with vacant mind, Lawford stood
+waiting, as one stands forebodingly upon the eve of a new experience he
+heard as if at a distance the sound of falling water. He still paused on
+the country roadside, scrutinising this strange, still, wooden presence;
+but at last with an effort he pushed open the gate, followed the winding
+path, and pulled the old iron hanging bell. There came presently a
+quiet tread, and Herbert himself opened the door which led into a
+little square wood-panelled hall, hung with queer old prints and obscure
+portraits in dark frames.
+
+'Ah, yes, come in, Mr Lawford,' he drawled; 'I was beginning to be
+afraid you were not coming.'
+
+Lawford laid hat and walking-stick on an oak bench, and followed his
+churchyard companion up a slightly inclined corridor and a staircase
+into a high room, covered far up the yellowish walls with old books on
+shelves and in cases, between which hung in little black frames, mezzo
+tints, etchings, and antiquated maps. A large table stood a few paces
+from the deep alcove of the window, which was surrounded by a low,
+faded, green seat, and was screened from the sunshine by wooden
+shutters. And here the tranquil surge of falling water shook incessantly
+on the air, for the three lower casements stood open to the fading
+sunset. On a smaller table were spread cups, old earthenware dishes of
+fruit, and a big bowl of damask roses.
+
+'Please sit down; I shan't be a moment; I am not sure that my sister is
+in; but if so, I will tell her we are ready for tea.' Left to himself
+in this quiet, strange old room, Lawford forgot for a while everything
+else, he was for the moment so taken up with his surroundings.
+
+What seized on his fancy and strangely affected his mind was this
+incessant changing roar of falling water. It must be the Widder, he said
+to himself, flowing close to the walls. But not until he had had the
+boldness to lean head and shoulders out of the nearest window did he
+fully realize how close indeed the Widder was. It came sweeping dark
+and deep and begreened and full with the early autumnal rains, actually
+against the lower walls of the house itself, and in the middle suddenly
+swerved in a black, smooth arch, and tumbled headlong into a great
+pool, nodding with tall slender water-weeds, and charged in its bubbled
+blackness here and there with the last crimson of the setting sun. To
+the left of the house, where the waters floated free again, stood vast,
+still trees above the clustering rushes; and in glimpses between their
+spreading boughs lay the far-stretching countryside, now dimmed with the
+first mists of approaching evening. So absorbed he became as he stood
+leaning over the wooden sill above the falling water, that eye and ear
+became enslaved by the roar and stillness. And in the faint atmosphere
+of age that seemed like a veil to hang about the odd old house and these
+prodigious branches, he fell into a kind of waking dream.
+
+When at last he did draw back into the room it was perceptibly darker,
+and a thin keen shaft of recollection struck across his mind--the
+recollection of what he was, and of how he came to be there, his reasons
+for coming and of that dark indefinable presence which like a raven had
+begun to build its dwelling in his mind. He sat on, his eyes restlessly
+wandering, his face leaning on his hands; and in a while the door opened
+and Herbert returned, carrying an old crimson and green teapot and a
+dish of hot cakes.
+
+'They're all out,' he said; 'sister, Sallie, and boy; but these were in
+the oven, so we won't wait. I hope you haven't been very much bored.'
+
+Lawford dropped his hands from his face and smiled. 'I have been looking
+at the water,' he said.
+
+'My sister's favorite occupation; she sits for hours and hours, with not
+even a book for an apology, staring down into the black old roaring pot.
+It has a sort of hypnotic effect after a time. And you'd be surprised
+how quickly one gets used to the noise. To me it's even less distracting
+than sheer silence. You don't know, after all, what on earth sheer
+silence means--even at Widderstone. But one can just realize a
+water-nymph. They chatter; but, thank Heaven, it's not articulate.' He
+handed Lawford a cup with a certain niceness and self-consciousness,
+lifting his eyebrows slightly as he turned.
+
+Lawford found himself listening out of a peculiar stillness of mind
+to the voice of this suave and rather inscrutable acquaintance. 'The
+curious thing is, do you know,' he began rather nervously, 'that though
+I must have passed your gate at least twice in the last few months, I
+have never noticed it before, never even caught the sound of the water.'
+
+'No, that's the best of it; nobody ever does. We are just buried alive.
+We have lived here for years, and scarcely know a soul--not even our
+own, perhaps. Why on earth should one? Acquaintances, after all, are
+little else than a bad habit.'
+
+'But then, what about me?' said Lawford.
+
+'But that's just it,' said Herbert. 'I said ACQUAINTANCES; that's just
+exactly what I'm going to prove--what very old friends we are. You've no
+idea! It really is rather queer.' He took up his cup and sauntered over
+to the window.
+
+Lawford eyed him vacantly for a moment, and, following rather his
+own curious thoughts than seeking any light on this somewhat vague
+explanation, again broke the silence. 'It's odd, I suppose, but this
+house affects me much in the same way as Widderstone does. I'm not
+particularly fanciful--at least, I used not to be. But sitting here I
+seem, I hope it isn't a very frantic remark, it seems as though, if only
+my ears would let me, I should hear--well, voices. It's just what you
+said about the silence. I suppose it's the age of the place; it IS very
+old?'
+
+'Pretty old, I suppose; it's worm-eaten and rat-eaten and tindery enough
+in all conscience; and the damp doesn't exactly foster it. It's a queer
+old shanty. There are two or three accounts of it in some old local
+stuff I have. And of course there's a ghost.'
+
+'A ghost?' echoed Lawford, looking up.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE
+
+What's in a name?' laughed Herbert. 'But it really is a queer show-up of
+human oddity. A fellow comes in here, searching; that's all.' His back
+was turned, as he stood staring absently out, sipping his tea between
+his sentences. 'He comes in--oh, it's a positive fact, for I've seen him
+myself, just sitting back in my chair here, you know, watching him as
+one would a tramp in one's orchard.' He cast a candid glance over his
+shoulder. 'First he looks round, like a prying servant. Then he comes
+cautiously on--a kind of grizzled, fawn-coloured face, middle-size, with
+big hands; and then just like some quiet, groping, nocturnal creature,
+he begins his precious search--shelves, drawers that are not here,
+cupboards gone years ago, questing and nosing no end, and quite
+methodically too, until he reaches the window. Then he stops, looks
+back, narrows his foxy lids, listens--quite perceptibly, you know, a
+kind of gingerish blur; then he seems to open this corner bookcase here,
+as if it were a door and goes out along what I suppose might at some
+time have been an outside gallery or balcony, unless, as I rather fancy,
+the house extended once beyond these windows. Anyhow, out he goes quite
+deliberately, treading the air as lightly as Botticelli's angels,
+until, however far you lean out of the window, you can't follow him any
+further. And then--and this is the bit that takes one's fancy--when you
+have contentedly noddled down again to whatever you may have been doing
+when the wretch appeared, or are sitting in a cold sweat, with bolting
+eyes awaiting developments, just according to your school of thought,
+or of nerves, the creature comes back--comes back; and with what looks
+uncommonly like a lighted candle in his hand. That really is a thrill, I
+assure you.'
+
+'But you've seen this--you've really seen this yourself?'
+
+'Oh yes, twice,' replied Herbert cheerfully. 'And my sister, quite
+by haphazard, once saw him from the garden. She was shelling peas one
+evening for Sallie, and she distinctly saw him shamble out of the window
+here, and go shuffling along, mid-air, across the roaring washpot down
+below, turn sharp round the high corner of the house, sheer against
+the stars, in a kind of frightened hurry. And then, after five minutes'
+concentrated watching over the shucks, she saw him come shuffling back
+again--the same distraction, the same nebulous snuff colour, and a
+candle trailing its smoke behind him as he whisked in home.'
+
+'And then?'
+
+'Ah, then,' said Herbert, lagging along the bookshelves, and scanning
+the book-backs with eyes partially closed: he turned with lifted teapot,
+and refilled his visitor's cup; 'then, wherever you are--I mean,' he
+added, cutting up a little cake into six neat slices, 'wherever the
+chance inmate of the room happens to be, he comes straight for you, at
+a quite alarming velocity, and fades, vanishes, melts, or, as it were,
+silts inside.'
+
+Lawford listened in a curious hush that had suddenly fallen over his
+mind. '"Fades inside? silts?"--I'm awfully stupid, but what on earth
+do you mean?' The room had slowly emptied itself of daylight; its own
+darkness, it seemed, had met that of the narrowing night, and Herbert
+deliberately lit a cigarette before replying. His clear pale face, with
+its smooth outline and thin mouth and rather long dark eyes, turned with
+a kind of serene good-humour towards his questioner.
+
+'Why,' he said, 'I mean frankly just that. Besides, it's Grisel's own
+phrase; and an old nurse we used to have said much the same. He comes,
+or IT comes towards you, first just walking, then with a kind of
+gradually accelerated slide or glide, and sweeps straight into you,' he
+tapped his chest, 'me, whoever it may be is here. In a kind of panic, I
+suppose, to hide, or perhaps simply to get back again.'
+
+'Get back where?'
+
+'Be resumed, as it were, via you. You see, I suppose he is compelled to
+regain his circle, or Purgatory, or Styx, whatever you like to call it,
+via consciousness. No one present, then no revenant or spook, or
+astral body, or hallucination: what's in a name? And of course even an
+hallucination is mind-stuff, and on its own, as it were. What I mean is
+that the poor devil must have some kind of human personality to get back
+through in order to make his exit from our sphere of consciousness
+into his. And naturally, of course to make his entrance too. If like
+a tenuous smoke he can get in, the probability is that he gets out
+in precisely the same fashion. For really, if you weren't consciously
+expecting the customary impact (you actually jerk forward in the act of
+resistance unresisted), you would not notice his going. I am afraid I
+must be horribly boring you with all these tangled theories. All I mean
+is, that if you were really absorbed in what you happened to be doing at
+the time, the thing might come and go, with your mind for entrance and
+exit, as it were, without your being conscious of it at all.' There was
+a longish pause, in which Herbert slowly inhaled and softly breathed out
+his smoke.
+
+'And what--what is the poor wretch searching FOR? And what--why, what
+becomes of him when he does go?'
+
+'Ah, there you have me! One merely surmises just as one's temperament or
+convictions lean. Grisel says it's some poor derelict soul in search of
+peace--that the poor beggar wants finally to die, in fact, and can't.
+Sallie smells crime. After all, what is every man?' he talked on; 'a
+horde of ghosts--like a Chinese nest of boxes--oaks that were acorns
+that were oaks. Death lies behind us, not in front--in our ancestors,
+back and back, until--'
+
+'"Until?"' Lawford managed to remark.
+
+'Ah, that settles me again. Don't they call it an amoeba? But really I
+am abjectly ignorant of all that kind of stuff. We are ALL we are, and
+all in a sense we care to dream we are. And for that matter, anything
+outlandish, bizarre, is a godsend in this rather stodgy life. It is
+after all just what the old boy said--it's only the impossible that's
+credible; whatever credible may mean....'
+
+It seemed to Lawford as if the last remark had wafted him bodily into
+the presence of his kind, blinking, intensely anxious old friend, Mr
+Bethany. And what leagues asunder the two men were who had happened on
+much the same words to express their convictions.
+
+He drew his hand gropingly over his face, half rose, and again seated
+himself. 'Whatever it may be,' he said, 'the whole thing reminds me, you
+know--it is in a way so curiously like my own--my own case.'
+
+Herbert sat on, a little drawn up in his chair, quietly smoking. The
+crash of the falling water, after seeming to increase in volume with
+the fading of evening, had again died down in the darkness to a low
+multitudinous tumult as of countless inarticulate, echoing voices.
+
+'"Bizarre," you said; God knows I am.' But Herbert still remained
+obdurately silent. 'You remember, perhaps,' Lawford faintly began again,
+'our talk the other night?'
+
+'Oh, rather,' replied the cordial voice out of the dusk.
+
+'I suppose you thought I was insane?'
+
+'Insane!' There was a genuinely amused astonishment in the echo. 'You
+were lucidity itself. Besides--well, honestly, if I may venture, I don't
+put very much truck in what one calls one's sanity: except, of course,
+as a bond of respectability and a means of livelihood.'
+
+'But did you realise in the least from what I said how I really
+stand? That I went down into that old shadowy hollow one man, and came
+back--well--this?'
+
+'I gathered vaguely something like that. I thought at first it was
+merely an affectation--that what you said was an affectation, I
+mean--until--well, to be frank, it was the "this" that so immensely
+interested me. Especially,' he added almost with a touch of gaiety,
+'especially the last glimpse. But if it's really not a forbidden
+question, what precisely was the other? What precise manner of man, I
+mean, came down into Widderstone?'
+
+'It is my face that is changed, Mr Herbert. If you'll try to understand
+me--my FACE. What you see now is not what I really am, not what I was.
+Oh, it is all quite different. I know perfectly well how absurd it must
+sound. And you won't press me further. But that's the truth: that's what
+they have done for me.'
+
+It seemed to Lawford as if a remote tiny shout of laughter had been
+suddenly caught back in the silence that had followed this confession.
+He peered in vain in the direction of his companion. Even his cigarette
+revealed no sign of him. 'I know, I know,' he went gropingly on; 'I felt
+it would sound to you like nothing but frantic incredible nonsense. YOU
+can't see it. YOU can't feel it. YOU can't hear these hooting voices.
+It's no use at all blinking the fact; I am simply on the verge, if not
+over it, of insanity.'
+
+'As to that, Mr Lawford,' came the still voice out of the darkness;
+'the very fact of your being able to say so seems to me all but proof
+positive that you're not. Insanity is on another plane, isn't it?
+in which one can't compare one's states. As for what you say being
+credible, take our precious noodle of a spook here! Ninety-nine
+hundredths of this amiable world of ours would have guffawed the
+poor creature into imperceptibility ages ago. To such poor credulous
+creatures as my sister and I he is no more and no less a fact, a
+personality, an amusing reality than--well, this teacup. Here we are,
+amazing mysteries both of us in any case; and all round us are scores
+of books, dealing just with life, pure, candid, and unexpurgated; and
+there's not a single one among them but reads like a taradiddle. Yet
+grope between the lines of any autobiography, it's pretty clear what
+one has got--a feeble, timid, creeping attempt to describe the
+indescribable. As for what you say your case is, the bizarre--that kind
+very seldom gets into print at all. In all our make-believe, all our
+pretence, how, honestly, could it? But there, this is immaterial. The
+real question is, may I, can I help? What I gather is this: You just
+trundled down into Widderstone all among the dead men, and--but one
+moment, I'll light up.'
+
+A light flickered up in the dark. Shading it in his hand from the night
+air straying through the open window, Herbert lit the two candles
+that stood upon the little chimneypiece behind Lawford's head. Then
+sauntering over to the window again, almost as if with an affectation
+of nonchalance, he drew one of the shutters, and sat down. 'Nothing much
+struck me,' he went on, leaning back on his hands, 'I mean on Sunday
+evening, until you said good-bye. It was then that I caught in the moon
+a distinct glimpse of your face.'
+
+'This,' said Lawford, with a sudden horrible sinking of the heart.
+
+Herbert nodded. 'The fact is, I have a print of it,' he said.
+
+'A print of it?'
+
+'A miserable little dingy engraving.'
+
+'Of this?' Herbert nodded, with eyes fixed. 'Where?'
+
+'That's the nuisance. I searched high and low for it the instant I got
+home. For the moment it has been mislaid; but it must be somewhere in
+the house and it will turn up all in good time. It's the frontispiece
+of one of a queer old hotchpotch of pamphlets, sewn up together by
+some amateur enthusiast in a marbled paper cover--confessions, travels,
+trials and so on. All eighteenth century, and all in French.'
+
+'And mine?' said Lawford, gazing stonily across the candlelight.
+
+Herbert, from a head slightly stooping, gazed back in an almost birdlike
+fashion across the room at his visitor.
+
+'Sabathier's,' he said.
+
+'Sabathier's!'
+
+'A really curious resemblance. Of course, I am speaking only from
+memory; and perhaps it's not quite so vivid in this light; but still
+astonishingly clear.'
+
+Lawford sat drawn up, staring at his companion's face in an intense and
+helpless silence. His mouth opened but no words came.
+
+'Of course,' began Herbert again, 'I don't say there's anything in
+it--except the--the mere coincidence,' he paused and glanced out of the
+open casement beside him. 'But there's just one obvious question. Do you
+happen to know of any strain of French blood in your family?'
+
+Lawford shut his eyes, even memory seemed to be forsaking him at last.
+'No,' he said, after a long pause, 'there's a little Dutch, I think, on
+my mother's side, but no French.'
+
+'No Sabathier, then?' said Herbert, smiling. 'And then there's another
+question--this change; is it really as complete as you suppose? Has
+it--please just warn me off if I am in the least intruding--has it been
+noticed?'
+
+Lawford hesitated. 'Oh, yes,' he said slowly, 'it has been noticed--my
+wife, a few friends.'
+
+'Do you mind this infernal clatter?' said Herbert, laying his fingers on
+the open casement.
+
+'No, no. And you think?'
+
+'My dear fellow, I don't think anything. It's all the craziest
+conjecture. Stranger things even than this have happened. There are
+dozens here--in print. What are we human beings after all? Clay in the
+hands of the potter. Our bodies are merely an inheritance, packed tight
+and corded up. We have practically no control over their main functions.
+We can't even replace a little finger-nail. And look at the faces of
+us--what atrocious mockeries most of them are of any kind of image! But
+we know our bodies change--age, sickness, thought, passion, fatality. It
+proves they are amazingly plastic. And merely even as a theory it is not
+in the least untenable that by force of some violent convulsive effort
+from outside one's body might change. It answers with odd voluntariness
+to friend or foe, smile or snarl. As for what we call the laws of
+Nature, they are pure assumptions to-day, and may be nothing better
+than scrap-iron tomorrow. Good Heavens, Lawford, consider man's abysmal
+impudence.' He smoked on in silence for a moment. 'You say you fell
+asleep down there?'
+
+Lawford nodded. Herbert tapped his cigarette on the sill. 'Just
+following up our ludicrous conjecture, you know,' he remarked musingly,
+'it wasn't such a bad opportunity for the poor chap.'
+
+'But surely,' said Lawford, speaking as it were out of a dream of
+candle-light and reverberating sound and clearest darkness, towards
+this strange deliberate phantom with the unruffled clear-cut
+features--'surely then, in that case, he is here now? And yet, on my
+word of honour, though every friend I ever had in the world should
+deny it, I am the same. Memory stretches back clear and sound to my
+childhood. I can see myself with extraordinary lucidity, how I think, my
+motives and all that; and in spite of these voices that I seem to hear,
+and this peculiar kind of longing to break away, as it were, just
+to press on--it is I,--I myself, that am speaking to you now out of
+this--this mask.'
+
+Herbert glanced reflectively at his companion. 'You mustn't let me tire
+you,' he said; 'but even on our theory it would not necessarily
+follow that you yourself would be much affected. It's true this fellow
+Sabathier really was something of a personality. He had a rather
+unusual itch for life, for trying on and on to squeeze something out
+of experience that isn't there; and he seemed never to weary of a
+magnificent attempt to find in his fellow-creatures, especially in the
+women he met, what even--if they have it--they cannot give. The little
+book I wanted to show you is partly autobiographical and really does
+manage to set the fellow on his feet. Even there he does absolutely take
+one's imagination. I shall never forget the thrill of picking him up in
+the Charing Cross Road. You see, I had known the queer old tombstone for
+years. He's enormously vivid--quite beyond my feebleness to describe,
+with a kind of French verve and rapture. Unluckily we can't get nearer
+than two years to his death. I shouldn't mind guessing some last
+devastating dream swept over him, held him the breath of an instant too
+long beneath the wave, and he caved in. We know he killed himself; and
+perhaps lived to regret it ever after.
+
+'After all, what is this precious dying we talk so much about?' Herbert
+continued after a while, his eyes restlessly wandering from shelf to
+shelf. 'You remember our talk in the churchyard? We all know that the
+body fades quick enough when its occupant is gone. Supposing even in the
+sleep of the living it lies very feebly guarded. And supposing in that
+state some infernally potent thing outside it, wandering disembodied,
+just happens on it--like some hungry sexton beetle on the carcase of
+a mouse. Supposing--I know it's the most outrageous theorising--but
+supposing all these years of sun and dark, Sabathier's emanation,
+or whatever you like to call it, horribly restless, by some fatality
+longing on and on just for life, or even for the face, the voice, of
+some "impossible she" whom he couldn't get in this muddled world, simply
+loathing all else; supposing he has been lingering in ambush down beside
+those poor old dusty bones that had poured out for him such marrowy
+hospitality--oh, I know it; the dead do. And then, by a chance, one
+quiet autumn evening, a veritable godsend of a little Miss Muffet comes
+wandering down under the shade of his immortal cypresses, half asleep,
+fagged out, depressed in mind and body, perhaps: imagine yourself in his
+place, and he in yours!' Herbert stood up in his eagerness, his sleek
+hair shining. 'The one clinching chance of a century! Wouldn't you
+have made a fight for it? Wouldn't you have risked the raid? I can just
+conceive it--the amazing struggle in that darkness within a darkness;
+like some dazed alien bee bursting through the sentinels of a hive;
+one mad impetuous clutch at victory; then the appalling stirring on the
+other side; the groping back to a house dismantled, rearranged, not,
+mind you, disorganised or disintegrated....' He broke off with a smile,
+as if of apology for his long, fantastic harangue.
+
+Lawford sat listening, his eyes fixed on Herbert's colourless face.
+There was not a sound else, it seemed, than that slightly drawling
+scrupulous voice poking its way amid a maze of enticing, baffling
+thoughts. Herbert turned away with a shrug. 'It's tempting stuff,' he
+said, choosing another cigarette. 'But anyhow, the poor beggar failed.'
+
+'Failed?'
+
+'Why, surely; if he had succeeded I should not now be talking to a mere
+imperfect simulacrum, to the outward illusion of a passing likeness
+to the man, but to Sabathier himself!' His eyes moved slowly round and
+dwelt for a moment with a dark, quiet scrutiny on his visitor.
+
+'You say a passing likeness; do you MEAN that?'
+
+Herbert smiled indulgently. 'If one CAN mean what is purely a
+speculation. I am only trying to look at the thing dispassionately, you
+see. We are so much the slaves of mere repetition. Here is life--yours
+and mine--a kind of plenum in vacuo. It is only when we begin to play
+the eavesdropper; when something goes askew; when one of the sentries on
+the frontier of the unexpected shouts a hoarse "Qui vive?"--it is only
+then we begin to question; to prick our aldermen and pinch the calves
+of our kings. Why, who is there can answer to anybody's but his own
+satisfaction just that one fundamental question--Are we the prisoners,
+the slaves, the inheritors, the creatures, or the creators of our
+bodies? Fallen angels or horrific dust? As for identity or likeness
+or personality, we have only our neighbours' nod for them, and just a
+fading memory. No, the old fairy tales knew better; and witchcraft's
+witchcraft to the end of the chapter. Honestly, and just of course on
+that one theory, Lawford, I can't help thinking that Sabathier's raid
+only just so far succeeded as to leave his impression in the wax.
+It doesn't, of course, follow that it will necessarily end there. It
+might--it may be even now just gradually fading away. It may, you know,
+need driving out--with whips and scorpions. It might, perhaps, work in.'
+
+Lawford sat cold and still. 'It's no good, no good,' he said, 'I don't
+understand; I can't follow you. I was always stupid, always bigoted and
+cocksure. These things have never seemed anything but old women's tales
+to me. And now I must pay for it. And this Nicholas Sabathier; you say
+he was a blackguard?'
+
+'Well,' said Herbert with a faint smile, 'that depends on your
+definition of the word. He wasn't a flunkey, a fool, or a prig, if
+that's what you mean. He wasn't perhaps on Mrs Grundy's visiting
+list. He wasn't exactly gregarious. And yet in a sense that kind of
+temperament is so rare that Sappho, Nelson, and Shelley shared it. To
+the stodgy, suety world of course it's little else than sheer moonshine,
+midsummer madness. Naturally, in its own charming and stodgy way
+the world kept flickering cold water in his direction. Naturally it
+hissed.... I shall find the book. You shall have the book; oh yes.'
+
+'There's only one more question,' said Lawford in a dull, slow voice,
+stooping and covering his face with his hands. 'I know it's impossible
+for you to realise--but to me time seems like that water there, to be
+heaping up about me. I wait, just as one waits when the conductor of an
+orchestra lifts his hand and in a moment the whole surge of brass and
+wood, cymbal and drum will crash out--and sweep me under. I can't tell
+you Herbert, how it all is, with just these groping stirrings of that
+mole in my mind's dark. You say it may be this face, working in! God
+knows. I find it easy to speak to you--this cold, clear sense, you know.
+The others feel too much, or are afraid, or--Let me think--yes, I
+was going to ask you a question. But no one can answer it.' He peered
+darkly, with white face suddenly revealed between his hands. 'What
+remains now? Where do I come in? What is there left for ME to do?'
+
+And at that moment there sounded, even above the monotonous roar of
+the water beyond the window--there fell the sound of a light footfall
+approaching along the corridor.
+
+'Listen,' said Herbert; 'here's my sister coming; we'll ask her.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTEEN
+
+The door opened. Lawford rose, and into the further rays of the
+candlelight entered a rather slim figure in a light summer gown.
+
+'Just home?' said Herbert.
+
+'We've been for a walk--'
+
+'My sister always forgets everything,' said Herbert, turning to Lawford;
+'even tea-time. This is Mr Lawford, Grisel. We've been arguing no end.
+And we want you to give a decision. It's just this: Supposing if by some
+impossible trick you had come in now, not the charming familiar sister
+you are, but shorter, fatter, fair and round-faced, quite different,
+physically, you know--what would you do?'
+
+'What nonsense you talk, Herbert!'
+
+'Yes, but supposing: a complete transmogrification--by some unimaginable
+ingression or enchantment, by nibbling a bunch of roses, or whatever you
+like to call it?'
+
+'Only physically?'
+
+'Well, yes, actually; but potentially, why--that's another matter.'
+
+The dark eyes passed slowly from her brother's face and rested gravely
+on their visitor's.
+
+'Is he making fun of me?'
+
+Lawford almost imperceptibly shook his head.
+
+'But what a question! And I've had no tea.' She drew her gloves slowly
+through her hand. 'The thing, of course, isn't possible, I know. But
+shouldn't I go mad, don't you think?'
+
+Lawford gazed quietly back into the clear, grave, deliberate eyes.
+'Suppose, suppose, just for the sake of argument--NOT,' he suggested.
+
+She turned her head and reflected, glancing from one to the other of the
+pure, steady candle-flames.
+
+'And what was your answer?' she said, looking over her shoulder at her
+brother.
+
+'My dear child, you know what my answers are like!'
+
+'And yours?'
+
+Lawford took a deep breath, gazing mutely, forlornly, into the lovely
+untroubled peace of her eyes, and without the least warning tears swept
+up into his own. With an immense effort he turned, and choking back
+every sound, beating hack every thought, groped his way towards the
+square black darkness of the open door.
+
+'I must think, I must think,' he managed to whisper, lifting his hand
+and steadying himself. He caught over his shoulder the glimpse of a
+curiously distorted vision, a lifted candle, and a still face gazing
+after him with infinitely grieved eyes, then found himself groping and
+stumbling down the steep, uneven staircase into the darkness of the
+queer old wooden and hushed and lonely house. The night air cold on his
+face calmed his mind. He turned and held out his hand.
+
+'You'll come again?' Herbert was saying, with a hint of anxiety, even of
+apology in his voice.
+
+Lawford nodded, with eyes fixed blankly on the candle, and turning once
+more, made his way slowly down the narrow green-bordered path upon which
+the stars rained a scattered light so feeble it seemed but as a haze
+that blurred the darkness. He pushed open the little white wicket
+and turned his face towards the soundless, leaf-crowned hill. He had
+advanced hardly a score of steps in the thick dust when almost as if
+its very silence had struck upon his ear he remembered the black broken
+grave with its sightless heads that lay beyond the leaves. And fear,
+vast and menacing, fear such as only children know, broke like a sea of
+darkness on his heart. He stopped dead--cold, helpless, trembling.
+And, in the silence he heard a faint cry behind him and light footsteps
+pursuing him. He turned again. In the thick close gloom beneath the
+enormous elm-boughs the grey eyes shone clearly visible in the face
+upturned to him. 'My brother,' she began breathlessly--'the little
+French book. It was I who--who mislaid it.'
+
+The set, stricken face listened unmoved.
+
+'You are ill. Come back! I am afraid you are very ill.'
+
+'It's not that, not that,' Lawford muttered; 'don't leave me; I am
+alone. Don't question me,' he said strangely, looking down into her
+face, clutching her hand; 'only understand that I can't, I can't go on.'
+He swept a lean arm towards the unseen churchyard. 'I am afraid.'
+
+The cold hand clasped his closer. 'Hush, don't speak! Come back; come
+back. I am with you, a friend, you see; come back.'
+
+Lawford clutched her hand as a blind man in sudden peril might clutch
+the hand of a child. He saw nothing clearly; spoke almost without
+understanding his words.
+
+'Oh, but it's MUST,' he said; 'I MUST go on. You see--why, everything
+depends on struggling through: the future! But if you only knew--There!'
+Again his arm swept out, and the lean terrified face turned shuddering
+from the dark.
+
+'I do know; believe me, believe me! I can guess. See, I am coming with
+you; we will go together. As if, as if I did not know what it is to be
+afraid. Oh, believe me; no one is near; we go on; and see! it gradually,
+gradually lightens. How thankful I am I came.'
+
+She had turned and they were steadily ascending as if pushing their way,
+battling on through some obstacle of the mind rather than of the senses
+beneath the star-powdered callous vault of night. And it seemed to
+Lawford as if, as they pressed on together, some obscure detestable
+presence as slowly, as doggedly had drawn worsted aside. He could
+see again the peaceful outspread branches of the trees, the lych-gate
+standing in clear-cut silhouette against the liquid dusk of the sky.
+A strange calm stole over his mind. The very meaning and memory of his
+fear faded out and vanished, as the passed-away clouds of a storm that
+leave a purer, serener sky.
+
+They stopped and stood together on the brow of the little hill, and
+Lawford, still trembling from head to foot, looked back across the
+hushed and lightless countryside. 'It's all gone now,' he said
+wearily, 'and now there's nothing left. You see, I cannot even ask your
+forgiveness--and a stranger!'
+
+'Please don't say that--unless--unless--a "pilgrim" too. I think,
+surely, you must own we did have the best of it that time. Yes--and I
+don't care WHO may be listening--but we DID win through.'
+
+'What can I say? How shall I explain? How shall I make you understand?'
+
+The clear grey eyes showed not the faintest perturbation. 'But I do; I
+do indeed, in part; I do understand, ever so faintly.'
+
+'And now I will come back with you.'
+
+They paused in the darkness face to face, the silence of the sky,
+arched in its vastness above the little hill, the only witness of their
+triumph.
+
+She turned unquestioningly. And laughing softly almost as children
+do, the stalking shadows of a twilight wood behind them--they trod in
+silence back to the house. They said good-bye at the gate, and Lawford
+started once more for home. He walked slowly, conscious of an almost
+intolerable weariness, as if his strength had suddenly been wrested away
+from him. And at some distance beyond the top of the hill he sat down on
+the bank beside a nettled ditch, and with his book pressed down upon
+the wayside grass struck a match, and holding it low in the scented,
+windless air turned slowly the cockled leaf.
+
+Few of them were alike except for the dinginess of the print and the
+sinister smudge of the portraits. All were sewn roughly together into
+a mould-stained, marbled cover. He lit a second match, and as he did so
+glanced as if inquiringly over his shoulder. And a score or so of pages
+before the end he came at last upon the name he was seeking, and turned
+the page.
+
+It was a likeness even more striking in its crudeness of ink and line
+and paper than the most finished of portraits could have been. It
+repelled, and yet it fascinated him. He had not for a moment doubted
+Herbert's calm conviction. And yet as he stooped in the grass, closely
+scrutinising the blurred obscure features, he felt the faintest surprise
+not so much at the significant resemblance but at his own composure, his
+own steady, unflinching confrontation with this sinister and intangible
+adversary. The match burned down to his fingers. It hissed faintly in
+the grass.
+
+He stuffed the book into his pocket, and stared into the pale dial of
+his watch. It was a few minutes after eleven. Midnight, then, would
+just see him in. He rose stiffly and yawned in sheer exhaustion. Then,
+hesitating, he turned his head and looked back towards the hollow. But
+a vague foreboding held him back. A sour and vacuous incredulity swept
+over him. What was the use of all this struggling and vexation. What
+gain in living on? Once dead his sluggish spirit at least would find
+its rest. Dust to dust it would indeed be for him. What else, in sober
+earnest, had he been all his daily stolid life but half dead, scarce
+conscious, without a living thought, or desire, in head or heart?
+
+And while he was still gloomily debating within himself he had turned
+towards home, and soon was walking in a kind of reverie, even his
+extreme tiredness in part forgotten, and only a far-away dogged
+recollection in his mind that in spite of shame, in spite of all his
+miserable weakness, the words had been uttered once for all, and in all
+sincerity, 'We DID win through.'
+
+Yet a desolate and odd air of strangeness seemed to drape his unlighted
+house as he stood looking up in a kind of furtive communion with its
+windows. It affected him with that discomforting air of extreme and
+meaningless novelty that things very familiar sometimes take upon
+themselves. In this leaden tiredness no impression could be trustworthy.
+His lids shut of themselves as he softly mounted the steps. It seemed a
+needlessly wide door that soundlessly admitted him. But however hard he
+pressed the key his bedroom door remained stubbornly shut until he
+found that it was already unlocked and he had only to turn the handle.
+A night-light burned in a little basin on the washstand. The room was
+hung, as it were, with the stillness of night. And half lying on the
+bed in her dressing-gown, her head leaning on the rail at the foot, was
+Alice, just as sleep had overtaken her.
+
+Lawford returned to the door and listened. It seemed he heard a voice
+talking downstairs, and yet not talking, for it ran on and on in an
+incessant slightly argumentative monotony that had neither break nor
+interruption. He closed the door, and stooping laid his hand softly on
+Alice's narrow, still childish hand that lay half-folded on her knee.
+Her eyes opened instantly and gazed widely into his face. A slow vacant
+smile of sleep came and went and her fingers tightened gently over his
+as again her lids drooped down over the drowsy blue eyes.
+
+'At last, at last, dear,' she said; 'I have been waiting such a time.
+But we mustn't talk much. Mother is waiting up, reading.'
+
+Faintly through the close-shut door came the sound of that distant
+expressionless voice monotonously rising and falling.
+
+'Why didn't you tell me, dear?' Alice still sleepily whispered. 'Would
+I have asked a single question? How could I? Oh, if you had only trusted
+me!'
+
+'But the change--the change, Alice! You must have seen that. You spoke
+to me, you did think I was only a stranger; and even when you knew, it
+was only fear on your face, dearest, and aversion; and you turned to
+your mother first. Don't think, Alice, that I am...God only knows--I'm
+not complaining. But truth is best whatever it is. I do feel that. You
+mustn't be afraid of hurting me, my dear.'
+
+Her very hands seemed to quicken in his as now, with sleep quite gone,
+the fret of memory returned, and she must reassure both herself and him.
+'But you see, dear, mother had told me that you--besides, I did know
+you at once, really; quite inside, you know, deep down. I know I was
+perplexed; I didn't understand; but that was all. Why, even when you
+came up in the dark, and we talked--if you only knew how miserable I had
+been--though I knew even then there was something different, still I
+was not a bit afraid. Was I? And shouldn't I have been afraid, horribly
+afraid, if YOU had not been YOU?' She repressed a little shudder, and
+clasped his hand more closely. 'Don't let us say anything more about it,
+she implored him; 'we are just together again, you and I; that is all
+that matters.' But her words were like brave soldiers who have fought
+their way through an ambuscade but have left all confidence behind them.
+
+Lawford listened; and that was enough just now--that she still, in spite
+of doubt, believed in him, and thought and cared for him. He was too
+tired to have refused the least kindness. He made no answer, but leant
+his head on the cool, slender fingers in gratitude and peace. And, just
+as he was, he almost instantly fell asleep. He woke in the darkness to
+find himself alone. He groped his way heavily to the door and turned
+the handle. But now it was really locked. Energy failed him. 'I
+suppose--Sheila...' he muttered.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOURTEEN
+
+Sheila, calm, alert, reserved, was sitting at the open window when he
+awoke again. His breakfast tray stood on a little table beside the bed.
+He raised himself on his elbow and looked at his wife. The morning
+light shone full on her features as she turned quickly at sound of his
+stirring.
+
+'You have slept late,' she said, in a low, mellow voice.
+
+'Have I, Sheila? I suppose I was tired out. It is very kind of you to
+have got everything ready like this.'
+
+'I am afraid, Arthur, I was thinking rather of the maids. I like to
+inconvenience them as little as possible; in their usual routine, I
+mean. How are you feeling, do you think, this morning?'
+
+'I--I haven't seen the glass, Sheila.'
+
+She paused to place a little pencil tick at the foot of the page of her
+butcher's book. 'And did you--did you try?'
+
+'Did I try? Try what?'
+
+'I understood,' she said, turning slowly in her chair, 'you gave me to
+understand that you went out with the specific intention of trying to
+regain.... But there, forgive me, Arthur; I think I must be getting a
+little bit hardened to the position, so far at least as any hope is in
+my mind of rather amateurish experiments being of much help. I may seem
+unsympathetic in saying frankly what I feel. But amateurish or no, you
+are curiously erratic. Why, if you really were the Dr Ferguson whose
+part you play so admirably you could scarcely spend a more active life.'
+
+'All you mean, Sheila, I suppose, is that I have failed.'
+
+'"Failed" did not enter my mind. I thought, looking at you just now
+in your clothes on the bed, one might for the moment be deceived into
+thinking there was a slight--quite the slightest improvement. There
+was not quite that'--she hovered for the right word--'that tenseness.
+Whether or not, whether you desired any such change or didn't, I should
+have supposed in any case it would have been better to act as far
+as possible like any ordinary person. You were certainly in an
+extraordinarily sound sleep. I was almost alarmed; until I remembered
+that it was a little after two when I looked up from reading aloud to
+keep myself awake and discovered that you had only just come home. I had
+no fire. You know how easily late hours bring on my headaches; a little
+thought might possibly have suggested that I should be anxious to hear.
+But no; it seems I cannot profit by experience, Arthur. And even now you
+have not answered surely a very natural question. You do not recollect,
+perhaps, exactly what did happen last night? Did you go in the direction
+even of Widderstone?'
+
+'Yes, Sheila, I went to Widderstone.'
+
+'It was of course absurd to suppose that sitting on a seat beside
+the broken-down grave of a suicide would have the slightest effect on
+one's--one's physical condition; though possibly it might affect one's
+brain. It would mine; I am at least certain of that. It was your own
+prescription, however; and it merely occurred to me to inquire whether
+the actual experience has not brought you round to my own opinion.'
+
+'Yes, I think it has,' Lawford answered calmly. 'But I don't quite see
+what suicide has got to do with it; unless--You know Widderstone, then,
+Sheila?'
+
+'I drove there last Saturday afternoon.'
+
+'For prayer or praise?' Although Lawford had not actually raised his
+head, he became conscious rather of the wonderfully adjusted mass
+of hair than of the pained dignity in the face that was now closely
+regarding him.
+
+'I went,' came the rigidly controlled retort, 'simply to test an
+inconceivable story.'
+
+'And returned?'
+
+'Convinced, Arthur, of its inconceivability. But if you would kindly
+inform me what precise formula you followed at Widderstone last night, I
+would tell you why I think the explanation, or rather your first account
+of the matter, is not an explanation of the facts.'
+
+Lawford shot a rather doglike glance over his toast. 'Danton?' he said.
+
+'Candidly, Arthur, Mr Danton doubts the whole story. Your very
+conduct--well, it would serve no useful purpose to go into that.
+Candidly, on the other hand, Mr. Danton did make some extremely helpful
+suggestions--basing them, of course, on the TRUTH of your account. He
+has seen a good deal of life; and certainly very mysterious things do
+occur to quite innocent and well-meaning people without the faintest
+shadow of warning, and as Mr. Bethany himself said, evil birds do come
+home to roost, and often out of a clear sky, as it were. But there,
+every fresh solution that occurs to me only makes the thing more
+preposterous, more, I was going to say, disreputable--I mean, of course,
+to the outside world. And we have our duties to perform to them too, I
+suppose. Why, what can we say? What plausible account of ourselves have
+we? We shall never be able to look anybody in the face again. I can
+only--I am compelled to believe that God has been pleased to make this
+precise visitation upon us--an eye for an eye, I suppose, SOMEWHERE. And
+to that conviction I shall hold until actual circumstances convince me
+that it's false. What, however, and this is all that I have to say now,
+what I cannot understand are your amazing indiscretions.'
+
+'Do you understand your own, Sheila?'
+
+'My indiscretions, Arthur?'
+
+'Well,' said Lawford, 'wasn't it indiscreet, don't you think, to risk
+divine retribution by marrying me? Shouldn't you have inquired? Wasn't
+it indiscreet to allow me to remain here in--in my "visitation?" Wasn't
+it indiscreet to risk the moral stigma this unhappy face of mine must
+cast on its surroundings? I am not sure whether such a change as this
+constitutes cruelty.... Oh, what is the use of fretting and babbling on
+like this?'
+
+'Am I to understand, then, that you refuse positively to discuss this
+horrible business any more? You are doing your best to drive me away,
+Arthur; you must see that. Will you be very disappointed if I refuse to
+go?'
+
+Lawford rose from the bed. 'Listen just this once,' he said, seating
+himself on the corner of the dressing-table. 'Imagine all this--whatever
+you like to call it--obliterated. Take this,' he nodded towards the
+glass, 'entirely for itself, on its own merits, as it were. Let the dead
+past bury its dead. Which, now, precisely, REALLY do you prefer--him,'
+he jerked his head in the direction of the dispassionate youthful
+picture on the wall, 'him or me?'
+
+He was so close to her now that he could see the faintest tremor on the
+face that had suddenly become grey and still in the thin clear sunshine.
+
+'I own it, I own it,' he went on, slowly; 'the change is more than
+skin-deep now. One can't go through what I have gone through these last
+few terrifying days, Sheila, unchanged. They have played the devil with
+my body; now begins the tampering with my mind. Not even Danton knows
+how it will end. But shall I tell you why you won't, why you can't
+answer me that one question--him or me? Shall I tell you?'
+
+Sheila slowly raised her eyes.
+
+'It is because, my dear, you don't care the ghost of a straw for either.
+That one--he was worn out long ago, and we never knew it. I know it now.
+Time and the sheer going-on of day by day, without either of us guessing
+at it, wore that down till it had no more meaning for you or me than any
+other faded remembrance in this interminable footling with truth that we
+call life. And this one--the whole abject meaning of it lies simply in
+the fact that it has pierced down and shown us up. I had no courage.
+I couldn't see how feeble a hold I had on life--just one's friends'
+opinions. It was all at second hand. What I want to know now is--leave
+me out; don't think, or care, or regard my living-on one shadow of an
+iota--all I ask is, What am I to do for you?' He turned away and stood
+staring down at the cinders in the fireless grate.
+
+'I answer that mad wicked outburst with one plain question,' said a low,
+trembling voice; 'did you or did you not go to Widderstone yesterday?'
+
+'I did go.'
+
+'You sat there, just as you said you sat before; and with all your heart
+and soul strove to regain--yourself?'
+
+Lawford lifted a still, colourless face into the sunlight. 'No,' he
+said; 'I spent the evening at the house of a friend.'
+
+'Then I say it is infamous. You cast all this on me. You have brought
+me into contempt and poisoned Alice's whole life. You dream and idle
+on just as you used to do, without the least care or thought or
+consideration for others; and go out in this condition--go out
+absolutely unashamed--to spend the evening at a friend's. Peculiar
+friends they must be. Why, really, Arthur, you must be mad!'
+
+Lawford paused. Like a flock of sheep streaming helter-skelter before
+the onset of a wolf were the thoughts that a moment before had seemed so
+orderly and sober.
+
+'Not mad--possessed,' he said softly.
+
+'And I add this,' cried Sheila, as it were out of a tragic mask,
+'somewhere in the past, whether of your own life, or of the lives of
+those who brought you into the world--the world which you pretend so
+conveniently to despise--somewhere is hidden some miserable secret. God
+visits all sins. On you has fallen at last the payment. THAT I believe.
+You can't run away, any more than a child can run away from the cupboard
+it has been locked into for a punishment. Who's going to hear you now?
+You have deliberately refused to make a friend of me. Fight it out
+alone, then!'
+
+Lawford heard the door close, and the dying away of the sound that had
+been the unceasing accompaniment of all these later years--the rustling
+of his wife's skirts, her crisp, authoritative footstep. And he turned
+towards the flooding sunlight that streamed in on the upturned surface
+of the looking-glass. No clear decisive thought came into his mind, only
+a vague recognition that so far as Sheila was concerned this was the
+end. No regret, no remorse visited him. He was just alone again, that
+was all--alone, as in reality he had always been alone, without having
+the sense or power to see or to acknowledge it. All he had said had been
+the mere flotsam of the moment, and now it stood stark and irrevocable
+between himself and the past.
+
+He sat down dazed and stupid. Again and again a struggling recollection
+tried to obtrude itself; again and again he beat it back. And rather
+for something to distract his attention than for any real interest
+or enlightenment he might find in its pages, he took out the grimy
+dog's-eared book that Herbert had given him, and turned slowly over the
+leaves till he came to Sabathier once more. Snatches of remembrance of
+their long talk returned to him, but just as that dark, water-haunted
+house had seemed to banish remembrance and the reality of the room in
+which he now sat, and of the old familiar life; so now the house, the
+faces of yesterday seemed in their turn unreal, almost spectral, and
+the thick print on the smudgy page no more significant than a story one
+reads and throws away.
+
+But a moment's comparison in the glass of the two faces side by
+side suddenly sharpened his attention--the resemblance was so oddly
+arresting, and yet, and yet, so curiously inconclusive. There was then
+something of the stolid old Saxon left, he thought. Or had it been
+regained? Which was it? Not merely the complexity of the question, but
+a half-conscious distaste of attempting to face it, set him reading very
+slowly and laboriously, for his French was little more than fragmentary
+recollection, the first few pages of the life of this buried Sabathier.
+But with a disinclination almost amounting to aversion he made very slow
+progress. Many of the words were meaningless to him, and every other
+moment he found himself listening with intense concentration for the
+least hint of what Sheila was doing, of what was going on in the house
+beneath him. He had not very long to wait. He was sitting with his head
+leaning on his hand, the book unheeded beneath the other on the table,
+when the door opened again behind him, and Sheila entered. She stood for
+a moment, calm and dignified, looking down on him through her veil.
+
+'Please understand, Arthur, that I am not taking this step in pique,
+or even in anger. It would serve no purpose to go on like this--this
+incessant heedlessness and recrimination. There have been mistakes,
+misconceptions, perhaps, on both sides. To me naturally yours are most
+conspicuous. That need not, however, blind me to my own.'
+
+She paused in vain for an answer.
+
+'Think the whole thing over candidly and quietly,' she began again in a
+quiet rapid voice. 'Have you really shown the slightest regard, I won't
+say for me, or even for Alice, but for just the obvious difficulties
+and--and proprieties of our position? I have given up as far as I
+can brooding on and on over the same horrible impossible thoughts. I
+withdraw unreservedly what I said just now about punishment. Whatever
+the evidence, it is not even a wife's place to judge like that. You will
+forgive me that?'
+
+Lawford did not turn his head. 'Of course,' he said, looking rather
+vacantly out of the window, 'it was only in the heat of the moment,
+Sheila; though, who knows? it may be true.'
+
+'Well,' she took hold of the great brass knob at the foot of the bed
+with one gloved hand--'well, I feel it is my duty to withdraw it. Apart
+from it, I see only too clearly that even though all that has happened
+in these last few days was in reality nothing but a horrible nightmare,
+I see that even then what you have said about our married life together
+can never be recalled. You have told me quite deliberately that for
+years past your life has been nothing but a pretence--a sham. You
+implied that mine had been too. Honestly, I was not aware of it, Arthur.
+But supposing all that has happened to you had been merely what might
+happen at any moment to anybody, some actual defacement (you will
+forgive me suggesting such a horrible thing)--why, if what you say is
+true, even in that case my sympathy would have been only a continual
+fret and annoyance to you. And this--this change, I own, is infinitely
+harder to bear. It would be an outrage on common sense and on all that
+we hold seemly and--and sacred in life, even in some trumpery story. You
+do, you must see all that, Arthur?'
+
+'Oh yes,' said Lawford, narrowing his eyes to pierce through the
+sunlight, 'I see all that.'
+
+'Then we need not go over it all again. Whatever others may say,
+or think, I shall still, at least so long as nothing occurs to the
+contrary, keep firmly to my present convictions. Mr Bethany has assured
+me repeatedly that he has no--no misgivings; that he understands. And
+even if I still doubted, which I don't, Arthur, though it would be
+rather trying to have to accept one's husband at second-hand, as it
+were, I should have to be satisfied. I dare say even such an unheard-of
+thing as what we are discussing now, or something equally ghastly, does
+occur occasionally. In foreign countries, perhaps. I have not studied
+such things enough to say. We were all very much restricted in our
+reading as children, and I honestly think, not unwisely. It is enough
+for the present to repeat that I do believe, and that whatever may
+happen--and I know absolutely nothing about the procedure in such
+cases--but whatever may happen, I shall still be loyal; I shall always
+have your interests at heart.' Her words faltered and she turned her
+head away. 'You did love me once, Arthur, I can't forget that.' The
+contralto voice trembled ever so little, and the gloved hand smoothed
+gently the brass knob beneath.
+
+'If,' said Lawford, resting his face on his hands, and curiously
+watching the while his moving reflection in the looking-glass before
+him--'if I said I still loved you, what then?
+
+'But you have already denied it, Arthur.'
+
+'Yes; but if I said that that too was said only in haste, that brooding
+over the trouble this--this metamorphosis was bringing on us all had
+driven me almost beyond endurance: supposing that I withdrew all that,
+and instead said now that I do still love you, just as I--' he turned a
+little, and turned back again, 'like this?'
+
+Sheila paused. 'Could ANY woman answer such a question?' she almost
+sighed at last.
+
+'Yes, but,' Lawford pressed on, in a voice almost naive and stubborn as
+a child's, 'If I tried to--to make you? I did once, Sheila.'
+
+'I can't, I can't conceive such a position. Surely that alone is almost
+as frantic as it is heartless! Is it, is it even right?'
+
+'Well, I have not actually asked it. I own,' he added moodily, almost
+under his breath, 'it would be--dangerous.... But there, Sheila, this
+poor old mask of mine is wearing out. I am somehow convinced of that.
+What will be left, God only knows. You were saying--' He rose abruptly.
+'Please, please sit down,' he said; 'I did not notice you were
+standing.'
+
+'I shall not keep you a moment,' she answered hurriedly; 'I will sit
+here. The truth is, Arthur,' she began again almost solemnly, 'apart
+from all sentiment and--and good intentions, my presence here only
+harasses you and keeps you back. I am not so bound up in myself that I
+cannot realise THAT. The consequence is that after calmly--and I
+hope considerately--thinking the whole thing over, I have come to the
+conclusion that it would arouse very little comment, the least possible
+perhaps in the circumstances, if I just went away for a few days. You
+are not in any sense ill. In fact, I have never known you so--so robust,
+so energetic. You will be alone: Mr Bethany, perhaps.... You could go
+out and come in just as you pleased. Possibly,' Sheila smiled frankly
+beneath her veil, 'even this Dr Ferguson you have invented will be a
+help. It's only the servants that remain to be considered.'
+
+'I should prefer to be quite alone.'
+
+'Then do not worry about THEM. I can easily explain. And if you would
+not mind letting her in, Mrs Gull can come in every other day or so just
+to keep things in order. She's entirely trustworthy and discreet. Or
+perhaps, if you would prefer--'
+
+'Mrs Gull will do nicely, Sheila. It's very good of you to have given me
+so much thought.' A long and rather arduous pause followed.
+
+'Oh, one other thing, Arthur. You sent out to Mr Critchett--do you
+remember?--the night you first came home. I think, too, after the first
+awful shock, when we were sitting in our bedroom, you actually referred
+to--to violent measures. You will promise me, I may perhaps at least ask
+that, you will promise me on your word of honour, for Alice's sake, if
+not for mine, to do nothing rash.'
+
+'Yes, yes,' said Lawford, sinking lower even than he had supposed
+possible into the thin and lightless chill of ennui--'nothing rash.'
+
+Sheila rose with a sigh only in part suppressed. 'I have not seen Mr
+Bethany again. I think, however, it would be better to let Harry know; I
+mean, dear, of your derangement. After all, he is one of the family--at
+least, of mine. He will not interfere. He would, perhaps quite
+naturally, be hurt if we did not take him into our confidence. Otherwise
+there is no pressing cause for haste, at least for another week or so.
+After that, I suppose, something will have to be done. Then there's Mr
+Wedderburn; wouldn't it be as well to let him know that at least for the
+present you are quite unable to think of returning to town? That,
+too, in time will have to be arranged, I suppose, if nothing happens
+meanwhile; I mean if things don't come right. And I do hope, Arthur, you
+will not set your mind too closely on what may only prove false hopes.
+This is all intensely painful to me; of course, to us both.'
+
+Again Lawford, even though he did not turn to confront it, became
+conscious of the black veil turned towards him tentatively,
+speculatively, impenetrably.
+
+'Yes,' he said, 'I'll write to Wedderburn; he's had his ups and downs
+too.'
+
+'I always rather fancied so,' said Sheila reflectively, 'he looks rather
+a--a restless man. Oh, and then again,' she broke off quickly, 'there's
+the question of money. I suppose--it is only a conjecture--I suppose it
+would be better to do nothing in that direction just for the present.
+Ada has now gone to the Bank. Fifty pounds, Arthur; it is out of my own
+private account--do you think that will be enough, just, of course, for
+your PRESENT needs?'
+
+'As a bribe, hush-money, or a thank-offering, Sheila?' murmured her
+husband wearily.
+
+'I don't follow you,' replied the discreet voice from beneath the veil.
+
+He did actually turn this time and glance steadily over his shoulder.
+'How long are you going for? and where?'
+
+'I proposed to go to my cousin's, Bettie Lovat's; that is, of course, if
+you have no objection. It's near; it will be a long-deferred visit; and
+she need know very little. And, of course, if for the least thing in the
+world you should want me, there I am within call, as it were. And you
+will write? We ARE acting for the best, Arthur?'
+
+'So long as it is your best, Sheila.'
+
+Sheila pondered. 'You think, you mean, they'll all say I ought to have
+stayed. Candidly, I can't see it in that light. Surely every experience
+of life proves that in intimate domestic matters, and especially in
+those between husband and wife, only the parties concerned have any
+means of judging what is best for them? It has been our experience at
+any rate: though I must in fairness confess that, outwardly at least,
+I haven't had much of that kind of thing to complain of.' Sheila paused
+again for a reply.
+
+'What kind of thing?'
+
+'Domestic experience, dear.'
+
+The house was quiet. There was not a sound stirring in the still
+sunny road of orchards and discreet and drowsy villas. A long silence
+followed, immensely active and alert on the one side, almost morbidly
+lethargic so far as the stooping figure in front of the looking-glass
+was concerned. At last the last haunting question came in a kind of
+croak, as if only by a supreme effort could it be compelled to produce
+itself for consideration.
+
+'And Alice, Sheila?'
+
+'Alice, dear, of course goes with ME.'
+
+'You realise,' he stirred uneasily, `you realise it may be final.'
+
+'My dear Arthur,' cried Sheila, 'it is surely, apart from mere delicacy,
+a parental obligation to screen the poor child from the shock. Could she
+be at such a time in any better keeping than her mother's? At present
+she only vaguely guesses. To know definitely that her father, infinitely
+worse than death, had--had--Oh, is it possible to realise anything in
+this awful cloud? It would kill her outright.'
+
+Lawford made no stir. The quietest of raps came at the door. 'The money
+from the Bank, ma'am,' said a faint voice.
+
+Sheila carefully opened the door a few inches. She laid the blue
+envelope on the dressing-table at her husband's elbow. 'You had better
+perhaps count it,' she said in a low voice--'forty in notes, the rest
+in gold,' and narrowed her eyes beneath her veil upon her husband's very
+peculiar method of forgetting his responsibilities.
+
+'French?' she said with a nod. 'How very quaint.'
+
+Lawford's eyes fell and rested gravely on the dingy page of Herbert's
+mean-looking bundle of print. A queer feeling of cold crept over him.
+'Yes,' he said vaguely, 'French,' and hopelessly failed to fill in the
+silence that seemed like some rather sleek nocturnal creature quietly
+waiting to be fed.
+
+Sheila swept softly towards the door. 'Well, Arthur, I think that is
+all. The servants will have gone by this evening. I have ordered a
+carriage for half-past twelve. Perhaps you would first write down
+anything that occurs to you to be necessary? Perhaps, too, it would be
+better if Dr Simon were told that we shall not need him any more,
+that you are thinking of a complete change of scene, a voyage. He is
+obviously useless. Besides, Mr Bethany, I think, is going to discuss
+a specialist with you. I have written him a little note, just briefly
+explaining. Shall I write to Dr Simon too?'
+
+'You remember everything,' said Lawford, and it seemed to him it was a
+remark he had heard ages and ages ago. 'It's only this money, Sheila;
+will you please take that away?'
+
+'Take it away?'
+
+'I think, Sheila, if I do take a voyage I should almost prefer to work
+my passage. As for a mere "change of scene," that's quite uncostly.'
+
+'It is only your face, Arthur,' said Sheila solemnly, 'that suggest
+these wicked stabs. Some day you will perhaps repent of every one.'
+
+'It is possible, Sheila; we none of us stand still, you know. One rips
+open a lid sometimes and the wax face rots before one's eyes. Take back
+your blue envelope; and thank you for thinking of me. It's always the
+woman of the house that has the head.'
+
+'I wish,' said Sheila almost pathetically, and yet with a faint quaver
+of resignation, 'I wish it could be said that the man of the house
+sometimes has the heart. Think it over, Arthur!'
+
+Sheila, with her husband's luncheon tray, brought also her farewells.
+Lawford surveyed, not without a faint, shy stirring of incredulity,
+the superbly restrained presence. He stood before her dry-lipped,
+inarticulate, a schoolboy caught redhanded in the shabbiest of offences.
+
+'It is your wish then that I go, Arthur?' she said pleadingly.
+
+He handed her her money without a word.
+
+'Very well, Arthur; if you won't take it,' she said. 'I should scarcely
+have thought this the occasion for mere pride.'
+
+'The tenth,' she continued, as she squeezed the envelope into her purse,
+with only the least hardening of voice, 'although I daresay you have not
+troubled to remember it--the tenth will be the eighteenth anniversary
+of our wedding-day. It makes parting, however advisable, and though only
+for the few days we should think nothing of in happier circumstances,
+a little harder to bear. But there, all will come right. You will see
+things in a different light, perhaps. Words may wound, but time will
+heal.' But even as she now looked closely into his colourless sunken
+face some distant memory seemed to well up irresistibly--the memory of
+eyes just as ingenuous, and as unassuming that even in claiming her love
+had expressed only their stolid unworthiness.
+
+'Did you know it? have you seen it?' she said, stooping forward a
+little. 'I believe in spite of all....' He gazed on solemnly, almost
+owlishly, out of his fading mask.
+
+'Wait till Mr Bethany tells you; you will believe it perhaps from him.'
+He saw the grey-gloved hand a little reluctantly lifted towards him.
+
+'Good-bye, Sheila,' he said, and turned mechanically back to the window.
+
+She hesitated, listening to a small far-away voice that kept urging her
+with an almost frog-like pertinacity to do, to say something, and yet as
+stubbornly would not say what; and she was gone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIFTEEN
+
+Raying and gleaming in the sunlight the hired landau drove up to the
+gate. Lawford, peeping between the blinds, looked down on the coachman,
+with reins hanging loosely from his red squat-thumbed hand, seated in
+his tight livery and indescribable hat on the faded cushions. One thing
+only was in his mind; and it was almost with an audible cry that he
+turned towards the figure that edged, white and trembling, into the
+chill room, to fling herself into his arms. 'Don't look at me,' he
+begged her, 'only remember, dearest, I would rather have died down
+there and been never seen again than have given you pain. Run--run, your
+mother's calling. Write to me, think of me; good-bye!'
+
+He threw himself on the bed and lay there till evening--till the door
+had shut gently behind the last rat to leave the sinking ship. All
+the clearness, the calmness were gone again. Round and round in dizzy
+sickening flare and clatter his thoughts whirled. Contempt, fear,
+loathing, blasphemy, laughter, longing: there was no end. Death was no
+end. There was no meaning, no refuge, no hope, no possible peace. To
+give up was to go to perdition: to go forward was to go mad. And even
+madness--he sat up with trembling lips in the twilight--madness itself
+was only a state, only a state. You might be bereaved, and the pain
+and hopelessness of that would pass. You might be cast out, betrayed,
+deserted, and still be you, still find solitude lovely and in a brave
+face a friend. But madness!--it surged in on him with all the clearness
+and emptiness of a dream. And he sat quite still, his hand clutching the
+bedclothes, his head askew, waiting for the sound of footsteps, for the
+presences and the voices that have their thin-walled dwelling beneath
+the shallow crust of consciousness.
+
+Inky blackness drifted up in wisps, in smoke before his eyes; he was
+powerless to move, to cry out. There was no room to turn; no air to
+breathe. And yet there was a low, continuous, never-varying stir as of
+an enormous wheel whirling in the gloom. Countless infinitesimal faces
+arched like glimmering pebbles the huge dim-coloured vault above his
+head. He heard a voice above the monstrous rustling of the wheel,
+clamouring, calling him back. He was hastening headlong, muttering to
+himself his own flat meaningless name, like a child repeating as he runs
+his errand. And then as if in a charmed cold pool he awoke and opened
+his eyes again on the gathering darkness of the great bedroom, and heard
+a quick, importunate, long-continued knocking on the door below, as of
+some one who had already knocked in vain.
+
+Cramped and heavy-limbed, he felt his way across the room and lit a
+candle. He stood listening awhile: his eyes fixed on the door that hung
+a little open. All in the room seemed acutely fantastically still. The
+flame burned dim, misled in the sluggish air. He stole slowly to the
+door, looked out, and again listened. Again the knocking broke out, more
+impetuously and yet with a certain restraint and caution. Shielding the
+flame of his candle in the shell of his left hand, Lawford moved slowly,
+with chin uplifted, to the stairs. He bent forward a little, and stood
+motionless and drawn up, the pupils of his eyes slowly contracting and
+expanding as he gazed down into the carpeted vacant gloom; past the dim
+louring presence that had fallen back before him.
+
+His mouth opened. 'Who's there?' at last he called.
+
+'Thank God, thank God!' he heard Mr Bethany mutter. 'I mustn't call,
+Lawford,' came a hurried whisper as if the old gentleman were pressing
+his lips to speak through the letter-box. 'Come down and open the door;
+there's a good fellow! I've been knocking no end of a time.'
+
+'Yes, I am coming,' said Lawford. He shut his mouth and held his
+breath, and stair by stair he descended, driving steadily before him the
+crouching, gloating menacing shape, darkly lifted up before him against
+the darkness, contending the way with him.
+
+'Are you ill? Are you hurt? Has anything happened, Lawford?' came the
+anxious old voice again, striving in vain to be restrained.
+
+'No, no,' muttered Lawford. 'I am coming; coming slowly.' He paused to
+breathe, his hands trembling, his hair lank with sweat, and still
+with eyes wide open he descended against the phantom lurking in the
+darkness--an adversary that, if he should but for one moment close his
+lids, he felt would master sanity and imagination with its evil. 'So
+long as you don't get in,' he heard himself muttering, 'so long as you
+don't get in, my friend!'
+
+'What's that you're saying?' came up the muffled, querulous voice; 'I
+can't for the life of me hear, my boy.'
+
+'Nothing, nothing,' came softly the answer from the foot of the stairs.
+'I was only speaking to myself.'
+
+Deliberately, with candle held rigidly on a level with his eyes, Lawford
+pushed forward a pace or two into the airless, empty drawing-room, and
+grasped the handle of the door. He gazed in awhile, a black oblique
+shadow flung across his face, his eyes fixed like an animal's, then drew
+the door steadily towards him. And suddenly some power that had held him
+tense seemed to fail. He thrust out his head, and, his face quivering
+with fear and loathing, spat defiance as if in a passion of triumph into
+the gloom.
+
+Still muttering, he shut the door and turned the key. In another moment
+his light was gleaming out on the grey perturbed face and black narrow
+shoulders of his visitor.
+
+'You gave me quite a fright,' said the old man almost angrily; 'have you
+hurt your foot, or something?'
+
+'It was very dark,' said Lawford, 'down the stairs.'
+
+'What!' said Mr Bethany still more angrily, blinking out of his
+unspectacled eyes; 'has she cut off the gas, then?'
+
+'You got the note?' said Lawford, unmoved.
+
+'Yes, yes; I got the note.... Gone?'
+
+'Oh, yes; all gone. It was my choice. I preferred it so.'
+
+Mr Bethany sat down on one of the hard old wooden chairs that stood on
+either side of the lofty hall, and breathing rather thickly, rested his
+hands on his knees. 'What's happened?' he inquired, looking up into the
+candle. 'I forgot my glasses, old fool that I am, and can't, my dear
+fellow, see you very plainly. But your voice--'
+
+'I think,' said Lawford, 'I think it's beginning to come back.'
+
+'What, the whole thing! Oh no, my dear, dear man; be frank with me; not
+the whole thing?'
+
+'Yes,' said Lawford, 'the whole thing--very, very gradually,
+imperceptibly. I think even Sheila noticed. But I rather feel it than
+see it; that is all.... I'm cornering him.'
+
+'Him?'
+
+Lawford jerked his candle as if towards some definite goal. 'In time,'
+he said.
+
+The two faces with the candle between them seemed as it were to gain
+light each from the other.
+
+'Well, well,' said Mr Bethany, 'every man for himself, Lawford; it's the
+only way. But what's going to be done? We must be cautious; must think
+of--of the others?'
+
+'Oh, that,' said Lawford; 'she's going to squeeze me out.'
+
+'You've--squabbled? Oh, but my dear, honest old, HONEST old idiot, there
+are scores of families here in this parish, within a stone's throw, that
+squabble, wrangle, all but politely tear each other's eyes out, every
+day of their earthly lives. It's perfectly natural. Where should we poor
+old busybodies be else. Peace on earth we bring, and it's mainly between
+husband and wife.'
+
+'Yes,' said Lawford, 'but you see, this was not our earthly life. It was
+between US.'
+
+'Listen, listen to the dear mystic!' exclaimed the old creature
+scoffingly. 'What depths we're touching. Here's the first serious break
+of his lifetime, and he's gone stark staring transcendental. Ah well.'
+He paused and glanced quickly about him, with his curious bird-like
+poise of head. 'But you're not alone here?' he inquired suddenly; 'not
+absolutely alone?'
+
+'Yes,' said Lawford. 'But there's plenty to think about--and read. I
+haven't thought or read for years.'
+
+'No, nor I; after thirty, my dear boy, one merely annotates, and the
+book's called Life. Bless me, his solemn old voice is grinding epigrams
+out of even this poor old parochial barrel-organ. You don't suppose, you
+cannot be supposing you are the only serious person in the world? What's
+more, it's only skin deep.'
+
+Lawford smiled. 'Skin deep. But think quietly over it; you'll see I'm
+done.'
+
+'Come here,' said Mr Bethany. 'Where's the whiskey, where's the cigars?
+You shall smoke and drink, and I'll watch. If it weren't for a
+pitiful old stomach, I'd join you. Come on!' He led the way into the
+dining-room.
+
+He looked sparer, more wizened and sinewy than ever as he stooped to
+open the sideboard. 'Where on earth do they keep everything?' he was
+muttering to himself.
+
+Lawford put the candlestick down on the table. 'There's only one thing,'
+he said, watching his visitor's rummaging; 'what precisely do you think
+they will do with me?'
+
+'Look here, Lawford,' snapped Mr Bethany; 'I've come round here, hooting
+through your letter-box, to tally sense, not sentiment. Why has your
+wife deserted you? Without a servant, without a single--It's perfectly
+monstrous.'
+
+'On my word of honour, I prefer it so. I couldn't have gone on. Alone
+I all but forget this--this lupus. Every turn of her little finger
+reminded me of it. We are all of us alone, whether we know it or
+not; you said so yourself. And it's better to realize it stark and
+unconfused. Besides, you have no idea what--what odd things.... There
+may be; there IS something on the other side. I'll win through to that.'
+
+Mr Bethany had been listening attentively. He scrambled up from his
+knees with a half-empty syphon of sodawater. 'See here, Lawford,' he
+said; 'if you really want to know what's your most insidious and most
+dangerous symptom just now, it is spiritual pride. You've won what you
+think a domestic victory; and you can scarcely bear the splendour.
+Oh, you may shrug! Pray, what IS this "other side" which the superior
+double-faced creature's going to win through to now?' He rapped it out
+almost bitterly, almost contemptuously.
+
+Lawford hardly heard the question. Before his eyes had suddenly arisen
+the peace, the friendly unquestioning stillness, the thunderous lullaby
+old as the grave. 'It's only a fancy. It seemed I could begin again.'
+
+'Well, look here,' said Mr Bethany, his whole face suddenly lined and
+grey with age. 'You can't. It's the one solitary thing I've got to say,
+as I've said it to myself morn, noon, and night these scores of years.
+You can't begin again; it's all a delusion and a snare. You say we're
+alone. So we are. The world's a dream, a stage, a mirage, a rack, call
+it what you will--but YOU don't change, YOU'RE no illusion. There's
+no crying off for YOU no ravelling out, no clean leaves. You've got
+this--this trouble, this affliction--my dear, dear fellow what shall
+I say to tell you how I grieve and groan for you oh yes, and actually
+laughed, I confess it, a vile hysterical laughter, to think of it.
+You've got this almost intolerable burden to bear; it's come like a
+thief in the night; but bear it you must, and ALONE! They say death's a
+going to bed; I doubt it; but anyhow life's a long undressing. We came
+in puling and naked, and every stitch must come off before we get out
+again. We must stand on our feet in all our Rabelaisian nakedness, and
+watch the world fade. Well then, and not another word of sense shall you
+worm out of my worn-out old brains after today--all I say is, don't give
+in! Why, if you stood here now, freed from this devilish disguise, the
+old, fat, sluggish fellow that sat and yawned his head off under my eyes
+in his pew the Sunday before last, if I know anything about human nature
+I'd say it to your face, and a fig for your vanity and resignation--your
+last state would be worse than the first. There!'
+
+He bunched up a big white handkerchief and mopped it over his head.
+'That's done,' he said, 'and we won't go back. What I want to know now
+is what are you going to do? Where are you sleeping? What are you going
+to think about? I'll stay--yes, yes, that's what it must be: I must
+stay. And I detest strange beds. I'll stay, you SHAN'T be alone. Do you
+hear me, Lawford?--you SHAN'T be alone!'
+
+Lawford gazed gravely. 'There is just one little thing I want to ask
+you before you go. I've wormed out an extraordinary old French book;
+and--just as you say--to pass the time, I've been having a shot at
+translating it. But I'm frightfully rusty; it's old French; would you
+mind having a look?'
+
+Mr Bethany blinked and listened. He tried for the twentieth time to
+judge his friend's eyes, to gain as best he could some sustained and
+unobserved glance at this baffling face. 'Where is your precious French
+book?' he said irritably.
+
+'It's upstairs.'
+
+'Fire away, then!' Lawford rose and glanced about the room. 'What, no
+light there either?' snapped Mr Bethany. 'Take this; I don't mind the
+dark. There'll be plenty of that for me soon.'
+
+Lawford hesitated at the door, looking rather strangely back. 'No,'
+he said, 'there are matches upstairs.' He shut the door after him. The
+darkness seemed cold and still as water. He went slowly up, with eyes
+fixed wide on the floating luminous gloom, and out of memory seemed to
+gather, as faintly as in the darkness which they had exorcised for him,
+the strange pitiful eyes of the night before. And as he mounted a chill,
+terrible, physical peace seemed to steal over him.
+
+Mr Bethany was sitting as he had left him, looking steadily on the
+floor, when Lawford returned. He flattened out the book on the table
+with a sniff of impatience. And dragging the candle nearer, and stooping
+his nose close to the fusty print, he began to read.
+
+'Was this in the house?' he inquired presently.
+
+'No,' said Lawford; 'it was lent to me by a friend--Herbert.'
+
+'H'm! don't know him. Anyhow, precious poor stuff this is.
+This Sabathier, whoever he is, seems to be a kind of clap-trap
+eighteenth-century adventurer who thought the world would be better off,
+apparently, for a long account of all his sentimental amours. Rousseau,
+with a touch of Don Quixote in his composition, and an echo of that
+prince of bogies, Poe! What, in the name of wonder, induced you to fix
+on this for your holiday reading?'
+
+'Sabathier's alive, isn't he?'
+
+'I never said he wasn't. He's a good deal too much alive for my old
+wits, with his Mam'selle This and Madame the Other; interesting enough,
+perhaps, for the professional literary nose with a taste for patchouli.'
+
+'Yet I suppose even that is not a very rare character?' Mr Bethany
+peered up from the dingy book at his ingenuous questioner. 'I should say
+decidedly that the fellow was a very rare character, so long as by rare
+you don't mean good. It's one of the dullest stupidities of the present
+day, my dear fellow, to dote on a man simply because he's different
+from the rest of us. Once a man strays out of the common herd, he's
+more likely to meet wolves in the thickets than angels. From what I can
+gather in just these few pages this Sabathier appears to have been
+an amorous, adventurous, emotional Frenchman, who went to the dogs as
+easily and as rapidly as his own nature and his period allowed. And I
+should say, Lawford, that he made precious bad reading for a poor old
+troubled hermit like yourself at the present moment.'
+
+'There's a portrait of him a few pages back.'
+
+Mr Bethany, with some little impatience, turned back to the engraving.
+'"Nicholas de Sabathier,"'s he muttered. '"De," indeed!' He poked in at
+the foxy print with narrowed eyes. 'I don't deny it's a striking, even
+perhaps, a rather taking face. I don't deny it.' He gazed on with
+an even more acute concentration, and looked up sharply. 'Look here,
+Lawford, what in the name of wonder--what trick are you playing on me
+now?'
+
+'Trick?' said Lawford; and the world fell with the tiniest plash in the
+silence, like a vivid little float upon the surface of a shadowy pool.
+
+The old face flushed. 'What conceivable bearing, I say, has this dead
+and gone old roue on us now?'
+
+'You don't think, then, you see any resemblance--ANY resemblance at
+all?'
+
+'Resemblance?' repeated Mr Bethany in a flat voice, and without raising
+his face again to meet Lawford's direct scrutiny. 'Resemblance to whom?'
+
+'To me? To me, as I am?'
+
+'But even, my dear fellow (forgive my dull old brains!), even if there
+was just the faintest superficial suggestion of--of that; what then?'
+
+'Why,' said Lawford, 'he's buried in Widderstone.'
+
+'Buried in Widderstone?' The keen childlike blue eyes looked almost
+stealthily up across the book; the old man sat without speaking, so
+still that it might even be supposed he himself was listening for a
+quiet distant footfall.
+
+'He is buried in the grave beside which I fell asleep,' said Lawford;
+'all green and still and broken,' he added faintly. 'You remember,' he
+went on in a repressed voice--'you remember you asked me if there was
+anybody else in sight, any eavesdropper? You don't think--him?'
+
+Mr. Bethany pushed the book a few inches away from him. 'Who, did you
+say--who was it you said put the thing into your head? A queer friend
+surely?' he paused helplessly. 'And how, pray, do you know,' he began
+again more firmly, 'even if there is a Sabathier buried at Widderstone,
+how do you know it is this Sabathier? It's not, I think,' he added
+boldly, 'a very uncommon name; with two b's at any rate. Whereabouts is
+the grave?'
+
+'Quite down at the bottom, under the trees. And the little seat I told
+you of is there, too, where I fell asleep. You see,' he explained, 'the
+grave's almost isolated; I suppose because he killed himself.'
+
+Mr Bethany clasped his knuckled fingers on the tablecloth. 'It's no
+good,' he concluded after a long pause; 'the fellow's got up into
+my head. I can't think him out. We must thrash it out quietly in the
+morning with the blessed sun at the window; not this farthing dip. To
+me the whole idea is as revolting as it is incredible. Why, above a
+century--no, no! And on the other hand, how easily one's fancy builds! A
+few straws and there's a nest and squawking fledglings, all complete.
+Is that why--is that why that good, practical wife of yours and all your
+faithful household have absconded? Does it'--he threw up his head as if
+towards the house above them--'does it REEK with him?'
+
+Lawford shook his head. 'She hasn't seen him: not--not apart. I haven't
+told her.'
+
+Mr Bethany tossed the hugger-mugger of pamphlets across the table.
+'Then, for simple sanity's sake, don't. Hide it; burn it; put the thing
+completely out of your mind. A friend! Who, where is this wonderful
+friend?'
+
+'Not very far from Widderstone. He lives--practically alone.'
+
+'And all that stumbling and muttering on the stairs?' he leant forward
+almost threateningly. 'There isn't anybody here, Lawford?'
+
+'Oh, no,' said Lawford. 'We are practically alone with this, you know,'
+he pointed to the book, and smiled frankly, however faintly.
+
+Again Mr Bethany sank into a fixed yet uneasy reverie, and again shook
+himself and raised his eyes.
+
+'Well then,' he said, in a voice all but morose in its fretfullness,
+'what I suggest is that first you keep quiet here; and next, that you
+write and get your wife back. You say you are better. I think you said
+she herself noticed a slight improvement. Isn't it just exactly as I
+foresaw? And yet she's gone! But that's not our business. Get her back.
+And don't for a single instant waste a thought on the other; not for a
+single instant, I implore you, Lawford. And in a week the whole thing
+will be no more than a dreary, preposterous dream.... You don't answer
+me!' he cried impulsively.
+
+'But can one so easily forget a dream like this?'
+
+'You don't speak out, Lawford; you mean SHE won't.'
+
+'It must at least seem to have been in part of my own seeking, or
+contriving; or at any rate--she said it--of my own hereditary or
+unconscious deserving.'
+
+'She said that!' Mr Bethany sat back. 'I see, I see,' he said. 'I'm
+nothing but a fumbling old meddler. And there was I, not ten minutes
+ago, preaching for all I was worth on a text I knew nothing about. God
+bless me, Lawford, how long we take a-learning. I'll say no more. But
+what an illusion. To think this--this--he laid a long lean hand at arm's
+length flat upon the table towards his friend--'to think this is our old
+jog-trot Arthur Lawford! From henceforth I throw you over, you old wolf
+in sheep's wool. I wash my hands of you. And now where am I going to
+sleep?'
+
+He covered up his age and weariness for an instant with a small crooked
+hand.
+
+Lawford took a deep breath. 'You're going, old friend, to sleep at home.
+And I--I'm going to give you my arm to the Vicarage gate. Here I am,
+immeasurably relieved, fitter than I've been since I was a dolt of a
+schoolboy. On my word of honour: I can't say why, but I am. I don't care
+THAT, vicar, honestly--puffed up with spiritual pride. If a man can't
+sleep with pride for a bed-fellow, well, he'd better try elsewhere. It's
+no good; I'm as stubborn as a mule; that's at least a relic of the old
+Adam. I care no more,' he raised his voice firmly and gravely--'I
+don't care a jot for solitude, not a jot for all the ghosts of all the
+catacombs!'
+
+Mr. Bethany listened, grimly pursed up his lips. 'Not a jot for all the
+ghosts of all the catechisms!' he muttered. `Nor the devil himself, I
+suppose?' He turned once more to glance sharply in the direction of the
+face he could so dimly--and of set purpose--discern; and without a word
+trotted off into the hall. Lawford followed with the candle.
+
+''Pon my word, you haven't had a mouthful of supper. Let me forage; just
+a quarter of an hour, eh?'
+
+'Not me,' said Mr Bethany; 'if you won't have me, home I go. I refuse
+to encourage this miserable grass-widowering. What WOULD they say?
+What would the busybodies say? Ghouls and graves and shocking
+mysteries--Selina! Sister Anne! Come on.'
+
+He shuffled on his hat and caught firm hold of his knobbed umbrella.
+'Better not leave a candle,' he said.
+
+Lawford blew out the candle.
+
+'What? What?' called the old man suddenly. But no voice had spoken.
+
+A thin trickle of light from the lamp in the street stuck up through
+the fanlight as, with a smile that could be described neither as
+mischievous, saturnine, nor vindictive, and was yet faintly suggestive
+of all three, Lawford quietly opened the drawing-room door and put down
+the candlestick on the floor within.
+
+'What on earth, my good man, are you fumbling after now?' came the
+almost fretful question from under the echoing porch.
+
+'Coming, coming,' said Lawford, and slammed the door behind them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIXTEEN
+
+The first faint streaks of dawn were silvering across the stars when
+Lawford again let himself into his deserted house. He stumbled down
+to the pantry and cut himself a crust of bread and cheese, and ate it,
+sitting on the table, watching the leafy eastern sky through the painted
+bars of the area window. He munched on, hungry and tired. His night
+walk had cooled head and heart. Having obstinately refused Mr Bethany's
+invitation to sleep at the Vicarage, he had sat down on an old low wall,
+and watched until his light had shone out at his bedroom window. Then
+he had simply wandered on, past rustling glimmering gardens, under
+the great timbers of yellowing elms, hardly thinking, hardly aware
+of himself except as in a far-away vision of a sluggish insignificant
+creature struggling across the tossed-up crust of an old,
+incomprehensible world.
+
+The secret of his content in that long leisurely ramble had been
+that repeatedly by a scarcely realised effort it had not lain in the
+direction of Widderstone. And now, as he sat hungrily devouring his
+breakfast on the table in the kitchen, with the daybreak comforting his
+eyes, he thought with a positive mockery of that poor old night-thing
+he had given inch by inch into the safe keeping of his pink and white
+drawing-room. Don Quixote, Poe, Rousseau--they were familiar but not
+very significant labels to a mind that had found very poor entertainment
+in reading. But they were at least representative enough to set him
+wondering which of their influences it was that had inflated with such
+a gaseous heroism the Lawford of the night before. He thought of Sheila
+with a not unkindly smile, and of the rest. 'I wonder what they'll do?'
+had been a question almost as much in his mind during these last few
+hours as had 'What am I to do?' in the first bout of his 'visitation.'
+
+But the 'they' was not very precisely visualised. He saw Sheila, and
+Harry, and dainty pale-blue Bettie Lovat, and cautious old Wedderburn,
+and Danton, and Craik, and cheery, gossipy Dr Sutherland, and the
+verger, Mr Dutton, and Critchett, and the gardener, and Ada, and the
+whole vague populous host that keep one as definitely in one's place in
+the world's economy as a firm-set pin the camphored moth. What his place
+was to be only time could show. Meanwhile there was in this loneliness
+at least a respite.
+
+Solitude!--he bathed his weary bones in it. He laved his eyelids in
+it, as in a woodland brook after the heat of noon. He sat on in calmest
+reverie till his hunger was satisfied. Then, scattering out his last
+crumbs to the birds from the barred window, he climbed upstairs again,
+past his usual bedroom, past his detested guest room, up into the narrow
+sweetness of Alice's, and flinging himself on her bed fell into a long
+and dreamless sleep.
+
+By ten next morning Lawford had bathed and dressed. And at half-past ten
+he got up from Sheila's fat little French dictionary and his Memoirs to
+answer Mrs Gull's summons on the area bell. The little woman stood with
+arms folded over an empty and capacious bag, with an air of sustained
+melancholy on her friendly face. She wished him a very nervous 'Good
+morning,' and dived down into the kitchen. The hours dragged slowly by
+in a silence broken only by an occasional ring at the bell. About three
+she emerged from the house and climbed the area steps with her bag
+hooked over her arm. He watched the little black figure out of
+sight, watched a man in a white canvas hat ascend the steps to push a
+blue-printed circular through the letter-box. It had begun to rain a
+little. He returned to the breakfast-room and with the window wide open
+to the rustling coolness of the leaves, edged his way very slowly across
+from line to line of the obscure French print.
+
+Sabathier none the less, and in spite of his unintelligible
+literariness, did begin to take shape and consistency. The man himself,
+breathing, and thinking, began to live for Lawford even in those few
+half-articulate pages, though not in quite so formidable a fashion as
+Mr Bethany had summed him up. But as the west began to lighten with the
+declining sun, the same old disquietude, the same old friendless and
+foreboding ennui stole over Lawford's solitude once more. He shut his
+books, placed a candlestick and two boxes of matches on the hall table,
+lit a bead of gas, and went out into the rainy-sweet streets again.
+
+At a mean little barber's with a pole above his lettered door he went
+in to be shaved. And a few steps further on he sat down at the
+crumb-littered counter of a little baker's shop to have some tea. It
+pleased him almost to childishness to find how easily he could listen
+and even talk to the oiled and crimpy little barber, and to the pretty,
+consumptive-looking, print-dressed baker's wife. Whatever his face might
+now be conniving at, the Arthur Lawford of last week could never have
+hob-nobbed so affably with his social 'inferiors.'
+
+For no reason in the world, unless to spend a moment or two longer
+in the friendly baker's shop, he bought six-penny-worth of cakes. He
+watched them as they were deposited one by one in the bag, and even
+asked for one sort to be exchanged for another, flushing a little at the
+pretty compliment he had ventured on.
+
+He climbed out of the shop, and paused on the wooden doorstep. 'Do you
+happen to know Mr Herbert Herbert's?' he said.
+
+The baker's wife glanced up at him with clear, reflective eyes. 'Mr
+Herbert's?--that must be some little way off, sir. I don't know any such
+name, and I know most, just round about like.'
+
+'Well, yes, it is,' said Lawford, rather foolishly; 'I hardly know why I
+asked. It's past the churchyard at Widderstone.'
+
+'Oh yes, sir,' she encouraged him.
+
+'A big, wooden-looking house.'
+
+'Really, sir. Wooden?'
+
+Lawford looked into her face, but could find nothing more to say, so he
+smiled again rather absently, and ascended into the street.
+
+He sat down outside the churchyard gate on the very bank where he had in
+the sourness of the nettles first opened Sabathier's Memoirs. The world
+lay still beneath the pale sky. Presently the little fat rector walked
+up the hill, his wrists still showing beneath his sleeves. Lawford
+meditatively watched him pass by. A small boy with a switch, a tiny
+nose, and a swinging gallipot, his cheeks lit with the sunset, followed
+soon after. Lawford beckoned him with his finger and held out the bag
+of tarts. He watched him, half incredulous of his prize, and with many a
+cautious look over his shoulder, pass out of sight. For a long while
+he sat alone, only the evening birds singing out of the greenness and
+silence of the churchyard. What a haunting inescapable riddle life was.
+
+Colour suddenly faded out of the light streaming between the branches.
+And depression, always lying in ambush of the novelty of his freedom,
+began like mist to rise above his restless thoughts. It was all so
+devilish empty--this raft of the world floating under evening's shadow.
+How many sermons had he listened to, enriched with the simile of the
+ocean of life. Here they were, come home to roost. He had fallen asleep,
+ineffectual sailor that he was, and a thief out of the cloudy deep had
+stolen oar and sail and compass, leaving him adrift amid the riding of
+the waves.
+
+'Are they worth, do you think, quite a penny?' suddenly inquired a quiet
+voice in the silence. He looked up into the almost colourless face, into
+the grey eyes beneath their clear narrow brows.
+
+'I was thinking,' he said, 'what a curious thing life is, and
+wondering--'
+
+'The first half is well worth the penny--its originality! I can't afford
+twopence. So you must GIVE me what you were wondering.'
+
+Lawford gazed rather blankly across the twilight fields. 'I was
+wondering,' he said with an oddly naive candour, 'how long it took one
+to sink.'
+
+'They say, you know,' Grisel replied solemnly, 'drowned sailors float
+midway, suffering their sea change; purgatory. But what a splendid
+pennyworth. All pure philosophy!'
+
+'"Philosophy!"' said Lawford; 'I am a perfect fool. Has your brother
+told you about me?'
+
+She glanced at him quickly. 'We had a talk.'
+
+'Then you do know--?' He stopped dead, and turned to her. 'You really
+realise it, looking at me now?'
+
+'I realise,' she said gravely, 'that you look even a little more pale
+and haggard than when I saw you first the other night. We both, my
+brother and I, you know, thought for certain you'd come yesterday.
+In fact, I went into the Widderstone in the evening to look for you,
+knowing your nocturnal habits....' She glanced again at him with a kind
+of shy anxiety.
+
+'Why--why is your brother so--why does he let me bore him so horribly?'
+
+'Does he? He's tremendously interested; but then, he's pretty easily
+interested when he's interested at all. If he can possibly twist
+anything into the slightest show of a mystery, he will. But, of course,
+you won't, you can't, take all he says seriously. The tiniest pinch of
+salt, you know. He's an absolute fanatic at talking in the air. Besides,
+it doesn't really matter much.'
+
+'In the air?'
+
+'I mean if once a theory gets into his head--the more far-fetched,
+so long as it's original, the better--it flowers out into a positive
+miracle of incredibilities. And of course you can rout out evidence for
+anything under the sun from his dingy old folios. Why did he lend you
+that PARTICULAR book?'
+
+'Didn't he tell you that, then?'
+
+'He said it was Sabathier.' She seemed to think intensely for the
+merest fraction of a moment, and turned. 'Honestly, though, I think he
+immensely exaggerated the likeness. As for...'
+
+He touched her arm, and they stopped again, face to face. 'Tell me what
+difference exactly you see,' he said. 'I am quite myself again now,
+honestly; please tell me just the very worst you think.'
+
+'I think, to begin with,' she began, with exaggerated candour, 'his is
+rather a detestable face.'
+
+'And mine?' he said gravely.
+
+'Why--very troubled; oh yes--but his was like some bird of prey.
+Yours--what mad stuff to talk like this!--not the least symptom, that I
+can see, of--why, the "prey," you know.'
+
+They had come to the wicket in the dark thorny hedge. 'Would it be very
+dreadful to walk on a little--just to finish?'
+
+'Very,' she said, turning as gravely at his side.
+
+'What I wanted to say was--' began Lawford, and forgetting altogether
+the thread by which he hoped to lead up to what he really wanted to
+say, broke off lamely; 'I should have thought you would have absolutely
+despised a coward.'
+
+'It would be rather absurd to despise what one so horribly well
+understands. Besides, we weren't cowards--we weren't cowards a bit. My
+childhood was one long, reiterated terror--nights and nights of it. But
+I never had the pluck to tell any one. No one so much as dreamt of
+the company I had. Ah, and you didn't see either that my heart was
+absolutely in my mouth, that I was shrivelled up with fear, even at
+sight of the fear on your face in the dark. There's absolutely nothing
+so catching. So, you see, I do know a little what nerves are; and
+dream too sometimes, though I don't choose charnelhouses if I can get a
+comfortable bed. A coward! May I really say that to ask my help was one
+of the bravest things in a man I ever heard of. Bullets--that kind of
+courage--no real woman cares twopence for bullets. An old aunt of mine
+stared a man right out of the house with the thing in her face. Anyhow,
+whether I may or not, I do say it. So now we are quits.'
+
+'Will you--' began Lawford, and stopped. 'What I wanted to say was,'
+he jerked on, 'it is sheer horrible hypocrisy to be talking to you like
+this--though you will never have the faintest idea of what it has meant
+and done for me. I mean... And yet, and yet, I do feel when just for
+the least moment I forget what I am, and that isn't very often, when
+I forget what I have become and what I must go back to--I feel that I
+haven't any business to be talking with you at all. "Quits!" And here I
+am, an outcast from decent society. Ah, you don't know--'
+
+She bent her head and laughed under her breath. 'You do really stumble
+on such delicious compliments. And yet, do you know, I think my brother
+would be immensely pleased to think you were an outcast from decent
+society if only he could be thought one too. He has been trying half his
+life to wither decent society with neglect and disdain--but it doesn't
+take the least notice. The deaf adder, you know. Besides, besides; what
+is all this meek talk? I detest meek talk--gods or men. Surely in the
+first and last resort all we are is ourselves. Something has happened;
+you are jangled, shaken. But to us, believe me, you are simply one of
+fewer friends-and I think, after struggling up Widderstone Lane hand in
+hand with you in the dark, I have a right to say "friends" than I could
+count on one hand. What are we all if we only realized it? We talk of
+dignity and propriety, and we are like so many children playing
+with knucklebones in a giant's scullery. Come along, he will, some
+suppertime, for us, each in turn--and how many even will so much as look
+up from their play to wave us good-bye? that's what I mean--the plot
+of silence we are all in. If only I had my brother's lucidity, how much
+better I would have said all this. It is only, believe me, that I want
+ever so much to help you, if I may--even at risk, too,' she added,
+rather shakily, 'of having that help--well--I know it's little good.'
+
+The lane had narrowed. They had climbed the arch of a narrow stone
+bridge that spanned the smooth dark Widder. A few late starlings were
+winging far above them. Darkness was coming on apace. They stood for
+awhile looking down into the black flowing water, with here and there
+the mild silver of a star dim leagues below. 'I am afraid,' said
+Grisel, looking quietly up, 'you have led me into talking most pitiless
+nonsense. How many hours, I wonder, did I lie awake in the dark last
+night, thinking of you? Honestly, I shall never, NEVER forget that walk.
+It haunted me, on and on.'
+
+'Thinking of me? Do you really mean that? Then it was not all
+imagination; it wasn't just the drowning man clutching at a straw?'
+
+The grey eyes questioned him. 'You see,' he explained in a whisper, as
+if afraid of being overheard, 'it--it came back again, and--I don't mind
+a bit how much you laugh at me! I had been asleep, and had had a most
+awful dream, one of those dreams that seem to hint that some day THAT
+will be our real world, that some day we may awake where dreaming then
+will be of this; and I woke--came back--and there was a tremendous
+knocking going on downstairs. I knew there was no one else in the
+house--'
+
+'No one else in the house? And you like this?'
+
+'Yes,' said Lawford, stolidly, 'they were all out as it happened. And,
+of course,' he went on quickly, 'there was nothing for me to do but
+simply to go down and open the door. And yet, do you know, at first I
+simply couldn't move. I lit a candle, and then--then somehow I got
+to know that waiting for me was just--but there,' he broke off
+half-ashamed, 'I mustn't bother you with all this morbid stuff. Will
+your brother be in now, do you think?'
+
+'My brother will be in, and, of course, expecting you. But as for
+"bother," believe me--well, did I quite deserve it?' She stooped towards
+him. 'You lit a candle--and then?'
+
+They turned and retraced their way slowly up the hill.
+
+'It came again.'
+
+'It?'
+
+'That--that presence, that shadow. I don't mean, of course, it's a real
+shadow. It comes, doesn't it, from--from within? As if from out of some
+unheard-of hiding place, where it has been lurking for ages and ages
+before one's childhood; at least, so it seems to me now. And yet
+although it does come from within, there it is, too, in front of you,
+before your eyes, feeding even on your fear, just watching, waiting
+for--What nonsense all this must seem to you!'
+
+'Yes, yes; and then?'
+
+'Then, and you must remember the poor old boy had been knocking all this
+time--my old friend--Mr Bethany, I mean--knocking and calling through
+the letter-box, thinking I was in extremis, or something; then--how
+shall I describe it?--well YOU came, your eyes, your face, as clear as
+when, you know, the night before last, we went up the hill together. And
+then...'
+
+'And then?'
+
+'And then, we--you and I, you know--simply drove him downstairs, and
+I could hear myself grunting as if it was really a physical effort; we
+drove him, step by step, downstairs. And--' He laughed outright, and
+boyishly continued his adventure. 'What do you think I did then, without
+the ghost of a smile, too, at the idiocy of the thing? I locked the poor
+beggar in the drawing-room. I saw him there, as plainly as I ever saw
+anything in my life, and the furniture glimmering, though it was pitch
+dark: I can't describe it. It all seemed so desperately real, absolutely
+vital then. It all seems so meaningless and impossible now. And yet,
+although I am utterly played out and done for, and however absurd it may
+sound, I wouldn't have lost it; I wouldn't go back for any bribe there
+is. I feel just as if a great bundle had been rolled off my back. Of
+course, the queerest, the most detestable part of the whole business
+is that it--the thing on the stairs--was this'--he lifted a grave and
+haggard face towards her again--'or rather that,' he pointed with his
+stick towards the starry churchyard. 'Sabathier,' he said.
+
+Again they had paused together before the white gate, and this time
+Lawford pushed it open, and followed his companion up the narrow path.
+
+She stayed a moment, her hand on the bell. 'Was it my brother who
+actually put that horrible idea into your mind?--about Sabathier?'
+
+'Oh no, not really put it into my head,' said Lawford hollowly. 'He only
+found it there; lit it up.'
+
+She laid her hand lightly on his arm. 'Whether he did or not,' she said
+with an earnestness that was almost an entreaty, 'of course, you MUST
+agree that we every one of us have some such experience--that kind
+of visitor, once at least, in a lifetime.' 'Ah, but,' began Lawford,
+turning forlornly away, 'you didn't see, you can't have realized--the
+change.'
+
+She pulled the bell almost as if in some inward triumph. 'But don't you
+think,' she suggested, 'that that, like the other, might be, as it were,
+partly imagination too? If now you thought back.'
+
+But a little old woman had opened the door, and the sentence, for the
+moment, was left unfinished.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
+
+There was no one in the room, and no light, when they entered. For a
+moment Grisel stood by the open window, looking out. Then she turned
+impulsively. 'My brother, of course, will ask you too,' she said; 'we
+had made up our minds to do so if you came again; but I want you to
+promise me now that you won't dream of going back to-night. That surely
+would be tempting--well, not Providence. I couldn't rest if I thought
+you might be alone; like that again.' Her voice died away into the
+calling of the waters. A light moved across the dingy old rows of books
+and as his sister turned to go out Herbert appeared in the doorway,
+carrying a green-shaded lamp, with an old leather quarto under his arm.
+
+'Ah, here you are,' he said. 'I guessed you had probably met.' He drew
+up, burdened, before his visitor. But his clear black glance, instead of
+wandering off at his first greeting, had intensified. And it was almost
+with an air of absorption that he turned away. He dumped his book on to
+a chair and it turned over with scattered leaves on to the floor. He
+put the lamp down and stooped after it, so that his next words came up
+muffled, and as if the remark had been forced out of him. 'You don't
+feel worse, I hope?' He got up and faced his visitor for the answer. And
+for the moment Lawford stood considering his symptoms.
+
+'No,' he said almost gaily; 'I feel enormously better.' But Herbert's
+long, oval, questioning eyes beneath the sleek black hair were still
+fixed on his face. 'I am afraid, my dear fellow,' he said, with
+something more than his usual curiously indifferent courtesy, 'the
+struggle has frightfully pulled you to pieces.'
+
+'The question is,' answered Lawford, with a kind of tired yet whimsical
+melancholy in his voice, 'though I am not sure that the answer very much
+matters--what's going to put me together again? It's the old story of
+Humpty Dumpty, Herbert. Besides, one thing you said has stuck out in a
+quite curious way in my memory. I wonder if you will remember?'
+
+'What was that?' said Herbert with unfeigned curiosity.
+
+'Why, you said even though Sabathier had failed, though I was still
+my own old stodgy self, that you thought the face--the face, you know,
+might work in. Somehow, sometimes I think it has. It does really rather
+haunt me. In that case--well, what then?' Lawford had himself listened
+to this involved explanation much as one watches the accomplishment of
+a difficult trick, marvelling more at its completion at all than at the
+difficulty involved in the doing of it.
+
+'"Work in,"' repeated Herbert, like a rather blase child confronted with
+a new mechanical toy; 'did I really say that? well, honestly, it wasn't
+bad; it's what one would expect on that hypothesis. You see, we are
+only different, as it were, in our differences. Once the foot's over the
+threshold, it's nine points of the law! But I don't remember saying it.'
+He shamefacedly and naively confessed it: 'I say such an awful lot of
+things. And I'm always changing my mind. It's a standing joke against me
+with my sister. She says the recording angel will have two sides to my
+account: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; and Tuesdays, Thursdays, and
+Saturdays--diametrically opposite convictions, and both kinds wrong. On
+Sundays I am all things to all men. As for Sabathier, by the way, I
+do want particularly to have another go at him. I've been thinking him
+over, and I'm afraid in some ways he won't quite wash. And that reminds
+me, did you read the poor chap?'
+
+'I just grubbed through a page or two; but most of my French was left at
+school. What I did do, though, was to show the book to an old friend
+of ours--my wife's and mine--just to skim--a Mr Bethany. He's an old
+clergyman--our vicar, in fact.'
+
+Herbert had sat down, and with eyes slightly narrowed was listening with
+peculiar attention. He smiled a little magnanimously. 'His verdict, I
+should think, must have been a perfect joy.'
+
+'He said,' said Lawford, in his rather low, monotonous voice, 'he said
+it was precious poor stuff, that it reminded him of patchouli; and that
+Sabathier--the print I mean--looked like a foxy old roue. They were, I
+think, his exact words. We were alone together, last night.'
+
+'You don't mean that he simply didn't see the faintest resemblance?'
+
+Lawford nodded. 'But then,' he added simply, 'whenever he comes to see
+me now he leaves his spectacles at home.'
+
+And at that, as if at some preconcerted signal, they both went off into
+a simple shout of laughter, unanimous and sustained.
+
+But this first wild bout of laughter over, the first real bursting of
+the dam, perhaps, for years, Lawford found himself at a lower ebb than
+ever.
+
+'You see,' he said presently, and while still his companion's face was
+smiling around the remembrance of his laughter like ripples after the
+splash of a stone, 'Bethany has been absolutely my sheet-anchor right
+through. And I was--it was--you can't possibly realise what a ghastly
+change it really was. I don't think any one ever will.'
+
+Herbert opened his hand and looked reflectively into its palm before
+allowing himself to reply. 'I wonder, you know; I have been wondering a
+good deal; simply taking the other point of view for a moment; WAS it?
+I don't mean "ghastly" exactly (like, say, smallpox, G.P.I,
+elephantiasis), but was it quite so complete, so radical, as in the
+first sheer gust of astonishment you fancied?'
+
+Lawford thought on a little further. 'You know how one sees oneself in
+a passion--why, how a child looks--the whole face darkened and drawn and
+possessed? That was the change. That's how it seems to come back to me.
+And something, somebody, dodging behind the eyes. Yes; more that than
+even any excessive change of feature, except, of course, that I also
+seemed--Shall I ever forget that first cold, stifling stare into the
+looking-glass! I certainly was much darker, even my hair. But I've told
+you all this before,' he added wearily, 'and the scores and scores of
+times I've thought it. I used to sit up there in the big spare bedroom
+my wife put me up in, simply gloating. My flesh seemed nothing more
+than an hallucination: there I was, haunting my body, an old grinning
+tenement, and all that I thought I wanted, and couldn't do without, all
+I valued and prided myself on--stacked up in the drizzling street below.
+Why, Herbert, our bodies are only glass or cloud. They melt, don't they,
+like wax in the sun once we're out. But those first few days don't make
+very pleasant thinking. Friday night was the first, when I sat there
+like a twitching waxwork, soberly debating between Bedlam here and
+Bedlam hereafter. I even sometimes wonder whether its very repetition
+has not dulled the memory or distorted it. My wife,' he added
+ingenuously, 'seems to think there are signs of a slight improvement--a
+going back, I mean. But I'm not sure whether she meant it.'
+
+Herbert surveyed his visitor critically. 'You say "dark," he said; 'but
+surely, Lawford, your hair now is nearly grey; well-flecked at least.'
+
+Although the remark carried nothing comparatively of a shock with it,
+yet it seemed to Lawford as if an electric current had passed over his
+scalp, coldly stirring every hair upon his head. But somehow or other it
+was easier to sit quietly on, to express no surprise, to let them do or
+say what they liked. 'Well' he retorted with an odd, crooked smile, 'you
+must remember I am a good deal older than I was last Saturday. I grew
+grey in the grave, Herbert.'
+
+'But it's like this, you know,' said Herbert, rising excitedly, and at
+the next moment, on reflection, composedly reseating himself. 'How many
+of your people actually saw it? How many owned to its being as bad, as
+complete, as you made out? I don't want for a moment to cut right across
+what you said last night--our talk--but there are two million sides
+to every question, and as often as not the less conspicuous have
+sounder--well--roots. That's all.'
+
+'I think really, do you know, I would rather not go over the detestable
+thing again. Not many; my wife, though, and a man I know called Danton,
+who--who's prejudiced. After all, I have myself to think about too. And
+right through, right through--there wasn't the least doubt of that--they
+all in their hearts knew it was me. They knew I was behind. I could feel
+that absolutely always; it's not just eyes and ears we use, there's us
+ourselves to consider, though God alone knows what that means. But
+the password was there, as you might say; and they all knew I knew it,
+all--except'--he looked up as if in bewilderment--'except just one, a
+poor old lady, a very old friend of my mother's, whom I--I Sabathiered!'
+
+'Whom--you--Sabathiered!' repeated Herbert carefully, with infinite
+relish, looking sidelong at his visitor. 'And it is just precisely
+that....'
+
+But at that moment his sister appeared in the doorway to say that supper
+was ready. And it was not until Herbert was actually engaged in carving
+a cold chicken that he followed up his advantage. 'Mr. Lawford, Grisel,'
+he said, 'has just enriched our jaded language with a new verb--to
+Sabathier. And if I may venture to define it in the presence of
+the distinguished neologist himself, it means, "To deal with
+histrionically"; or, rather, that's what it will mean a couple of
+hundred years hence. For the moment it means, "To act under the
+influence of subliminalization; To perplex, or bemuse, or estrange
+with OTHERNESS." Do tell us, Lawford, more about the little old lady.'
+He passed with her plate a little meaningful glance at his sister, and
+repeated, 'Do!'
+
+'But I've been plaguing your sister enough already. You'll wish...'
+Lawford began, and turned his tired-out eyes towards those others
+awaiting them so frankly they seemed in their perfect friendliness
+a rest from all his troubles. 'You see,' he went on, 'what I kept on
+thinking and thinking of was to get a quite unbiased and unprejudiced
+view. She had known me for years, though we had not actually met more
+than once or twice since my mother's death. And there she was sitting
+with me at the other end of just such another little seat as'--he
+turned--to Herbert 'as ours, at Widderstone. It was on Bewley Common: I
+can see it all now; it was sunset. And I simply turned and asked her in
+a kind of a whining affected manner if she remembered me; and when after
+a long time she came round to owning that to all intents and purposes
+she did not--I professed to have made a mistake in recognising her. I
+think,' he added, glancing up from one to the other of his two strange
+friends, 'I think it was the meanest trick I can remember.'
+
+'H'm,' said Herbert solemnly: 'I wish I had as sensitive a conscience.
+But as your old friend didn't recognise you, who's the worse? As for her
+not doing so, just think of the difference a few years makes to a man,
+and any severe shock. Life wears so infernally badly. Who, for that
+matter, does not change, even in character and yet who professes to see
+it? Mind, I don't say in essence! But then how many of the human ghosts
+one meets does one know in essence? One doesn't want to. It would
+be positively cataclysmic. And that's what brings me around to feel,
+Lawford, if I may venture to say so, that you may have brooded a little
+too keenly on--on your own case. Tell any one you feel ill; he will
+commiserate with you to positive nausea. Tell any priest your soul is
+in danger; will he wait for proof? It's misereres and penances world
+without end. Tell any woman you love her; will she, can she, should she,
+gainsay you? There you are. The cat's out of the bag, you see. My sister
+and I sat up half the night talking the thing over. I said I'd take the
+plunge. I said I'd risk appearing the crassest, contradictoriest wretch
+that ever drew breath. I don't deny that what I hinted at the other
+night must seem in part directly contrary to what I'm going to say now.'
+
+He wheeled his black eyes as if for inspiration, and helped himself to
+salad. 'It's this,' he said. 'Isn't it possible, isn't it even probable
+that being ill, and overstrung, moping a little over things more or less
+out of the common ruck, and sitting there in a kind of trance--isn't it
+possible that you may have very largely IMAGINED the change? Hypnotised
+yourself into believing it much worse--more profound, radical,
+acute--and simply absolutely hypnotizing others into thinking so, too.
+Christendom is just beginning to rediscover that there is such a thing
+as faith, that it is just possible that, say, megrims or melancholia may
+be removed at least as easily as mountains. The converse, of course,
+is obvious on the face of it. A man fails because he thinks himself a
+failure. It's the men that run away that lose the battle. Suppose then,
+Lawford'--he leaned forward, keen and suave--'suppose you have been and
+"Sabathiered" yourself!'
+
+Lawford had grown accustomed during the last few days to finding himself
+gazing out like a child into reality, as if from the windows of a dream.
+He had in a sense followed this long, loosely stitched, preliminary
+argument; he had at least in part realised that he sat there between
+two clear friendly minds acting in the friendliest and most obvious
+collusion. But he was incapable of fixing his attention very closely
+on any single fragment of Herbert's apology, or of rousing himself into
+being much more than a dispassionate and not very interested spectator
+of the little melodrama that Fate, it appeared, had at the last moment
+decided rather capriciously to twist into a farce. He turned with a
+smile to the face so keenly fixed and enthusiastic with the question it
+had so laboriously led up to: 'But surely, I don't quite see...'
+
+Herbert lifted his glass as if to his visitor's acumen and set it down
+again without tasting it. 'Why, my dear fellow,' he said triumphantly,
+'even a dream must have a peg. Yours was this unforgettable old suicide.
+Candidly now, how much of Sabathier was actually yours? In spite of all
+that that fantastical fellow, Herbert, said last night, dead men DON'T
+tell tales. The last place in the world to look for a ghost is where
+his traitorous bones lie crumbling. Good heavens, think what irrefutable
+masses of evidence there would be at our finger-tips if every tombstone
+hid its ghost! No; the fellow just arrested you with his creepy
+epitaph: an epitaph, mind you, that is in a literary sense distinctly
+fertilizing. It catches one's fancy in its own crude way, as pages
+and pages of infinitely more complicated stuff take possession of,
+germinate, and sprout in one's imagination in another way. We are all
+psychical parasites. Why, given his epitaph, given the surroundings, I
+wager any sensitive consciousness could have guessed at his face; and
+guessing, as it were, would have feigned it. What do you think, Grisel?'
+
+'I think, dear, you are talking absolute nonsense; what do they call
+it--"darkening counsel"? It's "the hair of the dog," Mr Lawford.'
+
+'Well, then, you see,' said Herbert over a hasty mouthful, and turning
+again to his victim--'then you see, when you were just in the pink of
+condition to credit any idle tale you heard, then I came in. What, with
+the least impetus, can one NOT see by moonlight? The howl of a dog turns
+the midnight into a Brocken; the branch of a tree stoops out at you like
+a Beelzebub crusted with gadflies. I'd, mind you, sipped of the deadly
+old Huguenot too. I'd listened to your innocent prattle about the child
+kicking his toes out on death's cupboard door; what more likely thing in
+the world, then, than that with that moon, in that packed air, I should
+have swallowed the bait whole, and seen Sabathier in every crevice of
+your skin? I don't say there wasn't any resemblance; it was for the
+moment extraordinary; it was even when you were here the other night
+distinctly arresting. But now (poor old Grisel, I'm nearly done) all I
+want to say is this: that if we had the "foxy old roue" here now, and
+Grisel played Paris between the three of us, she'd hand over the apple
+not to you but to me.'
+
+'I don't quite see where poor Paris comes in,' suggested Grisel meekly.
+
+'No, nor do I,' said Herbert. 'All that I mean, sagacious child, is,
+that Mr Lawford no more resembles the poor wretch now than I resemble
+the Apollo Belvedere. If you had only heard my sister scolding me,
+railing at me for putting such ideas into your jangled head! They
+don't affect ME one iota. I have, I suppose, what is usually called
+imagination; which merely means that I can sup with the devil, spoon
+for spoon, and could sleep in Bluebeard's linen-closet without turning
+a hair. You, if I am not very much mistaken, are not much troubled with
+that very unprofitable quality, and so, I suppose, when a crooked and
+bizarre fancy does edge into your mind it roots there.'
+
+And that said, not without some little confusion, and covert glance of
+inquiry at his sister, Herbert made all the haste he could to catch up
+the course that his companions had already finished.
+
+If only, Lawford thought, this insufferable weariness would lift awhile
+he could enjoy the quiet, absurd, heedless talk, and this very friendly
+topsy-turvy effort to ease his mind and soothe his nerves. He might even
+take an interest again in his 'case.'
+
+'You see,' he said, turning to Grisel, 'I don't think it really very
+much matters how it all came about. I never could believe it would last.
+It may perhaps--some of it at least may be fancy. But then, what isn't?
+What is trustworthy? And now your brother tells me my hair's turning
+grey. I suppose I have been living too slowly, too sluggishly, and they
+thought it was high time to stir me up.'
+
+He saw with extraordinary vividness the low panelled room; the still
+listening face; the white muslin shoulders and dark hair; and the
+eyes that seemed to recall some far-off desolate longing for home and
+childhood. It was all a dream. That was the end of the matter. Even now,
+perhaps, his tired old stupid body was lying hunched up, drenched with
+dew upon the little old seat under the mist-wreathed branches. Soon it
+would bestir itself and wake up and go off home--home to Sheila, to the
+old deadly round that once had seemed so natural and inevitable, to the
+old dull Lawford--eyes and brain and heart.
+
+They returned up the dark shallow staircase to Herbert's book-room, and
+he talked on to very quiet and passive listeners in his own fantastic
+endless fashion. And ever and again Lawford would find himself
+intercepting fleeting and anxious glances at his face, glances almost
+of remorse and pity; and thought he detected beneath this irresponsible
+contradictory babble an unceasing effort to clear the sky, to lure away
+too pressing memories, to put his doubts and fears completely to rest.
+
+Herbert even went so far as to plead guilty, when Grisel gave him the
+cue, of having a little heightened and overcoloured his story of
+the restless phantasmal old creature that haunted their queer wooden
+hauntable old house. And when they rose, laughing and yawning to take
+up their candles, it was, after all, after a rather animated discussion,
+with many a hair-raising ghost story brought in for proof between
+brother and sister, as to exactly how many times that snuff-coloured
+spectre had made his appearance; and, with less unanimity still, as
+to the precise manner in which he was in the habit of making his
+precipitant exit.
+
+'You do at any rate acknowledge, Grisel, that the old creature does
+appear, and that you saw him yourself step out into space when you were
+sitting down there under the willow shelling peas. I've seen him twice
+for certain, once rather hazily; Sallie saw him so plainly she asked his
+business: that's five. I resign.'
+
+'Acknowledge!' said Grisel; 'of course I do. I'd acknowledge anything in
+the world to save argument. Why, I don't know what I should do without
+him. If only, now Mr Lawford would give him a fair chance to show
+himself reading quietly here about ten minutes to one, or shelling peas
+even, if he prefers it. If only he'd stay long enough for THAT. Wouldn't
+it be the very thing for them both!'
+
+'Of course,' said Herbert cordially, 'the very thing.'
+
+Lawford looked up at neither of them. He shook his head.
+
+But he needed little persuasion to stay at least one night. The prospect
+of that long solitary walk, of that tired stupid stooping figure
+dragging itself along the interminable country roads seemed a sheer
+impossibility. 'It is not--it isn't, I swear it--the other that beeps me
+back,' he had solemnly assured the friend that half smiled her relief at
+his acceptance, 'but--if you only knew how empty it's all got now; all
+reason gone even to go on at all.'
+
+'But doesn't it follow? Of course it's empty. And now life is going
+to begin again. I assure you it is, I do indeed. Only, only have
+courage--just the will to win on.'
+
+He said good-night; shut-to the latched door of his long low room,
+ceilinged with rafters close under the steep roof, its brown walls hung
+with quiet, dark, pondering and beautiful faces looking gravely across
+at him. And with his candle in his hand he sat down on the bedside. All
+speculation was gone. The noisy clock of his brain had run down again.
+He turned towards the old oval looking-glass on the dressing-table
+without the faintest stirring of interest, suspense, or anxiety. What
+did it matter what a man looked like--a now familiar but enfeebled and
+deprecating voice seemed to say. He knew that a change had come. Even
+Sheila had noticed it. And since then what had he not gone through? What
+now was here seemed of little moment, so far at least as this world was
+concerned.
+
+At last with an effort he rose, crossed the uneven floor, and looked in
+unmovedly on what was his own poor face come back to him: changed indeed
+almost beyond belief from the sleek self-satisfied genial yet languid
+Arthur Lawford of the past years, and still haunted with some faint
+trace of the set and icy sharpness, and challenge, and affront of the
+dark Adventurer, but that--how immeasurably dimmed and blunted and
+faded. He had expected to find it so. Would it (the thought vanished
+across his mind) would it have been as unmistakably there had he
+come hot-foot, fearing, expecting to find the other? But--was he
+disappointed!
+
+He hardly knew how long he stood there, leaning on his hands, surveying
+almost listlessly in the candle-light that lined, bedraggled, grey,
+hopeless countenance, those dark-socketed, smouldering eyes, whose
+pupils even now were so dilated that a casual glance would have failed
+to detect the least hint of any iris. 'It must have been something
+pretty bad you were, you know, or something pretty bad you did,' they
+seemed to be trying to say to him, 'to drag us down to this.'
+
+He knelt down by force of habit to say his prayers; but no words came.
+Well, between earthly friends a betrayal such as this would have caused
+a livelong estrangement and hostility. The God the old Lawford used to
+pray to would forgive him, he thought wearily, if just for the present
+he was a little too sore at heart to play the hypocrite. But if,
+while kneeling, he said nothing, he saw a good many things in such
+tranquillity and clearness as the mere eyes of the body can share but
+rarely with their sisters of the imagination. And now it was Alice
+who looked mournfully out of the dark at him; and now the little old
+charwoman, Mrs Gull, with her bag hooked over her arm, climbed painfully
+up the area steps; and now it was the lean vexed face of a friend,
+nursing some restless and anxious grievance against him--Mr Bethany;
+and then and ever again it was the face of one who seemed pure dream and
+fantasy and yet... He listened intently and fancied even now he could
+hear the voices of brother and sister talking quietly and circumspectly
+together in the room beneath.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
+
+A quiet knocking aroused him in the long, tranquil bedroom; and
+Herbert's head was poked into the room. 'There's a bath behind that door
+over there,' he whispered, `or if you like I'm off for a bathe in the
+Widder. It's a luscious day. Shall I wait? All right,' and the head was
+withdrawn. 'Don't put much on,' came the voice at the panel; 'we'll be
+home again in twenty minutes.'
+
+The green and brightness of the morning must have been prepared for
+overnight by spiders and the dew. Everywhere the gleaming nets were
+hung, and everywhere there rose a tiny splendour from the waterdrops, so
+clear and pure and changeable it seemed with their fire and colour
+they shook a tiny crystal music in the air. Herbert led the way along a
+clayey downward path beneath hazels tossing softly together their twigs
+of nuts, until they came out into a rounded hollow that, mounded with
+thyme, sloped gently down to the green banks of the Widder. The water
+poured like clearest glass beneath a rain of misty sunbeams.
+
+'My sister always says that this is the very dell Boccaccio had in his
+mind's eye when he wrote the "Decameron." There really is something
+almost classic in those pines. And I'd sometimes swear with my eyes just
+out of the water I've seen Dryads half in hiding peeping between those
+beeches. Good Lord, Lawford, what a world we wretched moderns have made,
+and missed!'
+
+The water was violently cold. It seemed to Lawford, as it swept up over
+his body, and as he plunged his night-distorted eyes beneath its blazing
+surface, that it was charged with some strange, powerful enchantment to
+wash away in its icy clearness even the memory of the dull and tarnished
+days behind him. If one could but tie up anyhow that stained bundle of
+inconsequent memories called life, and fling it into a cupboard remoter
+even than Bluebeard's, and lock the door, and drop the quickly-rusting
+key into these living waters!
+
+He dressed himself with window thrown open to the blackbirds and
+thrushes, and the occasional shrill solitary whistling of a robin. But,
+like the sour-sweet fragrance of the brier, its wandering desolate burst
+of music had power to wake memory, and carried him instantly back to
+that first aimless descent into the evening gloom of Widderstone from
+which it was in vain to hope ever to climb again. Surely never a more
+ghoulish face looked out on its man before than that which confronted
+him as with borrowed razor he stood shaving those sunken chaps, that
+angular chin.
+
+And even now, beneath the lantern of broad daylight, just as within that
+other face had lurked the undeniable ghost and presence of himself, so
+beneath the sunken features seemed to float, tenuous as smoke, scarcely
+less elusive than a dream, between eye and object, the sinister darkness
+of the face that in those two bouts with fear he had by some strange
+miracle managed to repel.
+
+'Work in,' the chance phrase came back. It had worked in in sober
+earnest; and so far as the living of the next few weeks went, surely it
+might prove an ally without which he simply could not conceive himself
+as struggling on at all.
+
+But as dexterous minds as even restless Sabathier's had him just now in
+safe and kindly keeping. All the quiet October morning Herbert kept him
+talking and stooping over his extraordinary collection of books.
+
+'The point is,' he explained to Lawford, standing amid a positive
+archipelago of precious 'finds,' with his foot hoisted onto a chair and
+a patched-up, sea-stained folio on his knee, 'I honestly detest the mere
+give and take of what we are fools enough to call life. I don't deny
+Life's there,' he swept his hand towards the open window--'in that
+frantic Tophet we call London; but there's no focus, no point of
+vantage. Even a scribbler only gets it piecemeal and through a dulled
+medium. We learn to read before we know how to see; we swallow our
+tastes, convictions, and emotions whole; so that nine-tenths of the
+world's nectar is merely honeydew.' He smiled pleasantly into the
+fixed vacancy of his visitor's face. 'That's why I've just gone on,' he
+continued amiably, 'collecting this particular kind of stuff--what you
+might call riff-raff. There's not a book here, Lawford, that hasn't
+at least a glimmer of the real thing in it--just Life, seen through
+a living eye, and felt. As for literature, and style, and all that
+gallimaufry, don't fear for them if your author has the ghost of a hint
+of genius in his making.'
+
+'But surely,' said Lawford, trying for the twentieth time to pretend
+to himself that these endless books carried the faintest savour of the
+delight to him which they must, he rather forlornly supposed, shower
+upon Herbert, 'surely genius is a very rare thing!'
+
+'Rare! the world simply swarms with it. But before you can bottle it up
+in a book it's got to be articulate. Just for a single instant imagine
+yourself Falstaff, and if there weren't hundreds of Falstaffs in every
+generation, to be examples of his ungodly life, he'd be as dead as a
+doornail to-morrow--imagine yourself Falstaff, and being so,
+sitting down to write "Henry IV," or "The Merry Wives." It's simply
+preposterous. You wouldn't be such a fool as to waste the time. A mere
+Elizabethan scribbler comes along with a gift of expression and an
+observant eye, lifts the bloated old tippler clean out of life, and
+swims down the ages as the greatest genius the world has ever seen.
+Whereas, surely, though you mustn't let me bore you with all this
+piffle, it's Falstaff is the genius, and W. S. merely a talented
+reporter.
+
+'Lear, Macbeth, Mercutio--they live on their own, as it were. The
+newspapers are full of them, if we were only the Shakespeares to see it.
+Have you ever been in a Police Court? Have you ever WATCHED tradesmen
+behind their counters? My soul, the secrets walking in the streets! You
+jostle them at every corner. There's a Polonius in every first-class
+railway carriage, and as many Juliets as there are boarding-schools.
+What the devil are you, my dear chap, but genius itself, with all the
+world brand new upon your shoulders? And who'd have thought it of you
+ten days ago?
+
+'It's simply and solely because we're all, poor wretches, dumb--dumb as
+butts of Malmsez; dumb as drummerless drums. Here am I, ass that I am,
+trickling out this--this whey that no more expresses me than Tupper
+does Sappho. But that's what I want to mean. How inexhaustibly rich
+everything is, if you only stick to life. Here it is packed away behind
+these rotting covers, just the real thing, no respectable stodge; no
+mere parasitic stuff; not more than a dozen poets; scores of outcasts
+and vagabonds--and the real thing in vagabonds is pretty rare in print,
+I can tell you. We're all, every one of us, sodden with facts, drugged
+with the second-hand, and barnacled with respectability until--until the
+touch comes. Goodness knows where from; but there's no mistaking it; oh
+no!'
+
+'But what,' said Lawford uneasily, 'what on earth do you mean by the
+touch?'
+
+'I mean when you cease to be a puppet only and sit up in the gallery
+too. When you squeeze through to the other side. When you suffer a kind
+of conversion of the mind; become aware of your senses. When you get a
+living inkling. When you become articulate to yourself. When you SEE.'
+
+'I am awfully stupid,' Lawford murmured, 'but even now I don't really
+follow you a bit. But when, as you say, you do become articulate to
+yourself, what happens then?'
+
+'Why, then,' said Herbert with a shrug almost of despair, 'then
+begins the weary tramp back. One by one drop off the truisms, and the
+Grundyisms, and the pedantries, and all the stillborn claptrap of the
+marketplace sloughs off. Then one can seriously begin to think about
+saving one's soul.'
+
+'Saving one's soul,' groaned Lawford; 'why, I am not even sure of my own
+body yet.' He walked slowly over to the window and with every thought in
+his head as quiet as doves on a sunny wall, stared out into the garden
+of green things growing, leaves fading and falling water. 'I tell you
+what,' he said, turning irresolutely, 'I wonder if you could possibly
+find time to write me out a translation of Sabathier. My French is much
+too hazy to let me really get at the chap. He's gone now; but I really
+should like to know what kind of stuff exactly he has left behind.'
+
+'Oh, Sabathier!' said Herbert, laughing. 'What do you think of that,
+Grisel?' he asked, turning to his sister, who at that moment had looked
+in at the door. 'Here's Mr Lawford asking me to make a translation of
+Sabathier. Lunch, Lawford.'
+
+Lawford sighed. And not until he had slowly descended half the narrow
+uneven stairs that led down to the dining-room did he fully realise the
+guile of a sister that could induce a hopeless bookworm to waste a whole
+morning over the stupidest of companions, simply to keep his tired-out
+mind from rankling, and give his Sabathier a chance to go to roost.
+
+'I think, do you know,' he managed to blurt out at last 'I think I ought
+to be getting home again. The house is empty--and--'
+
+'You shall go this evening,' said Herbert, 'if you really must insist
+on it. But honestly, Lawford, we both think that after what the last few
+days must have been, it is merely common sense to take a rest. How can
+you possibly rest with a dozen empty rooms echoing every thought you
+think? There's nothing more to worry about; you agree to that. Send
+your people a note saying that you are here, safe and sound. Give them a
+chance of lighting a fire, and driving in the fatted calf. Stay on with
+us just the week out.'
+
+Lawford turned from one to the other of the two friendly faces. But what
+was dimly in his mind refused to express itself. 'I think, you know,
+I--' he began falteringly.
+
+'But it's just this thinking that's the deuce--this preposterous habit
+of having continually to make up one's mind. Off with his head, Grisel!
+My sister's going to take you for a picnic; we go every other fine
+afternoon; and you can argue it out with her.'
+
+Once alone again with Grisel, however, Lawford found talking
+unnecessary. Silences seemed to fall between them as quietly and
+restfully as evening flows into night. They walked on slowly through the
+fading woods, and when they had reached the top of the hill that sloped
+down to the dark and foamless Widder they sat down in the honey-scented
+sunshine on a knoll of heather and bracken, and Grisel lighted the
+little spirit-kettle she had brought with her, and busied herself very
+methodically over making tea.
+
+That done, she clasped her hands round her knees, and sat now gossiping,
+now silent, in the pale autumnal beauty. There was a bird wistfully
+twittering in the branches overhead, and ever and again a withered leaf
+would slip circling down from the motionless beech boughs arched in
+their stillness above their heads beneath the thin blue sky.
+
+'Men, you know,' she began again suddenly, starting out of reverie,
+'really are absurdly blind; and just a little bit absurdly kindly
+stupid. How many times have I been at the point of laughing out at my
+brother's delicious naive subtleties. But you do, you will, understand,
+Mr Lawford, that he was, that we are both "doing our best"--to make
+amends?'
+
+
+'I understand--I do indeed--a tenth part of all your kindness.'
+
+'Yes, but that's just it--that horrible word "kindness"! If ever there
+were two utterly self-absorbed people, without a trace, with an absolute
+horror of kindness, it is just my brother and I. It's most of it false
+and most of it useless. We all surely must take what comes in this
+topsy-turvy world. I believe in saying out:--that the more one thinks
+about life the worse it becomes. There are only two kinds of happiness
+in this world--a wooden post's and Prometheus's. And who ever heard
+of any one having the impudence to be kind to Prometheus? As for a
+miserable "medium" like me, not quite a post and leagues and leagues
+from even envying a Prometheus, she's better for the powder without the
+jam. But that's all nothing. What I can't help thinking--and it's not a
+bit giving my brother away, because we both think it--that it was partly
+our thoughtlessness that added at least something to--to the rest. It
+was perfectly absurd. He saw you were ill; he saw--he must have seen
+even in that first Sunday talk--that your nerves were all askew. And
+who doesn't know what "nerves" means nowadays? And yet he deliberately
+chattered. He loves it--just at large, you know, like me. I told him
+before I came out that I intended, if I could, to say all this. And now
+it's said you'll please forgive me for going back to it.'
+
+'Please don't talk about forgiveness. But when you say he chattered, you
+mean about Sabathier, of course. And that, you know, I don't care a fig
+for now. We can settle all that between ourselves--him and me, I mean.
+And now tell me candidly again--Is there any "prey" in my face now?'
+
+She looked up fleetingly into his eyes, leant back her head and laughed.
+'"Prey," there never was a glimpse.'
+
+'And "change"?' Their eyes met again in an infinitely brief, infinitely
+bewildering argument.
+
+'Really, really, scarcely perceptible,' she assured him, 'except, of
+course, how horribly, horribly ill you look. And that only seems to
+prove to me you must be hiding something else. No illusion on earth
+could--could have done that to your face.'
+
+'You think, I know,' he persisted, 'that I must be persuaded and
+cosseted and humoured. Yes, you do; it's my poor old sanity that's
+really in both your minds. Perhaps I am--not absolutely sound. Anyhow.
+I've been watching it in your looks at each other all the time. And I
+can never, never say, never tell you what you have done for me. But you
+see, after all, we did win through; I keep on telling myself that. So
+that now it's purely from the most selfish and practical motives that I
+want you to be perfectly frank with me. I have to go back, you know; and
+some of them, one or two of my friends I mean, are not all on my side.
+Think of me as I was when you came into the room, three centuries ago,
+and you turned and looked, frowning at me in the candle-light; remember
+that and look at me now. What is the difference? Does it shock you? Does
+it make the whole world seem a trick, a sham? Does it simply sour your
+life to think such a thing possible? Oh, the hours I've spent gloating
+on Widderstone's miserable mask of skin and bone, as I was saying to
+your brother only last night, and never knew until they shuffled me that
+the old self too was nothing better than a stifling suffocating mask.'
+
+'But don't you see,' she argued softly, turning her face away a little,
+'you were a stranger then (though I certainly didn't mean to frown). And
+then a little while after we were, well, just human beings, shoulder
+to shoulder, and if friendship does not mean that, I don't know what it
+does mean. And now, you are--well, just you: the you, you know, of three
+centuries ago! And if you mean to ask me whether at any precise moment
+I have been conscious that this you I am now speaking to was not the
+you of last night, or of that dark climb up the hill, why, it is simply
+frantic to think it could ever be necessary to say over and over again,
+No. But if you mean, Have you changed else? All I could answer is, Don't
+we all change as we grow to know one another? What were just features,
+what just dingily represented one, as it were, is forgotten, or rather
+gets remembered. Of course, the first glimpse is the landscape under
+lightning as it were. But afterwards isn't it surely like the alphabet
+to a child; what was first a queer angular scrawl becomes A, and is
+always ever after A, undistinguished, half-forgotten, yet standing at
+last for goodness knows what real wonderful things--or for just the dry
+bones of soulless words? Is that it?' She stole a sidelong glance into
+his brooding face, leaning her head on her hand.
+
+'Yes, yes,' came the rather dissatisfied reply. 'I do agree; perfectly.
+But then, you see--I told you I was going to talk of nothing but
+myself--what did at first happen to me was something much worse, and, I
+suppose, something quite different from that.'
+
+'And yet, didn't you tell us, that of all your friends not one really
+denied in their hearts your--what they would call, I suppose--your
+IDENTITY; except that poor little offended old lady. And even she, if my
+intuition is worth a penny piece, even she when you go soon and talk to
+her will own that she did know you, and that it was not because you
+were a stranger that she was offended, but because you so ungenerously
+pretended to be one. That was a little mad, now, if you like!'
+
+'Oh yes,' said Lawford, 'I am going to ask her forgiveness. I don't know
+what I didn't vow to take her for a peace-offering if the chance should
+ever come--and the courage--to make my peace with her. But now that the
+chance has come, and I think the courage, it is the desire that's gone.
+I don't seem to care either way. I feel as if I had got past making my
+peace with any one.'
+
+But this time no answer helped him out.
+
+'After all,' he went plodding on, 'there is more than just the mere day
+to day to consider. And one doesn't realise that one's face actually
+IS one's fortune without a shock. And that THAT gone, one is, as
+your brother said, just like a bee come back to the wrong hive. It
+undermines,' he smiled rather bitterly, 'one's views rather. And it
+certainly shifts one's friends. If it hadn't been just for my old'--he
+stopped dead, and again pushed slowly on--'if it hadn't been for our
+old friend, Mr Bethany, I doubt if we should now have had a soul on our
+side. I once read somewhere that wolves always chase the old and weak
+and maimed out of the pack. And after all, what do we do? Where do
+we keep the homeless and the insane? And yet, you know,' he added
+ruminatingly, 'it is not as if mine was ever a particularly lovely or
+lovable face! While as for the poor wretch behind it, well, I really
+cannot see what meaning, or life even, he had before--'
+
+'Before?'
+
+Lawford met bravely the clear whimsical eyes. 'Before, I was
+Sabathiered.'
+
+Grisel laughed outright.
+
+'You think,' he retorted almost bitterly, 'you think I am talking like a
+child.'
+
+'Yes,' she sighed cheerfully, 'I was quite envying you.'
+
+'Well, there I am,' said Lawford inconsequently. 'And now; well, now,
+I suppose, the whole thing's to begin again. I can't help beginning to
+wonder what the meaning of it all is; why one's duty should always seem
+so very stupid a thing. And then, too, what can there be on earth
+that even a buried Sabathier could desire?' He glanced up in a really
+animated perplexity at the still, dark face turned in the evening light
+towards the darkening valley. And perplexity deepened into a disquieted
+frown--like that of a child who is roused suddenly from a daydream by
+the half-forgotten question of a stranger. He turned his eyes almost
+furtively away as if afraid of disturbing her; and for awhile they sat
+in silence... At last he turned again almost shyly. 'I hope some day you
+will let me bring my daughter to see you.'
+
+'Yes, yes,' said Grisel eagerly; 'we should both LOVE it, of course.
+Isn't it curious?--I simply KNEW you had a daughter. Sheer intuition!'
+
+'I say "some day,"' said Lawford; 'I know, though, that that some day
+will never come.'
+
+'Wait; just wait,' replied the quiet confident voice, 'that will come
+too. One thing at a time, Mr Lawford. You've won your old self back
+again; you'll win your old love of life back again in a little while;
+never fear. Oh, don't I know that awful Land's End after illness; and
+that longing, too, that gnawing longing, too, for Ultima Thule. So,
+it's a bargain between us that you bring your daughter soon.' She busied
+herself over the tea things. 'And, of course,' she added, as if it were
+an afterthought, looking across at him in the pale green sunlight as she
+knelt, 'you simply won't think of going back to-night.... Solitude, I
+really do think, solitude just now would be absolute madness. You'll
+write to-day and go, perhaps, to-morrow!'
+
+Lawford looked across in his mind at his square ungainly house,
+full-fronting the afternoon sun. He tried to repress a shudder. 'I
+think, do you know, I ought to go to-day.'
+
+'Well, why not? Why not? Just to reassure yourself that all's well. And
+come back here to sleep. If you'd really promise that I'd drive you in.
+I'd love it. There's the jolliest little governess-cart we sometimes
+hire for our picnics. Way I? You've no idea how much easier in our minds
+my brother and I would be if you would. And then to-morrow, or at any
+rate the next day, you shall be surrendered, whole and in your right
+mind. There, that's a bargain too. Now we must hurry.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINETEEN
+
+Herbert himself went down to order the governess cart, and packed them
+in with a rug. And in the dusk Grisel set Lawford down at the corner of
+his road and drove on to an old bookseller's with a commission from her
+brother, promising to return for him in an hour. Dust and a few straws
+lay at rest as if in some abstruse arrangement on the stones of the
+porch just as the last faint whirling gust of sunset had left them. Shut
+lids of sightless indifference seemed to greet the wanderer from the
+curtained windows.
+
+He opened the door and went in. For a moment he stood in the vacant
+hall; then he peeped first into the blind-drawn dining-room, faintly,
+dingily sweet, like an empty wine-bottle. He went softly on a few paces
+and just opening the door looked in on the faintly glittering twilight
+of the drawing-room. But the congealed stump of candle that he had set
+in the corner as a final rancorous challenge to the beaten Shade was
+gone. He slowly and deliberately ascended the stairs, conscious of a
+peculiar sense of ownership of what in even so brief an absence had
+taken on so queer a look of strangeness. It was almost as if he might be
+some lone heir come in the rather mournful dusk to view what melancholy
+fate had unexpectedly bestowed on him.
+
+'Work in'--what on earth else could this chill sense of strangeness
+mean? Would he ever free his memory from that one haphazard, haunting
+hint? And as he stood in the doorway of the big, calm room, which seemed
+even now to be stirring with the restless shadow of these last few
+far-away days; now pacing sullenly to and fro; now sitting hunched-up to
+think; and now lying impotent in a vain, hopeless endeavour only for the
+breath of a moment to forget--he awoke out of reverie to find himself
+smiling at the thought that a changed face was practically at the mercy
+of an incredulous world, whereas a changed heart was no one's deadly
+dull affair but its owner's. The merest breath of pity even stole over
+him for the Sabathier who after all had dared and had needed, perhaps,
+nothing like so arrogant and merciless a coup de grace to realise that
+he had so ignominiously failed.
+
+'But there, that's done!' he exclaimed out loud, not without a tinge of
+regret that theories, however brilliant and bizarre, could never now be
+anything else--that now indeed that the symptoms had gone, the 'malady,'
+for all who had not been actually admitted into the shocked circle,
+was become nothing more than an inanely 'tall' story; stuffing not
+even savoury enough for a goose. How wide exactly, he wondered, would
+Sheila's discreet, shocked circle prove? He stood once more before the
+looking-glass, hearing again Grisel's words in the still green shadow
+of the beech-tree, 'Except of course, horribly, horribly ill.' 'What a
+fool, what a coward she thinks I am!'
+
+There was still nearly an hour to be spent in this great barn of faded
+interests. He lit a candle and descended into the kitchen. A mouse went
+scampering to its hole as he pushed open the door. The memory of that
+ravenous morning meal nauseated him. It was sour and very still here;
+he stood erect; the air smelt faint of earth. In the breakfast-room the
+bookcase still swung open. Late evening mantled the garden; and in
+sheer ennui again he sat down to the table, and turned for a last not
+unfriendly hob-a-nob with his poor old friend Sabathier. He would take
+the thing back. Herbert, of course, was going to translate it for him.
+Now if the patient old Frenchman had stormed Herbert instead--that
+surely would have been something like a coup! Those frenzied books.
+The absurd talk of the man. Herbert was perfectly right--he could have
+entertained fifty old Huguenots without turning a hair. 'I'm such an
+awful stodge.'
+
+He turned the woolly leaves over very slowly. He frowned impatiently,
+and from the end backwards turned them over again. Then he laid the book
+softly down on the table and sat back. He stared with narrowed lids
+into the flame of his quiet friendly candle. Every trace, every shred of
+portrait and memoir were gone. Once more, deliberately, punctiliously,
+he examined page by page the blurred and unfamiliar French--the sooty
+heads, the long, lean noses, the baggy eyes passing like figures in
+a peepshow one by one under his hand--to the last fragmentary and
+dexterously mended leaf. Yes, Sabathier was gone. Quite the old slow
+Lawford smile crept over his face at the discovery. It was a smile a
+little sheepish too, as he thought of Sheila's quiet vigilance.
+
+And the next instant he had looked up sharply, with a sudden peculiar
+shrug, and a kind of cry, like the first thin cry of an awakened child,
+in his mind. Without a moment's hesitation he climbed swiftly upstairs
+again to the big sepulchral bedroom. He pressed with his fingernail the
+tiny spring in the looking-glass. The empty drawer flew open. There were
+finger-marks still in the dust.
+
+Yet, strangely enough, beneath all the clashing thoughts that came
+flocking into his mind as he stood with the empty drawer in his hand,
+was a wounding yet still a little amused pity for his old friend Mr
+Bethany. So far as he himself was concerned the discovery--well, he
+would have plenty of time to consider everything that could possibly now
+concern himself. Anyhow, it could only simplify matters.
+
+He remembered waking to that old wave of sickening horror on the first
+unhappy morning; he remembered the keen yet owlish old face blinking
+its deathless friendliness at him, and the steady pressure of the cold,
+skinny hand. As for Sheila, she had never done anything by halves;
+certainly not when it came to throwing over a friend no longer
+necessary to one's social satisfaction. But she would edge out cleverly,
+magnanimously, triumphantly enough, no doubt, when the day of reckoning
+should come, the day when, her nets wide spread, her bait prepared, he
+must stand up before her outraged circle and positively prove himself
+her lawful husband, perhaps even to the very imprint of his thumb.
+
+'Poor old thing!' he said again; and this time his pity was shared
+almost equally between both witnesses to Mr Bethany's ingenuous little
+document, the loss of which had fallen so softly and pathetically that
+he felt only ashamed of having discovered it so soon.
+
+He shut back the tell-tale drawer, and after trying to collect his
+thoughts in case anything should have been forgotten, he turned with a
+deep trembling sigh to descend the stairs. But on the landing he drew
+back at the sound of voices, and then a footstep. Soon came the sound of
+a key in the lock. He blew out his candle and leant listening over the
+balusters.
+
+'Who's there?' he called quietly.
+
+'Me, sir,' came the feeble reply out of the darkness.
+
+'What is it, Ada? What have you come for?'
+
+'Only, sir, to see that all was safe, and you were in, sir.'
+
+'Yes,' he said. 'All's safe; and I am in. What if I had been out?' It
+was like dropping tiny pebbles into a deep well--so long after came the
+answering feeble splash.
+
+'Then I was to go back, sir.' And a moment after the discreet voice
+floated up with the faintest tinge of effrontery out of the hush. 'Is
+that Dr Ferguson, too sir?'
+
+'No, Ada; and please tell your mistress from me that Dr Ferguson is
+unlikely to call again.' A keen but rather forlorn smile passed over his
+face. 'He's dining with friends no doubt at Holloway. But of course if
+she should want to see him he will see her to-morrow at any hour at Mrs
+Lovat's. And--Ada!'
+
+'Yes, sir?'
+
+'Say that I'm a little better; your mistress will be relieved to hear
+that I'm a little better; still not quite myself say, but, I think, a
+little better.'
+
+'Yes, sir; and I'm sure I'm very glad to hear it,' came fainter still.
+
+'What voice was that I heard just now?'
+
+'Miss Alice's, sir; but she came quite against my wishes, and I hope you
+won't repeat it, sir. She promised if she came that mistress shouldn't
+know. I was only afraid she might disturb you, or--or Dr Ferguson. And
+did you say, sir, that I was to tell mistress that he MIGHT be coming
+back?'
+
+'Ah, that I don't know; so perhaps it would be as well not to mention
+him at all. Is Miss Alice there?'
+
+'I said I would tell her if you were alone. But I hope you'll understand
+that it was only because she begged so. Mistress has gone to St Peter's
+bazaar; and that's how it was.'
+
+'I quite understand. Beckon to her.'
+
+There came a hasty step in the hall and a hurried murmur of explanation.
+Lawford heard her call as she ran up the stairs; and the next moment
+he had Alice's hand in his and they were groping together through the
+gloaming back into the solitude of the empty room again.
+
+'Don't be alarmed, dear,' he heard himself imploring. Just hold tight
+to that clear common sense, and above all you won't tell? It must be our
+secret; a dead, dead secret from every one, even your mother, for just
+a little while; just a mere two days or so--in case. I'm--I'm better,
+dear.'
+
+He fumbled with the little box of matches, dropped one, broke another;
+but at last the candle-flame dipped, brightened, and with the door shut
+and the last pale blueness of dusk at the window Lawford turned and
+looked at his daughter. She stood with eyes wide open, like the eyes
+of a child walking in its sleep; then twisted her fingers more tightly
+within his. 'Oh, dearest, how ill, how ill you look,' she whispered.
+'But there, never mind--never mind. It was all a miserable dream, then;
+it won't, it can't come back? I don't think I could bear its coming
+back. And mother told me such curious things; as if I were a child and
+understood nothing. And even after I knew that you were you--I mean
+before I sat up here in the dark to see you--she said that you were
+gone and would never come back; that a terrible thing had happened--a
+disgrace which we must never speak of; and that all the other was only
+a pretence to keep people from talking. But I did not believe then, and
+how could I believe afterwards?'
+
+'There, never mind now, dear, what she said. It was all meant for the
+best, perhaps. But here I am; and not nearly so ill as I look, Alice;
+and there's nothing more to trouble ourselves about; not even if it
+should be necessary for me to go away for a time. And this is our
+secret, mind; ours only; just a dead secret between you and me.'
+
+They sat for awhile without speaking or stirring. And faintly along the
+hushed road Lawford heard in the silence a leisurely indolent beat of
+little hoofs approaching, and the sound of wheels. A sudden wave of
+feeling swept over him. He took Alice's quiet loving face in his hands
+and kissed her passionately. 'Do not so much as think of me yet, or
+doubt, or question: only love me, dearest. And soon--and soon--'
+
+'We'll just begin again, just begin again, won't we? all three of us
+together, just as we used to be. I didn't mean to have said all those
+horrid things about mother. She was only dreadfully anxious and meant
+everything for the best. You'll let me tell her soon?'
+
+The haggard face turned slowly, listening. 'I hear, I understand, but
+I can't think very clearly now, Alice; I can't, dear; my miserable old
+tangled nerves. I just stumble along as best I can. You'll understand
+better when you get to be a poor old thing like me. We must do the best
+we can. And of course you'll see, Dillie, how awfully important it is
+not to raise false hopes. You understand? I mustn't risk the least thing
+in the world, must I? And now goodbye; only for a few hours now. And not
+a word, not a word to a single living soul.'
+
+He extinguished the candle again, and led the way to the top of the
+stairs. 'Are you there, Ada?'
+
+'Yes, sir,' answered the quiet imperturbable voice from under the black
+straw brim. Alice went slowly down, but at the foot of the stairs,
+looking out into the cold, blue, lamplit street she paused as if at a
+sudden recollection, and ran hastily up again.
+
+'There was nothing more, dear?' She said, leaning back to peer up.
+
+'"Nothing more?" What?'
+
+She stood panting a little in the darkness, listening to some cautious
+yet uneasy thought that seemed to haunt her mind. 'I thought--it seemed
+there was something we had not said, something I could not understand.
+But there, it is nothing! You know what a fanciful old silly I am. You
+do love me? Quite as much as ever?'
+
+'More, sweetheart, more!'
+
+'Good-night again, then; and God bless you, dear.'
+
+The outer door closed softly, the footsteps died away. Lawford still
+hesitated. He took hold of the stairs above his head as he stood on
+the landing and leaned his head upon his hands, striving calmly to
+disentangle the perplexity of his thoughts. His pulses were beating in
+his ear with a low muffled roar. He looked down between the blinds to
+where against the blue of the road beneath the straggling yellow beams
+of the lamp stood the little cart and drooping, shaggy pony, and Grisel
+sitting quietly there awaiting him. He shut his eyes as if in hope by
+some convulsive effort of mind to break through this subtle glasslike
+atmosphere of dream that had stolen over consciousness, and blotted out
+the significance, almost the meaning of the past. He turned abruptly.
+Empty as the empty rooms around him, unanswering were mind and heart.
+Life was a tale told by an idiot--signifying nothing.
+
+He paused at the head of the staircase. And even then the doubt
+confronted him: Would he ever come back? Who knows? he thought; and
+again stood pondering, arguing, denying. At last he seemed to have come
+to a decision. He made his way downstairs, opened and left ajar a long
+narrow window in a passage to the garden beyond the kitchen. He turned
+on his heel as he reached the gate and waved his hand as if in a kind of
+forlorn mockery towards the darkly glittering windows. The drowsy pony
+awoke at touch of the whip.
+
+Grisel lifted the rug and squeezed a little closer into the corner. She
+had drawn a veil over her face, so that to Lawford her eyes seemed to
+be dreaming in a little darkness of their own as he laid his hand on
+the side of the cart. 'It's a most curious thing,' he said, 'but peeping
+down at you just now when the sound of the wheels came, a memory came
+clearly back to me of years and years ago--of my mother. She used to
+come to fetch me at school in a little cart like this, and a little
+pony just like this, with a thick dusty coat. And once I remember I was
+simply sick of everything, a failure, and fagged out, and all that, and
+was looking out in the twilight; I fancy even it was autumn too. It was
+a little side staircase window; I was horribly homesick. And she came
+quite unexpectedly. I shall never forget it--the misery, and then, her
+coming.' He lifted his eyes, cowed with the incessant struggle, and
+watched her face for some time in silence. 'Ought I to stay?'
+
+'I see no "ought,"' she said. 'No one is there?'
+
+'Only a miserable broken voice out of a broken cage--called Conscience.'
+
+'Don't you think, perhaps, that even that has a good many
+disguises--convention, cowardice, weakness, ennui; they all take their
+turn at hooting in its feathers? You must, you really must have rest.
+You don't know; you don't see; I do. Just a little snap, some one last
+exquisite thread gives way, and then it is all over. You see I have even
+to try to frighten you, for I can't tell you how you distress me.'
+
+'Why do I distress you?--my face, my story you mean?'
+
+'No; I mean you: your trouble, that horrible empty house, and--oh, dear
+me, yes, your courage too.'
+
+'Listen,' said Lawford, stooping forward. He could scarcely see the
+pale, veiled face through this mist that had risen up over his eyes.
+'I have no courage apart from you; no courage and no hope. Ask me to
+come!--a stranger with no history, no mockery, no miserable rant of a
+grave and darkness and fear behind me. Are we not all haunted--every
+one? That forgotten, and the fool I was, and the vacillating, and the
+pretence--oh, how it all sweeps clear before me; without a will, without
+a hope or glimpse or whisper of courage. Be just the memory of my
+mother, the face, the friend I've never seen; the voice that every dream
+leaves echoing. Ask me to come.'
+
+She sat unstirring; and then as if by some uncontrollable impulse
+stooped a little closer to him and laid her gloved hand on his.
+
+'I hear, you know; I hear too,' she whispered. 'But we mustn't listen.
+Come now. It's growing late.'
+
+The little village echoed back from its stone walls the clatter of the
+pony's hoofs. Night had darkened to its deepest when their lamp shone
+white on the wicket in the hedge. They had scarcely spoken. Lawford had
+simply watched pass by, almost without a thought, the arching trees, the
+darkening fields; had watched rise up in a mist of primrose light the
+harvest moon to shine in saffron on the faces and shoulders of the few
+wayfarers they met, or who passed them by. The still grave face beneath
+the shadow of its veil had never turned, though the moon poured all her
+flood of brilliance upon the dark profile. And once when as if in sudden
+alarm he had lifted his head and looked at her, a sudden doubt had
+assailed him so instantly that he had half put out his hand to touch
+her, and had as quickly withdrawn it, lest her beauty and stillness
+should be, even as the moment's fancy had suggested, only a far-gone
+memory returned in dream.
+
+Herbert hailed them from the darkness of an open window. He came
+down, and they talked a little in the cold air of the garden. He lit
+a cigarette, and climbed languidly into the cart, and drove the drowsy
+little pony off into the moonlight.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY
+
+It was a quiet supper the three friends sat down to. Herbert sat
+narrowing his eyes over his thoughts, which, when the fancy took him, he
+scattered out upon the others' silence. Lawford apparently had not yet
+shaken himself free from the sorcery of the moonlight. His eyes shone
+dark and full like those of a child who has trespassed beyond its hour
+for bed, and sits marvelling at reality in a waking dream.
+
+Long after they had bidden each other good-night, long after Herbert
+had trodden on tiptoe with his candle past his closed door, Lawford
+sat leaning on his arms at the open window, staring out across the
+motionless moonlit trees that seemed to stand like draped and dreaming
+pilgrims, come to the peace of their Nirvana at last beside the crashing
+music of the waters. And he himself, the self that never sleeps beneath
+the tides and waves of consciousness, was listening, too, almost as
+unmovedly and unheedingly to the thoughts that clashed in conflict
+through his brain.
+
+Why, in a strange transitory life was one the slave of these small
+cares? What if even in that dark pit beneath, which seemed to whisper
+Lethe to the tumultuous, swirling waters--what if there, too, were
+merely a beginning again, and to seek a slumbering refuge there merely a
+blind and reiterated plunge into the heat and tumult of another day? Who
+was that poor, dark, homeless ghoul, Sabathier? Who was this Helen of an
+impossible dream? Her face with its strange smile, her eyes with their
+still pity and rapt courage had taken hope away. 'Here's not your rest,'
+cried one insistent voice; 'she is the mystery that haunts day and
+night, past all the changing of the restless hours. Chance has given you
+back eyes to see, a heart that can be broken. Chance and the stirrings
+of a long-gone life have torn down the veil age spins so thick and fast.
+Pride and ambition; what dull fools men are! Effort and duty, what dull
+fools men are!' He listened on and on to these phantom pleadings and to
+the rather coarse old Lawford conscience grunting them mercilessly down,
+too weary even to try to rest.
+
+Rooks at dawn came sweeping beneath the turquoise of the sky. He saw
+their sharp-beaked heads turn this way, that way, as they floated on
+outspread wings across the misty world. Except for the hoarse roar of
+the water under the huge thin-leafed trees, not a sound was stirring.
+'One thing,' he seemed to hear himself mutter as he turned with a shiver
+from the morning air, 'it won't be for long. You can, at least, poor
+devil, wait the last act out.' If in this foolish hustling mob of the
+world, hired anywhere and anywhen for the one poor dubious wage of a
+penny--if it was only his own small dull part to carry a mock spear,
+and shout huzza with the rest--there was nothing for it, he grunted
+obstinately to himself, shout he would with the loudest.
+
+He threw himself on to the bed with eyes so wearied with want of sleep
+it seemed they had lost their livelong skill in finding it. Not the echo
+of triumph nor even a sigh of relief stirred the torpor of his mind. He
+knew vaguely that what had been the misery and madness of the last few
+days was gone. But the thought had no power to move him now. Sheila's
+good sense, and Mr Bethany's stubborn loyalty were alike old stories
+that had lost their savour and meaning. Gone, too, was the need for that
+portentous family gathering that had sat so often in his fancy during
+these last few days around his dining-room table, discussing with futile
+decorum the problem of how to hush him up, to muffle him down. Half
+dreaming, half awake, he saw the familiar door slowly open and, like the
+timely hero in a melodrama, his own figure appear before the stricken
+and astonished company. His eyes opened half-fearfully, and glanced up
+in the morning twilight. Their perplexity gave place to a quiet, almost
+vacant smile; the lids slowly closed again, and at last the lean hands
+twitched awhile in sleep.
+
+Next morning he spent rummaging among the old books, dipping listlessly
+here and there as the tasteless fancy took him, while Herbert sat
+writing with serene face and lifted eyebrows at his open window. But the
+unfamiliar long S's, the close type, and the spelling of the musty old
+books wearied eye and mind. What he read, too, however far-fetched,
+or lively, or sententious, or gross, seemed either to be of the same
+texture as what had become his everyday experience, and so baffled him
+with its nearness, or else was only the meaningless ramblings of an idle
+pen. And this, he thought to himself, looking covertly up at the spruce
+clear-cut profile at the window, this is what Herbert had called Life.
+
+'Am I interrupting you, Herbert; are you very busy?' he asked at last,
+taking refuge on a chair in a far corner of the room.
+
+'Bless me, no; not a bit--not a bit,' said Herbert amiably, laying down
+his pen. 'I'm afraid the old leatherjackets have been boring you. It's
+a habit this beastly reading; this gorge and glint and fever all at
+second-hand--purely a bad habit, like morphia, like laudanum. But once
+in, you know there's no recovery Anyhow, I'm neck-deep, and to struggle
+would be simply to drown.'
+
+'I was only going to say how sorry I am for having left Sabathier at
+home.'
+
+'My dear fellow--' began Herbert reassuringly.
+
+'It was only because I wanted so very much to have your translation. I
+get muddled up with other things groping through the dictionary.'
+
+Herbert surveyed him critically. 'What exactly is your interest now,
+Lawford? You don't mean that my old "theory" has left any sting now?'
+
+'No sting; oh no. I was only curious. But you yourself still think it
+really, don't you?'
+
+Herbert turned for a moment to the open window.
+
+'I was simply trying then to find something to fit the facts as you
+experienced them. But now that the facts have gone--and they have,
+haven't they?--exit, of course, my theory!'
+
+'I see,' was the cryptic answer. 'And yet, Herbert,' Lawford solemnly
+began again, 'it has changed me; even in my way of thinking. When I shut
+my eyes now--I only discovered it by chance--I see immediately faces
+quite strange to me; or places, sometimes thronged with people; and once
+an old well with some one sitting in the shadow. I can't tell you how
+clearly, and yet it is all altogether different from a dream. Even when
+I sit with my eyes open, I am conscious, as it were, of a kind of faint,
+colourless mirage. In the old days--I mean before Widderstone, what
+I saw was only what I'd seen already. Nothing came uncalled for,
+unexplained. This makes the old life seem so blank; I did not know what
+extraordinarily real things I was doing without. And whether for that
+reason or another, I can't quite make out what in fact I did want then,
+and was always fretting and striving for. I can see no wisdom or purpose
+in anything now but to get to one's journey's end as quickly and bravely
+as one can. And even then, even if we do call life a journey, and death
+the inn we shall reach at last in the evening when it's over; that, too,
+I feel will be only as brief a stopping-place as any other inn would
+be. Our experience here is so scanty and shallow--nothing more than the
+moment of the continual present. Surely that must go on, even if one
+does call it eternity. And so we shall all have to begin again. Probably
+Sabathier himself.... But there, what on earth are we, Herbert, when all
+is said? Who is it has--has done all this for us--what kind of self?
+And to what possible end? Is it that the clockwork has been wound up and
+must still jolt on a while with jarring wheels? Will it never run down,
+do you think?'
+
+Herbert smiled faintly, but made no answer.
+
+'You see,' continued Lawford, in the same quiet, dispassionate
+undertone, 'I wouldn't mind if it was only myself. But there are so many
+of us, so many selves, I mean; and they all seem to have a voice in the
+matter. What is the reality to this infernal dream?'
+
+'The reality is, Lawford, that you are fretting your life out over this
+rotten illusion. Be guided by me just this once. We'll go, all three
+of us, a good ten-mile walk to-day, and thoroughly tire you out. And
+to-night you shall sleep here--a really sound, refreshing sleep. Then
+to-morrow, whole and hale, back you shall go; honestly. It's only
+professional strong men should ask questions. Babes like you and me must
+keep to slops.'
+
+So, though Lawford made no answer, it was agreed. Before noon the three
+of them had set out on their walk across the fields. And after rambling
+on just as caprice took them, past reddening blackberry bushes and
+copses of hazel, and flaming beech, they sat down to spread out their
+meal on the slope of a hill, overlooking quiet ploughed fields and
+grazing cattle. Herbert stretched himself with his back to the earth,
+and his placid face to the pale vacant sky, while Lawford, even more
+dispirited after his walk, wandered up to the crest of the hill.
+
+At the foot of the hill, upon the other side, lay a farm and its
+out-buildings, and a pool of water beneath a group of elms. It was
+vacant in the sunlight, and the water vividly green with a scum of weed.
+And about half a mile beyond stood a cluster of cottages and an old
+towered church. He gazed idly down, listening vaguely to the wailing of
+a curlew flitting anxiously to and fro above the broken solitude of
+its green hill. And it seemed as if a thin and dark cloud began to be
+quietly withdrawn from over his eyes. Hill and wailing cry and barn and
+water faded out. And he was staring as if in an endless stillness at an
+open window against which the sun was beating in a bristling torrent of
+gold, while out of the garden beyond came the voice of some evening bird
+singing with such an unspeakable ecstasy of grief it seemed it must
+be perched upon the confines of another world. The light gathered to a
+radiance almost intolerable, driving back with its raining beams some
+memory, forlorn, remorseless, remote. His body stood dark and senseless,
+rocking in the air on the hillside as if bereft of its spirit. Then his
+hands were drawn over his eyes. He turned unsteadily and made his way,
+as if through a thick, drizzling haze, slowly back.
+
+'What is that--there?' he said almost menacingly, standing with
+bloodshot eyes looking down upon Herbert.
+
+'"That!"--what?' said Herbert, glancing up startled from his book. 'Why,
+what's wrong, Lawford?'
+
+'That,' said Lawford sullenly, yet with a faintly mournful cadence in
+his voice; 'those fields and that old empty farm--that village over
+there? Why did you bring me here?'
+
+Grisel had not stirred. 'The village...'
+
+'Ssh!' she said, catching her brother's sleeve; 'that's Detcham, yes,
+Detcham.'
+
+Lawford turned wide vacant eyes on her. He shook his head and shuddered.
+'No, no; not Detcham. I know it; I know it; but it has gone out of my
+mind. Not Detcham; I've been there before; don't look at me. Horrible,
+horrible. It takes me back--I can't think. I stood there, trying,
+trying; it's all in a blur. Don't ask me--a dream.'
+
+Grisel leaned forward and touched his hand. 'Don't think; don't even
+try. Why should you? We can't; we MUSTN'T go back.'
+
+Lawford, still gazing fixedly, turned again a darkened face towards
+the steep of the hill. 'I think, you know,' he said, stooping and
+whispering, 'HE would know--the window and the sun and the singing. And
+oh, of course it was too late. You understand--too late. And once... you
+can't go back; oh no. You won't leave me? You see, if you go, it would
+only be all. I could not be quite so alone. But Detcham--Detcham?
+perhaps you will not trust me--tell me? That was not the name.'
+He shuddered violently and turned dog-like beseeching eyes.
+'To-morrow--yes, to-morrow,' he said, 'I will promise anything if you
+will not leave me now. Once--' But again the thread running so faintly
+through that inextricable maze of memory eluded him. 'So long as you
+won't leave me now!' he implored her.
+
+She was vainly trying to win back her composure, and could not answer
+him at once....
+
+In the evening after supper Grisel sat her guest down in front of a big
+wood fire in the old book-room, where, staring into the playing flames,
+he could fall at peace into the almost motionless reverie which he
+seemed merely to harass and weary himself by trying to disperse. She
+opened the little piano at the far end of the room and played on and
+on as fancy led--Chopin and Beethoven, a fugue from Bach, and lovely
+forlorn old English airs, till the music seemed not only a voice
+persuading, pondering, and lamenting, but gathered about itself the
+hollow surge of the water and the darkness; wistful and clear, as the
+thoughts of a solitary child. Ever and again a log burnt through its
+strength, and falling amid sparks, stirred, like a restless animal, the
+stillness; or Herbert in his corner lifted his head to glance towards
+his visitor, and to turn another page. At last the music, too, fell
+silent, and Lawford stood up with his candle in his hand and eyed with a
+strange fixity brother and sister. His glance wandered slowly round the
+quiet flame-lit room.
+
+'You won't,' he said, stooping towards them as if in extreme confidence,
+'you won't much notice? They come and go. I try not to--to speak. It's
+the only way through. It is not that I don't know they're only dreams.
+But if once the--the others thought there had been any tampering'--he
+tapped his forehead meaningly--'here: if once they thought that, it
+would, you know, be quite over then. How could I prove...?' He turned
+cautiously towards the door, and with laborious significance nodded his
+head at them.
+
+Herbert bent down and held out his long hands to the fire. 'Tampering,
+my dear chap: That's what the lump said to the leaven.'
+
+'Yes, yes,' said Lawford, putting out his hand, 'but you know what
+I mean, Herbert. Anything I tried to do then would be quite, quite
+hopeless. That would be poisoning the wells.'
+
+They watched him out of the room, and listened till quite distinctly in
+the still night-shaded house they heard his door gently close. Then, as
+if by consent, they turned and looked long and questioningly into each
+other's faces.
+
+'Then you are not afraid?' Herbert said quietly.
+
+Grisel gazed steadily on, and almost imperceptibly shook her head.
+
+'You mean?' he questioned her; but still he had again to read her answer
+in her eyes.
+
+'Oh, very well, Grisel,' he said quietly, 'you know best,' and returned
+once more to his writing.
+
+For an hour or two Lawford slept heavily, so heavily that when a little
+after midnight he awoke, with his face towards the uncurtained window,
+though for many minutes he lay brightly confronting all Orion, that from
+blazing helm to flaming dog at heel filled high the glimmering square,
+he could not lift or stir his cold and leaden limbs. He rose at last and
+threw off the burden of his bedclothes, and rested awhile, as if freed
+from the heaviness of an unrememberable nightmare. But so clear was his
+mind and so extraordinarily refreshed he seemed in body that sleep for
+many hours would not return again. And he spent almost all the remainder
+of the lagging darkness pacing softly to and fro; one face only before
+his eyes, the one sure thing, the one thing unattainable in a world of
+phantoms.
+
+Herbert waited on in vain for his guest next morning, and after
+wandering up and down the mossy lawn at the back of the house, went off
+cheerfully at last alone for his dip. When he returned Lawford was in
+his place at the breakfast-table. He sat on, moody and constrained,
+until even Herbert's haphazard talk trickled low.
+
+'I fancy my sister is nursing a headache,' he said at last, 'but she'll
+be down soon. And I'm afraid from the looks of you, Lawford, your night
+was not particularly restful.' He felt his way very heedfully. 'Perhaps
+we walked you a little too far yesterday. We are so used to tramping
+that--' Lawford kept thoughtful eyes fixed on the deprecating face.
+
+'I see what it is, Herbert--you are humouring me again. I have
+been wracking my brains in vain to remember what exactly DID happen
+yesterday. I feel as if it was all sunk oceans deep in sleep. I get so
+far--and then I'm done. It won't give up a hint. But you really mustn't
+think I'm an invalid, or--or in my second childhood. The truth is,' he
+added, 'it's only my FIRST, come back again. But now that I've got so
+far, now that I'm really better, I--' He broke off rather vacantly, as
+if afraid of his own confidence. 'I must be getting on,' he summed
+up with an effort, 'and that's the solemn fact. I keep on forgetting
+I'm--I'm a ratepayer!'
+
+Herbert sat round in his chair. 'You see, Lawford, the very term is
+little else than Double-Dutch to me. As a matter of fact Grisel sends
+all my hush-money to the horrible people that do the cleaning up, as
+it were. I can't catch their drift. Government to me is merely the
+spectacle of the clever, or the specious, managing the dull. It deals
+merely with the physical, and just the fringe of consciousness. I am not
+joking. I think I follow you. All I mean is that the obligations--mainly
+tepid, I take it--that are luring you back to the fold would be the
+very ones that would scare me quickest off. The imagination, the appeal
+faded: we're dead.'
+
+Lawford opened his mouth; 'TEMPORARILY tepid,' he at last all but
+coughed out.
+
+'Oh yes, of course,' said Herbert intelligently. 'Only temporarily. It's
+this beastly gregariousness that's the devil. The very thought of it
+undoes me--with an absolute shock of sheepishness. I suddenly realise
+my human nakedness: that here we are, little better than naked animals,
+bleating behind our illusory wattles on the slopes of--of infinity.
+And nakedness, after all, is a wholesome thing to realize only when one
+thinks too much of one's clothes. I peer sometimes, feebly enough, out
+of my wool, and it seems to me that all these busybodies, all these
+fact-devourers, all this news-reading rabble, are nothing brighter than
+very dull-witted children trying to play an imaginative game, much too
+deep for their poor reasons. I don't mean that YOUR wanting to go home
+is anything gregarious, but I do think THEIR insisting on your coming
+back at once might be. And I know you won't visit this stuff on me as
+anything more than just my "scum," as Grisel calls the fine flower of my
+maiden meditations. All that I really want to say is that we should both
+be more than delighted if you'd stay just as long as it will not be a
+bore for you to stay. Stay till you're heartily tired of us. Go back
+now, if you MUST; tell them how much better you are. Bolt off to a nerve
+specialist. He'll say complete rest--change of scene, and all that. They
+all do. Instinct via intellect. And why not take your rest here? We
+are such miserably dull company to one another it would be a greater
+pleasure to have you with us than I can say. I mean it from the very
+bottom of my heart. Do!'
+
+Lawford listened. 'I wish--,' he began, and stopped dead again. 'Anyhow,
+I'll go back. I am afraid, Herbert, I've been playing truant. It was all
+very well while--To tell you the truth I can't think QUITE straight yet.
+But it won't last for ever. Besides--well, anyhow, I'll go back.'
+
+'Right you are,' said Herbert, pretending to be cheerful. 'You can't
+expect, you really can't, everything to come right straight away. Just
+have patience. And now, let's go out and sit in the sun. They've mixed
+September up with May.'
+
+And about half an hour afterwards he glanced up from his book to find
+his visitor fast asleep in his garden chair.
+
+Grisel had taken her brother's place, with a little pile of needlework
+beside her on the grass, when Lawford again opened his eyes under the
+rosy shade of a parasol. He watched her for a while, without speaking.
+
+'How long have I been asleep?' he said at last.
+
+She started and looked up from her needle.
+
+'That depends on how long you have been awake,' she said, smiling. 'My
+brother tells me,' she went on, beginning to stitch, 'that you have
+made up your mind to leave us to-day. Perhaps we are only flattering
+ourselves it has been a rest. But if it has--is that, do you think,
+quite wise?'
+
+He leant forward and hid his face in his hands. 'It's because--it's
+because it's the only "must" I can see.'
+
+'But even "musts"--well, we have to be sure even of "musts," haven't
+we? Are YOU?' She glanced up and for an instant their eyes met, and the
+falling water seemed to be sounding out of a distance so remote it might
+be but the echo of a dream. She stooped once more over her work.
+
+'Supposing,' he said very slowly, and almost as if speaking to himself,
+'supposing Sabathier--and you know he's merely like a friend now one
+mustn't be seen talking to--supposing he came back; what then?'
+
+'Oh, but Sabathier's gone: he never really came. It was only a fancy--a
+mood. It was only you--another you.'
+
+'Who was that yesterday, then?'
+
+She glanced at him swiftly and knew the question was but a venture.
+
+'Yesterday?'
+
+'Oh, very well,' he said fretfully, 'you too! But if he did, if he did,
+come really back: "prey" and all?'
+
+'What is the riddle?' she said, taking a deep breath and facing him
+brightly.
+
+'Would MY "must" still be HIS?' The face he raised to her, as he leaned
+forward under the direct light of the sun, was so colourless, cadaverous
+and haggard, the thought crossed her mind that it did indeed seem little
+more than a shadowy mask that but one hour of darkness might dispel.
+
+'You said, you know, we did win through. Why then should we be even
+thinking of defeat now?'
+
+'"We"!'
+
+'Oh no, you!' she cried triumphantly.
+
+'You do not answer my question.'
+
+'Nor you mine! It WAS a glorious victory. Is there the ghost of a reason
+why you should cast your mind back? Is there, now?'
+
+'Only,' said Lawford, looking patiently up into her face, 'only because
+I love you': and listened in the silence to the words as one may watch a
+bird that has escaped for ever and irrevocably out of its cage, steadily
+flying on and on till lost to sight.
+
+For an instant the grey eyes faltered. 'But that, surely,' she began
+in a low voice, still steadily sewing, 'that was our compact last
+night--that you should let me help, that you should trust me just as you
+trusted the mother years ago who came in the little cart with the shaggy
+dusty pony to the homesick boy watching at the window. Perhaps,' she
+added, her fingers trembling, 'in this odd shuffle of souls and faces,
+I AM that mother, and most frightfully anxious you should not give in.
+Why, even because of the tiredness, even because the cause seems vain,
+you must still fight on--wouldn't she have said it? Surely there are
+prizes, a daughter, a career, no end! And even they gone--still the self
+undimmed, undaunted, that took its drubbing like a man.'
+
+'I know you know I'm all but crazed; you see this wretched mind all
+littered and broken down; look at me like that, then. Forget even you
+have befriended me and pretended--Why must I blunder on and on like
+this? Oh, Grisel, my friend, my friend, if only you loved me!'
+
+Tears clouded her eyes. She turned vaguely as if for a hiding-place.
+'We can't talk here. How mad the day is. Listen, listen! I do--I do love
+you--mother and woman and friend--from the very moment you came. It's
+all so clear, so clear: that, and your miserable "must," my friend.
+Come, we will go away by ourselves a little, and talk. That way. I'll
+meet you by the gate.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
+
+She came out into the sunlight, and they went through the little gate
+together. She walked quickly, without speaking, over the bridge, past a
+little cottage whose hollyhocks leaned fading above its low flint wall.
+Skirting a field of stubble, she struck into a wood by a path that ran
+steeply up the hillside. And by and by they came to a glen where the
+woodmen of a score of years ago had felled the trees, leaving a green
+hollow of saplings in the midst of their towering neighbours.
+
+'There,' she said, holding out her hand to him, 'now we are alone. Just
+six hours or so--and then the sun will be there,' she pointed to the
+tree-tops to the west, 'and then you will have to go; for good, for
+good--you your way, and I mine. What a tangle--a tangle is this life of
+ours. Could I have dreamt we should ever be talking like this, you and
+I? Friends of an hour. What will you think of me? Does it matter? Don't
+speak. Say nothing--poor face, poor hands. If only there were something
+to look to--to pray to!' She bent over his hand and pressed it to her
+breast. 'What worlds we've seen together, you and I. And then--another
+parting.'
+
+They wandered on a little way, and came back and listened to the first
+few birds that flew up into the higher branches, noonday being past, to
+sing.
+
+They talked, and were silent, and talked again with out question, or
+sadness, or regret, or reproach; she mocking even at themselves, mocking
+at this 'change'--'Why, and yet without it, would you ever even have
+dreamed once a poor fool of a Frenchman went to his restless grave for
+me--for me? Need we understand? Were we told to pry? Who made us
+human must be human too. Why must we take such care, and make such a
+fret--this soul? I know it, I know it; it is all we have--"to save,"
+they say, poor creatures. No, never to SPEND, and so they daren't for a
+solitary instant lift it on the finger from its cage. Well, we have; and
+now, soon, back it must go, back it must go, and try its best to whistle
+the day out. And yet, do you know, perhaps the very freedom does a
+little shake its--its monotony. It's true, you see, they have lived
+a long time; these Worldly Wisefolk they were wise before they were
+swaddled....
+
+'There, and you are hungry?' she asked him, laughing in his eyes. `Of
+course, of course you are--scarcely a mouthful since that first still
+wonderful supper. And you haven't slept a wink, except like a tired-out
+child after its first party, on that old garden chair. I sat and
+watched, and yes, almost hoped you'd never wake in case--in case. Come
+along, see, down there. I can't go home just yet. There's a little old
+inn--we'll go and sit down there--as if we were really trying to be
+romantic! I know the woman quite well; we can talk there--just the day
+out.'
+
+They sat at a little table in the garden of 'The Cherry Trees,' its
+thick green apple branches burdened with ripened fruit. And Grisel tried
+to persuade him to eat and drink, 'for to-morrow we die,' she said,
+her hands trembling, her face as it were veiled with a faint mysterious
+light.
+
+'There are dozens and dozens of old stories, you know,' she said,
+leaning on her elbows, 'dozens and dozens, meaning only us. You must,
+you must eat; look, just an apple. We've got to say good-bye. And
+faintness will double the difficulty.' She lightly touched his hand as
+if to compel him to smile with her. 'There, I'll peel it; and this is
+Eden; and soon it will be the cool of the evening. And then, oh yes, the
+voice will come. What nonsense I am talking. Never mind.'
+
+They sat on in the quiet sunshine, and a spider slid softly through
+the air and with busy claws set to its nets; and those small ghosts the
+robins went whistling restlessly among the heavy boughs.
+
+A child presently came out of the porch of the inn into the garden, and
+stood with its battered doll in its arms, softly watching them awhile.
+But when Grisel smiled and tried to coax her over, she burst out
+laughing and ran in again.
+
+Lawford stooped forward on his chair with a groan. 'You see,' he said,
+'the whole world mocks me. You say "this evening"; need it be, must it
+be this evening? If you only knew how far they have driven me. If you
+only knew what we should only detest each other for saying and
+for listening to. The whole thing's dulled and staled. Who wants
+a changeling? Who wants a painted bird? Who does not loathe the
+converted?--and I'm converted to Sabathier's God. Should we be sitting
+here talking like this if it were not so? I can't, I can't go back.'
+
+She rose and stood with her hand pressed over her mouth, watching him.
+
+'Won't you understand?' he continued. 'I am an outcast--a felon caught
+red-handed, come in the flesh to a hideous and righteous judgment. I
+hear myself saying all these things; and yet, Grisel, I do, I do love
+you with all the dull best I ever had. Not now, then; I don't ask new
+even. I can, I would begin again. God knows my face has changed enough
+even as it is. Think of me as that poor wandering ghost of yours; how
+easily I could hide away--in your memory; and just wait, wait for you.
+In time even this wild futile madness too would fade away. Then I could
+come back. May I try?'
+
+'I can't answer you. I can't reason. Only, still, I do know, talk, put
+off, forget as I may, must is must. Right and wrong, who knows what
+THEY mean, except that one's to be done and one's to be forsworn;
+or--forgive, my friend, the truest thing I ever said--or else we lose
+the savour of both. Oh, then, and I know, too, you'd weary of me. I know
+you, Monsieur Nicholas, better than you can ever know yourself, though
+you have risen from your grave. You follow a dream, no voice or face or
+flesh and blood; and not to do what the one old raven within you cries
+you must, would be in time to hate the very sound of my footsteps. You
+shall go back, poor turncoat, and face the clearness, the utterly more
+difficult, bald, and heartless clearness, as together we faced the dark.
+Life is a little while. And though I have no words to tell what always
+are and must be foolish reasons because they are not reasons at all but
+ghosts of memory, I know in my heart that to face the worst is your only
+hope of peace. Should I have staked so much on your finding that, and
+now throw up the game? Don't let us talk any more. I'll walk half
+the way, perhaps. Perhaps I will walk all the way. I think my brother
+guesses--at least MY madness. I've talked and talked him nearly past his
+patience. And then, when you are quite safely, oh yes, quite safely and
+soundly gone, then I shall go away for a little, so that we can't even
+hear each other speak, except in dreams. Life!--well, I always thought
+it was much too plain a tale to have as dull an ending. And with us the
+powers beyond have played a newer trick, that's all. Another hour, and
+we will go. Till then there's just the solitary walk home and only the
+dull old haunted house that hoards as many ghosts as we ourselves to
+watch our coming.'
+
+Evening began to shine between the trees; they seemed to stand aflame,
+with a melancholy rapture in their uplifted boughs above their fading
+coats. The fields of the garnered harvest shone with a golden stillness,
+awhir with shimmering flocks of starlings. And the old birds that had
+sung in the spring sang now amid the same leaves, grown older too to
+give them harbourage.
+
+Herbert was sitting in his room when they returned, nursing his teacup
+on his knee while he pretended to be reading, with elbow propped on the
+table.
+
+'Here's Nicholas Sabathier, my dear, come to say goodbye awhile,'
+said Grisel. She stood for a moment in her white gown, her face turned
+towards the clear green twilight of the open window. 'I have promised to
+walk part of the way with him. But I think first we must have some tea.
+No; he flatly refuses to be driven. We are going to walk.'
+
+The two friends were left alone, face to face with a rather difficult
+silence, only the least degree of nervousness apparent, so far as
+Herbert was concerned, in that odd aloof sustained air of impersonality
+that had so baffled his companion in their first queer talk together.
+
+'Your sister said just now, Herbert,' blurted Lawford at last. '"Here's
+Nicholas Sabathier come to say good-bye" well, I--what I want you to
+understand is that it is Sabathier, the worst he ever was; but also that
+it is "good-bye."'
+
+Herbert slowly turned. 'I don't quite see why "goodbye," Lawford.
+And--frankly, there is nothing to explain. We have chosen to live such
+a very out-of-the-way life,' he went on, as if following up a train of
+thought.... 'The truth is if one wants to live at all--one's own life,
+I mean--there's no time for many friends. And just steadfastly regarding
+your neighbour's tail as you follow it down into the Nowhere--it's that
+that seems to me the deadliest form of hypnotism. One must simply go
+one's own way, doing one's best to free one's mind of cant--and I dare
+say clearing some excellent stuff out with the rubbish. One consequence
+is that I don't think, however foolhardy it may be to say so, I don't
+think I care a groat for any opinion as human as my own, good or bad. My
+sister's a million times a better woman than I am a man. What possibly
+could there be, then, for me to say?' He turned with a nervous smile.
+'Why should it be good-bye?'
+
+Lawford glanced involuntarily towards the door that stood in shadow
+duskily ajar. 'Well,' he said, 'we have talked, and we think it must
+be that, until, at least,' he smiled faintly, 'I can come as quietly as
+your old ghost you told me of; and in that case it may not be so very
+long to wait.'
+
+Their eyes met fleetingly across the still, listening room. 'The more
+I think of it,' Lawford pushed slowly on, 'the less I understand the
+frantic purposelessness of all that has happened to me. Until I
+went down, as you said, "a godsend of a little Miss Muffet," and the
+inconceivable farce came off, I was fairly happy, fairly contented to
+dance my little wooden dance and wait till the showman should put me
+down into his box again. And now--well, here I am. The whole thing has
+gone by and scarcely left a trace of its visit. Here I am for all my
+friends to swear to; and yet, Herbert, if you'll forgive me troubling
+you with this stuff about myself, not a single belief, or thought, or
+desire remains unchanged. You will remember all that, I hope. It's not,
+of course, the ghost of an apology, only the mere facts.'
+
+Herbert rose and paced slowly across to the window. 'The longer I live,
+Lawford, the more I curse this futile gift of speech. Here am I, wanting
+to tell you, to say out frankly what, if mind could appeal direct to
+mind, would be merely as the wind passing through the leaves of a tree
+with just one--one multitudinous rustle, but which, if I tried to
+put into words--well, daybreak would find us still groping on....' He
+turned; a peculiar wry smile on his face. 'It's a dumb world: but there
+we are. And some day you'll come again.'
+
+'Well,' said Lawford, as if with an almost hopeless effort to turn
+thought into such primitive speech, 'that's where we stand, then.' He
+got up suddenly like a man awakened in the midst of unforeseen danger,
+'Where is your sister?' he cried, looking into the shadow. And as if in
+actual answer to his entreaty, they heard the clinking of the cups on
+the little, old, green lacquer tray she was at that moment carrying into
+the room. She sat down on the window seat and put the tray down beside
+her. 'It will be before dark even now,' she said, glancing out at the
+faintly burning skies.
+
+They had trudged on together with almost as deep a sense of physical
+exhaustion as peasants have who have been labouring in the fields since
+daybreak. And a little beyond the village, before the last, long road
+began that led in presently to the housed and scrupulous suburb, she
+stopped with a sob beside an old scarred milestone by the wayside.
+'This--is as far as I can go,' she said. She stooped, and laid her hand
+on the cold moss-grown surface of the stone. 'Even now it's wet with
+dew.' She rose again and looked strangely into his face. 'Yes, yes, here
+it is,' she said, 'oh, and worse, worse than any fear. But nothing now
+can trouble you again of that. We're both at least past that.'
+
+'Grisel,' he said, 'forgive me, but I can't--I can't go on.'
+
+'Don't think, don't think,' she said, taking his hands, and lifting them
+to her bosom. 'It's only how the day goes; and it has all, my one
+dear, happened scores and scores of times before--mother and child and
+friend--and lovers that are all these too, like us. We mustn't cry out.
+Perhaps it was all before even we could speak--this sorrow came. Take
+all the hope and all the future: and then may come our chance.'
+
+'What's life to me now. You said the desire would come back; that I
+should shake myself free. I could if you would help me. I don't know
+what you are or what your meaning is, only that I love you; care for
+nothing, wish for nothing but to see you and think of you. A flat, dull
+voice keeps saying that I have no right to be telling you all this.
+You will know best. I know I am nothing. I ask nothing. If we love one
+another, what is there else to say?'
+
+'Nothing, nothing to say, except only good-bye. What could you tell
+me that I have not told myself over and over again? Reason's gone.
+Thinking's gone. Now I am only sure.' She smiled shadowily. 'What peace
+did HE find who couldn't, perhaps, like you, face the last good-bye?'
+
+They stood in utter solitude awhile in the evening gloom. The air was
+as still and cold as some grey unfathomable untraversed sea. Above them
+uncountable clouds drifted slowly across space.
+
+'Why do they all keep whispering together?' he said in a low voice, with
+cowering face. 'Oh if you knew, Grisel, how they have hemmed me in; how
+they have come pressing in through the narrow gate I left ajar. Only to
+mock and mislead. It's all dark and unintelligible.'
+
+He touched her hand, peering out of the shadows that seemed to him to be
+gathering between their faces. He drew her closer and touched her lips
+with his fingers. Her beauty seemed to his distorted senses to fill
+earth and sky. This, then, was the presence, the grave and lovely
+overshadowing dream whose surrender made life a torment, and death the
+near fold of an immortal, starry veil. She broke from him with a faint
+cry. And he found himself running and running, just as he had run that
+other night, with death instead of life for inspiration, towards his
+earthly home.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
+
+He was utterly wearied, but he walked on for a long while with a dogged
+unglancing pertinacity and without looking behind him. Then he rested
+under the dew-sodden hedgeside and buried his face in his hands. Once,
+indeed, he did turn and grind his way back with hard uplifted face for
+many minutes, but at the meeting with an old woman who in the late dusk
+passed him unheeded on the road, he stopped again, and after standing
+awhile looking down upon the dust, trying to gather up the tangled
+threads of his thoughts, he once more set off homewards.
+
+It was clear, starry, and quite dark when he reached the house. The lamp
+at the roadside obscurely lit its breadth and height. Lamp-light within,
+too, was showing yellow between the Venetian blinds; a cold gas-jet
+gleamed out of the basement window. He seemed bereft now of all desire
+or emotion, simply the passive witness of things external in a calm
+which, though he scarcely realised its cause, was an exquisite solace
+and relief. His senses were intensely sharpened with sleeplessness. The
+faintest sound belled clear and keen on his ear. The thinnest beam of
+light besprinkled his eyes with curious brilliance.
+
+As quietly as some nocturnal creature he ascended the steps to the
+porch, and leaning between stone pilaster and wall, listened intently
+for any rumour of those within.
+
+He heard a clear, rather languid and delicate voice quietly speak on
+until it broke into a little peal of laughter, followed, when it fell
+silent by Sheila's--rapid, rich, and low. The first speaker seemed to be
+standing. Probably, then, his evening visitors had only just come in, or
+were preparing to depart. He inserted his latchkey and gently pushed at
+the cumbersome door. It was locked against him. With not the faintest
+thought of resentment or surprise, he turned back, stooped over the
+balustrade and looked down into the kitchen. Nothing there was visible
+but a narrow strip of the white table, on which lay a black cotton
+glove, and beyond, the glint of a copper pan. What made all these mute
+and inanimate things so coldly hostile?
+
+An extreme, almost nauseous distaste filled him at the thought of
+knocking for admission, of confronting Ada, possibly even Sheila, in the
+cold echoing gloom of the detestable porch; of meeting the first wild,
+almost metallic, flash of recognition. He swept softly down again, and
+paused at the open gate. Once before the voices of the night had called
+him: they would not summon him forever in vain. He raised his eyes again
+towards the window. Who were these visitors met together to drum the
+alien out? He narrowed his lids and smiled up at the vacuous unfriendly
+house. Then wheeling, on a sudden impulse he groped his way down the
+gravel path that led into the garden. As he had left it, the long white
+window was ajar.
+
+With extreme caution he pushed it noiselessly up, and climbed in, and
+stood listening again in the black passage on the other side. When
+he had fully recovered his breath, and the knocking of his heart was
+stilled, he trod on softly, till turning the corner he came in sight
+of the kitchen door. It was now narrowly open, just enough, perhaps, to
+admit a cat; and as he softly approached, looking steadily in, he
+could see Ada sitting at the empty table, beneath the single whistling
+chandelier, in her black dress and black straw hat. She was reading
+apparently; but her back was turned to him and he could not distinguish
+her arm beyond the elbow. Then almost in an instant he discovered, as,
+drawn up and unstirring he gazed on, that she was not reading, but had
+covertly and instantaneously raised her eyes from the print on the table
+beneath, and was transfixedly listening too. He turned his eyes away and
+waited. When again he peered in she had apparently bent once more over
+her magazine, and he stole on.
+
+One by one, with a thin remote exultation in his progress, he mounted
+the kitchen stairs, and with each deliberate and groping step the voices
+above him became more clearly audible. At last, in the darkness of the
+hall, but faintly stirred by the gleam of lamplight from the chink of
+the dining-room door, he stood on the threshold of the drawing-room door
+and could hear with varying distinctness what those friendly voices
+were so absorbedly discussing. His ear seemed as exquisite as some
+contrivance of science, registering passively the least sound, the
+faintest syllable, and like it, in no sense meddling with the thought
+that speech conveyed. He simply stood listening, fixed and motionless,
+like some uncouth statue in the leafy hollow of a garden, stony,
+unspeculating.
+
+'Oh, but you either refuse to believe, Bettie, or you won't understand
+that it's far worse than that.' Sheila seemed to be upbraiding, or at
+least reasoning with, the last speaker. 'Ask Mr Danton--he actually SAW
+him.'
+
+'"Saw him,"' repeated a thick, still voice. 'He stood there, in that
+very doorway, Mrs Lovat, and positively railed at me. He stood there
+and streamed out all the names he could lay his tongue to. I
+wasn't--unfriendly to the poor beggar. When Bethany let me into it
+I thought it was simply--I did indeed, Mrs Lawford--a monstrous
+exaggeration. Flatly, I didn't believe it; shall I say that? But when I
+stood face to face with him, I could have taken my oath that that was no
+more poor old Arthur Lawford than--well, I won't repeat what particular
+word occurred to me. But there,' the corpulent shrug was almost audible,
+'we all know what old Bethany is. A sterling old chap, mind you, so far
+as mere character is concerned; the right man in the right place; but as
+gullible and as soft-hearted as a tom-tit. I've said all this before, I
+know, Mrs Lawford, and been properly snubbed for my pains. But if I
+had been Bethany I'd have sifted the whole story at the beginning,
+the moment he put his foot into the house. Look at that Tichborne
+fellow--went for months and months, just picking up one day what he
+floored old Hawkins--wasn't it?--with the next. But of course,' he added
+gloomily, 'now that's all too late. He's moaned himself into a tolerably
+tight corner. I'd just like to see, though, a British jury comparing
+this claimant with his photograph, 'pon my word I would. Where would he
+be then, do you think?'
+
+'But my dear Mr Danton,' went on the clear, languid voice Lawford had
+heard break so light-heartedly into laughter, 'you don't mean to tell me
+that a woman doesn't know her own husband when she sees him--or, for the
+matter of that, when she doesn't see him? If Tom came home from a ramble
+as handsome as Apollo to-morrow, I'd recognise him at the very first
+blush--literally! He'd go nuzzling off to get his slippers, or complain
+that the lamps had been smoking, or hunt the house down for last week's
+paper. Oh, besides, Tom's Tom--and there's an end of it.'
+
+'That's precisely what I think, Mrs Lovat; one is saturated with one's
+personality, as it were.'
+
+'You see, that's just it! That's just exactly every woman's husband all
+over; he is saturated with his personality. Bravo, Mr Craik!'
+
+'Good Lord,' said Danton softly. 'I don't deny it!'
+
+'But that,' broke in Sheila crisply--'that's just precisely what I asked
+you all to come in for. It's because I know now, apart altogether from
+the mere evidence, that--that he is Arthur. Mind, I don't say I ever
+really doubted. I was only so utterly shocked, I suppose. I positively
+put posers to him; but his memory was perfect in spite of the shock
+which would have killed a--a more sensitive nature.' She had risen, it
+seemed, and was moving with all her splendid impressiveness of silk and
+presence across the general line of vision. But the hall was dark and
+still; her eyes were dimmed with light. Lawford could survey her there
+unmoved.
+
+'Are you there, Ada?' she called discreetly.
+
+'Yes, ma'am,' answered the faint voice from below.
+
+'You have not heard anything--no knock?'
+
+'No, ma'am, no knock.'
+
+'The door is open if you should call.'
+
+'Yes, ma'am.'
+
+'The girl's scared out of her wits,' said Sheila returning to her
+audience. 'I've told you all that miserable Ferguson story--a piece of
+calm, callous presence of mind I should never have dreamed my husband
+capable of. And the curious thing is--at least, it is no longer curious
+in the light of the ghastly facts I am only waiting for Mr Bethany
+to tell you--from the very first she instinctively detested the very
+mention of his name.'
+
+'I believe, you know,' said Mr Craik with some decision, 'that servants
+must have the same wonderful instinct as dogs and children; they are
+natural, intuitive judges of character.'
+
+'Yes,' said Sheila gravely, 'and it's only through that that I got to
+hear of the--the mysterious friend in the little pony-carriage. Ada's
+magnificently loyal--I will say that.'
+
+'I don't want to suggest anything, Mrs Lawford,' began Mr Craik rather
+hurriedly, 'but wouldn't it perhaps be wiser not to wait for Mr Bethany?
+It is not at all unusual for him to be kept a considerable time in the
+vestry after service, and to-day is the Feast of St Michael's and all
+Angels, you know. Mightn't your husband be--er--coming back, don't you
+think?'
+
+'Craik's right, Mrs Lawford; it's not a bit of good waiting. Bethany
+would stick there till midnight if any old woman's spiritual state could
+keep her going so long. Here we all are, and at any moment we may be
+interrupted. Mind you, I promise nothing--only that there shall be
+no scene. But here I am, and if he does come knocking and ringing and
+lunging out in the disgusting manner he--well, all I ask is permission
+to speak for YOU. 'Pon my soul, to think what you must have gone
+through! It isn't the place for ladies just now--honestly it ain't.'
+
+'Besides, supposing the romantic lady of the pony-carriage has friends?
+Are YOU a pugilist, Mr Craik?'
+
+'I hope I could give some little account of myself, Mrs Lovat; but you
+need have no anxiety about that.'
+
+'There, Mr Danton. So as there is not the least cause for anxiety even
+if poor Arthur SHOULD return to his earthly home, may we share your
+dreadful story at once, Sheila; and then, perhaps, hear Mr Bethany's
+exposition of it when he DOES arrive? We are amply guarded.'
+
+'Honestly, you know, you are a bit of a sceptic, Mrs Lovat,' pleaded
+Danton playfully. 'I've SEEN him.'
+
+'And seeing is disbelieving, I suppose. Now then, Sheila.'
+
+'I don't think there's the least chance of Arthur returning to-night,'
+said Sheila solemnly. 'I am perfectly well aware it's best to be as
+cheerful as one can--and as resolved; but I think, Bettie, when even
+you know the whole horrible secret, you won't think Mr Danton was--was
+horrified for nothing. The ghastly, the awful truth is that my
+husband--there is no other word for it--is--possessed!'
+
+'"Possessed," Sheila! What in the name of all the creeps is that?'
+
+'Well, I dare say Mr Craik will explain it much better than I can. By
+a devil, dear.' The voice was perfectly poised and restrained, and Mr
+Craik did not see fit for the moment to embellish the definition.
+
+Lawford, with an almost wooden immobility, listened on.
+
+'But THE devil, or A devil? Isn't there a distinction?' inquired Mrs
+Lovat.
+
+'It's in the Bible, Bettie, over and over again. It was quite a common
+thing in the Middle Ages; I think I'm right in saying that, am I not,
+Mr Craik?' Mr Craik must have solemnly nodded or abundantly looked
+his unwilling affirmation. 'And what HAS been,' continued Sheila
+temperately, 'I suppose may be again.'
+
+'When the fellow began raving at me the other night,' began Danton
+huskily, as if out of an unfathomable pit of reflection, 'among other
+things he said that I haven't any wish to remember was that I was a
+sceptic. And Bethany said DITTO to it. I don't mind being called a
+sceptic: why, I said myself Mrs Lovat was a sceptic just now! But when
+it comes to "devils," Mrs Lawford--I may be convinced about the other,
+but "devils"! Well, I've been in the City nearly twenty-five years, and
+it's my impression human nature can raise all the devils WE shall
+ever need. And another thing,' he added, as if inspired, and with an
+immensely intelligent blink, 'is it just precisely that word in the
+Revised Version--eh, Craik?'
+
+'I'll certainly look it up, Danton. But I take it that Mrs Lawford is
+not so much insisting on the word, as on the--the manifestation. And
+I'm bound to confess that the Society for Psychical Research, which
+has among its members quite eminent and entirely trustworthy men of
+science--I am bound to admit they have some very curious stories to
+tell. The old idea was, you know, that there are seventy-two princely
+devils, and as many as seven million--er--commoners. It may very well
+sound quaint to our ears, Mrs Lovat; but there it is. But whether
+that has any bearing on--on what you were saying, Danton, I can't say.
+Perhaps Mrs Lawford will throw a little more light on the subject
+when she tells us on what precise facts her--her distressing theory is
+based.'
+
+Lawford had soundlessly stolen a pace or two nearer, and by stooping
+forward a little he could, each in turn, scrutinise the little intent
+company sitting over his story around the lamp at the further end of the
+table; squatting like little children with their twigs and pins, fishing
+for wonders on the brink of the unknown.
+
+'Yes,' Mrs Lovat was saying, 'I quite agree, Mr Craik. Seventy-two
+princes, and no princesses. Oh, these masculine prejudices! But do throw
+a little more modern light on the subject, Sheila.'
+
+'I mean this,' said Sheila firmly. 'When I went in for the last time to
+say good-bye--and of course it was at his own wish that I did leave him;
+and precisely WHY he wished it is now unhappily only too apparent--I had
+brought him some money from the bank--fifty pounds, I think; yes, fifty
+pounds. And quite by the merest chance I glanced down, in passing, at a
+book he had apparently been reading, a book which he seemed very anxious
+to conceal with his hand. Arthur is not a great reader, though I believe
+he studied a little before we were married, and--well, I detest anything
+like subterfuge, and I said it out without thinking, "Why, you're
+reading French, Arthur!" He turned deathly white but made no answer.'
+
+'And can't you even confide to us the title, Sheila?' sighed Mrs Lovat
+reproachfully.
+
+'Wait a minute,' said Sheila; 'you shall make as much fun of the thing
+as you like, Bettie, when I've finished. I don't know why, but that
+peculiar, stealthy look haunted me. "Why French?" I kept asking myself.
+"Why French?" Arthur hasn't opened a French book for years. He doesn't
+even approve of the entente. His argument was that we ought to be
+friends with the Germans because they are more hostile. Never mind. When
+Ada came back the next evening and said he was out, I came the following
+morning--by myself--and knocked. No one answered, and I let myself in.
+His bed had not been slept in. There were candles and matches all over
+the house--one even burnt nearly to the stick on the floor in the corner
+of the drawing-room. I suppose it was foolish, but I was alone, and just
+that, somehow, horrified me. It seemed to point to such a peculiar state
+of mind. I hesitated; what was the use of looking further? Yet something
+seemed to say to me--and it was surely providential--"Go downstairs!"
+And there in the breakfast-room the first thing I saw on the table
+was this book--a dingy, ragged, bleared, patched-up, oh, a horrible,
+a loathsome little book (and I have read bits too here and there);
+and beside it was my own little school dictionary, my own child's 'She
+looked up sharply. 'What was that? Did anybody call?'
+
+'Nobody I heard,' said Danton, staring stonily round.
+
+'It may have been the passing of the wind,' suggested Mr Craik, after a
+pause.
+
+'Peep between the blinds, Mr Craik; it may be poor Mr Bethany
+confronting Pneumonia in the porch.'
+
+'There's no one there, Mrs Lovat,' said the curate, returning softly
+from his errand. 'Please continue your--your narrative, Mrs Lawford.'
+
+'We are panting for the "devil," my dear.'
+
+'Well, I sat down and, very much against my inclination, turned over the
+pages. It was full of the most revolting confessions and trials, so
+far as I could see. In fact, I think the book was merely an amateur
+collection of--of horrors. And the faces, the portraits! Well, then, can
+you imagine my feelings when towards the end of the book about thirty
+pages from the end, I came upon this--gloating up at me from the table
+in my house before my very eyes?'
+
+She cast a rapid glance over her shoulder, and gathering up her silk
+skirt, drew out, from the pocket beneath, the few crumpled pages, and
+passed them without a word to Danton. Lawford kept him plainly in view,
+as, lowering his great face, he slowly stooped, and holding the loose
+leaves with both fat hands between his knees, stared into the portrait.
+Then he truculently lifted his cropped head.
+
+'What did I say?' he said. 'What did I SAY? What did I tell old Bethany
+in this very room? What d'ye think of that, Mrs Lovat, for a portrait of
+Arthur Lawford? What d'ye make of that, Craik--eh? Devil--eh?'
+
+Mrs Lovat glanced with arched eyebrows, and with her finger-tips handed
+the sheets on to her neighbour, who gazed with a settled and mournful
+frown and returned them to Sheila.
+
+She took the pages, folded them and replaced them carefully in her
+pocket. She swept her hands over her skirts, and turned to Danton.
+
+'You agree,' she inquired softly, 'it's like?'
+
+'Like! It's the livin' livid image. The livin' image,' he repeated,
+stretching out his arm, 'as he stood there that very night.'
+
+'What will you say, then,' said Sheila, quietly, 'What will you say if I
+tell you that that man, Nicholas de Sabathier, has been in his grave for
+over a hundred years?'
+
+Danton's little eyes seemed, if anything, to draw back even further
+into his head. 'I'd say, Mrs Lawford, if you'll excuse the word, that
+it might be a damn horrible coincidence--I'd go farther, an almost
+incredible coincidence. But if you want the sober truth, I'd say it was
+nothing more than a crafty, clever, abominable piece of trickery. That's
+what I'd say. Oh, you don't know, Mrs Lovat. When a scamp's a scamp,
+he'll stop at nothing. I could tell you some tales.'
+
+'Ah, but that's not all,' said Sheila, eyeing them steadfastly one by
+one. 'We all of us know that my husband's story was that he had gone
+down to Widderstone--into the churchyard, for his convalescent ramble;
+that story's true. We all know that he said he had had a fit, a heart
+attack, and that a kind of--of stupor had come over him. I believe on my
+honour that's true too. But no one knows but he himself and Mr Bethany
+and I, that it was a wretched broken grave, quite at the bottom of the
+hill, that he chose for his resting place, nor--and I can't get the
+scene out of my head--nor that the name on that one solitary tombstone
+down there was--was...this!'
+
+Danton rolled his eyes. 'I don't begin to follow,' he said stubbornly.
+
+'You don't mean,' said Mr Craik, who had not removed his gaze from
+Sheila's face, 'I am not to take it that you mean, Mrs Lawford, the--the
+other?'
+
+'Yes,' said Sheila, 'HIS'--she patted her skirts--'Sabathier's.'
+
+'You mean,' said Mrs Lovat crisply, 'that the man in the grave is the
+man in the book, and that the man in the book is--is poor Arthur's
+changed face?'
+
+Sheila nodded.
+
+Danton rose cumbrously from his chair, looking beadily down on his three
+friends.
+
+'Oh, but you know, it isn't--it isn't right,' he began. 'Lord! I can see
+him now. Glassy--yes, that's the very word I said--glassy. It won't do,
+Mrs Lawford; on my solemn honour, it won't do. I don't deny it, call it
+what you like; yes, devils, if you like. But what I say as a practical
+man is that it's just rank--that's what it is! Bethany's had too much
+rope. The time's gone by for sentiment and all that foolery. Mercy's all
+very well, but after all it's justice that clinches the bargain. There's
+only one way: we must catch him; we must lay the poor wretch by the
+heels before it's too late. No publicity, God bless me, no. We'd have
+all the rags in London on us. They'd pillory us nine days on end. We'd
+never live it down. No, we must just hush it up--a home or something;
+an asylum. For my part,' he turned like a huge toad, his chin low in his
+collar--'and I'd say the same if it was my own brother, and, after all,
+he is your husband, Mrs Lawford--I'd sooner he was in his grave. It
+takes two to play at that game, that's what I say. To lay himself open!
+I can't stand it--honestly, I can't stand it. And yet,' he jerked his
+chin over the peak of his collar towards the ladies, 'and yet you say
+he's being fetched; comes creeping home, and is fetched at dark by a--a
+lady in a pony-carriage. God bless me! It's rank. What,' he broke out
+violently again, 'what was he doing there in a cemetery after dark? Do
+you think that beastly Frenchman would have played such a trick on Craik
+here? Would he have tried his little game on me? Deviltry be it, if
+you prefer the word, and all deference to you, Mrs Lawford. But I know
+this--a couple of hundred years ago they would have burnt a man at the
+stake for less than a tenth of this. Ask Craik here. I don't know how,
+and I don't know when: his mother, I've always heard say, was a little
+eccentric; but the truth is he's managed by some unholy legerdemain to
+get the thing at his finger's ends; that's what it is. Think of that
+unspeakable book. Left open on the table! Look at his Ferguson game.
+It's our solemn duty to keep him for good and all out of mischief. It
+reflects all round. There's no getting out of it; we're all in it. And
+tar sticks. And then there's poor little Alice to consider, and--and
+you yourself, Mrs. Lawford: I wouldn't give the fellow--friend though
+he was, in a way--it isn't safe to give him five minutes' freedom.
+We've simply got to save you from yourself, Mrs Lawford; that's what it
+is--and from old-fashioned sentiment. And I only wish Bethany was here
+now to dispute it!'
+
+He stirred himself down, as it were, into his clothes, and stood in the
+middle of the hearthrug, gently oscillating, with his hands behind
+his back. But at some faint rumour out of the silent house his posture
+suddenly stiffened, and he lifted a little, with heavy, steady lids, his
+head.
+
+'What is the matter, Danton?' said Mr Craik in a small voice; 'why are
+you listening?'
+
+'I wasn't listening,' said Danton stoutly, 'I was thinking.'
+
+At the same moment, at the creak of a footstep on the kitchen stairs,
+Lawford also had drawn soundlessly back into the darkness of the empty
+drawing-room.
+
+'While Mr Danton is "thinking," Sheila,' Mrs Lovat was softly
+interposing, 'do please listen a moment to me. Do you mean really that
+that Frenchman--the one you've pocketed--is the poor creature in the
+grave?'
+
+'Yes, Mrs Lawford,' said Mr Craik, putting out his face a little, 'are
+we to take it that you mean that?'
+
+'It's the same date, dear, the same name even to the spelling; what
+possibly else can I think?'
+
+'And that the poor creature in the grave actually climbed up out of the
+darkness and--well, what?'
+
+'I know no more than you do NOW, Bettie. But the two faces--you must
+remember you haven't seen my husband SINCE.' You must remember you
+haven't heard the peculiar--the most peculiar things he--Arthur
+himself--has said to me. Things such as a wife... And not in jest,
+Bettie; I assure you....'
+
+'And Mr Bethany?' interpolated Mr Craik modestly, feeling his way.
+
+'Pah, Bethany, Craik! He'd back Old Nick himself if he came with a good
+tale. We've got to act; we've got to settle his hash before he does any
+mischief.'
+
+'Well,' began Mrs Lovat, smiling a little remorsefully beneath the arch
+of her raised eyebrows, 'I sincerely hope you'll all forgive me; but I
+really am, heart and soul, with Old Nick, as Mr Danton seems on intimate
+terms enough to call him. Dead, he is really immensely alluring; and
+alive, I think, awfully--just awfully pitiful and--and pathetic. But if
+I know anything of Arthur he won't be beaten by a Frenchman. As for
+just the portrait, I think, do you know, I almost prefer dark men'--she
+glanced up at the face immediately in front of the clock--'at least,'
+she added softly, 'when they are not looking very vindictive. I suppose
+people are fairly often possessed, Mr Craik? HOW many "deadly sins" are
+there?'
+
+'As a matter of fact, Mrs Lovat, there are seven. But I think in this
+case Mrs Lawford intends to suggest not so much that--that her husband
+is in that condition; habitual sin, you know--grave enough, of course,
+I own--but that he is actually being compelled, even to the extent of a
+more or less complete change of physiognomy, to follow the biddings of
+some atrocious spiritual influence. It is no breach of confidence to
+say that I have myself been present at a death-bed where the struggle
+against what I may call the end was perfectly awful to witness. I
+don't profess to follow all the ramifications of the affair, but though
+possibly Mr Danton may seem a little harsh, such harshness, if I may
+venture to intercede, is not necessarily "vindictive." And--and personal
+security is a consideration.'
+
+'If you only knew the awful fear, the awful uncertainty I have been
+in, Bettie! Oh, it is worse, infinitely worse, than you can possibly
+imagine. I have myself heard the Voice speak out of him--a high, hard,
+nasal voice. I've seen what Mr Danton calls the "glassiness" come into
+his face, and an expression so wild and so appallingly depraved, as
+it were, that I have had to hurry downstairs to hide myself from the
+thought. I'm willing to sacrifice everything for my own husband and for
+Alice; but can it be expected of me to go on harbouring....' Lawford
+listened on in vain for a moment; poor Sheila, it seemed, had all but
+broken down.
+
+'Look here, Mrs Lawford,' began Danton huskily, 'you really mustn't give
+way; you really mustn't. It's awful, unspeakably awful, I admit. But
+here we are; friends, in the midst of friends. And there's absolutely
+nothing--What's that? Eh? Who is it?... Oh, the maid!'
+
+Ada stood in the doorway looking in. 'All I've come to ask, ma'am,' she
+said in a low voice, 'is, am I to stay downstairs any longer? And are
+you aware there's somebody in the house?'
+
+'What's that? What's that you're saying?' broke out the husky voice
+again. 'Control yourself! Speak gently! What's that?'
+
+'Begging your pardon, sir, I'm perfectly under control. And all I say is
+that I can't stay any longer alone downstairs there. There's somebody in
+the house.'
+
+A concentrated hush seemed to have fallen on the little assembly.
+
+'"Somebody"--but who?' said Sheila out of the silence. 'You come up
+here, Ada, with these idle fancies. Who's in the house? There has been
+no knock--no footstep.'
+
+'No knock, no footstep, ma'am, that I've heard. It's Dr Ferguson, ma'am.
+He was here that first night; and he's been here ever since. He was here
+when I came on Tuesday; and he was here last night. And he's here now.
+I can't be deceived by my own feelings. It's not right, it's not
+out-spoken to keep me in the dark like this. And if you have no
+objection, I would like to go home.'
+
+Lawford in his utter weariness had nearly closed the door and now sat
+bent up on a chair, wondering vaguely when this poor play was coming to
+an end, longing with an intensity almost beyond endurance for the keen
+night air, the open sky. But still his ears drank in every tiniest sound
+or stir. He heard Danton's lowered voice muttering his arguments. He
+heard Ada quietly sniffing in the darkness of the hall. And this was his
+world! This was his life's panorama, creaking on at every jolt. This was
+the 'must' Grisel had sent him back to--these poor fools packed
+together in a panic at an old stale tale! Well, they would all come out
+presently, and cluster; and the crested, cackling fellow would lead them
+safely away out of the haunted farmyard.
+
+He started out of his reverie at Danton's voice close at hand.
+
+'Look here, my good girl, we haven't the least intention of keeping you
+in the dark. If you want to leave your mistress like this in the midst
+of her anxieties she says you can go and welcome. But it's not a bit of
+good in the world coming up with these cock-and-bull stories. The truth
+is your master's mad, that's the sober truth of it--hopelessly insane,
+you understand; and we've got to find him. But nothing's to be said,
+d'ye see? It's got to be done without fuss or scandal. But if there's
+any witness wanted, or anything of that kind, why, here you are; and,'
+he dropped his voice to an almost inaudible hoot, 'and well worth your
+while! You did see him, eh? Step into the trap, and all that?'
+
+Ada stood silent a moment. 'I don't know, sir,' she began quietly, 'by
+what right you speak to me about what you call my cock-and-bull stories.
+If the master is mad, all I can say to anybody is I'm very sorry to hear
+it. I came to my mistress, sir, if you please; and I prefer to take my
+orders from one who has a right to give them. Did I understand you to
+say, ma'am, that you wouldn't want me any more this evening?'
+
+Sheila had swept solemnly to the door. 'Mr Danton meant all that he said
+quite kindly, Ada. I can perfectly understand your feelings--perfectly.
+And I'm very much obliged to you for all your kindness to me in very
+trying circumstances. We are all agreed--we are forced to the terrible
+conclusion which--which Mr Danton has just--expressed. And I know I
+can rely on your discretion. Don't stay on a moment if you really are
+afraid. But when you say "some one" Ada, do you mean--some one like you
+or me; or do you mean--the other?'
+
+'I've been sitting in the kitchen, ma'am, unable to move. I'm watched
+everywhere. The other evening I went into the drawing-room--I was alone
+in the house--and... I can't describe it. It wasn't dark; and yet it was
+all still and black, like the ruins after a fire. I don't mean I saw it,
+only that it was like a scene. And then the watching--I am quite aware
+to some it may sound all fancy. But I'm not superstitious, never was.
+I only mean--that I can't sit alone here. I daren't. Else, I'm quite
+myself. So if so be you don't want me any more; if I can't be of any
+further use to you or to--to Mr. Lawford, I'd prefer to go home.'
+
+'Very well, Ada; thank you. You can go out this way.'
+
+The door was unchained and unbolted, and 'Good-night' said. And Sheila
+swept back in sombre pomp to her absorbed friends.
+
+'She's quite a good creature at heart,' she explained frankly, as if to
+disclaim any finesse, 'and almost quixotically loyal. But what really
+did she mean, do you think? She is so obstinate. That maddening "some
+one"! How they do repeat themselves. It can't be my husband; not Dr
+Ferguson, I mean. You don't suppose--oh surely, not "some one" else!'
+Again the dark silence of the house seemed to drift in on the little
+company.
+
+Mr Craik cleared his throat. 'I failed to catch quite all that the maid
+said,' he murmured apologetically; 'but I certainly did gather it was to
+some kind of--of emanation she was referring. And the "ruin," you know.
+I'm not a mystic; and yet do you know, that somehow seemed to me almost
+offensively suggestive of--of demonic influence. You don't suppose,
+Mrs Lawford--and of course I wouldn't for a moment venture on such a
+conjecture unsupported-but even if this restless spirit (let us call
+it) did succeed in making a footing, it might possibly be rather in
+the nature of a lodging than a permanent residence. Moreover we are, I
+think, bound to remember that probably in all spheres of existence like
+attracts like; even the Gadarene episode seems to suggest a possible
+MULTIPLICATION!' he peered largely. 'You don't suppose, Mrs Lawford...?'
+
+'I think Mr Craik doesn't quite relish having to break the news, Sheila
+dear,' explained Mrs Lovat soothingly, 'that perhaps Sabathier's out.
+Which really is quite a heavenly suggestion, for in that case your
+husband would be in, wouldn't he? Just our old stolid Arthur again, you
+know. And next Mr Craik is suggesting, and it certainly does seem rather
+fascinating, that poor Ada's got mixed up with the Frenchman's friends,
+or perhaps, even, with one of the seventy-two Princes Royal. I know
+women can't, or mustn't reason, Mr Danton, but you do, I hope, just
+catch the drift?'
+
+Danton started. 'I wasn't really listening to the girl,' he explained
+nonchalantly, shrugging his black shoulders and pursing up his eyes.
+'Personally, Mrs Lovat, I'd pack the baggage off to-night, box and all.
+But it's not my business.'
+
+'You mustn't be depressed--must he, Mr Craik? After all, my dear man,
+the business, as you call it, is not exactly entailed. But really,
+Sheila, I think it must be getting very late. Mr Bethany won't come now.
+And the dear old thing ought certainly to have his say before we go any
+further; OUGHTN'T he, Mr Danton? So what's the use of worriting poor
+Ada's ghost any longer. And as for poor Arthur--I haven't the faintest
+desire in the world to hear the little cart drive up, simply in case it
+should be to leave your unfortunate husband behind it, Sheila. What
+it must be to be alone all night in this house with a dead and buried
+Frenchman's face--well, I shudder, dear!'
+
+'And yet, Mrs Lovat,' said Mr Craik, with some little show of returning
+bravado, 'as we make our bed, you know.'
+
+'But in this case, you see,' she replied reflectively, 'if all accounts
+are true, Mr Craik, it's manifestly the wicked Frenchman who has made
+the bed, and Sheila who refu---- But look; Mr Danton is fretting to get
+home.'
+
+'If you'll all go to the door,' said Danton, seizing a fleeting
+opportunity to raise his eyebrows more expressively even than if he had
+again shrugged his shoulders at Sheila, 'I'll put out the light.'
+
+The night air flowed into the dark house as Danton hastily groped his
+way out of the dining-room.
+
+'There's only one thing,' said Sheila slowly. 'When I last saw my
+husband, you know, he was, I think, the least bit better. He was always
+stubbornly convinced it would all come right in time. That's why,
+I think, he's been spending his--his evenings away from home. But
+supposing it did?'
+
+'For my part,' said Mrs Lovat, breathing the faint wind that was rising
+out of the west, 'I'd sigh; I'd rub my eyes; I'd thank God for such an
+exciting dream; and I'd turn comfortably over and go to sleep again. I'm
+all for Arthur--absolutely--back against the wall.'
+
+'For my part,' said Danton, looming in the dusk, 'friend or no friend,
+I'd cut the--I'd cut him dead. But don't fret, Mrs Lawford, devil or no
+devil, he's gone for good.'
+
+'And for my part--' began Mr Craik; but the door at that moment slammed.
+
+Voices, however, broke out almost immediately in the porch. And after
+a hurried consultation, Lawford in his stagnant retreat heard the door
+softly reopen, and the striking of a match. And Mr Craik, followed
+closely by Danton's great body, stole circumspectly across his dim
+chink, and the first adventurer went stumbling down the kitchen
+staircase.
+
+'I suppose,' muttered Lawford, turning his head in the darkness, 'they
+have come back to put out the kitchen gas.'
+
+Danton began a busy tuneless whistle between his teeth.
+
+'Coming, Craik?' he called thickly, after a long pause.
+
+Apparently no answer had been returned to his inquiry: he waited a
+little longer, with legs apart, and eyeballs enveloped in brooding
+darkness. 'I'll just go and tell the ladies you're coming,' he suddenly
+bawled down the hollow. 'Do you hear, Craik? They're alone, you know.'
+And with that he resolutely wheeled and rapidly made his way down
+the steps into the garden. Some few moments afterwards Mr Craik shook
+himself free of the basement, hastened at a spirited trot to rejoin his
+companions, and in his absence of mind omitted to shut the front door.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
+
+Lawford sat on in the darkness, and now one sentence and now another of
+their talk would repeat itself in his memory, in much the same way as
+one listlessly turns over an antiquated diary, to read here and there a
+flattened and almost meaningless sentiment. Sometimes a footstep passed
+echoing along the path under the trees, then his thoughts would leave
+him, and he would listen and listen till it had died quite out. It was
+all so very far away. And they too--these talkers--so very far away; as
+remote and yet as clear as the characters in a play when they have made
+their final bow, and have left the curtained stage, and one is standing
+uncompanioned and nearly the last of the spectators, and the lights that
+have summoned back reality again are being extinguished. It was only by
+painful effort of mind that he kept recalling himself to himself--why he
+was here; what it all meant; that this was indeed actuality.
+
+Yet, after all, this by now was his customary loneliness: there was
+little else he desired for the present than the hospitality of the dark.
+He glanced around him in the clear, black, stirless air. Here and there,
+it seemed, a humped or spindled form held against all comers its passive
+place. Here and there a tiny faintness of light played. Night after
+night these chairs and tables kept their blank vigil. Why, he thought,
+pleased as an overtired child with the fancy, in a sense they were
+always alone, shut up in a kind of senselessness--just like us all. But
+what--what, he had suddenly risen from his chair to ask himself--what
+on earth are they alone with? No precise answer had been forthcoming to
+that question. But as in turning in the doorway, he looked out into
+the night, flashing here and there in dark spaces of the sky above
+the withering apple leaves--the long dark wall and quiet untrodden
+road--with the tumultuous beating of the stars--one thing at least he
+was conscious of having learned in these last few days: he knew what
+kind of a place he was alone IN.
+
+It seemed to weave a spell over him, to call up a nostalgia he had lost
+all remembrance of since childhood. And that queer homesickness, at
+any rate, was all Sabathier's doing, he thought, smiling in his rather
+careworn fashion. Sabathier! It was this mystery, bereft now of all
+fear, and this beauty together, that made life the endless, changing and
+yet changeless, thing it was. And yet mystery and loveliness alike were
+only really appreciable with one's legs, as it were, dangling down over
+into the grave.
+
+Just with one's lantern lit, on the edge of the whispering unknown, and
+a reiterated going back out of the solitude into the light and warmth,
+to the voices and glancing of eyes, to say good-bye:--that after all was
+this life on earth for those who watched as well as acted. What if one's
+earthly home were empty?--still the restless fretted traveller must
+tarry; 'for the horrible worst of it is, my friend,' he said, as if to
+some silent companion listening behind him, 'the worst of it is, YOUR
+way was just simply, solely suicide.' What was it Herbert had called
+it? Yes, a cul-de-sac--black, lofty, immensely still and old and
+picturesque, but none the less merely a contemptible cul-de-sac; no
+abiding place, scarcely even sufficing with its flagstones for a groan
+from the fugitive and deluded refugee. There was no peace for the
+wicked. The question of course then came in--Was there any peace
+anywhere, for anybody?
+
+He smiled at a sudden odd remembrance of a quiet, sardonic old aunt
+whom he used to stay with as a child. 'Children should be seen and not
+heard,' she would say, peering at him over his favourite pudding.
+
+His eyes rested vacantly on the darkling street. He fell again into
+reverie, gigantically brooded over by shapes only imagination dimly
+conceived of: the remote alleys of his mind astir with a shadowy and
+ceaseless traffic which it wasn't at least THIS life's business to
+hearken after, or regard. And as he stood there in a mysteriously
+thronging peaceful solitude such as he had never known before, faintly
+out of the silence broke the sound of approaching hoofs. His heart
+seemed to gather itself close; a momentary blindness veiled his eyes, so
+wildly had his blood surged up into cheek and brain. He remained, caught
+up, with head slightly inclined, listening, as, with an interminable
+tardiness, measureless anguished hope died down into nothing in his
+mind.
+
+Cold and heavy, his heart began to beat again, as if to catch up those
+laggard moments. He turned with an infinite revulsion of feeling to look
+out on the lamps of the old fly that had drawn up at his gate.
+
+He watched incuriously a little old lady rather arduously alight, pause,
+and look up at his darkened windows, and after a momentary hesitation,
+and a word over her shoulder to the cabman, stoop and fumble at the iron
+latch. He watched her with a kind of wondering aversion, still scarcely
+tinged with curiosity. She had succeeded in lifting the latch and in
+pushing her way through, and was even now steadily advancing towards
+him along the tiled path. And a minute after he recognised with the
+strangest reactions the quiet old figure that had shared a sunset with
+him ages and ages ago--his mother's old schoolfellow, Miss Sinnet.
+
+He was already ransacking the still faintly-perfumed dining-room for
+matches, and had just succeeded in relighting the still-warm lamp, when
+he heard her quiet step in the porch, even felt her peering in, in the
+gloom, with all her years' trickling customariness behind her, a little
+dubious of knocking on a wide-open door.
+
+But the lamp lit Lawford went out again and welcomed his visitor. 'I am
+alone,' he was explaining gravely, 'my wife's away and the whole house
+topsy-turvy. How very, very kind of you!'
+
+The old lady was breathing a little heavily after her ascent of the
+steep steps, and seemed not to have noticed his outstretched hand. None
+the less she followed him in, and when she was well advanced into the
+lighted room, she sighed deeply, raised her veil over the front of her
+bonnet, and leisurely took out her spectacles.
+
+'I suppose,' she was explaining in a little quiet voice, 'you ARE Mr
+Arthur Lawford, but as I did not catch sight of a light in any of the
+windows I began to fear that the cabman might have set me down at the
+wrong house.'
+
+She raised her head, and first through, and then over her spectacles she
+deliberately and steadfastly regarded him.
+
+'Yes,' she said to herself, and turned, not as it seemed entirely with
+satisfaction, to look for a chair. He wheeled the most comfortable up to
+the table.
+
+'I have been visiting my old friend Miss Tucker--Rev W. Tucker's
+daughter--she, I knew, could give me your address; and sure enough she
+did. Your road, d'ye see, was on my way home. And I determined, in spite
+of the hour, just to inquire. You must understand, Mr Lawford, there
+was something that I rather particularly wanted to say to you. But
+there!--you're looking sadly, sadly ill; and,' she glanced round a
+little inquisitively, 'I think my story had better wait for a more
+convenient occasion.'
+
+'Not at all, Miss Sinnet; please not,' Lawford assured her, 'really. I
+have been ill, but I'm now practically quite myself again. My wife and
+daughter have gone away for a few days; and I follow to-morrow, so if
+you'll forgive such a very poor welcome, it may be my--my only chance.
+Do please let me hear.'
+
+The old lady leant back in her chair, placed her hands on its arms and
+softly panted, while out of the rather broad serenity of her face she
+sat blinking up at her companion as if after a long talk, instead of
+at the beginning of one. 'No,' she repeated reflectively, 'I don't like
+your looks at all; yet here we are, enjoying beautiful autumn weather,
+Mr Lawford, why not make use of it?'
+
+'Oh yes,' said Lawford, 'I do. I have been making tremendous use of it.'
+
+Her eyelid flickered at his candid glance. 'And does your business
+permit of much walking?'
+
+'Well, I've been malingering these last few days idling at home; but I
+am usually more or less my own man, Miss Sinnet. I walk a little.'
+
+'H'm, but not much in my direction, Mr Lawford?' she quizzed him.
+
+'All horrible indolence, Miss Sinnet. But I often--often think of you;
+and especially just lately.'
+
+'Well, now,' she wriggled round her head to get a better view of him
+rather stiffly seated on his chair, 'that's very peculiar; because I too
+have been thinking lately a great deal of you. And yet--I fancy I
+shall succeed in mystifying you presently--not precisely of you, but of
+somebody else!'
+
+'You do mystify me--"somebody else"!' he replied gallantly. 'And that is
+the story, I suppose?'
+
+'That's the story,' repeated Miss Sinnet with some little triumph. 'Now,
+let me see; it was on Saturday last--yes, Saturday evening; a wonderful
+sunset; Bewley Heath.'
+
+'Oh yes; my daughter's favourite walk.'
+
+'And your daughter's age now?'
+
+'She's nearly sixteen; Alice, you know.'
+
+'Ah, yes, Alice; to be sure. It is a beautiful walk, and if fine, I
+generally take mine there too. It's near; there's shade; it's very
+little frequented; and I can wander and muse undisturbed. And that
+I think is pretty well all that an old woman like me is fit for, Mr
+Lawford. "Nearly sixteen!" Is it possible? Dear, dear me? But let me get
+on. On my way home from the Heath, you may be aware, before one reaches
+the road again, there's a somewhat steep ascent. I haven't the strength
+I had, and whether I'm fatigued or not, I have always made it a rule to
+rest awhile on a most convenient little seat at the summit, admire the
+view--what I can see of it--and then make my way quietly, quietly home.
+On Saturday, however, and it most rarely occurs--once, I remember, when
+a very civil nursemaid was sitting with two charmingly behaved little
+children in the sunshine, and I heard they were my old friend Major
+Loder's son's children--on Saturday, as I was saying, my own particular
+little haunt was already occupied.' She glanced back at him from out of
+her thoughts, as it were. 'By a gentleman. I say, gentleman; though I
+must confess that his conduct--perhaps, too, a little something even in
+his appearance, somewhat belied the term. Anyhow, gentleman let us call
+him.'
+
+Lawford, all attention, nodded, and encouragingly smiled.
+
+'I'm not one of those tiresome, suspicious people, Mr Lawford, who
+distrust strangers. I have never been molested, and I have enjoyed many
+and many a most interesting, and sometimes instructive, talk with an
+individual whom I've never seen in my life before, and this side of the
+grave perhaps, am never likely to see again.' She lifted her head with
+pursed lips, and gravely yet still flickeringly regarded him once more.
+'Well, I made some trifling remark--the weather, the view, what-not,'
+she explained with a little jerk of her shoulder--'and to my extreme
+astonishment he turned and addressed me by name--Miss Sinnet.
+Unmistakably--Sinnet. Now, perhaps, and very rightly, you won't
+considered THAT a very peculiar thing to do? But you will recollect, Mr
+Lawford, that I had been sitting there a considerable time. Surely, now,
+if you had recognised my face you would have addressed me at once?'
+
+'Was he, do you think, Miss Sinnet, a little uncertain, perhaps?'
+
+'Never mind, never mind; let me get on with my story first. The next
+thing my gentleman does is more mysterious still. His whole manner was
+a little peculiar, perhaps--a certain restlessness, what, in fact, one
+might be almost tempted to call a certain furtiveness of behaviour.
+Never mind. What he does next is to ask me a riddle! Perhaps you won't
+think that was peculiar either?'
+
+'What was the riddle?' smiled Lawford.
+
+'Why, to be sure, to guess his name! Simply guided, so I surmised,
+by some very faint resemblance in his face to his MOTHER, who was,
+he assured me, an old schoolfellow of mine at BRIGHTON. I thought
+and thought. I confess the adventure was beginning to be a little
+perplexing. But of course, very, very few of my old schoolfellows remain
+distinctly in my memory now; and I fear that grows more treacherous the
+longer I live. Their faces as girls are clear enough. But later in life
+most of them drifted out of sight--many, alas, are dead; and, well, at
+last I narrowed my man down to one. And who now, do you suppose that
+was?'
+
+Lawford sustained an expression of abysmal mystification. 'Do tell
+me--who?'
+
+'Your own poor dear mother, Mr Lawford.'
+
+'HE said so?'
+
+'No, no,' said the old lady, with some vexation, closing her eyes. 'I
+said so. He asked me to guess. And I guessed Mary Lawford; now do you
+see?'
+
+`Yes, yes. But WAS he like her, Miss Sinnet? That was really very, very
+extraordinary. Did you see any likeness in his face?'
+
+Miss Sinnet very deliberately took her spectacles out of their case
+again. 'Now, see here, sir; this is being practical, isn't it? I'm just
+going to take a leisurely glance at yours. But you mustn't let me forget
+the time. You must look after the time for me.'
+
+'It's about a quarter to ten,' said Lawford, having glanced first at the
+stopped clock on the chimney-piece and then at his watch. He then sat
+quite still and endeavoured to sit at ease, while the old lady lifted
+her bonneted head and ever so gravely and benignly surveyed him.
+
+'H'm,' she said at last. 'There's no mistaking YOU. It's Mary's chin,
+and Mary's brow--with just a little something, perhaps, of her dreamy
+eye. But you haven't all her looks, Mr Lawford, by any manner of means.
+She was a very beautiful girl, and so vivacious, so fanciful--it was, I
+suppose the foreign strain showing itself. Even marriage did not quite
+succeed in spoiling her.'
+
+'The foreign strain?' Lawford glanced with a kind of fleeting fixity at
+the quiet old figure. 'The foreign strain?'
+
+Your mother's maiden name, my dear Mr Lawford, surely memory does not
+deceive me in that, was van der Gucht. THAT, I believe, is a foreign
+name.'
+
+'Ah, yes,' said Lawford, his rising thoughts sinking quietly to rest
+again. 'Van der Gucht, of course. I--how stupid of me!'
+
+'As a matter of fact, your mother was very proud of her Dutch blood. But
+there,' she flung out little fin-like sleeves, 'if you don't let me keep
+to my story I shall go back as uneasy as I came. And you didn't,' she
+added even more fretfully, 'you didn't tell me the time.'
+
+Lawford stared at his watch again for some few moments without replying.
+'It's a few minutes to ten,' he said at last.
+
+'Dear me! And I'm keeping the cabman! I mast hurry on. Well, now, I put
+it to you; you shall be my father confessor--though I detest the idea in
+real life--was I wrong? Was I justified in professing to the poor fellow
+that I detected a likeness when there was extremely little likeness
+there?'
+
+'What! None at all!' cried Lawford; 'not the faintest trace?'
+
+'My dear good Mr Lawford,' she expostulated, patting her lap, 'there's
+very little more than a trace of my dear beautiful Mary in YOU, her
+own son. How could there be--how could you expect it in him, a complete
+stranger? No, it was nothing but my own foolish kindliness. It might
+have been Mary's son for all that I could recollect. I haven't for
+years, please remember, had the pleasure of receiving a visit from
+YOU. I am firmly of opinionthat I was justified. My motive was entirely
+benevolent. And then--to my positive amazement--well, I won't say hard
+things of the absent; but he suddenly turns round on me with a "Thank
+you, Miss Bennett." Bennett, hark ye! Perhaps you won't agree that I had
+any justification in being vexed and--and affronted at THAT.'
+
+'I think, Miss Sinnet,' said Lawford solemnly, 'that you were perfectly
+justified. Oh, perfectly. I wonder even you had the patience to give
+the real Arthur Lawford a chance to ask your forgiveness for--or the
+stranger.'
+
+'Well, candidly,' said Miss Sinnett severely. 'I was very much
+scandalised; and I shouldn't be here now telling you my story if it
+hadn't been for your mother.'
+
+'My mother!'
+
+The old lady rather grimly enjoyed his confusion. 'Yes, Mr Lawford,
+your mother. I don't know why--something in his manner, something in
+his face--so dejected, so unhappy, so--if it is not uncharitablnesse to
+say it--so wild: it has haunted me: I haven't been able to put the
+matter out of my mind. I have lain awake in my bed thinking of him. Why
+did he speak to me, I keep asking myself. Why did he play me so very
+aimless a trick? How had he learned my name? Why was he sitting there so
+solitary and so dejected? And worse even than that, what has become of
+him? A little more patience, a little more charity, perhaps--what might
+I not have done for him? The whole thing has harassed and distressed me
+more than I can say. Would you believe it, I have actually twice, and on
+one occasion, three times in a day made my way to the seat--hoping to
+see him there. And I am not so young as I was. And then, as I say, to
+crown all, I had a most remarkable dream about your mother. But that's
+my own affair. Elderly people like me are used--well, perhaps I won't
+say used--we're not surprised or disturbed by visits from those who have
+gone before. We live, in a sense, among the tombs; though I would not
+have you fancy it's in any way a morbid or unhappy life to lead. We
+don't talk about it--certainly not to young people. Let them enjoy their
+Eden while they can; though there's plenty of apples, I fear, on the
+Tree yet, Mr Lawford.'
+
+She leant forward and whispered it with a big, simple smile:--'We don't
+even discuss it much among ourselves. But as one gets nearer and nearer
+to the wicket-gate there's other company around one than you'll find
+in--in the directory. And that is why I have just come on here tonight.
+Very probably my errand may seem to have no meaning for you. You look
+ill, but you don't appear to be in any great trouble or adversity, as I
+feared in my--well, there--as I feared you might be. I must say, though,
+it seems a terribly empty house. And no lights, too!'
+
+She slowly, with a little trembling nodding of her bonnet, turned
+her head and glanced quietly, fixedly, and unflinchingly, out of the
+half-open door. 'But that's not my affair.' And again she looked at him
+for a little while.
+
+Then she stooped forward and touched him kindly and trustingly on the
+knee. 'Trouble or no trouble,' she said, 'it's never too late to remind
+a man of his mother. And I'm sure, Mr Lawford, I'm very glad to hear you
+are struggling up out of your illness again. We must keep a brave heart,
+forty or seventy, whichever we may be: "While the evil days come not nor
+the years draw nigh when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them,"
+though they have not come to me even yet; and I trust from the bottom of
+my heart, not to YOU.'
+
+She looked at him without a trace of emotion or constraint in her
+large, quiet face, and their eyes met for a moment in that brief, fixed,
+baffling fashion that seems to prove that mankind is after all but a
+dumb masked creature saddled with the vain illusion of speech.
+
+'And now that I've eased my conscience,' said the old lady, pulling
+down her veil, 'I must beg pardon for intruding at such an hour of the
+evening. And may I have your arm down those dreadful steps? Really, Mr
+Lawford, judging from the houses they erect for us, the builders must
+have a very peculiar notion of mankind. Is the fly still there? I
+expressly told the man to wait, and what I am going to do if--!'
+
+'He's there,' Lawford reassured her, craning his neck in their slow
+progress to catch a peep into the quiet road. And like a flock of birds
+scared by a chance comer at their feeding in some deserted field, a
+whirring cloud of memories swept softly up in his mind--memories whose
+import he made no effort to discover. None the less, the leisurely
+descent became in their company something of a real experience even in
+such a brimming week.
+
+'I hope, some day, you will really tell me your dream?' he said, pushing
+the old lady's silk skirts in after her as she slowly climbed into the
+carriage.
+
+'Ah, my dear Lawford, when you are my age,' she called back to him,
+groping her way into the rather musty gloom, 'you'll dream such dreams
+for yourself. Life's not what's just the fashion. And there are queerer
+things to be seen and heard just quietly in one's solitude than this
+busy life gives us time to discover. But as for my mystifying Bewley
+acquaintance--I confess I cannot make head or tail of him.'
+
+'Was he,' said Lawford rather vaguely, looking up into the dim white
+face that with its plumes filled nearly the whole carriage window, 'was
+his face very unpleasing?'
+
+She raised a gloved hand. 'It has haunted me, haunted me, Mr Lawford;
+its--its conflict! Poor fellow; I hope, I do hope, he faced his trouble
+out. But I shall never see him again.'
+
+He squeezed the trembling, kindly old hand. 'I bet, Miss Sinnet,' he
+said earnestly, 'even your having thought kindly of the poor beggar
+eased his mind--whoever he may have been. I assure you, assure you of
+that.'
+
+'Ay, but I did more than THINK,' replied the old lady with a chuckle
+that might have seemed even a little derisive if it had not been so
+profoundly magnanimous.
+
+He watched the old black fly roll slowly off, and still smiling at Miss
+Sinnet's inscrutable finesse went back into the house. 'And now, my
+friend,' he said, addressing peacefully the thronging darkness, 'the
+time's nearly up for me to go too.'
+
+He had made up his mind. Or, rather, it seemed as if in the unregarded
+silences of this last long talk his mind had made up itself. Only among
+impossibilities had he the shadow of a choice. In this old haunted
+house, amid this shallow turmoil no practicable clue could show itself
+of a way out. He would go away for a while.
+
+He left the door ajar behind him for the moments still left, and
+stood for a while thinking. Then, lamp in hand, he descended into the
+breakfast-room for pen, ink, and paper. He sat for some time in that
+underground calm, nibbling his pen like a harassed and self-conscious
+schoolboy. At last he began:
+
+'MY DEAR SHEILA,--I must tell you, to begin with, that the CHANGE has
+now all passed away. I am--as near as man can be--completely myself
+again. And next: that I overheard all that was said to-night in the
+dining-room.
+
+'I'm sorry for listening; but it's no good going over all that now. Here
+I am, and, as you said, for Alice's sake we must make the best of it. I
+am going away for a while, to get, if I can, a chance to quiet down. I
+suppose every one comes sooner or later to a time in life when there
+is nothing else to be done but just shut one's eyes and blunder on. And
+that's all I can do now--blunder on....'
+
+He paused, and suddenly, at the echo of the words in his mind, a
+revulsion of feeling--shame and hatred of himself surged up, and he
+tore his letter into tiny pieces. Once more he began, 'my dear Sheila,'
+dropped his pen, sat on for a long time, cold and inert, harbouring
+almost unendurably a pitiful, hopeless longing.... He would write to
+Grisel another day.
+
+He leant back in his chair, his fingers pressed against his eyelids. And
+clearer than those which myriad-hued reality can ever present, pictures
+of the imagination swam up before his eyes. It seemed, indeed, that even
+now some ghost, some revenant of himself was sitting there, in the old
+green churchyard, roofed only with a thousand thousand stars. The breath
+of darkness stirred softly on his cheek. Some little scampering shape
+slipped by. A bird on high cried weirdly, solemnly, over the globe. He
+shuddered faintly, and looked out again into the small lamplit room.
+
+Here, too, was quite as inexplicable a coming and going. A fly was
+walking on the table beneath his eyes, with the uneasy gait of one that
+has outlived his hour and most of his companions. Mice were scampering
+and shrieking in the empty kitchen. And all about him, in the viewless
+air, the phantoms of another life passed by, unmindful of his motionless
+body. He fell into a lethargy of the senses, and only gradually became
+aware after a while of the strange long-drawn sigh of rain at the
+window. He rose and opened it. The night air flowed in, chilled with its
+waters and faintly fragrant of the dust. It soothed away all thought for
+a while. He turned back to his chair. He would wait until the rain had
+lulled before starting....
+
+A little before midnight the door was softly, and with extreme care,
+pushed open, and Mr Bethany's old face, with an intense and sharpened
+scrutiny, looked in on the lamplit room. And as if still intent on
+the least sound within the empty walls around him, he came near, and
+stooping across the table, stared through his spectacles at the sidelong
+face of his friend, so still, with hands so lightly laid on the arms of
+his chair that the old man had need to watch closely to detect in his
+heavy slumber the slow measured rise and fall of his breast.
+
+He turned wearily away muttering a little, between an immeasurable
+relief and a now almost intolerable medley of vexations. What WAS
+this monstrous web of Craik's? What HAD the creature been nodding and
+ducketing about?--those whisperings, that tattling? And what in the end,
+when you were old and sour and out-strategied, what was the end to be
+of this urgent dream called Life? He sat quietly down and drew his hands
+over his face, pushed his lean knotted fingers up under his spectacles,
+then sat blinking--and softly slowly deciphered the solitary 'My dear
+Sheila' on Lawford's note-paper. 'H'm,' he muttered, and looked up again
+at the dark still eyelids that in the strange torpor of sleep might yet
+be dimly conveying to the dreaming brain behind them some hint of his
+presence. 'I wish to goodness, you wonderful old creature,' he muttered,
+wagging his head, 'I wish to goodness you'd wake up.'
+
+For some time he sat on, listening to the still soft downpour on the
+fading leaves. 'They don't come to me,' he said softly again; with a
+tiny smile on his old face. 'It's that old medieval Craik: with a
+face like a last year's rookery!' And again he sat, with head a little
+sidelong, listening now to the infinitesimal sounds of life without,
+now to the thoughts within, and ever and again he gazed steadfastly on
+Lawford.
+
+At last it seemed in the haunted quietness other thoughts came to him.
+A cloud, as it were of youth, drew over the wrinkled skin, composed the
+birdlike keenness; his head nodded. Once, like Lawford in the darkness
+at Widderstone, he glanced up sharply across the lamplight at
+his phantasmagorical shadowy companion, heard the steady surge of
+multitudinous rain-drops, like the roar of Time's winged chariot
+hurrying near; then he too, with spectacles awry, bobbed on in his
+chair, a weary old sentinel on the outskirts of his friend's denuded
+battlefield.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Return, by Walter de la Mare
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diff --git a/old/3075.zip b/old/3075.zip
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Return, by Walter de la Mare
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+Title: The Return
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+Author:  Walter de la Mare
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+Mr
+Mrs
+Dr
+
+
+
+
+THE RETURN
+
+Walter de la Mare
+
+
+"Look not for roses in Attalus his garden, or wholesome
+flowers in a venomous plantation. And since there is scarce
+any one bad, but some others are the worse for him; tempt
+not contagion by proximity and hazard not thyself in the
+shadow of corruption."
+
+      SIR THOMAS BROWNE.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+The churchyard in which Arthur Lawford found himself wandering
+that mild and golden September afternoon was old, green, and
+refreshingly still. The silence in which it lay seemed as keen
+and mellow as the light--the pale, almost heatless, sunlight that
+filled the air. Here and there robins sang across the stones,
+elvishly shrill in the quiet of harvest. The only other living
+creature there seemed to Lawford to be his own rather fair, not
+insubstantial, rather languid self, who at the noise of the birds
+had raised his head and glanced as if between content and
+incredulity across his still and solitary surroundings. An
+increasing inclination for such lonely ramblings, together with
+the feeling that his continued ill-health had grown a little
+irksome to his wife, and that now that he was really better she
+would be relieved at his absence, had induced him to wander on
+from home without much considering where the quiet lanes were
+leading him. And in spite of a peculiar melancholy that had
+welled up into his mind during these last few days, he had
+certainly smiled with a faint sense of the irony of things on
+lifting his eyes in an unusually depressed moodiness to find
+himself looking down on the shadows and peace of Widderstone.
+
+With that anxious irresolution which illness so often brings in
+its train he had hesitated for a few minutes before actually
+entering the graveyard. But once safely within he had begun to
+feel extremely loth to think of turning back again, and this not
+the less at remembering with a real foreboding that it was now
+drawing towards evening, that another day was nearly done. He
+trailed his umbrella behind him over the grass-grown paths;
+staying here and there to read some time-worn inscription;
+stooping a little broodingly over the dark green graves. Not for
+the first time during the long laborious convalescence that had
+followed apparently so slight an indisposition, a fleeting sense
+almost as if of an unintelligible remorse had overtaken him, a
+vague thought that behind all these past years, hidden as it were
+from his daily life, lay something not yet quite reckoned with.
+How often as a boy had he been rapped into a galvanic activity
+out of the deep reveries he used to fall into--those fits of a
+kind of fishlike day-dream. How often, and even far beyond
+boyhood, had he found himself bent on some distant thought or
+fleeting vision that the sudden clash of self-possession had made
+to seem quite illusory, and yet had left so strangely haunting.
+And now the old habit had stirred out of its long sleep, and,
+through the gate that Influenza in departing had left ajar, had
+returned upon him.
+
+'But I suppose we are all pretty much the same, if we only knew
+it,' he had consoled himself. 'We keep our crazy side to
+ourselves; that's all. We just go on for years and years doing
+and saying whatever happens to come up--and really keen about it
+too'--he had glanced up with a kind of challenge in his face at
+the squat little belfry--'and then, without the slightest reason
+or warning, down you go, and it all begins to wear thin, and you
+get wondering what on earth it all means.' Memory slipped back
+for an instant to the life that in so unusual a fashion seemed to
+have floated a little aloof. Fortunately he had not discussed
+these inward symptoms with his wife. How surprised Sheila would
+be to see him loafing in this old, crooked churchyard. How she
+would lift her dark eyebrows, with that handsome, indifferent
+tolerance. He smiled, but a little confusedly; yet the thought
+gave even a spice of adventure to the evening's ramble.
+
+He loitered on, scarcely thinking at all now, stooping here and
+there. These faint listless ideas made no more stir than the
+sunlight gilding the fading leaves, the crisp turf underfoot.
+With a slight effort he stooped even once again;--
+
+'Stranger, a moment pause, and stay;
+In this dim chamber hidden away
+Lies one who once found life as dear
+As now he finds his slumbers here:
+Pray, then, the Judgement but increase
+His deep, everlasting peace!'
+
+'But then, do you know you lie at peace?' Lawford audibly
+questioned, gazing at the doggerel. And yet, as his eyes wandered
+over the blunt green stone and the rambling crimson-berried brier
+that had almost encircled it with its thorns, the echo of that
+whisper rather jarred. He was, he supposed, rather a dull
+creature--at least people seemed to think so--and he seldom felt
+at ease even with his own small facetiousness. Besides, just that
+kind of question was getting very common. Now that cleverness was
+the fashion most people were clever--even perfect fools; and
+cleverness after all was often only a bore: all head and no body.
+He turned languidly to the small cross-shaped stone on the other
+side:
+
+     'Here lies the body of Ann Hard, who died in child-bed.
+                 Also of James, her infant son.'
+
+He muttered the words over with a kind of mournful bitterness.
+'That's just it--just it; that's just how it goes!'... He yawned
+softly; the pathway had come to an end. Beyond him lay ranker
+grass, one and another obscurer mounds, an old scarred oak seat,
+shadowed by a few everlastingly green cypresses and coral-fruited
+yew-trees. And above and beyond all hung a pale blue arch of sky
+with a few voyaging clouds like silvered wool, and the calm wide
+curves of stubble field and pasture land. He stood with vacant
+eyes, not in the least aware how queer a figure he made with his
+gloves and his umbrella and his hat among the stained and
+tottering gravestones. Then, just to linger out his hour, and
+half sunken in reverie, he walked slowly over to the few solitary
+graves beneath the cypresses.
+
+One only was commemorated with a tombstone, a rather unusual
+oval-headed stone, carved at each corner into what might be the
+heads of angels, or of pagan dryads, blindly facing each other
+with worn-out, sightless faces. A low curved granite canopy
+arched over the grave, with a crevice so wide between its stones
+that Lawford actually bent down and slid in his gloved fingers
+between them. He straightened himself with a sigh, and followed
+with extreme difficulty the well-nigh, illegible inscription:
+
+'Here lie ye Bones of one,
+Nicholas Sabathier, a Stranger to this Parish,
+who fell by his own Hand on ye
+Eve of Ste. Michael and All Angels.
+MDCCXXXIX
+
+Of the date he was a little uncertain. The 'Hand' had lost its
+'n' and 'd'; and all the 'Angels' rain had erased. He was not
+quite sure even of the 'Stranger.' There was a great rich 'S,'
+and the twisted tail of a 'g' ; and, whether or not, Lawford
+smilingly thought, he is no Stranger now. But how rare and how
+memorable a name! French evidently; probably Huguenot. And the
+Huguenots, he remembered vaguely, were a rather remarkable
+'crowd.' He had, he thought, even played at 'Huguenots' once.
+What was the man's name? Coligny; yes, of course, Coligny. 'And I
+suppose,' Lawford continued, muttering to himself, 'I suppose
+this poor beggar was put here out of the way. They might, you
+know,' he added confidentially, raising the ferrule of his
+umbrella, 'they might have stuck a stake through you, and buried
+you at the crossroads.' And again, a feeling of ennui, a faint
+disgust at his poor little witticism, clouded over his mind. It
+was a pity thoughts always ran the easiest way, like water in old
+ditches.
+
+'"Here lie ye bones of one, Nicholas Sabathier,"' he began
+murmuring again--'merely bones, mind you; brains and heart are
+quite another story. And it's pretty certain the fellow had some
+kind of brains. Besides, poor devil! he killed himself. That
+seems to hint at brains... Oh, for goodness' sake!' he cried
+out; so loud that the sound of his voice alarmed even a robin
+that had perched on a twig almost within touch, with glittering
+eye intent above its dim red breast on this other and even rarer
+stranger.
+
+'I wonder if it is XXXIX.; it might be LXXIX.' Lawford cast a
+cautious glance over his round grey shoulder, then laboriously
+knelt down beside the stone, and peeped into the gaping cranny.
+There he encountered merely the tiny, pale-green, faintly
+conspicuous eyes of a large spider, confronting his own. It was
+for the moment an alarming, and yet a faintly fascinating
+experience. The little almost colourless fires remained so
+changeless. But still, even when at last they had actually
+vanished into the recesses of that quiet habitation, Lawford did
+not rise from his knees. An utterly unreasonable feeling of
+dismay, a sudden weakness and weariness had come over him.
+
+'What is the good of it all?' he asked himself inconsequently--
+this monotonous, restless, stupid life to which he was soon to be
+returning, and for good. He began to realize how ludicrous a
+spectacle he must be, kneeling here amid the weeds and grass
+beneath the solemn cypresses. 'Well, you can't have everything,'
+seemed loosely to express his disquiet.
+
+He stared vacantly at the green and fretted gravestone, dimly
+aware that his heart was beating with an unusual effort. He felt
+ill and weak. He leant his hand on the stone and lifted himself
+on to the low wooden seat nearby. He drew off his glove and
+thrust his bare hand under his waistcoat, with his mouth a little
+ajar, and his eyes fixed on the dark square turret, its bell
+sharply defined against the evening sky.
+
+'Dead!' a bitter inward voice seemed to break into speech; 'Dead!'
+The viewless air seemed to be flocking with hidden listeners. The
+very clearness and the crystal silence were their ambush. He alone
+seemed to be the target of cold and hostile scrutiny. There was
+not a breath to breathe in this crisp, pale sunshine. It was all
+too rare, too thin. The shadows lay like wings everlastingly
+folded. The robin that had been his only living witness lifted
+its throat, and broke, as if from the uttermost outskirts of
+reality, into its shrill, passionless song. Lawford moved heavy
+eyes from one object to another--bird--sun-gilded stone--those
+two small earth-worn faces--his hands--a stirring in the grass
+as of some creature labouring to climb up. It was useless to sit
+here any longer. He must go back now. Fancies were all very well
+for a change, but must be only occasional guests in a world
+devoted to reality. He leaned his hand on the dark grey wood, and
+closed his eyes. The lids presently unsealed a little, momentarily
+revealing astonished, aggrieved pupils, and softly, slowly they
+again descended....
+
+The flaming rose that had swiftly surged from the west into the
+zenith, dyeing all the churchyard grass a wild and vivid green,
+and the stooping stones above it a pure faint purple, waned
+softly back like a falling fountain into its basin. In a few
+minutes, only a faint orange burned in the west, dimly
+illuminating with its band of light the huddled figure on his low
+wood seat, his right hand still pressed against a faintly beating
+heart. Dusk gathered; the first white stars appeared; out of the
+shadowy fields a nightjar purred. But there was only the silence
+of the falling dew among the graves. Down here, under the
+ink-black cypresses, the blades of the grass were stooping with
+cold drops; and darkness lay like the hem of an enormous cloak,
+whose jewels above the breast of its wearer might be in the
+unfathomable clearness the glittering constellations....
+
+In his small cage of darkness Lawford shuddered and raised a
+furtive head. He stood up and peered eagerly and strangely from
+side to side. He stayed quite still, listening as raptly as some
+wandering night-beast to the indiscriminate stir and echoings of
+the darkness. He cocked his head above his shoulder and listened
+again, then turned upon the soundless grass towards the hill. He
+felt not the faintest astonishment or strangeness in his solitude
+here; only a little chilled, and physically uneasy; and yet in
+this vast darkness a faint spiritual exaltation seemed to hover.
+
+He hastened up the narrow path, walking with knees a little bent,
+like an old labourer who has lived a life of stooping, and came
+out into the dry and dusty lane. One moment his instinct
+hesitated as to which turn to take--only a moment; he was soon
+walking swiftly, almost trotting, downhill with this vivid
+exaltation in the huge dark night in his heart, and Sheila merely
+a little angry Titianesque cloud on a scarcely perceptible
+horizon. He had no notion of the time; the golden hands of his
+watch were indiscernible in the gloom. But presently, as he
+passed by, he pressed his face close to the cold glass of a
+little shop-window, and pierced that out by an old Swiss
+cuckoo-clock. He would if he hurried just be home before dinner.
+
+He broke into a slow, steady trot, gaining speed as he ran on,
+vaguely elated to find how well his breath was serving him. An
+odd smile darkened his face at remembrance of the thoughts he had
+been thinking. There could be little amiss with the heart of a
+man who could shamble along like this, taking even pleasure, an
+increasing pleasure in this long, wolf-like stride. He turned
+round occasionally to look into the face of some fellow-wayfarer
+whom he had overtaken, for he felt not only this unusual
+animation, this peculiar zest, but that, like a boy on some
+secret errand, he had slightly disguised his very presence, was
+going masked, as it were. Even his clothes seemed to have
+connived at this queer illusion. No tailor had for these ten
+years allowed him so much latitude. He cautiously at last opened
+his garden gate and with soundless agility mounted the six stone
+steps, his latch-key ready in his gloveless hand, and softly let
+himself into the house.
+
+Sheila was out, it seemed, for the maid had forgotten to light
+the lamp. Without pausing to take off his greatcoat, he hung up
+his hat, ran nimbly upstairs, and knocked with a light knuckle on
+his bedroom door. It was closed, but no answer came. He opened
+it, shut it, locked it, and sat down on the bedside for a moment,
+in the darkness, so that he could scarcely hear any other sound,
+as he sat erect and still, like some night animal, wary of
+danger, attentively alert. Then he rose from the bed, threw off
+his coat, which was clammy with dew, and lit a candle on the
+dressing-table.
+
+Its narrow flame lengthened, drooped, brightened, gleamed clearly.
+He glanced around him, unusually contented--at the ruddiness of
+the low fire, the brass bedstead, the warm red curtains, the soft
+silveriness here and there. It seemed as if a heavy and dull
+dream had withdrawn out of his mind. He would go again some day,
+and sit on the little hard seat beside the crooked tombstone of
+the friendless old Huguenot. He opened a drawer, took out his
+razors, and, faintly whistling, returned to the table and lit a
+second candle. And still with this strange heightened sense of
+life stirring in his mind, he drew his hand gently over his chin
+and looked unto the glass.
+
+For an instant he stood head to foot icily still, without the
+least feeling, or thought, or stir--staring into the
+looking-glass. Then an inconceivable drumming beat on his ear. A
+warm surge, like the onset of a wave, broke in him, flooding
+neck, face, forehead, even his hands with colour. He caught
+himself up and wheeled deliberately and completely round, his eyes
+darting to and fro, suddenly to fix themselves in a prolonged stare,
+while he took a deep breath, caught back his self-possession and
+paused. Then he turned and once more confronted the changed
+strange face in the glass.
+
+Without a sound he drew up a chair and sat down, just as he was,
+frigid and appalled, at the foot of the bed. To sit like this,
+with a kind of incredibly swift torrent of consciousness, bearing
+echoes and images like straws and bubbles on its surface, could
+not be called thinking. Some stealthy hand had thrust open the
+sluice of memory. And words, voices, faces of mockery streamed
+through without connection, tendency, or sense. His hands hung
+between his knees, a deep and settled frown darkened the features
+stooping out of the direct rays of the light, and his eyes
+wandered like busy and inquisitive, but stupid, animals over the
+floor.
+
+If, in that flood of unintelligible thoughts, anything clearly
+recurred at all, it was the memory of Sheila. He saw her face,
+lit, transfigured, distorted, stricken, appealing, horrified. His
+lids narrowed; a vague terror and horror mastered him. He hid his
+eyes in his hands and cried without sound, without tears, without
+hope, like a desolate child. He ceased crying; and sat without
+stirring. And it seemed after an age of vacancy and
+meaninglessness he heard a door shut downstairs, a distant voice,
+and then the rustle of some one slowly ascending the stairs. Some
+one turned the handle; in vain; tapped. 'Is that you, Arthur?'
+
+For an instant Lawford paused, then like a child listening for an
+echo, answered, 'Yes, Sheila.' And a sigh broke from him; his
+voice, except for a little huskiness, was singularly unchanged.
+
+'May I come in?' Lawford stood softly up and glanced once more
+into the glass. His lips set tight, and a slight frown settled
+between the long, narrow, intensely dark eyes.
+
+'Just one moment, Sheila,' he answered slowly, 'just one moment.'
+
+'How long will you be?'
+
+He stood erect and raised his voice, gazing the while impassively
+into the glass.
+
+'It's no use,' he began, as if repeating a lesson, 'it's no use
+your asking me, Sheila. Please give me a moment, a...I am not
+quite myself, dear,' he added quite gravely.
+
+The faintest hint of vexation was in the answer.
+
+'What is the matter? Can't I help? It's so very absurd--'
+
+'What is absurd?' he asked dully.
+
+'Why, standing like this outside my own bedroom door. Are you
+ill? I will send for Dr. Simon.'
+
+'Please, Sheila, do nothing of the kind. I am not ill. I merely
+want a little time to think in.' There was again a brief pause,
+and then a slight rattling at the handle.
+
+'Arthur, I insist on knowing at once what's wrong; this does not
+sound a bit like yourself. It is not even quite like your own
+voice.'
+
+'It is myself,' he replied stubbornly, staring fixedly into the
+glass. You must give me a few moments, Sheila. Something has
+happened. My face. Come back in an hour.'
+
+'Don't be absurd; it's simply wicked to talk like that. How do I
+know what you are doing? As if I can leave you for an hour in
+uncertainty! Your face! If you don't open at once I shall believe
+there's something seriously wrong: I shall send Ada for
+assistance.'
+
+'If you do that, Sheila, it will be disastrous. I cannot answer
+for the con--. Go quietly downstairs. Say I am unwell; don't wait
+dinner for me; come back in an hour; oh, half an hour!'
+
+The answer broke out angrily. 'You must be mad, beside yourself,
+to ask such a thing. I shall wait in the next room until you
+call.'
+
+'Wait where you please,' Lawford replied, 'but tell them
+downstairs.'
+
+'Then if I tell them to wait until half-past eight, you will come
+down? You say you are not ill: the dinner will be ruined. It's
+absurd.'
+
+Lawford made no answer. He listened a while, then he deliberately
+sat down once more to try to think. Like a squirrel in a cage his
+mind seemed to be aimlessly, unceasingly astir. 'What is it
+really? What is it really?--really?' He sat there and it seemed
+to him his body was transparent as glass. It seemed he had no
+body at all--only the memory of an hallucinatory reflection in
+the glass, and this inward voice crying, arguing, questioning,
+threatening out of the silence--'What is it really--really--
+REALLY?' And at last, cold, wearied out, he rose once more and
+leaned between the two long candle-flames, and stared on--on--on,
+into the glass.
+
+He gave that long, dark face that had been foisted on him tricks
+to do--lift an eyebrow, frown. There was scarcely any perceptible
+pause between the wish and its performance. He found to his
+discomfiture that the face answered instantaneously to the
+slightest emotion, even to his fainter secondary thoughts; as if
+these unfamiliar features were not entirely within control. He
+could not, in fact, without the glass before him, tell precisely
+what that face WAS expressing. He was still, it seemed, keenly
+sane. That he would discover for certain when Sheila returned.
+Terror, rage, horror had fallen back. If only he felt ill, or was
+in pain: he would have rejoiced at it. He was simply caught in
+some unheard-of snare--caught, how? when? where? by whom?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+But the coolness and deliberation of his scrutiny, had to a
+certain extent calmed Lawford's mind  and given him confidence.
+Hitherto he had met the little difficulties of life only to
+vanquish them with ease and applause. Now he was standing face to
+face with the unknown. He burst out laughing, into a long, low,
+helpless laughter. Then he arose and began to walk softly,
+swiftly, to and fro across the room--from wall to wall seven
+paces, and at the fourth, that awful, unseen, brightly-lit
+profile passed as swiftly over the tranquil surface of the
+looking-glass. The power of concentration was gone again. He
+simply paced on mechanically, listening to a Babel of questions,
+a conflicting medley of answers. But above all the confusion and
+turmoil of his brain, as a boatswain's whistle rises above a
+storm, so sounded that same infinitesimal voice, incessantly
+repeating another question now, 'What are you going to do? What
+are you going to do?'
+
+And in the midst of this confusion, out of the infinite, as it
+were, came another sharp tap at the door, and all within sank to
+utter stillness again.
+
+'It's nearly half-past eight, Arthur; I can't wait any longer.'
+
+Lawford cast a last fleeting look into the glass, turned, and
+confronted the closed door. 'Very well, Sheila, you shall not
+wait any longer.' He crossed over to the door, and suddenly a
+swift crafty idea flashed into his mind.
+
+He tapped on the panel. 'Sheila,' he said softly, 'I want you
+first, before you come in, to get me something out of my old
+writing-desk in the smoking-room. Here is the key.' He pushed a
+tiny key--from off the ring he carried--beneath the door. 'In the
+third little drawer from the top, on the left side, is a letter;
+please don't say anything now. It is the letter you wrote me, you
+will remember, after I had asked you to marry me. You scribbled
+in the corner under your signature the initials "Y.S.O.A."--do
+you remember? They meant, You Silly Old Arthur!--do you remember?
+Will you please get that letter at once?'
+
+'Arthur,' answered the voice from without, empty of all
+expression, 'what does all this mean, this mystery, this hopeless
+nonsense about a silly letter? What has happened? Is this a
+miserable form of persecution? Are you mad?--I refuse to get the
+letter.'
+
+Lawford stooped, black and angular, against the door. 'I am not
+mad. Oh, I am in the deadliest earnest, Sheila. You must get the
+letter, if only for your own peace of mind.' He heard his wife
+hesitate as she turned. He heard a sob. And once more he waited.
+
+'I have brought the letter,' came the low toneless voice again.
+
+'Have you opened it?'
+
+There was a rustle of paper. 'Are the letters there underlined
+three times--"Y.S.O.A."?'
+
+'The letters are there.'
+
+'And the date of the month is underneath, "April 3rd." No one
+else in the whole world, living or dead, could know of this but
+ourselves, Sheila?'
+
+'Will you please open the door?'
+
+'No one?'
+
+'I suppose not--no one.'
+
+'Then come in.' He unlocked the door and opened it. A dark,
+rather handsome woman, with sleek hair, in a silk dress of a dark
+rich colour entered. Lawford closed the door. But his face was in
+shadow. He had still a moment's respite.
+
+'I need not ask you to be patient,' he began quickly; 'if I could
+possibly have spared you--if there had been anybody in the world
+to go to... I am in horrible, horrible trouble, Sheila. It is
+inconceivable. I said I was sane: so I am, but the fact is--I
+went out for a walk; it was rather stupid, perhaps, so soon: and
+I think I was taken ill, or something--my heart. A kind of fit, a
+nervous fit. Possibly I am a little unstrung, and it's all, it's
+mainly fancy: but I think, I can't help thinking it has a little
+distorted--changed my face; everything, Sheila; except, of
+course, myself. Would you mind looking?' He walked slowly and
+with face averted towards the dressing-table.
+
+'Simply a nervous--to make such a fuss, to scare!...' began his
+wife, following him.
+
+Without a word he took up the two old china candlesticks, and
+held them, one in each lank-fingered hand, before his face, and
+turned.
+
+Lawford could see his wife--every tint and curve and line as
+distinctly as she could see him. Her cheeks never had much
+colour; now her whole face visibly darkened, from pallor to a
+dusky leaden grey, as she gazed. It was not an illusion then; not
+a miserable hallucination. The unbelievable, the inconceivable,
+had happened. He replaced the candles with trembling fingers and
+sat down.
+
+'Well,' he said, 'what is it really; what is it really, Sheila?
+What on earth are we to do?'
+
+'Is the door locked?' she whispered. He nodded. With eyes fixed
+stirlessly on his face, Sheila unsteadily seated herself, a
+little out of the candlelight, in the shadow. Lawford rose and
+put the key of the door on his wife's little rose-wood
+prayer-desk at her elbow, and deliberately sat down again.
+
+'You said "a fit"--where?'
+
+'I suppose--is--is it very different--hopeless? You will
+understand my being... O Sheila, what am I to do?' His wife sat
+perfectly still, watching him with unflinching attention.
+
+'You gave me to understand--"a nervous fit"; where?'
+
+Lawford took a deep breath, and quietly faced her again. 'In the
+old churchyard, Widderstone; I was looking at--at the
+gravestones.'
+
+'A fit; in the old churchyard, Widderstone--you were "looking at
+the gravestones"?'
+
+Lawford shut his mouth. 'I suppose so--a fit,' he said presently.
+'My heart went a little queer, and I sat down and fell into a
+kind of doze--a stupor, I suppose. I don't remember anything
+more. And then I woke; like this.'
+
+'How do you know?'
+
+'How do I know what?'
+
+'"Like that"?'
+
+He turned slowly towards the looking-glass. 'Why, here I am!'
+
+She gazed at him steadily; and a hard, incredulous, almost
+cunning glint came into her wide blue eyes. She took up the key
+carelessly, glanced at it; glanced at him. 'It has made me--I
+mean the first shock, you know--it has made me a little faint.'
+She walked slowly, deliberately to the door, and unlocked it.
+'I'll get a little sal volatile.' She softly drew out the key,
+and without once removing her eyes from his face, opened the door
+and pushed the key noiselessly in on the other side. 'Please stay
+there; I won't be a minute.'
+
+Lawford's face smiled--a rather desperate, yet for all that a
+patient, resolute smile. 'Oh yes, of course,' he said, almost to
+himself, 'I had not foreseen--at least--you must do precisely
+what you please, Sheila. You were going to lock me in. You will,
+however, before taking any final step, please think over what it
+will entail. I did not think you would, after such proof, in this
+awful trouble--I did not think you would simply disbelieve me,
+Sheila. Who else is there to help me? You have the letter in your
+hand. Isn't that sufficient proof? It was overwhelming proof to
+me. And even I doubted too; doubted myself. But never mind; why I
+should have dreamed you would believe me; or taken this awful
+thing differently, I don't know. It's rather awful to have to go
+on alone. But there, think it over. I shall not stir until I hear
+the voices. And then: honestly, Sheila, I couldn't face quite
+that. I'd sooner give up altogether. Any proof you can think of--
+I will... O God, I cannot bear it!' He covered his face with his
+hands; but in a moment looked up, unmoved once more. 'Why, for
+that matter,' he added slowly, and, as it were, with infinite
+pains, a faint thin smile again stealing into his face, 'I
+think,' he turned wearily to the glass, 'I think, it's almost an
+improvement!'
+
+Something deep in those dark clear pupils, out of that lean
+adventurous face, gleamed back at him, the distant flash of a
+heliograph, as it were, height to height, flashing 'Courage!' He
+shuddered, and shut his eyes. 'But I would really rather,' he
+aided in a quiet childlike way, 'I would really rather, Sheila,
+you left me alone now.'
+
+His wife stood irresolute. 'I understand you to explain,' she
+said, 'that you went out of this house, just your usual self,
+this afternoon, for a walk; that for some reason you went to
+Widderstone--"to read the tombstones," that you had a heart
+attack, or, as you said at first, a fit, that you fell into a
+stupor, and came home like--like this. Am I likely to believe all
+that? Am I likely to believe such a story as that? Whoever you
+are, whoever you may be, is it likely? I am not in the least
+afraid. I thought at first it was some silly practical joke. I
+thought that at first.' She paused, but no answer came. 'Well, I
+suppose in a civilised country there is a remedy even for a joke
+as wicked as that.'
+
+Lawford listened patiently. 'She is pretending; she is trying me;
+she is feeling her way,' he kept repeating to himself. 'She knows
+I AM I, but hasn't the courage... Let her talk!'
+
+'I shall leave the door open,' Sheila continued. 'I am not, as
+you no doubt very naturally assumed--I am not going to do
+anything either senseless or heedless. I am merely going to ask
+your brother Cecil to come in, if he is at home, and if not, no
+doubt our old friend Mr. Montgomery would--would help us.' Her
+scrutiny was still and concentrated, like that of a cat above a
+mouse's hole.
+
+Lawford sat crouched together in the candle-light. 'By all means,
+Sheila,' he said slowly choosing his words, 'if you think poor
+old Cecil, who next January will have been three years in his
+grave, will be of any use in our difficulty. Who Mr. Montgomery
+is...' His voice dropped in utter weariness. 'You did it very
+well, my dear,' he added softly.
+
+Sheila gently closed the door and sat down on the bed. He heard
+her softly crying, he heard the bed shaken with her sobs. But a
+slow glance towards the steady candle-flames restrained him. He
+let her cry on alone. When she had become a little more composed
+he stood up. 'You have had no dinner,' he managed to blurt out at
+last, 'you will be faint. It's useless to talk, even to think,
+any more to-night. Leave me to myself for a while. Don't look at
+me any more. Perhaps I can sleep: perhaps if I sleep it will come
+right again. When the servants are gone up, I will come down.
+Just let me have some--some medical book, or other; and some more
+candles. Don't think, Sheila; don't even think!'
+
+Sheila paid him no attention for a while. 'You tell me not to
+think,' she began, in a low, almost listless voice; 'why--I
+wonder I am in my right mind. And "eat"! How can you have the
+heartlessness to suggest it? You don't seem in the least to
+realize what you say. You seem to have lost all--all
+consciousness. I quite agree, it is useless for me to burden you
+with my company while you are in your present condition of mind.
+But you will at least promise me that you won't take any further
+steps in this awful business.' She could not, try as she would,
+bring herself again to look at him. She rose softly, paused a
+moment with sidelong eyes, then turned deliberately towards the
+door, 'What, what have I done to deserve all this?'
+
+>From behind her that voice, so extraordinarily like--and yet in
+some vague fashion more arresting, more resonant than her
+husband's, broke incredibly out once more. 'You will please leave
+the key, Sheila. I am ill, but I am not yet in the padded room.
+And please understand, I take no further steps in "this awful
+business" until I hear a strange voice in the house.' Sheila
+paused, but the quiet voice rang in her ear, desperately yet
+convincingly. She took the key out of the lock, placed it on the
+bed, and with a sigh, that was not quite without a hint of relief
+in its misery, she furtively extinguished the gas-light on the
+landing and rustled downstairs.
+
+She speedily returned. 'I have brought the book.' she said
+hastily. 'I could only find the one volume. I have said you have
+taken a fresh chill. No one will disturb you.'
+
+Lawford took the book without a word. And once more, with eyes
+stonily averted, his wife left him to his own company and that of
+the face in the glass.
+
+When completely deserted, Lawford with fumbling fingers opened
+Quain's 'Dictionary of Medicine.' He had never had much
+curiosity, and had always hated what he disbelieved, but none the
+less he had heard occasionally of absurd and questionable
+experiments. He remembered even to have glanced over reports of
+cases in the newspapers concerning disappearances, loss of
+memory, dual personality. Cranks... Oh yes, he thought now, with
+a sense of cold humiliating relief, there had been such cases as
+his before. They were no doubt curable. They must be
+comparatively common in America--that land of jangled nerves.
+Possibly bromide, rest, a battery. But Quain, it seemed, shared
+his prejudices, at least in this edition, or had hidden away all
+such apocryphal matter beneath technical terms, where no sensible
+man could find it, 'Besides,' he muttered angrily, 'what's the
+good of your one volume?' He flung it down and strode to the bed,
+and rang the bell. Then suddenly recollecting himself, he paused
+and listened. There came a tap on the door. 'Is that you,
+Sheila?' he called, doubtfully.
+
+'No, sir, it's me,' came the answer.
+
+'Oh, don't trouble; I only wanted to speak to your mistress. It's
+all right.'
+
+'Mrs. Lawford has gone out, sir,' replied the voice.
+
+'Gone out?'
+
+'Yes, sir; she told me not to mention it; but I suppose as you
+asked--'
+
+'Oh, that's all right; never mind; I didn't ring.' He stood with
+face uplifted, thinking.
+
+'Can I do anything, sir?' came the faint, nervous question after
+a long pause.
+
+'One moment, Ada,' he called in a loud voice. He took out his
+pocket-book, sat down, and scribbled a little note. He hardly
+noticed how changed his handwriting was--the clear round letters
+crabbed and irregular.
+
+'Are you there, Ada?' he called. 'I am slipping a note beneath
+the door; just draw back the mat; that's it. Take it at once,
+please, to Mr. Critchett's, and be sure to wait for an answer.
+Then come back direct to me, up here. I don't think, Ada, your
+mistress believes much in Critchett; but I have fully explained
+what I want. He has made me up many prescriptions. Explain that
+to his assistant if he is not there. Go at once, and you will be
+back before she is. I should be so very much obliged, tell him.
+"Mr Arthur Lawford."'
+
+The minutes slowly drifted by. He sat quite still in the clear
+untroubled light, waiting in the silence of the empty house. And
+for the first time he was confronted with the cold incredible
+horror of his ordeal. Who would believe, who could believe, that
+behind this strange and awful, yet how simple mask, lay himself?
+What test; what heaped-up evidence of identity would break it
+down? It was all a loathsome ignominy. It was utterly absurd. It
+was--
+
+Suddenly, with a kind of ape-like cunning, he deliberately raised
+a long lean forefinger and pointed it at the shadowy crystal of
+the looking-glass. Perhaps he was dead, was really and indeed
+changed in body, was fated really and indeed to change in soul,
+into That. 'It's that beastly voice again,' Lawford cried out
+loud, looking vacantly at his upstretched finger. And then, hand
+and arm, not too willingly, as it were, obeyed; relaxed and fell
+to his side. 'You must keep a tight hold, old man,' he muttered
+to himself. 'Once, once you lose yourself--the least symptom of
+that--the least symptom, and it's all up!' And the fools, the
+heartless, preposterous fools had brought him one volume!
+
+When on earth was Ada coming back? She was lagging on purpose.
+She was in the conspiracy too. Oh, it should be a lesson to
+Sheila! Oh, if only daylight would come! 'What are you going to
+do--to do--to DO?' He rose once more and paced his silent cage.
+To and fro, thinking no more; just using his eyes, compelling
+them to wander from picture to picture, bedpost to bedpost; now
+counting aloud his footsteps; now humming; only, only to keep
+himself from thinking. At last he took out a drawer and actually
+began arranging its medley of contents; ties, letters, studs,
+concert and theatre programmes--all higgledy-piggledy. And in the
+midst of this childish strategem he heard a faint sound, as of
+heavy water trickling from a height. He turned. A thief was in
+one of the candles. It was guttering out. He would be left in
+darkness. He turned hastily without a moment's heed, to call for
+light, flung the door open and full in the flare of a lamp,
+illuminating her pale forehead and astonished face beneath her
+black straw hat, stood face to face with Ada.
+
+With one swift dexterous movement he drew the door to after him,
+looking straight into her almost colourless steady eyes. 'Ah,' he
+said instantly, in a high faint voice, 'the powder, thank you;
+yes, Mr Lawford's powder; thank you, thank you. He must be kept
+absolutely quiet--absolutely. Mrs Lawford is following. Please
+tell her that I am here, when she returns. Mr Critchett was in,
+then? Thank you. Extreme, extreme silence, please.' Again that
+knotted, melodramatic finger raised itself on high; and within
+that lean, cadaverous body the soul of its lodger quailed at this
+spectral boldness. But it was triumphant. The maid at once left
+him and went downstairs. He heard faint voices in muffled
+consultation. And in a moment Sheila's silks rustled once more on
+the staircase. Lawford put down the lamp, and watched her
+deliberately close the door.
+
+'What does this mean?' she began swiftly, 'I understand that--Ada
+tells me a stranger is here; giving orders, directions. Who is
+he? where is he? You bound yourself on your solemn promise not to
+stir till I returned. You... How can I, how can we get decently
+through this horrible business if you are so wretchedly
+indiscreet? You sent Ada to the chemist's. What for? What for? I
+say.'
+
+Lawford watched his wife with an almost extraneous interest. She
+was certainly extremely interesting from that point of view, that
+very novel point of view. 'It's quite useless,' he said, 'to get
+in the least nervous or hysterical. I don't care for the darkness
+just now. That was all. Tell the girl I am a strange doctor--Dr
+Simon's new partner. You are clever at conventionalities, Sheila.
+Invent! I said our patient must be kept quiet--I really think he
+must. That is all, so far as Ada is concerned.... What on earth
+else ARE we to say?' he broke out. 'That, for the present to
+EVERYBODY, is our only possible story. It will give us what we
+must have--time. And next--where is the second volume of Quain? I
+want that. And next--why have you broken faith with me?' Mrs
+Lawford sat down. This sudden and baffling outburst had stupefied
+her.
+
+'I can't, I can't make head or tail of what you say. And as for
+having broken faith, as you call it, would any wife, would any
+sane woman face what you have brought on us, a situation like
+this, without seeking advice and help? Mr Bethany will he
+perfectly discreet--if he thinks discretion desirable. He is the
+only available friend we have close enough to ask at once. And
+things of this kind are, I suppose, if anybody's concern, his.
+It's certain to leak out. Everybody will hear of it. Don't
+flatter yourself you are going to hush up a thing like this for
+long. You can't keep living skeletons in a cupboard. You think
+only of yourself, only of your own misfortune. But who's to know,
+pray, that you really are my husband--if you are? The sooner I
+get the vicar on my side the better for us both. Who in the whole
+of the parish--I ask you--and you must have the sense left to see
+that--who will believe that a respectable man, a gentleman, a
+Churchman, would deliberately go out to seek an afternoon's
+amusement in a poky little country churchyard? Why, apart from
+everything else, THAT was absolutely mad to start with. Can you
+really wonder at the result?'
+
+Probably because she still steadfastly refused to look at him,
+her memory kept losing its hold on the appalling fact facing
+them. She realised fully only that she was in a great,
+unwarrantable, and insurmountable difficulty, but until she
+actually lifted her eyes for a moment she had not fully realised
+what that difficulty was. She got up with a sudden and horrible
+nausea. 'One moment,' she said, 'I will see if the servants have
+gone to bed.'
+
+That long saturnine face, behind which Lawford lay in a dull and
+desperate ambush, smiled. Something partaking of its clay, some
+reflex ghost of its rather remarkable features, was even a little
+amused at Sheila.
+
+She returned in a moment, and stood in profile in the doorway.
+'Will you come down?' she remarked distantly.
+
+'One moment, Sheila,' Lawford began miserably. 'Before we take
+this irrevocable step, a step I implore you to postpone awhile--
+for what comes, I suppose, may go--what precisely have you told
+the vicar? I must in fairness know that.'
+
+'In fairness,' she began ironically, and suddenly broke off. Her
+husband had turned the flame of the lamp low down in the vacant
+room behind them; the corridor was lit obscurely by the
+chandelier far down in the hall below. A faint, inexplicable
+dread fell softly and coldly on her heart. 'Have you no trust in
+me?' she murmured a little bitterly. 'I have simply told him the
+truth.'
+
+They softly descended the stairs; she first, the dark figure
+following close behind her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+Mr Bethany sat awaiting them in the dining-room, a large,
+heavily-furnished room with a great benign looking-glass on the
+mantelpiece, a marble clock, and with rich old damask curtains.
+Fleecy silver hair was all that was visible of their visitor when
+they entered. But Mr Bethany rose out of his chair when he heard
+them, and with a little jerk, turned sharply round. Thus it was
+that the gold-spectacled vicar and Lawford first confronted each
+other, the one brightly illuminated, the other framed in the
+gloom of the doorway. Mr Bethany's first scrutiny was timid and
+courteous, but beneath it he tried to be keen, and himself
+hastened round the table almost at a trot, to obtain, as
+delicately as possible, a closer view. But Lawford, having shut
+the door behind him, had gone straight to the fire and seated
+himself, leaning his face in his hands. Mr Bethany smiled
+faintly, waved his hand almost as if in blessing, but certainly
+in peace, and tapped Mrs Lawford into the chair upon the other
+side. But he himself remained standing.
+
+'Mrs Lawford has, I declare, been telling family secrets,' he
+began, and paused, peering. But there, you will forgive an old
+friend's intrusion--this little confidence about a change, my
+dear fellow--about a ramble and a change?' He sat down, put up
+his kind little puckered face and peered again at Lawford, and
+then very hastily at his wife. But all her attention was centred
+on the bowed figure opposite to her. Lawford responded to this
+cautious advance without raising his head.
+
+'You do not wish me to repeat all that my wife tells me she has
+told you?'
+
+'Dear me, no,' said Mr Bethany cheerfully, 'I wish nothing,
+nothing, old friend. You must not burden yourself with me. If I
+may be of any help, here I am.... Oh, no, no....' he paused, with
+blinking eyes, but wits still shrewd and alert. Why doesn't the
+man raise his head? he thought. A mere domestic dispute!
+
+'I thought,' he went on ruminatingly, 'I thought on Tuesday, yes,
+on Tuesday, that you weren't looking quite the thing. Indeed, I
+remarked on it. But now, I understand from Mrs Lawford that the
+malady has taken a graver turn--eh, Lawford, an heretical turn? I
+hear you have been wandering from the true fold.' Mr Bethany
+leaned forward with what might be described as a very large smile
+in a very small compass. 'And that, of course, entailed instant
+retribution.' He broke off solemnly. 'I know Widderstone
+churchyard well; a most verdant and beautiful spot. The late
+rector, a Mr Strickland, was a very old friend of mine. And his
+wife, dear good Alicia, used to set out her babies, in the
+morning, to sleep and to play there, twenty, dear me, perhaps
+twenty-five years ago. But I did not know, my dear Lawford, that
+you--' and suddenly, without an instant's warning, something
+seemed to shout at him, 'Look, look! He is looking at you!' He
+stopped, faltered, and a slight warmth came into his face. 'And
+and you were taken ill there?' His voice had fallen flat and
+faint.
+
+'I fell asleep--or something of that sort,' came the stubborn
+reply.
+
+'Yes,' said Mr Bethany, brightly, 'so your wife was saying. "Fell
+asleep," so have I too--scores of times'; he beamed, with beads
+of sweat glistening on his forehead. 'And then? I'm not, I'm not
+persisting?'
+
+'Then I woke; refreshed, I think, as it seemed--I felt much
+better and came home.'
+
+'Ah, yes,' said his visitor. And after that there was a long,
+brightly lit, intense pause; at the end of which Lawford raised
+his face and again looked firmly at his friend.
+
+Mr Bethany was now a shrunken old man; he sat perfectly still,
+his head craned a little forward, and his veined hands clutching
+his bent, spare knees.
+
+There wasn't the least sign of devilry, or out-facingness, or
+insolence in that lean shadowy steady head; and yet he himself
+was compelled to sidle his glance away, so much the face shook
+him. He closed his eyes, too, as a cat does after exchanging too
+direct a scrutiny with human eyes. He put out towards, and
+withdrew, a groping hand from Mrs Lawford.
+
+'Is it,' came a voice from somewhere, 'is it a great change, sir?
+I thought perhaps I may have exaggerated--candle-light, you
+know.'
+
+Mr Bethany remained still and silent, striving to entertain one
+thought at a time. His lips moved as if he were talking to
+himself. And again it was Lawford's faltering voice that broke
+the silence. 'You see,' he said, 'I have never... no fit, or
+anything of that kind before. I remember on Tuesday... oh yes,
+quite well. I did feel seedy, very. And we talked, didn't we?--
+Harvest Festival, Mrs Wine's flowers, the new offertory-bags, and
+all that. For God's sake, Vicar, it is not as bad as--as they
+make out?'
+
+Mr Bethany woke with a start. He leaned forward, and stretched
+out a long black wrinkled sleeve, just managing to reach far
+enough to tap Lawford's knee. 'Don't worry, don't worry,' he said
+soothingly. 'We believe, we believe.'
+
+It was, none the less, a sheer act of faith. He took off his
+spectacles and took out his handkerchief. 'What we must do, eh,
+my dear,' he half turned to Mrs Lawford, 'what we must do is to
+consult, yes, consult together. And later--we must have advice--
+medical advice; unless, as I very much suspect, it is merely a
+little quite temporary physical aberration. Science, I am told,
+is making great strides, experimenting, groping after things
+which no sane man has ever dreamed of before--without being
+burned alive for it. What's in a name? Nerves, especially,
+Lawford.'
+
+Mrs Lawford sat perfectly still, absorbedly listening, turning
+her face first this way, then that, to each speaker in turn.
+'That is what I thought,' she said, and cast one fleeting glance
+across at the fireplace, 'but--'
+
+The little old gentleman turned sharply with half-blind eyes, and
+lips tight shut. 'I think,' he said, with a hind of austere
+humour, 'I think, do you know, I see no "but."' He paused as if
+to catch the echo and added, 'It's our only course.' He continued
+to polish round and round his glasses. Mrs Lawford rather
+magnificently rose.
+
+'Perhaps if I were to leave you together awhile? I shall not be
+far off. It is,' she explained, as if into a huge vacuum, 'it is
+a terrible visitation.' She moved gravely round the table and
+very softly and firmly closed the door after her.
+
+Lawford took a deep breath. 'Of course.' he said, 'you realise my
+wife does not believe me. She thinks,' he explained naively, as
+if to himself, 'she thinks I am an imposter. Goodness knows what
+she does think. I can't think much myself--for long!'
+
+The vicar rubbed busily on. 'I have found, Lawford,' he said
+smoothly, 'that in all real difficulties the only feasible plan
+is--is to face the main issue. The others right themselves. Now,
+to take a plunge into your generosity. You have let me in far
+enough to make it impossible for me to get out--may I hear then
+exactly the whole story? All that I know now, so far as I could
+gather from your wife, poor soul, is of course inconceivable:
+that you went out one man and came home another. You will
+understand, my dear man, I am speaking, as it were, by rote. God
+has mercifully ordered that the human brain works slowly; first
+the blow, hours afterwards the bruise. Oh, dear me, that man
+Hume--"on miracles"--positively amazing! So that too, please, you
+will be quite clear about. Credo--not quia impossible est, but
+because you, Lawford, have told me. Now then, if it won't be too
+wearisome to you, the whole story.' He sat, lean and erect in his
+big chair, a hand resting loosely on each knee, in one spectacles,
+in the other a dangling pocket handkerchief. And the dark, sallow,
+aquiline, formidable figure, with its oddly changing voice,
+re-told the whole story from the beginning.
+
+'You were aware then of nothing different, I understand, until
+you actually looked into the glass?'
+
+'Only vaguely. I mean that after waking I felt much better, more
+alert. And my thoughts--'
+
+'Ah, yes, your thoughts?'
+
+'I hardly know--oh, clear as if I had had a real long rest. It
+was just like being a boy again. Influenza dispirits one so.'
+
+Mr Bethany gazed without stirring. 'And yet, you know,' he said,
+'I can hardly believe, I mean conceive, how-- You have been taking
+no drugs, no quackery, Lawford?'
+
+'I never dose myself,' said Lawford, with sombre pride.
+
+'God bless me, that's Lawford to the echo,' thought his visitor.
+'And before--?' he went on gently; 'I really cannot conceive, you
+see, how a mere fit could... Before you sat down you were quite
+alone?' He stuck out his head. 'There was nobody with you?'
+
+'With me? Oh no,' came the soft answer.
+
+'What had you been thinking of? In these days of faith-cures, and
+hypnotism, and telepathy, and subliminalities--why, the simple
+old world grows very confusing. But rarely, very rarely novel.
+You were thinking, you say; do you remember, perhaps, just the
+drift?'
+
+'Well,' began Lawford ruminatingly, 'there was something curious
+even then, perhaps. I remember, for instance, I knelt down to
+read an old tombstone. There was a little seat--no back. And an
+epitaph. The sun was just setting; some French name. And there
+was a long jagged crack in the stone, like the black line you
+know one sees after lightning, I mean it's as clear as that even
+now, in memory. Oh yes, I remember. And then, I suppose, came the
+sleep--stupid, sluggish: and then; well, here I am.'
+
+'You are absolutely certain, then,' persisted Mr Bethany almost
+querulously, 'there was no living creature near you? Bless me,
+Lawford, I see no unkindness in believing what the Bible itself
+relates. There are powers supernatural. Saul, and so on. We are
+all convinced of that. No one?'
+
+'I remember distinctly,' replied Lawford, in a calm, stubborn
+voice, 'I looked up all around me, while I was kneeling there,
+and there wasn't a soul to be seen. Because, you see, it even
+then occurred to me that it would have looked rather queer--my
+wandering about like that, I mean. Facing me there were some
+cypress-trees, and beyond, a low sunken fence, and then, just
+open country. Up above there were the gravestones toppling down
+the hill, where I had just strolled down, and sunshine!' He
+suddenly threw up his hand. 'Oh, marvellous! streaming in
+gold--flaming, like God's own ante-chamber.'
+
+There was a very pregnant pause. Mr Bethany shrunk back a little
+into his chair. His lips moved; he folded his spectacles.
+
+'Yes, yes,' he said. And then very quietly he stole one mole-like
+look into his sidesman's face.
+
+'What is Dr Simon's number?' he said. Lawford was gazing gloomily
+into the fire. 'Oh, Annandale,' he replied absently. 'I don't
+know the number.'
+
+'Do you believe in him? Your wife mentioned him. Is he clever?'
+
+'Oh, he's new,' said Lawford; 'old James was our doctor. He--he
+killed my father.' He laughed out shamefacedly.
+
+'A sound, lovable man,' said Mr Bethany, 'one of the kindest men
+I ever knew; and a very old friend of mine.'
+
+And suddenly the dark face turned with a shudder from the fire,
+and spoke in a low trembling voice. 'Only one thing--only one
+thing--my sanity, my sanity. If once I forget, who will believe
+me?' He thrust his long lean fingers beneath his coat. 'And mad,'
+he added; 'I would sooner die.'
+
+Mr Bethany deliberately adjusted his spectacles. 'May I, may I
+experiment?' he said boldly. There came a tap on the door.
+
+'Bless me,' said the vicar, taking out his watch, 'it is a
+quarter to twelve. 'Yes, yes, Mrs Lawford,' he trotted round to
+the door. 'We are beginning to see light--a ray!'
+
+'But I--I can see in the dark,' whispered Lawford, as if at a
+cue, turning with an inscrutable smile to the fire.
+
+The vicar came again, wrapped up in a little tight grey
+great-coat, and a white silk muffler. He looked up unflinching
+into Lawford's face, and tears stood in his eyes. 'Patience,
+patience, my dear fellow,' he repeated gravely, squeezing his
+hand. 'And rest, complete rest, is imperative. Just till the
+first thing to-morrow. And till then,' he turned to Mrs Lawford,
+where she stood looking in at the doorway, 'oh yes, complete
+quiet; and caution!'
+
+Mrs Lawford let him out. He shook his head once or twice, holding
+her fingers. 'Oh yes,' he whispered, 'it is your husband, not the
+smallest doubt. I tried: for MYSELF. But something--something has
+happened. Don't fret him now. Have patience. Oh yes, it is
+incredible... the change! But there, the very first thing
+to-morrow.' She closed the door gently after him, and stepping
+softly back to the dining-room, peered in. Her husband's back was
+turned, but he could see her in the looking-glass, stooping a
+little, with set face watching him, in the silvery stillness.
+
+'Well,' he said, 'is the old--' he doggedly met the fixed eyes
+facing him there, 'is our old friend gone?'
+
+'Yes,' said Sheila, 'he's gone.' Lawford sighed and turned round.
+'It's useless talking now, Sheila. No more questions. I cannot
+tell you how tired I am. And my head--'
+
+'What is wrong with your head?' inquired his wife discreetly.
+
+The haggard face turned gravely and patiently. 'Only one of my
+old headaches.' he smiled, 'my old bilious headaches--the
+hereditary Lawford variety.' But his voice fell low again. 'We
+must get to bed.'
+
+With a rather pretty and childish movement, Sheila gently drew
+her hands across her silk skirts. 'Yes, dear,' she said, 'I have
+made up a bed for you in the large spare room. It is thoroughly
+aired.' She came softly in, hastened over to a closed work-table
+that stood under the curtains, and opened it.
+
+Lawford watched her, utterly expressionless, utterly motionless.
+He opened his mouth and shut it again, still watching his wife as
+she stooped with ridiculously too busy fingers, searching through
+her coloured silks.
+
+Again he opened his mouth. 'Yes,' he said, and stalked slowly
+towards the door. But there he paused. 'God knows,' he said,
+strangely and meekly, 'I am sorry, sorry for all this. You will
+forgive me, Sheila?'
+
+She looked up swiftly. 'It's very tiresome, I can't find
+anywhere,' she murmured, 'I can't find anywhere the--the little
+red box key.'
+
+Lawford's cheek turned more sallow than ever. 'You are only
+pretending to look for it,' he said, 'to try me. We both know
+perfectly well the lock is broken. Ada broke it.'
+
+Sheila let fall the lid; and yet for a while her eyes roved over
+it as if in violent search for something. Then she turned: 'I am
+so very glad the vicar was at home,' she said brightly. 'And
+mind, mind you rest, Arthur. There's nothing so bad but it might
+be worse.... Oh, I can't, I can't bear it!' She sat down in the
+chair and huddled her face between her hands, sobbing on and on,
+without a tear.
+
+Lawford listened and stared solemnly. 'Whatever it may be,
+Sheila, I will be loyal,' he said.
+
+Her sobs hushed, and again cold horror crept over her. Nobody in
+the whole world could have said that 'I will be loyal' quite like
+that--nobody but Arthur. She stood up, patting her hair. 'I don't
+think my brain would bear much more. It's useless to talk. If you
+will go up; I will put out the lamp.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+0ne solitary and tall candle burned on the great dressing-table.
+Faint, solitary pictures broke the blankness of each wall. The
+carpet was rich, the bed impressive, and the basins on the
+washstand as uninviting as the bed. Lawford sat down on the edge
+of it in complete isolation. He sat without stirring, listening
+to his watch ticking in his pocket. The china clock on the
+chimney piece pointed cheerfully to the hour of dawn. It was
+exactly, he computed carefully, five hours and seven minutes
+fast. Not the slightest sound broke the stillness, until he
+heard, very, very softly and gradually, the key of his door turn
+in the oiled wards, and realized that he was a prisoner.
+
+Women were strange creatures. How often he had heard that said,
+he thought lamely. He felt no anger, no surprise or resentment,
+at the trick. It was only to be expected. He could sit on till
+morning; easily till morning. He had never noticed before how
+empty a well-furnished room could seem. It was his own room too;
+his best visitors' room. His father-in-law had slept here, with
+his whiskers on that pillow. His wife's most formidable aunt had
+been all night here, alone with these pictures. She certainly
+was... 'But what are you doing here?' cried a voice suddenly out
+of his reverie.
+
+He started up and stretched himself, and taking out the neat
+little packet that the maid had brought from the chemist's, he
+drew up a chair, and sat down once more in front of the glass. He
+sighed vacantly, rose and lifted down from the wall above the
+fireplace a tinted photograph of himself that Sheila had had
+enlarged about twelve years ago. It was a brighter, younger,
+hairier, but unmistakably the same dull indolent Lawford who had
+ventured into Widderstone churchyard that afternoon. The cheek
+was a little plumper, the eyes not quite so full-lidded, the hair
+a little more precisely parted, the upper lip graced with a small
+blonde moustache. He tilted the portrait into the candlelight,
+and compared it with this reflection in the glass of what had
+come out of Widderstone, feature with feature, with perfect
+composure and extreme care, Then he laid down the massive frame
+on the table, and gazed quietly at the tiny packet.
+
+It was to be a day of queer experiences. He had never before
+realized with how many miracles mere everyday life is besieged.
+Here in this small punctilious packet lay a Sesame--a power of
+transformation beside which the transformation of that rather
+flaccid face of the noonday into this tense, sinister face of
+midnight was but as a moving from house to house--a change just
+as irrevocable and complete, and yet so very normal. Which should
+it be, that, or--his face lifted itself once more to the ice-like
+gloom of the looking-glass-that, or this?
+
+It simply gazed back with a kind of quizzical pity on its lean
+features under the scrutiny of eyes so deep, so meaningful, so
+desolate, and yet so indomitably courageous. In the brain behind
+them a slow and stolid argument was in progress; the one baffling
+reply on the one side to every appeal on the other being still
+simply. 'What dreams may come?'
+
+Those eyes surely knew something of dreams, else, why this
+violent and stubborn endeavour to keep awake
+
+Lawford did indeed once actually frame the question, 'But who the
+devil are you?' And it really seemed the eyes perceptibly widened
+or brightened. The mere vexation of his unparalleled position.
+Sheila's pathetic incredulity, his old vicar's laborious
+kindness, the tiresome network of experience into which he would
+be dragged struggling on the morrow, and on the morrow after
+that, and after that--the thought of all these things faded for
+the moment from his mind, lost if not their significance, at
+least their instancy.
+
+He simply sat face to face with the sheer difficulty of living on
+at all. He even concluded in a kind of lethargy that if nothing
+had occurred, no 'change,' he might still be sitting here, Arthur
+Rennet Lawford, in his best visitor's room, deciding between
+inscrutable life and just--death. He supposed he was tired out.
+His thoughts hadn't even the energy to complete themselves. None
+cared but himself and this--this Silence.
+
+'But what does it all mean?' the insistent voice he was getting
+to know so well began tediously inquiring again. And every time
+he raised his eyes, or, rather, as in many cases it seemed, his
+eyes raised themselves, they saw this haunting face there--a face
+he no longer bitterly rebelled at, nor dimmed with scrutiny, but
+a face that was becoming a kind of hold on life, even a kind of
+refuge, an ally. It was a face that might have come out of a
+rather flashy book; or such as is revered on the stage. 'A rotten
+bad face,' he whispered at it in his own familiar slang, after
+some such abrupt encounter; a fearless, packed, daring,
+fascinating face, with even--what?--a spice of genius in it.
+Whose the devil's face was it? What on earth was the matter?...
+'Brazen it out,' a jubilant thought cried suddenly; 'follow it
+up; play the game! give me just one opening. Think--think what
+I've risked!'
+
+And all these voices thought Lawford, in deadly lassitude, meant
+only one thing--insanity. A blazing, impotent indignation seized
+him. He leaned near, peering as it were out of a red dusky mist.
+He snatched up the china candlestick, and poised it above the
+sardonic reflection, as if to throw. Then slowly, with infinite
+pains, he drew back from the glass and replaced the candlestick
+on the table; stuffed his paper packet into his pocket, took off
+his boots and threw himself on to the bed. In a little while, in
+the faint, still light, he opened drowsily wondering eyes. `Poor
+old thing!' his voice murmured, 'Poor old Sheila!'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+
+It was but little after daybreak when Mrs Lawford, after
+listening at his door a while, turned the key and looked in on
+her husband. Blue-grey light from between the venetian blinds
+just dusked the room. She stood in a bluish dressing-gown, her
+hand on her bosom, looking down on the lean impassive face. For
+the briefest instant her heart had leapt with an indescribable
+surmise; to fall dull as lead once more. Breathing equably and
+quietly, the strange figure lay stretched upon the bed. 'How can
+he sleep? How can he sleep?' she whispered with a black and
+hopeless indignation. What a night she had had! And he!
+
+She turned noiselessly away. The candle had guttered to
+extinction. The big glass reflected her, voluminous and wan, her
+dark-ringed eyes, full lips, rich, glossy hair, and rounded chin.
+'Yes, yes,' it seemed to murmur mournfully. She turned away, and
+drawing stealthily near stooped once more quite low, and examined
+the face on the pillow with lynx-like concentration. And though
+every nerve revolted at the thought, she was finally convinced,
+unwillingly, but assuredly, that her husband was here. Indeed, if
+it were not so, how could she for a single moment have accepted
+the possibility that he was a stranger? He seemed to haunt, like
+a ghostly emanation, this strange, detestable face--as memory
+supplies the features concealed beneath a mask. The face was
+still and stony, like one dead or imaged in wax, yet beneath it
+dreams were passing--silly, ordinary Lawford dreams. She was
+almost alarmed at the terribly rancorous hatred she felt for the
+face... 'It was just like Arthur to be so taken in!'
+
+Then she too remembered Quain, and remembered also in the slowly
+paling dusk that the house would soon be stirring. She went out
+and noiselessly locked the door again. But it was useless to
+begin looking  for Quain now--her husband had a good many dull
+books, most of them his 'eccentric' father's. What must the
+servants be thinking? and what was all that talk about a
+mysterious visitor? She would have to question Ada--
+diplomatically. She returned to her room and sat down in an
+arm-chair, and waited. In sheer weariness she fell into a doze,
+and woke at the sound of dustpan and broom. She rang the bell,
+and asked for hot water, tea, and a basin of cornflour.
+
+'And please, Ada, be as quiet as possible over your work; your
+master is in a nice sleep, and must not be disturbed on any
+account. In the front bedroom.' She looked up suddenly. 'By the
+way, who let Dr Ferguson in last night?' It was dangerous, but
+successful.
+
+'Dr Ferguson, ma'am? Oh, you mean... He WAS in.'
+
+Sheila smiled resignedly. 'Was in? What do you mean, "was in"?
+And where were you, then?'
+
+'I had been sent out to Critchett's, the chemist's.'
+
+'Of course, of course. So cook let Dr Ferguson in, then? Why
+didn't you say so before, Ada? And did you bring the medicine
+with you?'
+
+'It was a packet in an envelope, ma'am. But Cook is sure she
+heard no knock--not while I was out. So Dr Ferguson must have
+come in quite unbeknown.'
+
+'Well, really,' said Sheila, 'it seems very difficult to get at
+the truth sometimes. And when illness is in the house I cannot
+understand why there should be no one available to answer the
+door. You must have left it ajar, unsecured, when you went out.
+And pray, what if Dr Ferguson had been some common tramp? That
+would have been a nice thing.'
+
+'I am quite certain,' said Ada a little flatly, 'that I did shut
+the door. And cook says she never so much as stirred from the
+kitchen till I came down the area steps with the packet. And
+that's all I know about it, ma'am; except that he was here when I
+came back. I did not know even there was a Dr Ferguson; and my
+mother has lived here nineteen years.'
+
+'We must be thankful your mother enjoys such good health,'
+replied Mrs Lawford suavely. 'Please tell cook to be very careful
+with the cornflour--to be sure it's well mixed and thoroughly
+done.'
+
+Mrs Lawford's eyes followed with a certain discomfort those
+narrow print shoulders descending the stairs. And this abominable
+ruse was--Arthur's! She ran up lightly and listened with her ear
+to the panel of his door. And just as she was about to turn away
+again, there came a little light knock at the front door.
+
+Mrs Lawford paused at the loop of the staircase; and not
+altogether with gratitude or relief she heard the voice of Mr
+Bethany, inquiring in cautious but quite audible tones after her
+husband.
+
+She dressed quickly and went down. The little white old man
+looked very solitary in the long, fireless, drawing-room.
+
+'I could not sleep,' he said; 'I don't think I grasped in the
+least, I don't indeed, until I was nearly home, the complexity of
+our problem. I came, in fact, to a lamppost. It was casting a
+peculiar shadow. And then--you know how such thoughts seize us,
+my dear--like a sudden inspiration, I realised how tenuous, how
+appallingly tenuous a hold we every one of us have on our mere
+personality. But that,' he continued rapidly, 'that's only for
+ourselves--and after the event. Ours, just now, is to act. And
+first--?'
+
+'You really do, then--you really are convinced--' began Mrs
+Lawford.
+
+But Mr Bethany was too quick. 'We must be most circumspect. My
+dear friend, we must be most circumspect, for all our sakes. And
+this, you'll say,' he added, smiling, stretching out his arms,
+his soft hat in one hand, his umbrella in the other--'this is
+being circumspect--a seven o'clock in the morning call! But you
+see, my dear, I have come, as I took the precaution of explaining
+to the maid, because it's now or never to-day. It does so happen
+that I have to take a wedding for an old friend's niece at
+Witchett; so when in need, you see, Providence enables us to tell
+even the conventional truth. Now really, how is he? has he slept?
+has he recalled himself at all? is there any change?--and, dear
+me, how are YOU?'
+
+Mrs Lawford sighed. 'A broken night is really very little to a
+mother,' she said. 'He is still asleep. He hasn't, I think,
+stirred all night.'
+
+'Not stirred!' Mr Bethany repeated. 'You baffle me. And you have
+watched?'
+
+'Oh no,' was the cheerful answer; 'I felt that quiet, solitude;
+space, was everything; he preferred it so. He--he changed alone,
+I suppose. Don't you think it almost stands to reason that he
+will be alone...when he comes back? Was I right? But there, it's
+useless, it's worse than useless, to talk like this. My husband
+is gone. Some terrible thing has happened. Whatever the mystery
+may be, he will never come back alive. My only fear is that I am
+dragging you into a matter that should from the beginning have
+been entrusted to-- Oh, it's monstrous!' It appeared for a moment
+as if she were blinking to keep back her tears, yet her scrutiny
+seemed merely to harden.
+
+Only the merest flicker of the folded eyelids over the greenish
+eyes of her visitor answered the challenge. He stood small and
+black, peeping fixedly out of the window at the sunflecked
+laurels.
+
+'Last night,' he said slowly, 'when I said good-bye to your
+husband, on the tip of my tongue were the words I have used, in
+season and out of season, for nearly forty-five years--"God knows
+best." Well, my dear lady, a sense of humour, a sense of
+reverence, or perhaps even a taint of scepticism--call it what
+you will--just intercepted them. Oh no, not any of these, my
+child; just pity, overwhelming pity. God does know best; but in a
+matter like this it is not even my place to say so. It would be
+good for none of us to endanger our souls even with verbal cant.
+Now, if, do you think, I had just five minutes' talk--five
+minutes; would it disquiet him?'
+
+Only by an almost undignified haste, for the vicar was remarkably
+agile, Sheila managed to unlock the bedroom door without
+apparently his perceiving it, and with a warning finger she
+preceded him into the great bedroom. 'Oh, yes, yes,' he was
+whispering to himself; 'alone--well, well!' He hung his hat on
+his umbrella and leaned it in a corner, and then he turned.
+
+'I don't think, you know, an old friend does him any wrong; but
+last night I had no real oppor--' He firmly adjusted his
+spectacles, and looked long into the dark, dispassioned face.
+
+'H'm!' he said, and fidgeted, and peered again. Mrs Lawford
+watched him keenly.
+
+'Do you still--' she began.
+
+But at the same moment he too broke silence, suddenly stepping
+back with the innocent remark, 'Has he--has he asked for
+anything?'
+
+'Only for Quain.'
+
+'"Quain"?'
+
+'The medical Dictionary.'
+
+'Oh, yes; bless me; of course.... A calm, complete sleep of utter
+prostration--utter nervous prostration. And can one wonder? Poor
+fellow, poor fellow!' He walked to the window and peered between
+the blinds. 'Sparrows, sunshine--yes, and here's the postman,' he
+said, as if to himself. Then he turned sharply round, with mind
+made up.
+
+'Now, do you leave me here,' he said. 'Take half an hour's quiet
+rest. He will be glad of a dull old fellow like me when he wakes.
+And as for my pretty bride, if I miss the train, she must wait
+till the next. Good discipline, my dear. Oh, dear me! I don't
+change. What a precious experience now this would have been for a
+tottery, talkative, owlish old parochial creature like me. But
+there, there. Light words make heavy hearts, I see. I shall be
+quite comfortable. No, no, I breakfasted at home. There's hat and
+umbrella; at 9.3 I can fly.'
+
+Mrs Lawford thanked him mutely. He smilingly but firmly bowed her
+out and closed the door.
+
+But eyes and brain had been very busy. He had looked at the
+gutted candle; at the tinted bland portrait on the
+dressing-table; at the chair drawn-up; at the boots; and now
+again he turned almost with a groan towards the sleeper. Then he
+took out an envelope, on which he had jotted various memoranda,
+and waited awhile. Minutes passed and at last the sleeper faintly
+stirred, muttering.
+
+Mr Bethany stooped quickly. 'What is it, what is it?' he
+whispered.
+
+Lawford sighed. 'I was only dreaming, Sheila,' he said, and
+softly, peacefully opened his eyes. 'I dreamed I was in the--,
+His lids narrowed, his dark eyes fixed themselves on the anxious
+spectacled face bending over him. 'Mr Bethany! Where? What's
+wrong?'
+
+His friend put out his hand. 'There, there,' he said soothingly,
+'do not be disturbed; do not disquiet yourself.'
+
+Lawford struggled up. Slowly, painfully consciousness returned to
+him. He glanced furtively round the room, at his clothes,
+slinkingly at the vicar; licked his lips; flushed with
+extraordinary rapidity; and suddenly burst into tears.
+
+Mr Bethany sat without movement, waiting till he should have
+spent himself. 'Now, Lawford,' he said gently, compose yourself,
+old friend. We must face the music--like men.' He went to the
+window, drew up the blind, peeped out, and took off his
+spectacles.
+
+'The first thing to be done,' he said, returning briskly to his
+chair, 'is to send for Simon. Now, does Simon know you WELL?'
+Lawford shook his head. 'Would he recognise you?... I mean...'
+
+'I have only met him once--in the evening.'
+
+'Good; let him come immediately, then. Tell him just  the facts.
+If I am not mistaken, he will pooh-pooh the  whole thing; tell
+you to keep quiet, not to worry, and so on. My dear fellow, if
+we realised, say, typhoid, who'd dare to face it? That will give
+us time; to wait a while, to recover our breath, to see what
+happens next. And if--as I don't believe for a moment-- Why, in
+that case  I heard the other day of a most excellent man--
+Grosser, of Wimpole Street; nerves. He would be absorbed. He'll
+bottle you in spirit, Lawford. We'll have him down quietly. You
+see? But there won't be any necessity. Oh no. By then light will
+have come. We shall remember. What I mean is this.' He crossed
+his legs and  pushed out his lips. 'We are on quaky ground; and
+it's absolutely essential that you keep cool, and trust. I am
+yours, heart and soul--you know that. I own frankly, at first I
+was shaken. And I have, I confess, been very  cunning. But first,
+faith, then evidence to bolster it up. The faith was absolute'--
+he placed one firm hand on  Lawford's knee--'why, I cannot
+explain; but it was. The evidence is convincing. But there are
+others to think of. The shock, the incredibleness, the
+consequences; we  must not scan too closely. Think WITH; never
+against: and bang go all the arguments. Your wife, poor dear,
+believes; but of course, of course, she is horribly--' he
+broke off; 'of course she is SHAKEN, you old simpleton! Time
+will heal all that. Time will wear out the mask. Time will tire
+out this detestable physical witchcraft. The mind, the self's the
+thing. Old fogey though I may seem for saying it--that must be
+kept unsmirched. We won't go wearily over the painful subject
+again. You told me last night, dear old friend, that you were
+absolutely alone at Widderstone. That is enough. But here we have
+visible facts, tangible effects, and there must have been a
+definite reason and a cause for them. I believe in the devil, in
+the Powers of Darkness, Lawford, as firmly as I believe he and
+they are powerless--in the long run. They--what shall we say?--
+have surrendered their intrinsicality. You can just go through
+evil, as you can go through a sewer, and come out on the other
+side too. A loathsome process too. But there--we are not speaking
+of any such monstrosities, and even if we were, you and I with
+God's help would just tire them out. And that ally gone, our poor
+dear old Mrs Grundy will at once capitulate. Eh? Eh?'
+
+Through all this long and arduous harangue, consciousness, like
+the gradual light of dawn, had been flooding that other brain.
+And the face that now confronted Mr Bethany, though with his
+feeble unaided sight he could only very obscurely discern it, was
+vigilant and keen, in every sharp-cut hungry feature.
+
+A rather prolonged silence followed, the visitor peering mutely.
+The black eyes nearly closed, the face turned slowly towards the
+window, saw burnt-out candle, comprehensive glass.
+
+'Yes, yes.' he said; 'I'll send for Simon at once.'
+
+'Good,' said Mr Bethany, and more doubtfully repeated 'good.'
+'Now there's only one thing left,' he went on cheerfully. 'I have
+jotted down a few test questions here; they are questions no one
+on this earth could answer but you, Lawford. They are merely for
+external proofs. You won't, you can't, mistake my motive. We
+cannot foretell or foresee what need may arise for just such
+jog-trot primitive evidence. I propose that you now answer them
+here, in writing.'
+
+Lawford stood up and walked to the looking-glass, and paused. He
+put his hand to his head. 'es,' he said, 'of course; it's a
+rattling good move. I'm not quite awake; myself, I mean. I'll do
+it now.' He took out a pencil case and tore another leaf from his
+pocket-book. 'What are they?'
+
+Mr Bethany rang the bell. Sheila herself answered it. She stood
+on the threshold and looked across through a shaft of autumnal
+sunshine at her husband, and her husband with a quiet strange
+smile looked across through the sunshine at his wife. Mr Bethany
+waited in vain.
+
+'I am just going to put the arch-impostor through his
+credentials,' he said tartly. 'Now then, Lawford!' He read out
+the questions, one by one, from his crafty little list, pursing
+his lips between each; and one by one, Lawford, seated at the
+dressing-table, fluently scribbled his answers. Then question and
+answer were rigorously compared by Mr Bethany, with small white
+head bent close and spectacles poised upon the powerful nose, and
+signed and dated, and passed to Mrs Lawford without a word.
+
+Mrs Lawford read question and answer where she stood, in complete
+silence. She looked up. 'Many of these questions I don't know the
+answers to myself,' she said.
+
+'It is immaterial,' said Mr Bethany.
+
+'One answer is--is inaccurate. 'Yes, yes, quite so: due to a
+mistake in a letter from myself.'
+
+Mrs Lawford read quietly on, folded the papers, and held them out
+between finger and thumb. 'The--handwriting...' she remarked very
+softly.
+
+'Wonderful, isn't it?' said Mr Bethany warmly; 'all the general
+look and run of the thing different, but every real essential
+feature unchanged. Now into the envelope. And now a little wax?'
+
+Mrs Lawford stood waiting. 'There's a green piece of
+sealing-wax,' almost drawled the quiet voice, 'in the top right
+drawer of the nest in the study, which old James gave me the
+Christmas before last.' He glanced with lowered eyelids at his
+wife's flushed cheek. Their eyes met.
+
+'Thank you,' she said.
+
+When she returned the vicar was sitting in a chair, leaning his
+chin on the knobbed handle of his umbrella. He rose and lit a
+taper for her with a match from a little green pot on the table.
+And Mrs Lawford, with trembling fingers, sealed the letter, as he
+directed, with his own seal.
+
+'There!' he said triumphantly, 'how many more such brilliant
+lawyers, I wonder, lie dormant in the Church? And who shall keep
+this?... Why, all three, of course.' He went on without pausing.
+'Some little drawer now, secret and undetectable, with a lock.'
+Just such a little drawer that locked itself with a spring lay by
+chance in the looking-glass. There the letter was hidden. And Mr
+Bethany looked at his watch. 'Nineteen minutes,' he said. 'The
+next thing, my dear child--we're getting on swimmingly--and it's
+astonishing how things are simplified by mere use--the next thing
+is to send for Simon.'
+
+Sheila took a deep breath, but did not look up. 'I am entirely in
+your hands,' she replied. '
+
+'So be it,' said he crisply. 'Get to bed, Lawford; it's better
+so. And I'll look in on my way back from Witchett. I came, my
+dear fellow, in gloomy disturbance of mind. It was getting up too
+early; it fogs old brains. Good-bye, good-bye.'
+
+He squeezed Lawford's hand. Then, with umbrella under his arm,
+his hat on his head, his spectacles readjusted, he hurried out of
+the room. Mrs Lawford followed him. For a few minutes Lawford sat
+motionless, with head bent a little, and eyes restlessly scanning
+the door. Then he rose abruptly, and in a quarter of an hour was
+in bed, alone with his slow thoughts: while a basin of cornflour
+stood untasted on a little table at his bedside, and a cheerful
+fire burned in the best visitors' room's tiny grate.
+
+At half-past eleven Dr Simon entered this soundless seclusion. He
+sat down beside Lawford, and took temperature and pulse. Then he
+half closed his lids, and scanned his patient out of an unusually
+dark, un-English face, with straight black hair, and listened
+attentively to his rather incoherent story. It was a story very
+much modified and rounded off. Nor did Lawford draw Dr Simon's
+attention to the portrait now smiling conventionally above their
+heads from the wall over the fireplace.
+
+'It was rather bleak--the wind; and, I think, perhaps, I had had
+a touch of influenza. It was a silly thing to do. But still, Dr
+Simon, one doesn't expect--well, there, I don't feel the same
+man--physically. I really cannot explain how great a change has
+taken place. And yet I feel perfectly fit in myself. And if it
+were not for--for being laughed at, go back to town, to-day. Why
+my wife scarcely recognised me.'
+
+Dr Simon continued his scrutiny. Try as he would, Lawford could
+not raise his downcast eyes to meet direct the doctor's polite
+attention.
+
+'And what,' said Dr Simon, 'what precisely is the nature of the
+change? Have you any pain?'
+
+'No, not the least pain,' said Lawford; 'I think, perhaps, or
+rather my face is a little shrunken--and yet lengthened; at
+least it feels so; and a faint twinge of rheumatism. But my
+hair--well, I don't know; it's difficult to say one's self.' He
+could get on so very much better, he thought, if only his mind
+would be at peace and these preposterous promptings and voices
+were still.
+
+Dr Simon faced the window, and drew his hand softly over his
+head. 'We never can be too cautious at a certain age, and
+especially after influenza,' he said. 'It undermines the whole
+system, and in particular the nervous system; leaving the mind
+the prey of the most melancholy fancies. I should astound you, Mr
+Lawford, with the devil influenza plays.... A slight nervous shock
+and a chill; quite slight, I hope. A few days' rest and plenty of
+nourishment. There's nothing; temperature inconsiderable. All
+perfectly intelligible. Most certainly reassure yourself! And as
+for the change you speak of'--he looked steadily at the dark face
+on the pillow and smiled amiably--'I don't think we need worry
+much about that. It certainly was a bleak wind yesterday--and a
+cemetery, my dear sir! It was indiscreet--yes, very.' He held out
+his hand. 'You must not be alarmed,' he said, very distinctly
+with the merest trace of an accent; 'air, sunshine, quiet,
+nourishment; sleep--that is all. The little window might be a few
+inches open, and--and any light reading.'
+
+He opened the door and joined Mrs Lawford on the staircase. He
+talked to her quietly over his shoulder all the way downstairs.
+'It was, it was sporting with Providence--a wind, believe me,
+nearly due east, in spite of the warm sunshine.'
+
+'But the change--the change!' Mrs Lawford managed to murmur
+tragically, as he strode to the door. Dr Simon smiled, and
+gracefully tapped his forehead with a red-gloved forefinger.
+
+'Humour him, humour him,' he repeated indulgently. 'Rest and
+quiet will soon put that little trouble out of his head. Oh yes,
+I did notice it--the set drawn look, and the droop: quite so.
+Good morning.'
+
+Mrs Lawford gently closed the door after him. A glimpse of Ada,
+crossing from room to room, suggested a precaution. She called
+out in her clearest notes. 'If Dr Ferguson should call while I am
+out, Ada, will you please tell him that Dr Simon regretted that
+he was unable to wait? Thank you.' She paused with hand on the
+balusters, then slowly ascended the stairs. Her husband's face
+was turned to the ceiling, his hands clasped above his head. She
+took up her stand by the fireplace, resting one silk-slippered
+foot on the fender. 'Dr Simon is reassuring,' she said, 'but I do
+hope, Arthur, you will follow his advice. He looks a fairly
+clever man.... But with a big practice.... Do you think, dear, he
+quite realised the extent of the--the change?'
+
+'I told him what happened,' said her husband's voice out of the
+bed-clothes.
+
+'Yes, yes, I know,' said Sheila soothingly; 'but we must remember
+he is comparatively a stranger. He would not detect--'
+
+'What did he tell you?' asked the voice.
+
+Mrs Lawford deliberately considered. If only he would always thus
+keep his face concealed, how much easier it would be to discuss
+matters rationally. 'You see, dear,' she said softly, 'I know, of
+course, nothing about the nerves; but personally, I think his
+suggestion absurd. No mere fancy, surely, can make a lasting
+alteration in one's face. And your hair--I don't want to say
+anything that may seem unkind--but isn't it really quite a
+distinct shade darker, Arthur?'
+
+'Any great strain will change the colour of a man's hair,' said
+Lawford stolidly; 'at any rate, to white. Why, I read once of a
+fellow in India, a Hindoo, or something, who--'
+
+'But have you HAD any intense strain, or anxiety?' broke in
+Sheila. 'You might, at least, have confided in me; that is,
+unless-- But there, don't you think really, Arthur, it would be
+much more satisfactory in every way if we had further advice at
+once? Alice will be home next week. To-morrow is the Harvest
+Festival, and next week, of course, the Dedication; and, in any
+case, the Bazaar is out of the question. They will have to find
+another stall-holder. We must do our utmost to avoid comment or
+scandal. Every minute must help to--to fix a thing like that. I
+own even now I cannot realise what this awful calamity means.
+It's useless to brood on it. We must, as the poor dear old vicar
+said only last night, keep our heads clear. But I am sure Dr
+Simon was under a misapprehension. If, now, it was explained to
+him, a little more fully, Arthur--a photograph. Oh, anything on
+earth but this dreadful wearing uncertainty and suspense! Besides
+...is Simon quite an English name?'
+
+Lawford drew further into his pillow. 'Do as you think best,
+Sheila,' he said. 'For my own part, I believe it may be as he
+suggests--partly an illusion, a touch of nervous breakdown. It
+simply can't be as bad as I think it is. If it were, you would
+not be here talking like this; and Bethany wouldn't have believed
+a word I said. Whatever it is, it's no good crying it on the
+housetops. Give me time, just time. Besides, how do we know what
+he really thought? Doctors don't tell their patients everything.
+Give the poor chap a chance, and more so if he is a foreigner.
+He's'--his voice sank almost to a whisper--'he's no darker than
+this. And do, please, Sheila, take this infernal stuff away, and
+let me have something solid. I'm not ill--in that way. All I want
+is peace and quiet, time to think. Let me fight it out alone.
+It's been sprung on me. The worst's not over. But I'll win
+through; wait! And if not--well, you shall not suffer, Sheila.
+Don't be afraid. There are other ways out.'
+
+Sheila broke down. 'Any one would think to hear you talk, that I
+was perfectly heartless. I told Ada to be most careful about the
+cornflour. And as for other ways out, it's a positively wicked
+thing to say to me when I'm nearly distracted with trouble and
+anxiety. What motive could you have had for loitering in an old
+cemetery? And in an east wind! It's useless for me to remain
+here, Arthur, to be accused of every horrible thing that comes
+into a morbid imagination. I will leave you, as you suggest, in
+peace.'
+
+'One moment, Sheila,' answered the muffled voice. 'I have accused
+you of nothing. If you knew all; if you could read my thoughts,
+you would be surprised, perhaps, at my-- But never mind that. On
+the other hand, I really do think it would be better for the
+present to discuss the thing no more. To-day is Friday. Give this
+miserable face a week. Talk it over with Bethany if you like. But
+I forbid'--he struggled up in bed, sallow and sinister--'I flatly
+forbid, please understand, any other interference till then.
+Afterwards you must do exactly as you please. Send round the Town
+Crier! But till then, silence!'
+
+Sheila with raised head confronted him. 'This, then, is your
+gratitude. So be it. Silence, no doubt! Until it's too late to
+take action. Until you have wormed your way in, and think you are
+safe. To have believed! Where is my husband? that is what I am
+asking you now. When and how you have learned his secrets God
+only knows, and your conscience! But he always was a simpleton at
+heart. I warn you, then. Until next Thursday I consent to say
+nothing provided you remain quiet; make no disturbance, no
+scandal here. The servants and all who inquire shall simply be
+told that my husband is confined to his room with--with a nervous
+breakdown, as you have yourself so glibly suggested. I am at your
+mercy, I own it. The vicar believes your preposterous story--with
+his spectacles off. You would convince anybody with the wicked
+cunning with which you have cajoled and wheedled him, with which
+you have deceived and fooled a foreign doctor. But you will not
+convince me. You will not convince Alice. I have friends in the
+world, though you may not be aware of it, who will not be quite
+so apt to believe any cock-and-bull story you may see fit to
+invent. That is all I have to say. To-night I tell the vicar all
+that I have just told you. And from this moment, please, we are
+strangers. I shall come into the room no more than necessity
+dictates. On Friday we resume our real parts. My husband--
+Arthur--to--to connive at...Phh!'
+
+Rage had transfigured her. She scarcely heard her own words. They
+poured out senselessly, monotonously, one calling up another, as
+if from the lips of a Cassandra. Lawford sank back into bed,
+clutching the sheets with both lean hands. He took a deep breath
+and shut his mouth.
+
+'It reminds me, Sheila,' he began arduously, 'of our first
+quarrel before we were married, the evening after your aunt Rose
+died at Llandudno--do you remember? You threw open the window,
+and I think--I saved your life.' A pause followed. Then a queer,
+almost inarticulate voice added, 'At least, I am afraid so.'
+
+A cold and awful quietness fell on Sheila's heart. She stared
+fixedly at the tuft of dark hair, the only visible sign of her
+husband, on the pillow. Then, taking up the basin of cold
+cornflour, she left the room. In a quarter of an hour she
+reappeared carrying a tray, with ham and eggs and coffee and
+honey invitingly displayed. She laid it down.
+
+'There is only one other question,' she said, with perfect
+composure--'that of money. Your signature as it appears on
+the--the document drawn up this morning, would, of course, be
+quite useless on a cheque. I have taken all the money I could
+find; it is in safety. You may, however, conceivably be in need
+of some yourself; here is five pounds. I have my own cheque-book,
+and shall therefore have no need to consider the question again
+for--for the present. So far as you are concerned, I shall be
+guided solely by Mr Bethany. He will, I do not doubt, take full
+responsibility.'
+
+'And may the Lord have mercy on my soul!' uttered a stifled,
+unfamiliar voice from the bed. Mrs Lawford stooped. 'Arthur!' she
+cried faintly, 'Arthur!'
+
+Lawford raised himself on his elbow with a sigh that was very
+near to being a sob. 'Oh, Sheila, if you'd only be your real
+self! What is the use of all this pretence? Just consider MY
+position a little. The fear and horror are not all on your side.
+You called me Arthur even then. I'd willingly do anything you
+wish to save you pain; you know that. Can't we be friends even in
+this--this ghastly-- Won't you, Sheila?'
+
+Mrs Lawford drew back, struggling with a doubtful heart.
+
+'I think,' she said, `it would be better not to discuss that
+now.'
+
+The rest of the morning Lawford remained in solitude.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+
+There were three books in the room--Jeremy Taylor's 'Holy Living
+and Dying,' a volume of the Quiver, and a little gilded book on
+wildflowers. He read in vain. He lay and listened to the uproar
+of his thoughts on which an occasional sound--the droning of a
+fly, the cry of a milkman, the noise of a passing van--obtruded
+from the workaday world. The pale gold sunlight edged softly over
+the bed. He ate up everything on his tray. He even, on the shoals
+of nightmare, dreamed awhile. But by and by as the hours wheeled
+slowly on he grew less calm, less strenuously resolved on lying
+there inactive. Every sparrow that twittered cried reveille
+through his brain. He longed with an ardour strange to his
+temperament to be up and doing.
+
+What if his misfortune was, as he had in the excitement of the
+moment suggested to Sheila, only a morbid delusion of mind;
+shared too in part by sheer force of his absurd confession? Even
+if he was going mad, who knows how peaceful a release that might
+not be? Could his shrewd old vicar have implicitly believed in
+him if the change were as complete as he supposed it? He flung
+off the bedclothes and locked the door. He dressed himself,
+noticing, he fancied, with a deadly revulsion of feeling, that
+his coat was a little too short in the sleeves, his waistcoat too
+loose. In the midst of his dressing came Sheila bringing his
+luncheon. 'I'm sorry,' he called out, stooping quickly beside the
+bed, 'I can't talk now. Please put the tray down.'
+
+About half an hour afterwards he heard the outer door close, and
+peeping from behind the curtains saw his wife go out. All was
+drowsily quiet in the house. He devoured his lunch like a
+schoolboy. That finished to the last crumb, without a moment's
+delay he covered his face with a towel, locked the door behind
+him, put the key in his pocket, and ran lightly downstairs. He
+stuffed the towel into an ulster pocket, put on a soft,
+wide-brimmed hat, and noiselessly let himself out. Then he turned
+with an almost hysterical delight and ran--ran like the wind,
+without pausing, without thinking, straight on, up one turning,
+down another, until he reached a broad open common, thickly
+wooded, sprinkled with gorse and hazel and may, and faintly
+purple with fading heather. There he flung himself down in the
+beautiful sunlight, among the yellowing bracken, to recover his
+breath.
+
+He lay there for many minutes, thinking almost with composure.
+Flight, it seemed, had for the moment quietened the demands of
+that other feebly struggling personality which was beginning to
+insinuate itself into his consciousness, which had so
+miraculously broken in and taken possession of his body. He would
+not think now. All he needed was a little quiet and patience
+before he threw off for good and all his right to be free, to be
+his own master, to call himself sane.
+
+He scrambled up and turned his face towards the westering sun.
+What was there in the stillness of its beautiful splendour that
+seemed to sharpen his horror and difficulty, and yet to stir him
+to such a daring and devilry as he had never known since he was a
+boy? There was little sound of life; somewhere an unknown bird
+was singing, and a few late bees were droning in the bracken. All
+these years he had, like an old blind horse, stolidly plodded
+round and round in a dull self-set routine. And now, just when
+the spirit had come for rebellion, the mood for a harmless
+truancy, there had fallen with them too this hideous enigma. He
+sat there with the dusky silhouette of the face that was now
+drenched with sunlight in his mind's eye. He set off again up the
+stony incline.
+
+Why not walk on and on? In time real wholesome weariness would
+come; he could sleep at ease in some pleasant wayside inn,
+without once meeting the eyes that stood as it were like a window
+between himself and a shrewd incredulous scoffing world that
+would turn him into a monstrosity and his story into a fable. And
+in a little while, perhaps in three days, he would awaken out of
+this engrossing nightmare, and know he was free, this black dog
+gone from his back, and (as the old saying expressed it without
+any one dreaming what it really meant) his own man again. How
+astonished Sheila would be; how warmly she would welcome him!...
+Oh yes, of course she would.
+
+He came again to a standstill. No voice answered him out of that
+illimitable gold and blue. Nothing seemed aware of him. But as he
+stood there, doubtful as Cain on the outskirts of the unknown, he
+caught the sound of a footfall on the lonely and stone-strewn
+path.
+
+The ground sloped steeply away to the left, and slowly mounting
+the hillside came mildly on an old lady he knew, a Miss Sinnet,
+an old friend of his mother's. There was just such a little seat
+as that other he knew so well, on the brow of the hill. He made
+his way to it, intending to sit quietly there until the little
+old lady had passed by. Up and up she came. Her large bonnet
+appeared, and then her mild white face, inclined a little towards
+him as she ascended. Evidently this very seat was her goal; and
+evasion was impossible. Evasion!... Memory rushed back and set
+his pulses beating. He turned boldly to the sun, and the old
+lady, with a brief glance into his face, composed herself at the
+other end of the little seat. She gazed out of a gentle reverie
+into the golden valley. And so they sat a while. And almost as if
+she had felt the bond of acquaintance between them, she presently
+sighed, and addressed him: 'A very, very, beautiful view, sir.'
+
+Lawford paused, then turned a gloomy, earnest face, gilded with
+sunshine. 'Beautiful, indeed,' he said, 'but not for me. No, Miss
+Sinnet, not for me.'
+
+The old lady gravely turned and examined the aquiline profile.
+'Well, I confess,' she remarked urbanely, 'you have the advantage
+of me.'
+
+Lawford smiled uneasily. 'Believe me, it is little advantage.'
+
+'My sight,' said Miss Sinnet precisely, 'is not so good as I
+might wish; though better perhaps than I might have hoped; I fear
+I am not much wiser; your face is still unfamiliar to me.'
+
+'It is not unfamiliar to me,' said Lawford. Whose trickery was
+this? he thought, putting such affected stuff into his mouth.
+
+A faint lightening of pity came into the silvery and scrupulous
+countenance. 'Ah, dear me, yes,' she said courteously.
+
+Lawford rested a lean hand on the seat. 'And have you,' he asked,
+'not the least recollection in the world of my face?'
+
+'Now really,' she said, smiling blandly, 'is that quite fair?
+Think of all the scores and scores of faces in seventy long
+years; and how very treacherous memory is. You shall do me the
+service of REMINDING me of one whose name has for the moment
+escaped me.'
+
+'I am the son of a very old friend of yours, Miss Sinnet,' said
+Lawford quietly 'a friend that was once your schoolfellow at
+Brighton.'
+
+'Well, now,' said the old lady, grasping her umbrella, 'that is
+undoubtedly a clue; but then, you see, all but one of the friends
+of my girlhood are dead; and if I have never had the pleasure of
+meeting her son, unless there is a decided resemblance, how am I
+to recollect HER by looking at HIM?'
+
+'There is, I believe, a likeness,' said Lawford.
+
+She nodded her great bonnet at him with gentle amusement. 'You
+are insistent in your fancy. Well, let me think again. The last
+to leave me was Fanny Urquhart, that was--let me see--last
+October. Now you are certainly not Fanny Urquhart's son,' she
+stooped austerely, 'for she never had one. Last year, too, I
+heard that my dear, dear Mrs Jameson was dead. HER I hadn't met
+for many, many years. But, if I may venture to say so, yours is
+not a Scottish face; and she not only married a Scottish husband,
+but was herself a Dunbar. No, I am still at a loss.'
+
+A miserable strife was in her chance companion's mind, a strife
+of anger and recrimination. He turned his eyes wearily to the
+fast declining sun. 'You will forgive my persistency, but I
+assure you it is a matter of life or death to me. Is there no one
+my face recalls? My voice?'
+
+Miss Sinnet drew her long lips together, her eyebrows lifted with
+the faintest perturbation. 'But he certainly knows my name,' she
+said to herself. She turned once more, and in the still autumnal
+beauty, beneath that pale blue arch of evening, these two human
+beings confronted one another again. She eyed him blandly, yet
+with a certain grave directness.
+
+'I don't really think,' she said, 'you can be Mary Lawford's son.
+I could scarcely have mistaken HIM.'
+
+Lawford gulped and turned away. He hardly knew what this surge of
+feeling meant. Was it hope, despair, resentment; had he caught
+even the echo of an unholy joy? His mind for a moment became
+confused as if in the tumult of a struggle. He heard himself
+expostulate, 'Ah, Miss Bennett, I fear I set you too difficult a
+task.'
+
+The old lady drew abruptly in, like a trustful and gentle snail
+into its shocked house. 'Bennett, sir; but my name is not
+Bennett.'
+
+And again Lawford accepted the miserable prompting. 'Not
+Bennett!... How can I ever then apologise for so frantic a
+mistake?'
+
+The little old lady took firm hold of her umbrella. She did not
+answer him. 'The likeness, the likeness!' he began unctuously,
+and stopped, for the glance that dwelt fleetingly on him was cold
+with the formidable dignity and displeasure of age. He raised his
+hat and turned miserably home. He strode on out of the last gold
+into the blue twilight. What fantastic foolery of mind was
+mastering him? He cast a hurried look over his shoulder at the
+kindly and offended old figure sitting there, solitary, on the
+little seat, in her great bonnet, with back turned resolutely
+upon him--the friend of his dead mother who might have proved in
+his need a friend indeed to him. And he had by this insane
+caprice hopelessly estranged her.
+
+She would remember this face well enough now, he thought
+bitterly, and would take her place among his quiet enemies, if
+ever the day of reckoning should come. It was scandalous, it was
+banal to have abused her trust and courtesy. Oh, it was hopeless
+to struggle any more! The fates were against him. They had played
+him a trick. He was to be their transitory sport, as many a
+better man he could himself recollect had been before him. He
+would go home and give in; let Sheila do with him what she
+pleased. No one but a lunatic could have acted as he had, with
+just that frantic hint of method so remarkable in the insane.
+
+He left the common. A lamplighter was lighting the lamps. A thin
+evening haze was on the air. If only he had stayed at home that
+fateful afternoon! Who, what had induced him, enticed him to
+venture out? And even with the thought welled up into his mind an
+intense desire to go to the old green time-worn churchyard again;
+to sit there contentedly alone, where none heeded the completest
+metamorphosis, down beside the yew-trees. What a fool he had
+been. There alone, of course, lay his only possible chance of
+recovery. He would go to-morrow. Perhaps Sheila had not yet
+discovered his absence; and there would be no difficulty in
+repeating so successful a stratagem.
+
+Remembrance of his miserable mistake, of Miss Sinnet, faintly
+returned to him as he swiftly mounted the steps to his porch.
+Poor old lady. He would make amends for his discourtesy when he
+was quite himself again. She should some day hear, perhaps, his
+infinitely tragic, infinitely comic experience from his own lips.
+He would take her some flowers, some old keepsake of his mother's.
+What would he not do when the old moods and brains of the stupid
+Arthur Lawford, whom he had appreciated so little and so
+superficially, came back to him.
+
+He ran up the steps and stopped dead, his hand in his pocket,
+chilled and aghast. Sheila had taken his keys. He stood there,
+dazed and still, beneath the dim yellow of his own fanlight; and
+once again that inward spring flew back. 'Brazen it out; brazen
+it out! Knock and ring!'
+
+He knocked flamboyantly, and rang.
+
+There came a quiet step and the door opened. 'Dr Simon, of
+course, has called?' he inquired suavely.
+
+'Yes, sir.'
+
+'Ah, and gone'--as I feared. And Mrs Lawford?'
+
+'I think Mrs Lawford is in, sir.'
+
+Lawford put out a detaining hand. 'We will not disturb her; we
+will not disturb her. I can find my way up; oh yes, thank you!'
+
+But Ada still palely barred the way. 'I think, sir,' she said,
+'Mrs Lawford would prefer to see you herself; she told me most
+particularly "all callers." And Mr Lawford was not to be
+disturbed on any account.'
+
+'Disturbed? God forbid!' said Lawford, but his dark eyes failed
+to move these lightest hazel. 'Well,' he continued nonchalantly,
+'perhaps--perhaps it--,WOULD be as well if Mrs Lawford should
+know that I am here. No, thank you, I won't come in. Please go
+and tell--' But even as the maid turned to obey, Sheila herself
+appeared at the dining-room door in hat and veil.
+
+Lawford hesitated an immeasurable moment. In one swift glance he
+perceived the lamplit mystery of evening, beckoning, calling,
+pleading--Fly, fly! Home's here for you. Begin again, begin
+again. And there before him in quiet and hostile decorum stood
+maid and mistress. He took off his hat and stepped quickly in.
+
+'So late, so very late, I fear,' he began glibly. 'A sudden call,
+a perfectly impossible distance. Shall we disturb him, do you
+think?'
+
+'Wouldn't it,' began Sheila softly, 'be rather a pity perhaps? Dr
+Simon seemed to think.... But, of course, you must decide
+that.'
+
+Ada turned quiet small eyes.
+
+'No, no, by no means,' he almost mumbled.
+
+And a hard, slow smile passed over Sheila's face. 'Excuse me one
+moment,' she said; 'I will see if he is awake.' She swept swiftly
+forward, superb and triumphant, beneath the gaze of those dark,
+restless eyes. But so still was home and street that quite
+distinctly a clear and youthful laughter was heard, and light
+footsteps approaching. Sheila paused. Ada, in the act of closing
+the door, peered out. 'Miss Alice, ma'am,' she said.
+
+And in this infinitesimal advantage of time Dr Ferguson had
+seized his vanishing opportunity, and was already swiftly
+mounting the stairs. Mrs Lawford stood with veil half raised and
+coldly smiling lips and, as if it were by pre-arrangement, her
+daughter's laughing greeting from the garden, and from the
+landing above her, a faint 'Ah, and how are we now?' broke out
+simultaneously. And Ada, silent and discreet, had thrown open the
+door again to the twilight and to the young people ascending the
+steps.
+
+Lawford was still sitting on his bed before a cold and ashy
+hearth when Sheila knocked at the door.
+
+'Yes?' he said; 'who's there?' No answer followed. He rose with a
+shuddering sigh and turned the key. His wife entered.
+
+'That little exhibition of finesse was part of our agreement, I
+suppose?'
+
+'I say--' began Lawford.
+
+'To creep out in my absence like a thief, and to return like a
+mountebank; that was part of our compact?'
+
+'I say,' he stubbornly began again, 'did you wire for Alice?'
+
+'Will you please answer my question? Am I to be a mere catspaw in
+your intrigues, in this miserable masquerade before the servants?
+To set the whole place ringing with the name of a doctor that
+doesn't exist, and a bedridden patient that slips out of the
+house with his bedroom key in his pocket! Are you aware that Ada
+has been hammering at your door every half-hour of your absence?
+Are you aware of that? How much,' she continued in a low, bitter
+voice, 'how much should I offer for her discretion?'
+
+'Who was that with Alice?' inquired the same toneless voice.
+
+'I refuse to be ignored. I refuse to be made a child of. Will
+you please answer me?'
+
+Lawford turned. 'Look here, Sheila,' he began heavily, 'what
+about Alice? If you wired: well, it's useless to say anything
+more. But if you didn't, I ask you just this one thing. Don't
+tell her!'
+
+'Oh, I perfectly appreciate a father's natural anxiety.'
+
+Her husband drew up his shoulders as if to receive a blow. 'Yes,
+yes,' he said, 'but you won't?'
+
+The sound of a young laughing voice came faintly up from below.
+'How did Jimmie Fortescue know she was coming home to-day?'
+
+'Will you not inquire of Jimmie Fortescue for yourself?'
+
+'Oh, what is the use of sneering?' began the dull voice again. 'I
+am horribly tired, Sheila. And try how you will, you can't
+convince me that you believe for a moment that I am not myself,
+that you are as hard as you pretend. An acquaintance, even a
+friend might be deceived; but husband and wife--oh no! It isn't
+only a man's face that's himself--or even his hands.' He looked
+at them, straightened them slowly out, and buried them in his
+pockets. 'All I care about now is Alice. Is she, or is she not
+going to be told? I am simply asking you to give her just a
+chance.'
+
+'"Simply asking me to give Alice a chance"; now isn't that really
+just a little...?'
+
+Lawford slowly shook his head. 'You know in your heart it isn't,
+Sheila; you understand me quite well, although you persistently
+pretend not to. I can't argue now. I can't speak up for myself. I
+am just about as far down as I can go. It's only Alice.'
+
+'I see; a lucid interval?' suggested his wife in a low, trembling
+voice.
+
+'Yes, yes, if you like,' said her husband patiently, '"a lucid
+interval." Don't please look at my face like that, Sheila.
+Think--think that it's just lupus, just some horrible
+disfigurement.'
+
+Not much light was in the large room, and there was something so
+extraordinarily characteristic of her husband in those stooping
+shoulders, in the head hung a little forward, and in the
+preternaturally solemn voice, that Sheila had to bend a little
+over the bed to catch a glimpse of the sallow and keener face
+again. She sighed; and even on her own strained ear her sigh
+sounded almost like one of relief.
+
+'It's useless, I know, to ask you anything while you are in this
+mood,' continued Lawford dully; 'I know that of old.'
+
+The white, ringed hands clenched, '"Of old!"'
+
+'I didn't mean anything. Don't listen to what I say. It's
+only--it's just Alice knowing, that was all; I mean at once.'
+
+'Don't for a moment suppose I am not perfectly aware that it is
+only Alice you think of. You were particularly anxious about my
+feelings, weren't you? You broke the news to me with the
+tenderest solicitude. I am glad our--our daughter shares my
+husband's love.'
+
+'Look here,' said Lawford densely, 'you know that I love you as
+much as ever; but with this--as I am; what would be the good of
+my saying so?' Mrs Lawford took a deep breath.
+
+And a voice called softly at the door, 'Mother, are you there?
+Is father awake? May I come in?'
+
+In a flash the memory returned to her; twenty-four hours ago she
+was asking that very question of this unspeakable figure that sat
+hunched-up before her.
+
+'One moment, dear,' she called. And added in a very low voice,
+'Come here!'
+
+Lawford looked up. 'What?' he said.
+
+'Perhaps, perhaps,' she whispered, 'it isn't quite so bad.'
+
+'For mercy's sake, Sheila,' he said, 'don't torture me; tell the
+poor child to go away.'
+
+She paused. 'Are you there, Alice? Would you mind, father says,
+waiting a little? He is so very tired.'
+
+'Too tired to.... Oh, very well, mother.'
+
+Mrs Lawford opened the door, and called after her, 'Is Jimmie
+gone?'
+
+'Oh, yes, hours.'
+
+'Where did you meet?'
+
+'I couldn't get a carriage at the station. He carried my
+dressing-bag; I begged him not to. The other's coming on. You
+know what Jimmie is. How very, very lucky I did come home. I
+don't know what made me; just an impulse; they did laugh at me
+so. Father dear--do speak to me; how are you now?'
+
+Lawford opened his mouth, gulped, and shook his head.
+
+'Ssh, dear!' whispered Sheila, 'I think he has fallen asleep. I
+will be down in a minute.' Mrs Lawford was about to close the
+door when Ada appeared.
+
+'If you please, ma'am,' she said, 'I have been waiting, as you
+told me, to let Dr Ferguson out, but it's nearly seven now; and
+the table's not laid yet.'
+
+'I really should have thought, Ada,' Sheila began, then caught
+back the angry words, and turned and looked over her shoulder
+into the room. 'Do you think you will need anything more, Dr
+Ferguson?' she asked in a sepulchral voice.
+
+Again Lawford's lips moved; again he shook his head.
+
+'One moment, Ada,' she said closing the door. 'Some more
+medicine--what medicine? Quick! She mustn't suspect.'
+
+'"What medicine?"' repeated Lawford stolidly.
+
+'Oh, vexing, vexing; don't you see we must send her out? Don't
+you see? What was it you sent to Critchett's for last night? Tell
+him that's gone: we want more of that.'
+
+Lawford stared heavily. Oh, yes, yes,' he said thickly, 'more of
+that....'
+
+Sheila, with a shrug of extreme distaste and vexation. hastily
+opened the door. 'Dr Ferguson wants a further supply of the drug
+which Mr Critchett made up for Mr Lawford yesterday evening. You
+had better go at once, Ada, and please make as much haste as you
+possibly can.'
+
+'I say, I say,' began Lawford; but it was too late, the door was
+shut.
+
+'How I detest this wretched falsehood and subterfuge. What could
+have induced you....?'
+
+'Yes,' said her husband, 'what! I think I'll be getting to bed
+again, Sheila; I forgot I had been ill. And now I do really feel
+very tired. But I should like to feel--in spite of this hideous--
+I should like to feel we are friends, Sheila.'
+
+Sheila almost imperceptibly shuddered, crossed the room, and
+faced the still, almost lifeless mask. 'I spoke,' she said, in a
+low, cold, difficult voice--'I spoke in a temper this morning.
+You must try to understand what a shock it has been to me. Now, I
+own it frankly, I know you are--Arthur. But God only knows how it
+frightens me, and--and--horrifies me.' She shut her eyes beneath
+her veil. They waited on in silence a while.
+
+'Poor boy!' she said at last, lightly touching the loose sleeve;
+'be brave; it will all come right, soon. Meanwhile, for Alice's
+sake, if not for mine, don't give way to--to caprices, and all
+that. Keep quietly here, Arthur. And--and forgive my impatience.'
+
+He put out his hand as if to touch her. 'Forgive you!' he said
+humbly, pushing it stubbornly back into his pocket again. 'Oh,
+Sheila, the forgiveness is all on your side. You know I have
+nothing to forgive.' A long silence fell between them.
+
+'Then, to-night,' at last began Sheila wearily, drawing back, 'we
+say nothing to Alice, except that you are too tired--just nervous
+prostration--to see her. What we should do without this
+influenza, I cannot conceive. Mr Bethany will probably look in on
+his way home; and then we can talk it over--we can talk it over
+again. So long as you are like this, yourself, in mind, why I--
+What is it now?' she broke off querulously.
+
+'If you please, ma'am, Mr Critchett says he doesn't know Dr
+Ferguson, his name's not in the Directory, and there must be
+something wrong with the message, and he's sorry, but he must
+have it in writing because there was more even in the first
+packet than he ought by rights to send. What shall I do, if you
+please?'
+
+Still looking at her husband. Sheila listened quietly to the end,
+and then, as if in inarticulate disdain, she deliberately
+shrugged her shoulders, and went out to play her part unaided.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN
+
+Her husband turned wearily once more, and drawing up a chair sat
+down in front of the cold grate. He realised that Sheila thought
+him as much of a fool now as she had for the moment thought him
+an impostor, or something worse, the night before. That was at
+least something gained. He realised, too, in a vague way that the
+exuberance of mind that had practically invented Dr Ferguson, and
+outraged Miss Sinnet, had quite suddenly flickered out. It was
+astonishing, he thought, with gaze fixed innocently on the black
+coals, that he should ever have done such things. He detested
+that kind of 'rot'; that jaunty theatrical pose so many men
+prided their jackdaw brains on.
+
+And he sat quite still, like a cat at a cranny, listening, as it
+were, for the faintest remotest stir that might hint at any
+return of this--activity. It was the first really sane moment he
+had had since the 'change.' Whatever it was that had happened at
+Widderstone was now distinctly weakening in effect. Why, now,
+perhaps? He stole a thievish look over his shoulder at the glass,
+and cautiously drew finger and thumb down that beaked nose. Then
+he really quietly smiled, a smile he felt this abominable facial
+caricature was quite unused to, the superior Lawford smile of
+guileless contempt for the fanatical, the fantastic, and the
+bizarre: He wouldn't have sat with his feet on the fender before
+a burnt-out fire.
+
+And the animosity of that 'he,' uttered only just under his
+breath, surprised even himself. It actually did seem as if there
+were a chance; if only he kept cool and collected. If the whole
+mind of a man was bent on being one thing, surely no power on
+earth, certainly not on earth, could for long compel him to look
+another, any more (followed the resplendent thought) than vice
+versa.
+
+That, in fact, was the trick that had been in fitful fashion
+played him since yesterday. Obviously, and apart altogether from
+his promise to Sheila, the best possible thing he could do would
+be to walk quietly over to Widderstone to-morrow and like a child
+that has lost a penny, just make the attempt to reverse the
+process: look at the graves, read the inscriptions on the
+weather-beaten stones, compose himself once more to sleep on the
+little seat.
+
+Magic, witchcraft, possession, and all that--well, Mr Bethany
+might prefer to take it on the authority of the Bible if it was
+his duty. But it was at least mainly Old Testament stuff, like
+polygamy, Joshua, and the 'unclean beasts.' The 'unclean beasts.'
+It was simply, as Simon had said, mainly an affair of the nerves,
+like Indian jugglery. He had heard of dozens of such cases, or
+similar cases. And it was hardly likely that cases even remotely
+like his own would be much bragged about, or advertised. All
+those mysterious 'disappearances,' too, which one reads about so
+repeatedly? What of them? Even now, he felt (and glanced swiftly
+behind him at the fancy), it would be better to think as softly
+as possible, not to hope too openly, certainly not to triumph in
+the least degree, just in case of--well--listeners.
+
+He would wrap up too. And he wouldn't tell Sheila of the project
+till he had come safely back. What an  excellent joke it would be
+to confess meekly to his escapade, and to be scolded, and then
+suddenly to reveal himself. He sat back and gazed with an almost
+malignant animosity at the face in the portrait, comely and
+plump.
+
+An inarticulate, unfathomable depression rolled back on him, like
+a mist out of the sea. He hastily undressed, put watch and
+door-key and Critchett's powder under his pillow, paused,
+vacantly ruminated, and then replaced the powder in his waistcoat
+pocket, said his prayers, and got shivering to bed. He did not
+feel hurt at Sheila's leaving him like this. So long as she
+really believed in him. And now--Alice was home. He listened,
+trying not to shiver, for her voice; and sometimes heard, he
+fancied, the clear note. It was this beastly influenza that made
+him feel so cold and lifeless. But all would soon come right--
+that is, if only that face, luminous against the floating
+darkness within, would not appear the instant he closed his eyes.
+
+But legions of dreams are Influenza's allies. He fell into a
+chill doze, heard voices innumerable, and one above the rest,
+shouting them down, until there fell a lull. And another, as it
+were, from afar said quite clearly and distinctly, 'But surely,
+my dear, you have heard the story of the poor old charwoman who
+talked Greek in her delirium? A little school French need not
+alarm us.' And Lawford opened his eyes again on Mr Bethany
+standing at his bed
+
+'Tt, tt! There, I've been and waked him. And yet they say men
+make such excellent nurses in time of war. But you see, Lawford,
+what did I tell you? Wasn't I now an infallible prophet? Your
+wife has been giving me a most glowing account. Quite your old
+self, she tells me, except for just this--this touch of facial
+paralysis. And I think, do you know' (the kind old creature
+stooped over the bed, but still, Lawford noticed bitterly, still
+without his spectacles)--'yes, I really think there is a decided
+improvement. Not quite so--drawn. We must make haste slowly.
+Wedderburn, you know, believes profoundly in Simon; he pulled his
+wife through a dangerous confinement. And here's pills and tonics
+and liniments--a whole chemist's shop. Oh, we are getting on
+swimmingly.'
+
+Flamelight was flickering in the candled dusk. Lawford turned his
+head and saw Sheila's coiled, beautiful hair in the firelight.
+
+'You haven't told Alice?' he asked.
+
+'My dear good man,' said Mr Bethany, 'of course we haven't. You
+shall tell her yourself on Monday. What an incredible tradition
+it will be! But you mustn't worry; you mustn't even think. And no
+more of these jaunts, eh? That Ferguson business--that was too
+bad. What are we going to do with the fellow now we have created
+him? He will come home to roost--mark my words. And as likely as
+not down the Vicarage chimney. I wouldn't have believed it of
+you, my dear fellow.' He beamed, but looked, none the less, very
+lean and fagged and depressed.
+
+'How did the wedding go off?' Lawford managed to think of
+inquiring.
+
+'Oh, A1,' said Mr Bethany. 'I've just been describing it to
+Alice--the bride, her bridegroom, mother, aunts, cake, presents,
+finery, blushes, tears, and everything that was hers. We've been
+in fits, haven't we, Mrs Lawford? And Alice says I'm a Worth in a
+clerical collar--didn't she? And that it's only Art that has kept
+me out of an apron. Now look here; quiet, quiet, quiet; no
+excitement, no pranks. What is there to worry about, pray? And
+now Little Dorrit's down with influenza too. And Craik and I will
+have double work to do. Well, well; good-bye, my dear. God bless
+you, Lawford. I can't tell you how relieved, how unspeakably
+relieved I am to find you so much--so much better. Feed him up,
+my other dear; body and mind and soul and spirit. And there goes
+the bell. I must have a biscuit. I've swallowed nothing but a
+Cupid in plaster of Paris since breakfast. Goodnight; we shall
+miss you both--both.'
+
+But when Sheila returned, her husband was sunk again into a quiet
+sleep, from which not even the many questions she fretted to put
+to him seemed weighty enough to warrant his disturbance.
+
+So when Lawford again opened his eyes he found himself lying wide
+awake, clear and refreshed, and eager to get up. But upon the air
+lay the still hush of early morning. He tried in vain to catch
+back sleep again. A distant shred of dream still floated in his
+mind, like a cloud at evening. He rarely dreamed, but certainly
+something immensely interesting had but a moment ago eluded him.
+He sat up and looked at the clear red cinders and their maze of
+grottoes. He got out of bed and peeped through the blinds. To the
+east and opposite to him gardens and an apple-orchard lay, and
+there in strange liquid tranquillity hung the morning star, and
+rose, rifling into the dusk of night, the first grey of dawn. The
+street beneath its autumn leaves was vacant, charmed, deserted.
+
+Hardly since childhood had Lawford seen the dawn unless over his
+winter breakfast-table. Very much like a child now he stood
+gazing out of his bow-window--the child whom Time's busy robins
+had long ago covered over with the leaves of numberless hours. A
+vague exultation fumed up into his brain. Still on the borders of
+sleep, he unlocked the great wardrobe and took out an old faded
+purple and crimson dressing-gown that had belonged to his
+grandfather, the chief glory of every Christmas charade. He
+pulled the cowl-like hood over his head and strode majestically
+over to the looking-glass.
+
+He looked in there a moment on the strange face, like a child
+dismayed at its own excitement, and a fit of sobbing that was
+half uncontrollable laughter swept over him. He threw off the
+hood and turned once more to the window. Consciousness had
+flooded back indeed. What would Sheila have said to see him
+there? The unearthly beauty and stillness, and man's small
+labours, garden and wall and roof-tree idle and smokeless in the
+light of daybreak--there seemed to be some half-told secret
+between them. What had life done with him to leave a reality so
+clouded? He put on his slippers, and, gently opening the door,
+crept with extreme caution up the stairs. At a long, narrow
+landing window he confronted a panorama of starry night-gardens,
+sloping orchards; and beyond them fields, hills, Orion, the Dogs,
+in the clear and cloudless darkness.
+
+'My God, how beautiful!' a voice whispered. And a cock crowed
+mistily afar. He stood staring like a child into the wintry
+brightness of a pastry-cook's. Then once more he crept stealthily
+on. He stooped and listened at a closed door, until he fancied
+that above the beating of his own heart he could hear the
+breathing of the sleeper within. Then, taking firm hold of the
+handle with both hands, he slowly noiselessly turned it, and
+peeped in on Alice.
+
+The moon was long past her faint shining here. The blind was
+down. And yet it was not pitch dark. He stood with eyes fixed,
+waiting. Then he edged softly forward and knelt down beside the
+bed. He could hear her breathing now: long, low, quiet,
+unhastening--the miracle of life. He could just dimly discern the
+darkness of her hair against the pillow. Some long-sealed spring
+of tenderness seemed to rise in his heart with a grief and an
+ache he had never known before. Here at least he could find a
+little peace, a brief pause, however futile and stupid all his
+hopes of the night had been. He leant his head on his hands on
+the counterpane and refused to think. He felt a quick tremor, a
+startled movement, and knew that eyes wide open with fear were
+striving to pierce the gloom between them.
+
+'There, there, dearest,' he said in a low whisper, 'it's only me,
+only me.' He stroked the narrow hand and gazed into the
+shadowiness. Her fingers lay quiet and passive in his, with that
+strange sense of immateriality that sleep brings to the body.
+
+'You, you!' she answered with a deep sigh. 'Oh, dearest, how you
+frightened me. What is wrong? why have you come? Are you worse,
+dearest, dearest?'
+
+He kissed her hand. 'No, Alice, not worse. I couldn't sleep, that
+was all.'
+
+'Oh, and I came so utterly miserable to bed because you would not
+see me. And Mother would tell me only so very little. I didn't
+even know you had been ill.' She pressed his hand between her
+own. 'But this, you know, is very, very naughty--you will catch
+cold, you bad thing. What would Mother say?'
+
+'I think we mustn't tell her, dear. I couldn't help it; I felt
+much I wanted to see you. I have been rather miserable.'
+
+'Why?' she said, stroking his hand from wrist to fingertips with
+one soft finger. 'You mustn't be miserable. You and me have never
+done such a thing before; have we? Was it that wretched old Flu?'
+
+It was too dark in the little fragrant room even to see her face
+so close to his own. And yet he feared. 'Dr Simon,' she went on
+softly, 'said it was. But isn't your voice a little hoarse, and
+it sounds so melancholy in the dark. And oh'--she squeezed his
+wrist--'you have grown so thin! You do frighten me. Whatever
+should I do if you were really ill? And it was so odd, dear. When
+first I woke I seemed to be still straining my eyes in a dream,
+at such a curious, haunting face--not very nice. I am glad, I am
+glad you were here.'
+
+'What was the dream-face like?' came the muttered question.
+
+'Dark and sharp, and rather dwelling eyes; you know those long
+faces one sees in dreams: like a hawk, like a conjuror's.'
+
+Like a conjuror's!--it was the first unguarded and ungarbled
+criticism. 'Perhaps, dear, if you find my voice different, and my
+hand shrunk up, you will find my face changed, too--like a
+conjuror's.... What then?'
+
+She laughed gaily and tenderly. 'You silly silly; I should love
+you more than ever. Your hands are icy cold. I can't warm them
+nohow.'
+
+Lawford held tight his daughter's hand. 'You do love me, Alice?
+You would not turn against me, whatever happened? Ah, you shall
+see, you shall see.' A sudden burning hope sprang up in him.
+Surely when all was well again, these last few hours would not
+have been spent in vain. Like the shadow of death they had been,
+against whose darkness the green familiar earth seems beautiful
+as the plains of paradise. Had he but realized before how much he
+loved her--what years of life had been wasted in leaving it all
+unsaid! He came back from his reverie to find his hand wet with
+her tears. He stroked her hair, and touched gently her eyelids
+without speaking,
+
+'You will let me come in to-morrow?' she pleaded; 'you won't keep
+me out?'
+
+'Ah, but, dear, you must remember your mother. She gets so
+anxious, and every word the doctor says is law. How would you
+like me to come again like this, perhaps?--like Santa Claus?'
+
+'You know how I love having you,' she said, and stopped. 'But--but
+...' He leaned closer. 'Yes, yes, come,' she said, clutching his
+hand and hiding her eyes; 'it is only my dream--that horrible,
+dwelling face in the dream; it frightened me so.'
+
+Lawford rose very slowly from his knees. He could feel in the
+dark his brows drawn down; there came a low, sullen beating on
+his ear; he saw his face as it were in dim outline against the
+dark. Rage and rebellion surged up in him; even his love could be
+turned to bitterness. Well, two could play at any game! Alice
+sprang up in bed and caught his sleeve. 'Dearest, dearest, you
+must not be angry with me now!'
+
+He flung himself down beside the bed. Anger, resentment died
+away. 'You are all I have left,' he said.
+
+He stole back, as he had come, in the clear dawn to his bedroom.
+
+It was not five yet. He put a few more coals on his fire and blew
+out the night-light, and lay down. But it was impossible to rest,
+to remain inactive. He would go down and search for that first
+volume of Quain. Hallucination, Influenza, Insanity--why, Sheila
+must have purposely mislaid it. A rather formidable figure he
+looked, descending the stairs in the grey dusk of daybreak. The
+breakfast-room was at the back of the house. He tilted the blind,
+and a faint light flowed in from the changing colours of the sky.
+He opened the glass door of the little bookcase to the right of
+the window, and ran eye and finger over the few rows of books.
+But as he stood there with his back to the room, just as the
+shadow of a bird's wing floats across the moonlight of a pool, he
+became suddenly conscious that something, somebody had passed
+across the doorway, and in passing had looked in on him.
+
+He stood motionless, listening; but no sound broke the morning
+slumbrousness, except the faraway warbling of a thrush in the
+first light. So sudden and transitory had been the experience
+that it seemed now to be illusory; yet it had so caught him up,
+it had with so furtive and sinister a quietness broken in on his
+solitude, that for a moment he dared not move. A cold, indefinite
+sensation stole over him that he was being watched; that some
+dim, evil presence was behind him biding its time, patient and
+stealthy, with eyes fixed unmovingly on him where he stood. But,
+watch and wait as silently as he might, only the day broadened at
+the window, and at last a narrow ray of sunlight stole trembling
+up into the dusky bowl of the sky.
+
+At any rate Quain was found, with all the ills of life, from A to
+I; and Lawford turned back to his bondage with the book under his
+arm.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT
+
+The Sabbath, pale with September sunshine, and monotonous with
+chiming bells, had passed languidly away. Dr Simon had come and
+gone, optimistic and urbane, yet with a faint inward
+dissatisfaction over a patient behind whose taciturnity a hint of
+mockery and subterfuge seemed to lurk. Even Mrs Lawford had
+appeared to share her husband's reticence. But Dr Simon had
+happened on other cases in his experience where tact was required
+rather than skill, and time than medicine.
+
+The voices and footsteps, even the frou-frou of worshippers going
+to church, the voices and footsteps of worshippers returning from
+church, had floated up to the patient's open window. Sunlight had
+drawn across his room in one pale beam, and vanished. A few
+callers had called. Hothouse flowers, waxen and pale, had been
+left with messages of sympathy. Even Dr Critchett had respectfully
+and discreetly made inquiries on his way home from chapel.
+
+Lawford had spent most of his time in pacing to and fro in his
+soft slippers. The very monotony had eased his mind. Now and
+again he had lain motionless, with his face to the ceiling. He
+had dozed and had awakened, cold and torpid with dream. He had
+hardly been aware of the process, but every hour had done
+something, it seemed, towards clarifying his point of view. A
+consciousness had begun to stir in him that was neither that of
+the old, easy Lawford, whom he had never been fully aware of
+before, nor of this strange ghostly intelligence that haunted the
+hawklike, restless face, and plucked so insistently at his
+distracted nerves. He had begun in a vague fashion to be aware of
+them both, could in a fashion discriminate between them, almost
+as if there really were two spirits in stubborn conflict within
+him. It would, of course, wear him down in time. There could be
+only one end to such a struggle--THE end.
+
+All day he had longed for freedom, on and on, with craving for
+the open sky, for solitude, for green silence, beyond these
+maddening walls. This heedful silken coming and going, these
+Sunday voices, this reiterant yelp of a single peevish bell--
+would they never cease? And above all, betwixt dread and an
+almost physical greed, he hungered for night. He sat down with
+elbows on knees and head on his hands, thinking of night, its
+secrecy, its immeasurable solitude.
+
+His eyelids twitched; the fire before him had for an instant gone
+black out. He seemed to see slow-gesturing branches, grass
+stooping beneath a grey and wind-swept sky. He started up; and
+the remembrance of the morning returned to him--the glassy light,
+the changing rays, the beaming gilt upon the useless books. Now,
+at last, at the windows; afternoon had begun to wane. And when
+Sheila brought up his tea, as if Chance had heard his cry, she
+entered in hat and stole. She put down the tray, and paused at
+the glass, looking across it out of the window.
+
+'Alice says you are to eat every one of those delicious
+sandwiches, and especially the tiny omelette. You have scarcely
+touched anything to-day, Arthur. I am a poor one to preach, I am
+afraid; but you know what that will mean--a worse breakdown
+still. You really must try to think of--of us all.'
+
+'Are you going to church?' he asked in a low voice.
+
+'Not, of course, if you would prefer not. But Dr Simon advised me
+most particularly to go out at least once a day. We must
+remember, this is not the beginning of your illness.
+Long-continued anxiety, I suppose, does tell on one in time.
+Anyhow, he said that I looked worried and run-down. I AM worried.
+Let us both try for each other's sakes, or even if only for
+Alice's, to--to do all we can. I must not harass you; but is
+there any--do you see the slightest change of any kind?'
+
+'You always look pretty, Sheila; to-night you look prettier: THAT
+is the only change, I think.'
+
+Mrs Lawford's attitude intensified in its stillness. 'Now,
+speaking quite frankly, what is it in you suggests these remarks
+at such a time? That's what baffles me. It seems so childish, so
+needlessly blind.'
+
+'I am very sorry, Sheila, to be so childish. But I'm not, say
+what you like, blind. You ARE pretty: I'd repeat it if I was
+burning at the stake.'
+
+Sheila lowered her eyes softly on to the rich-toned picture in
+the glass. 'Supposing,' she said, watching her lips move,
+'supposing--of course, I know you are getting better and all
+that--but supposing you don't change back as Mr Bethany thinks,
+what will you do? Honestly, Arthur, when I think over it calmly,
+the whole tragedy comes back on me with such a force it sweeps me
+off my feet; I am for the moment scarcely my own mistress. What
+would you do?'
+
+'I think, Sheila,' replied a low, infinitely weary voice, 'I
+think I should marry again.' It was the same wavering, faintly
+ironical voice that had slightly discomposed Dr Simon that same
+morning.
+
+'"Marry again"!' exclaimed incredulously the full lips in the
+looking-glass. 'Who?'
+
+'YOU, dear!'
+
+Sheila turned softly round, conscious in a most humiliating
+manner that she had ever so little flushed.
+
+Her husband was pouring out his tea, unaware, apparently, of her
+change of position. She watched him curiously. In spite of all
+her reason, of her absolute certainty, she wondered even again
+for a moment if this really could be Arthur. And for the first
+time she realised the power and mastery of that eager and far too
+hungry face. Her mind seemed to pause, fluttering in air, like a
+bird in the wind. She hastened rather unsteadily to the door.
+
+'Will you want anything more, do you think, for an hour?' she
+asked.
+
+Her husband looked up over his little table. 'Is Alice going with
+you?'
+
+'Oh yes; poor child, she looks so pale and miserable. We are
+going to Mrs Sherwin's, and then on to Church. You will lock your
+door?'
+
+'Yes, I will lock my door.'
+
+'And I do hope Arthur--nothing rash!'
+
+A change, that seemed almost the effect of actual shadow, came
+over his face. 'I wish you could stay with me,' he said slowly.
+'I don't think you have any idea what--what I go through.'
+
+It was as if a child had asked on the verge of terror for a
+candle in the dark. But an hour's terror is better than a
+lifetime of timidity. Sheila sighed.
+
+'I think,' she said, 'I too might say that. But there; giving way
+will do nothing for either of us. I shall be gone only for an
+hour, or two at the most. And I told Mr Bethany I should have to
+come out before the sermon: it's only Mr Craik.'
+
+'But why Mrs Sherwin? She'd worm a secret out of one's grave.'
+
+'It's useless to discuss that, Arthur; you have always
+consistently disliked my friends. It's scarcely likely that you
+would find any improvement in them now.'
+
+'Oh, well--' he began. But the door was already closed.
+
+'Sheila!' he called in a burst of anger.
+
+'Well, Arthur?'
+
+'You have taken my latchkey.'
+
+Sheila came hastily in again. 'Your latchkey?'
+
+'I am going out.'
+
+'"Going out!"--you will not be so mad, so criminal; and after
+your promise!'
+
+He stood up. 'It is useless to argue. If I do not go out, I shall
+certainly go mad. As for criminal--why, that's a woman's word.
+Who on earth is to know me?'
+
+'It is of no consequence, then, that the servants are already
+gossiping about this impossible Dr Ferguson; that you are certain
+to be seen either going or returning; that Alice is bound to
+discover that you are well enough to go out, and yet not even
+enough to say good-night to your own daughter--oh, it's
+monstrous, it's a frantic, a heartless thing to do !' Her voice
+vaguely suggested tears.
+
+Lawford eyed her coldly and stubbornly--thinking of the empty
+room he would leave awaiting his return, its lamp burning, its
+fire-flames shining. It was almost a physical discomfort, this
+longing unspeakable for the twilight, the green secrecy and the
+silence of the graves. 'Keep them out of the way,' he said in a
+low voice; 'it will be dark when I come in.' His hardened face
+lit up. 'It's useless to attempt to dissuade me.'
+
+'Why must you always be hurting me? why do you seem to delight in
+trying to estrange me?' Husband and wife faced each other across
+the clear-lit room. He did not answer.
+
+'For the last time,' she said in a quiet, hard voice, 'I ask you
+not to go.'
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. 'Ask me not to come back,' he said;
+'that's nearer your hope.' He turned his face to the fire.
+Without moving he heard her go out, return, pause, and go out
+again. And when he deliberately wheeled round in his chair the
+little key lay conspicuous there on the counterpane.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINE
+
+The last light of sunset lay in the west; and a sullen wrack of
+cloud was mounting into the windless sky when Lawford entered the
+country graveyard again by its dark weather-worn lych-gate. The
+old stone church with its square tower stood amid trees, its
+eastern window faintly aglow with crimson and purple. He could
+hear a steady, rather nasal voice through its open lattices. But
+the stooping stones and the cypresses were out of sight of its
+porch. He would not be seen down there. He paused a moment,
+however; his hat was drawn down over his eyes; he was shivering.
+Far over the harvest fields showed a growing pallor in the
+solitary seat beneath the cypresses. He stood hesitating, gazing
+steadily and yet half vacantly at the motionless figure, and in a
+while a face was lifted in his direction, and undisconcerted eyes
+calmly surveyed him.
+
+'I am afraid,' called Lawford rather nervously--'I hope I am not
+intruding?'
+
+'Not at all, not at all,' said the stranger. 'I have no privileges
+here; at least as yet.'
+
+Lawford again hesitated, then slowly advanced. 'It's astonishingly
+quiet and beautiful,' he said.
+
+The stranger turned his head to glance over the fields. 'Yes, it
+is, very,' he replied. There was the faintest accent, a little
+drawl of unfriendliness in the remark.
+
+'You often sit here?' Lawford persisted.
+
+The stranger raised his eyebrows. 'Oh yes, often.' He smiled. 'It
+is my own modest fashion of attending divine service. The
+congregation is rapt.'
+
+'My visits,' said Lawford, 'have been very few--in fact, so far
+as I know, I have only once been here before.'
+
+'I envy you the novelty.' There was again the same faint
+unmistakable antagonism in voice and attitude; and yet so deep
+was the relief in talking to a fellow creature who hadn't the
+least suspicion of anything unusual in his appearance that
+Lawford was extremely disinclined to turn back. He made another
+effort--for conversation with strangers had always been a
+difficulty to him--and advanced towards the seat. 'You mustn't
+please let me intrude upon you,' he said, 'but really I am very
+interested in this queer old place. Perhaps you would tell me
+something of its history?' He sat down. His companion moved
+slowly to the other side of the broken gravestone.
+
+'To tell you the truth,' he replied, picking his way as it were
+from word to word, 'it's "history," as people call it, does not
+interest me in the least. After all, it's not when a thing is,
+but what it is, that much matters. What this is'--he glanced,
+with head bent, across the shadowy stones, 'is pretty evident. Of
+course, age has its charms.'
+
+'And is this very old?'
+
+'Oh yes, it's old right enough, as things go; but even age,
+perhaps, is mainly an affair of the imagination. There's a
+tombstone near that little old hawthorn, and there are two others
+side by side under the wall, still even legibly late seventeenth
+century. That's pretty good weathering.' He smiled faintly. 'Of
+course, the church itself is centuries older, drenched with age.
+But she's still sleep-walking while these old tombstones dream.
+Glow-worms and crickets are not such bad bedfellows.'
+
+'What interested me most, I think,' said Lawford haltingly, 'was
+this.' He pointed with his stick to the grave at his feet.
+
+'Ah, yes, Sabathier's,' said the stranger; 'I know his peculiar
+history almost by heart.'
+
+Lawford found himself staring with unusual concentration into the
+rather long and pale face. 'Not, I suppose,' he resumed faintly--
+'not, I suppose, beyond what's there.'
+
+His companion leant his hand on the old stooping tombstone. 'Well,
+you know, there's a good deal there'--he stooped over--'if you
+read between the lines. Even if you don't.'
+
+'A suicide,' said Lawford, under his breath.
+
+'Yes, a suicide; that's why our Christian countrymen have buried
+him outside of the fold. Dead or alive, they try to keep the wolf
+out.'
+
+'Is this, then, unconsecrated ground?' said Lawford.
+
+'Haven't you noticed,' drawled the other, 'how green the grass
+grows down here, and how very sharp are poor old Sabathier's
+thorns? Besides, he was a stranger, and they--kept him out.'
+
+'But, surely,' said Lawford, 'was it so entirely a matter of
+choice--the laws of the Church? If he did kill himself, he did.'
+
+The stranger turned with a little shrug. 'I don't suppose it's a
+matter of much consequence to HIM. I fancied I was his only
+friend. May I venture to ask why you are interested in the poor
+old thing?'
+
+Lawford's mind was as calm and shallow as a millpond. 'Oh, a
+rather unusual thing happened to me here,' he said. 'You say you
+often come?'
+
+'Often,' said the stranger rather curtly.
+
+'Has anything--ever--occurred?'
+
+'"Occurred?"' He raised his eyebrows. 'I wish it had. I come here
+simply, as I have said, because it's quiet; because I prefer the
+company of those who never answer me back, and who do not so much
+as condescend to pay me the least attention.' He smiled and
+turned his face towards the quiet fields.
+
+Lawford, after a long pause, lifted his eyes. 'Do you think,' he
+said softly, 'it is possible one ever could?'
+
+'"One ever could?"'
+
+'Answer back?'
+
+There was a low rotting wall of stone encompassing Sabathier's
+grave; on this the stranger sat down. He glanced up rather
+curiously at his companion. 'Seldom the time and the place and
+the revenant altogether. The thought has occurred to others,' he
+ventured to add.
+
+'Of course, of course,' said Lawford eagerly. 'But it is an
+absolutely new one to me. I don't mean that I have never had such
+an idea, just in one's own superficial way; but'--he paused and
+glanced swiftly into the fast-thickening twilight--'I wonder: are
+they, do you think, really, all quite dead?'
+
+'Call and see!' taunted the stranger softly.
+
+'Ah, yes, I know,' said Lawford. 'But I believe in the
+resurrection of the body; that is what we say; and supposing,
+when a man dies--supposing it was most frightfully against one's
+will; that one hated the awful inaction that death brings,
+shutting a poor devil up like a child kicking against the door in
+a dark cupboard; one might surely one might--just quietly, you
+know, try to get out? wouldn't you?' he added.
+
+'And, surely,' he found himself beginning gently to argue again,
+'surely, what about, say, him?' He nodded towards the old and
+broken grave that lay between them.
+
+'What, Sabathier?' the other echoed, laying his hand upon the
+stone.
+
+And a sheer enormous abyss of silence seemed to follow the
+unanswerable question.
+
+'He was a stranger; it says so. Good God!' said Lawford, 'how he
+must have wanted to get home! He killed himself, poor wretch,
+think of the fret and fever he must have been in--just before.
+Imagine it.'
+
+'But it might, you know,' suggested the other with a smile--'might
+have been sheer indifference.'
+
+'"Nicholas Sabathier, Stranger to this parish"--no, no,' said
+Lawford, his heart beating as if it would choke him, 'I don't
+fancy it was indifference.'
+
+It was almost too dark now to distinguish the stranger's features
+but there seemed a faint suggestion of irony in his voice. 'And
+how do you suppose your angry naughty child would set about it?
+It's narrow quarters; how would he begin?'
+
+Lawford sat quite still. 'You say--I hope I am not detaining you
+--you say you have come here, sat here often, on this very seat;
+have you ever had--have you ever fallen asleep here?'
+
+'Why do you ask?' inquired the other curiously.
+
+'I was only wondering,' said Lawford. He was cold and shivering.
+He felt instinctively it was madness to sit on here in the thin
+gliding mist that had gathered in swathes above the grass, milk-
+pale in the rising moon. The stranger turned away from him.
+
+'"For in that sleep of death what dreams may come must give us
+pause,"' he said slowly, with a little satirical catch on the
+last word. 'What did you dream?'
+
+Lawford glanced helplessly about him. The moon cast lean grey
+beams of light between the cypresses. But to his wide and
+wandering eyes it seemed that a radiance other than hers haunted
+these mounds and leaning stones. 'Have you ever noticed it?' he
+said, putting out his hand towards his unknown companion; 'this
+stone is cracked from head to foot?... But there'--he rose
+stiff and chilled--'I am afraid I have bored you with my company.
+You came here for solitude, and I have been trying to convince
+you that we are surrounded with witnesses. You will forgive my
+intrusion?' There was a kind of old-fashioned courtesy in his
+manner that he himself was dimly aware of. He held out his hand.
+
+'I hope you will think nothing of the kind,' said the other
+earnestly; 'how could it be in any sense an intrusion? It's the
+old story of Bluebeard. And I confess I too should very much like
+a peep into his cupboard. Who wouldn't? But there, it's merely a
+matter of time, I suppose.' He paused, and together they slowly
+ascended the path already glimmering with a heavy dew. At the
+porch they paused once more. And now it was the stranger that
+held out his hand.
+
+'Perhaps,' he said, 'you will give me the pleasure of some day
+continuing our talk. As for our friend below, it so happens that
+I have managed to pick up a little more of his history than the
+sexton seems to have heard of--if you would care some time or
+other to share it. I live only at the foot of the hill, not half
+a mile distant. Perhaps you could spare the time now?'
+
+Lawford took out his watch, 'You are really very kind,' he said.
+'But, perhaps--well, whatever that history may be, I think you
+would agree that mine is even--but, there, I've talked too much
+about myself already. Perhaps to-morrow?'
+
+'Why, to-morrow, then,' said his companion. 'It's a flat wooden
+house, on the left-hand side. Come at any time of the evening';
+he paused again and smiled--'the third house after the Rectory,
+which is marked up on the gate. My name is Herbert--Herbert
+Herbert to be precise.'
+
+Lawford took out his pocket-book and a card. 'Mine,' he said,
+handing it gravely to his companion. 'is Lawford--at least...'
+It was really the first time that either had seen the other's
+face at close quarters and clear-lit; and on Lawford's a moon
+almost at the full shone dazzlingly. He saw an expression--dismay,
+incredulity, overwhelming astonishment--start suddenly into the
+dark, rather indifferent eyes.
+
+'What is it?' he cried, hastily stooping close.
+
+'Why,' said the other, laughing and turning away, 'I think the
+moon must have bewitched me too.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TEN
+
+Lawford listened awhile before opening his door. He heard voices
+in the dining-room. A light shone faintly between the blinds of
+his bedroom. He very gently let himself in, and unheard, unseen,
+mounted the stairs. He sat down in front of the fire, tired out
+and bitterly cold in spite of his long walk home. But his mind
+was wearier even than his body. He tried in vain to catch up the
+thread of his thoughts. He only knew for certain that so far as
+his first hope and motives had gone his errand had proved
+entirely futile. 'How could I possibly fall asleep with that
+fellow talking there?' he had said to himself angrily; yet knew
+in his heart that their talk had driven every other idea out of
+his mind. He had not yet even glanced into the glass. His every
+thought was vainly wandering round and round the one curious hint
+that had drifted in, but which he had not yet been able to put
+into words.
+
+Supposing, though, that he had really fallen into a deep sleep,
+with none to watch or spy--what then? However ridiculous that
+idea, it was not more ridiculous, more incredible than the actual
+fact. If he had remained there, he might, it was just possible
+that he would by now, have actually awakened just his own
+familiar every-day self again. And the thought of that--though he
+hardly realised its full import--actually did send him on tip-toe
+for a glance that more or less effectually set the question at
+rest. And there looked out at him, it seemed, the same dark
+sallow face that had so much appalled him only two nights ago--
+expressionless, cadaverous, with shadowy hollows beneath the
+glittering eyes. And even as he watched it, its lips, of their
+own volition, drew together and questioned him--'Whose?'
+
+He was not to be given much leisure, however, for fantastic
+reveries like this. As he leaned his head on his hands, gladly
+conscious that he could not possibly bear this incessant strain
+for long, Sheila opened the door. He started up.
+
+'I wish you would knock,' he said angrily; 'you talk of quiet;
+you tell me to rest, and think; and here you come creeping and
+spying on me as if I was a child in a nursery. I refuse to be
+watched and guarded and peeped on like this.' He knew that his
+hands were trembling, that he could not keep his eyes fixed, that
+his voice was nearly inarticulate.
+
+Sheila drew in her lips. 'I have merely come to tell you, Arthur,
+that Mr Bethany has brought Mr Danton in to supper. He agrees
+with me it really would be advisable to take such a very old and
+prudent and practical friend into our confidence. You do nothing
+I ask of you. I simply cannot bear the burden of this incessant
+anxiety. Look, now, what your night walk has done for you! You
+look positively at death's door.'
+
+'What--what an instinct you have for the right word,' said
+Lawford softly. 'And Danton, of all people in the world! It was
+surely rather a curious, a thoughtless choice. Has he had
+supper?'
+
+'Why do you ask?'
+
+'He won't believe: too--bloated.'
+
+'I think,' said Sheila indignantly, 'it is hardly fair to speak
+of a very old and a very true friend of mine in such--well,
+vulgar terms as that. Besides, Arthur, as for believing--without
+in the least desiring to hurt your feelings--I must candidly warn
+you, some people won't.'
+
+'Come along,' said Lawford, with a faint gust of laughter; 'let's
+see.'
+
+They went quickly downstairs, Sheila with less dignity, perhaps,
+than she had been surprised into since she had left a slimmer
+girlhood behind. She swept into the gaze of the two gentlemen
+standing together on the hearthrug; and so was caught, as it
+were, between a rain of conflicting glances, for her husband had
+followed instantly, and stood now behind her, stooping a little,
+and with something between contempt and defiance confronting an
+old fat friend, whom that one brief challenging instant had
+congealed into a condition of passive and immovable hostility.
+
+Mr Danton composed his chin in his collar, and deliberately
+turned himself towards his companion. His small eyes wandered,
+and instantaneously met and rested on those of Mrs Lawford.
+
+'Arthur thought he would prefer to come down and see you
+himself.'
+
+'You take such formidable risks, Lawford,' said Mr Bethany in a
+dry, difficult voice.
+
+'Am I really to believe,' Danton began huskily. 'I am sure,
+Bethany, you will-- My dear Mrs Lawford!' said he, stirring
+vaguely, glancing restlessly.
+
+'It was not my wish, Vicar, to come at all,' said a voice from
+the doorway. 'To tell you the truth, I am too tired to care a jot
+either way. And'--he lifted a long arm--'I must positively refuse
+to produce the least, the remotest proof that I am not, so far as
+I am personally aware, even the Man in the Moon. Danton at heart
+was always an incorrigible sceptic. Aren't you, T. D.? You pride
+your dear old brawn on it in secret?'
+
+'I really--' began Danton in a rich still voice.
+
+'Oh, but you know you are,' drawled on the slightly hesitating
+long-drawn syllables; 'it's your parochial metier. Firm,
+unctuous, subtle, scepticism; and to that end your body
+flourishes. You were born fat; you became fat; and fat, my dear
+Danton, has been deliberately thrust on you--in layers! Lampreys!
+You'll perish of surfeit some day, of sheer Dantonism. And fat,
+postmortem, Danton. Oh, what a basting's there!'
+
+Mr Bethany, with a convulsive effort, woke. He turned swiftly on
+Mrs Lawford. 'Why, why, could you not have seen?' he cried.
+
+'It's no good, Vicar. She's all sheer Laodicean. Blow hot, blow
+cold. North, south, east, west--to have a weathercock for a wife
+is to marry the wind. There's nothing to be got from poor Sheila
+but....
+
+'Lawford!' the little man's voice was as sharp as the crack of a
+whip; 'I forbid it. Do you hear me? I forbid it. Some
+self-command; my dear good fellow, remember, remember it's only
+the will, the will that keeps us breathing.'
+
+Lawford peered as if out of a gathering dusk, that thickened and
+flickered with shadows before his eyes. 'What's he mean, then,'
+he muttered huskily, 'coming here with his black, still carcase--
+peeping, peeping--what's he mean, I say?' There was a moment's
+silence. Then with lifted brows and wide eyes that to every one
+of his three witnesses left an indelible memory of clear and
+wolfish light within their glassy pupils, he turned heavily, and
+climbed back to his solitude.
+
+'I suppose,' began Danton, with an obvious effort to disentangle
+himself from the humiliation of the moment, 'I suppose he was--
+wandering?'
+
+'Bless me, yes,' said Mr Bethany cordially--'fever. We all know
+what that MEANS.'
+
+'Yes,' said Danton, taking refuge in Mrs Lawford's white and
+intent gaze.
+
+'Just think, think, Danton--the awful, incessant strain of such
+an ordeal. Think for an instant what such a thing means!'
+
+Danton inserted a plump, white finger between collar and chin.
+'Oh yes. But--eh?--needlessly abusive? I never SAID I
+disbelieved him.'
+
+'Do you?' said Mrs Lawford's voice.
+
+He poised himself, as if it were, on the monolithic stability of
+his legs. 'Eh?' he said.
+
+Mr Bethany sat down at the table. 'I rather feared some such
+temporary breakdown as this, Danton. I think I foresaw it.
+And now, just while we are all three alone here together in
+friendly conclave, wouldn't it be as well, don't you think, to
+confront ourselves with the difficulties? I know--we all know,
+that that poor half-demented creature IS Arthur Lawford. This
+morning he was as sane, as lucid as I hope I am now. An awful
+calamity has suddenly fallen upon him--this change. I own frankly
+at the first sheer shock it staggered me as I think for the
+moment it has staggered you. But when I had seen the poor fellow
+face to face, heard him talk, and watched him there upstairs in
+the silence stir and awake and come up again to his trouble out
+of his sleep. I had no more doubt in my own mind and heart that
+he was he than I have in my mind that I--am I. We do in some
+mysterious way, you'll own at once, grow so accustomed, so
+inured, if you like, to each other's faces (masks though they be)
+that we hardly realise we see them when we are speaking together.
+And yet the slightest, the most infinitesimal change is instantly
+apparent.'
+
+'Oh yes, Vicar; but you see--'
+
+Mr Bethany raised a small lean hand: 'One moment, please. I have
+heard Lawford's own account. Conscious or unconscious, he has
+been through some terrific strain, some such awful conflict with
+the unseen powers that we--thank God!--have only read about, and
+never perhaps, until death is upon us, shall witness for
+ourselves. What more likely, more inevitable than that such a
+thing should leave its scar, its cloud, its masking shadow?--call
+it what you will. A smile can turn a face we dread into a face
+we'd die for. Some experience, which would be nothing but a
+hideous cruelty and outrage to ask too closely about--one,
+perhaps, which he could, even if he would, poor fellow, give no
+account of--has put him temporarily at the world's mercy. They
+made him a nine days' wonder, a byword. And that, my dear Danton,
+is just where we come in. We know the man himself; and it is to
+be our privilege to act as a buffer-state, to be intermediaries
+between him and the rest of this deadly, craving, sheepish
+world--for the time being; oh yes, just for the time being. Other
+and keener and more knowledgeable minds than mine or yours will
+some day bring him back to us again. We don't attempt to explain;
+we can't. We simply believe.'
+
+But Danton merely continued to stare, as if into the quiet of an
+aquarium.
+
+'My dear good Danton,' persisted Mr Bethany with cherubic
+patience, 'how old are you?'
+
+'I don't see quite...' smiled Danton with recovered ease, and
+rapidly mobilising forces. 'Excuse the confidence, Mrs
+Lawford, I'm forty-three.'
+
+'Good,' said Mr Bethany; 'and I'm seventy-one, and this child
+here'--he pointed an accusing finger at Sheila--is youth
+perpetual. So,' he briskly brightened, 'say, between us we're six
+score all told. Are we--can we, deliberately, with this mere
+pinch of years at our command out of the wheeling millions that
+have gone--can we say, "This is impossible," to any single
+phenomenon? CAN we?'
+
+'No, we can't, of course,' said Danton formidably. 'Not finally.
+That's all very well, but'--he paused, and nodded, nodding his
+round head upward as if towards the inaudible overhead, 'I
+suppose he can't HEAR?'
+
+Mr Bethany rose cheerfully. 'All right, Danton; I am afraid you
+are exactly what the poor fellow in his delirium solemnly
+asseverated. And, jesting apart, it is in delirium that we tell
+our sheer, plain, unadulterated truth: you're a nicely covered
+sceptic. Personally, I refuse to discuss the matter. Mere dull,
+stubborn prejudice; bigotry, if you like. I will only remark just
+this--that Mrs Lawford and I, in our inmost  hearts, know. You,
+my dear Danton, forgive the freedom, merely incredulously grope.
+Faith versus Reason--that prehistoric Armageddon. Some day, and a
+day not far distant either, Lawford will come back to us. This--
+this shutter will be taken down as abruptly as by some
+inconceivably drowsy heedlessness of common Nature it has been
+put up. He'll win through; and of his own sheer will and courage.
+But now, because I ask it, and this poor child here entreats it,
+you will say nothing to a living soul about the matter, say, till
+Friday? What step-by-step creatures we are, to be sure! I say
+Friday because it will be exactly a week then. And what's a
+week?--to Nature scarcely the unfolding of a rose. But still,
+Friday be it. Then, if nothing has occurred, we will, we shall
+HAVE to call a friendly gathering, we shall be compelled to have
+a friendly consultation.'
+
+'I'm not, I hope, a brute, Bethany,' said Danton apologetically;
+'but, honestly, speaking for myself, simply as a man of the
+world, it's a big risk to be taking on--what shall we call it?--
+on mere intuition. Personally, and even in a court of law--
+though Heaven forbid it ever reaches that stage--personally, I
+could swear that the fellow that stood abusing me there, in that
+revolting fashion, was not Lawford. It would be easier even to
+believe in him, if there were not that--that glaze, that shocking
+simulation of the man himself, the very man. But then, I am a
+sceptic; I own it. And 'pon my word, Mrs Lawford, there's plenty
+of room for sceptics in a world like this.'
+
+'Very well,' said Mr Bethany crisply, 'that's settled, then. With
+your permission, my dear,' he added, turning untarnishably clear
+childlike eyes on Sheila, 'I will take all risks--even to the
+foot of the gibbet: accessory, Danton, AFTER the fact.' And so
+direct and cloudless was his gaze that Sheila tried in vain to
+evade it and to catch a glimpse of Danton's small agate-like
+eyes, now completely under mastery, and awaiting confidently the
+meeting with her own.
+
+'Of course,' she said, 'I am entirely in your hands, dear Mr
+Bethany.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN
+
+Lawford slept far into the cloudy Monday morning, to wake steeped
+in sleep, lethargic, and  fretfully haunted by inconclusive
+remembrances of the night before. When Sheila, with obvious and
+capacious composure, brought him his breakfast tray, he watched
+her face for some time without speaking.
+
+'Sheila,' he began, as she was about to leave the room again.
+
+She paused, smiling.
+
+'Did anything happen last night? Would you mind telling me,
+Sheila? Who was it was here?'
+
+Her lids the least bit narrowed. 'Certainly, Arthur; Mr Danton
+was here.'
+
+'Then it was not a dream?'
+
+'Oh no,' said Sheila.
+
+'What did I say? What did HE say? It was hopeless, anyhow.'
+
+'I don't quite understand what you mean by "hopeless," Arthur.
+And must I answer the other questions?'
+
+Lawford drew his hand over his face, like a tired child. 'He
+didn't--believe?'
+
+'No, dear,' said Sheila softly.
+
+'And you, Sheila?' came the subdued voice.
+
+Sheila crossed slowly to the window. 'Well, quite honestly,
+Arthur, I was not very much surprised. Whatever we are agreed
+about on the whole, you were scarcely yourself last night.'
+
+Lawford shut his eyes, and re-opened them full on his wife's calm
+scrutiny, who had in that moment turned in the light of the one
+drawn blind to face him again.
+
+'Who is? Always?'
+
+'No,' said Sheila; 'but--it was at least unfortunate. We can't, I
+suppose, rely on Dr Bethany alone.'
+
+Lawford crouched over his food. 'Will he blab?'
+
+'Blab! Mr Danton is a gentleman, Arthur.'
+
+Lawford rolled his eyes as if in temporary vertigo. 'Yes,' he
+said. And Sheila once more prepared to make a reposefui
+exit.
+
+'I don't think I can see Simon this morning.'
+
+'Oh. Who, then?'
+
+'I mean I would prefer to be left alone.'
+
+'Believe me, I had no intention to intrude.' And this time the
+door really closed.
+
+'He is in a quiet, soothing sleep,' said Sheila a few minutes
+later.
+
+'Nothing could be better,' said Dr Simon; and Lawford, to his
+inexpressible relief, heard the fevered throbbing of the
+doctor's car reverse, and turned over and shut his eyes, dulled
+and exhausted in the still unfriendliness of the vacant room. His
+spirits had sunk, he thought, to their lowest ebb. He scarcely
+heeded the fragments of dreams--clear, green landscapes, amazing
+gleams of peace, the sudden broken voices, the rustling and
+calling shadowiness of subconsciousness--in this quiet sunlight
+of reality. The clouds had broken, or had been withdrawn like a
+veil from the October skies. One thought alone was his refuge;
+one face alone haunted him with its peace; one remembrance
+soothed him--Alice. Through all his scattered and purposeless
+arguments he strove to remember her voice, the loving-kindness
+of her eyes, her untroubled confidence.
+
+In the afternoon he got up and dressed himself. He could not
+bring himself to stand before the glass and deliberately shave.
+He even smiled at the thought of playing the barber to that lean
+chin. He dressed by the fireplace.
+
+'I couldn't rest,' he told Sheila, when she presently came in on
+one of her quiet, cautious, heedful visits; 'and one tires of
+reading even Quain in bed.'
+
+'Have you found anything?' she inquired politely.
+
+'Oh yes,' said Lawford wearily; 'I have discovered that
+infinitely worse things are infinitely commoner. But that there's
+nothing quite so picturesque.'
+
+'Tell me,' said Sheila, with refreshing naivete. 'How does it
+feel? does it even in the slightest degree affect your mind?'
+
+He turned his back and looked up at his broad gilt portrait for
+inspiration. 'Practically, not at all,' he said hollowly. 'Of
+course, one's nerves--that fellow Danton--when one's overtired.
+You have'--his voice, in spite of every effort, faintly
+quavered--'YOU haven't noticed anything? My mind?'
+
+'Me? Oh dear, no! I never was the least bit observant; you know
+that, Arthur. But apart from that, and I hope you will not think
+me unsympathetic--but don't you think we must sooner or later be
+thinking of what's to be done? At present, though I fully agree
+with Mr Bethany as to the wisdom of hushing this unhappy business
+up as long as possible, at least from the gossiping outside
+world, still we are only standing still. And your malady, dear,
+I suppose, isn't. You WILL help me, Arthur? You will try and
+think? Poor Alice!'
+
+'What about Alice?'
+
+'She mopes, dear, rather. She cannot, of course, quite understand
+why she must not see her father, and yet his not being, or, for
+the matter of that, even if he was, at death's door.'
+
+'At death's door,' murmured Lawford under his breath; 'who was it
+was saying that? Have you ever, Sheila, in a dream, or just as
+one's thoughts go sometimes, seen that door?...its ruinous stone
+lintel carved into lichenous stone heads...stonily silent in the
+last thin sunlight, hanging in peace unlatched. Heated, hunted,
+in agony--in that cold, green-clad shadowed porch is haven and
+sanctuary....But beyond--O God, beyond!'
+
+Sheila stood listening with startled eyes. 'And was all that in
+Quain?' she inquired rather flutteringly.
+
+Lawford turned a sidelong head, and looked steadily at his wife.
+
+She shook herself, with a slight shiver. 'Very well, then,' she
+said and paused in the silence.
+
+Her husband yawned, and smiled, and almost as if lit with that
+thin last sunshine seemed the smile that passed for an instant
+across the reverie of his shadowy face. He drew a hand wearily
+over his eyes. 'What has he been saying now?' he inquired like a
+fretful child.
+
+Sheila stood very quiet and still, as if in fear of scaring some
+rare, wild, timid creature by the least stir. 'Who?' she
+merely breathed.
+
+Lawford paused on the hearth-rug with his comb in his hand. 'It's
+just the last rags of that beastly influenza,' he said, and began
+vigorously combing his hair. And yet, simple and frank though the
+action was, it moved Sheila, perhaps, more than any other of the
+congested occurrences of the last few days. Her forehead grew
+suddenly cold, the palms of her hands began to ache, she had to
+hasten out of the room to avoid revealing the sheer physical
+repulsion she had experienced.
+
+But Lawford, quite unmindful of the shock, continued in a kind of
+heedless reverie to watch, as he combed, the still visionary
+thoughts that passed in tranced stillness before his eyes. He
+longed beyond measure for freedom that until yesterday he had not
+even dreamed existed outside the covers of some old impossible
+romance--the magic of the darkening sky, the invisible flocking
+presences of the dead, the shock of imaginations that had no
+words, of quixotic emotions which the stranger had stirred in
+that low, mocking, furtive talk beside the broken stones of the
+Huguenot. Was the 'change' quite so monstrous, so meaningless?
+How often, indeed, he remembered curiously had he seemed to
+be standing outside these fast-shut gates of thought, that now
+had been freely opened to him.
+
+He drew ajar the door, and leant his ear to listen. From far away
+came a rich, long-continued chuckle of laughter, followed by the
+clatter of a falling plate, and then, still more uncontrollable
+laughter. There was a faint smell of toast on the air. Lawford
+ventured out on to the landing and into a little room that had
+once, in years gone by, been Alice's nursery. He stood far back
+from the strip of open window that showed beneath the green
+blind, craning forward to see into the garden--the trees, their
+knotted trunks, and then, as he stole nearer, a flower-bed,
+late roses, geraniums, calceolarias, the lawn and--yes, three
+wicker chairs, a footstool, a work-basket, a little table on the
+smooth grass in the honey-coloured sunshine; and Sheila sitting
+there in the autumnal sunlight, her hands resting on the arms of
+her chair, her head bent, evidently deeply engrossed in her
+thoughts. He crept an inch or two forward, and stooped. There was
+a hat on the grass--Alice's big garden hat--and beside it lay
+Flitters, nose on paws, long ears sagging. He had forgotten
+Flitters. Had Flitters forgotten him? Would he bark at the
+strange, distasteful scent of a--Dr Ferguson? The coast was
+clear, then. He turned even softlier yet, to confront, rapt,
+still, and hovering betwixt astonishment and dread, the blue calm
+eyes of his daughter, looking in at the door. It seemed to
+Lawford as if they had both been suddenly swept by some unseen
+power into a still, unearthly silence.
+
+'We thought,' he began at last, 'we thought just to beckon Mrs
+Lawford from the window. He--he is asleep.'
+
+Alice nodded. Her whole face was in a moment flooded with red. It
+ebbed and left her pale. 'I will go down and tell mother you want
+to see her. It was very silly of me. I did not quite recognise at
+first...I suppose, thinking of my father--' The words faltered,
+and the eyes were lifted to his face again with a desolate,
+incredulous appeal. Lawford turned away heartsick and trembling.
+
+'Certainly, certainly, by no means,' he began, listening vaguely
+to the glib patter that seemed to come from another mouth. 'Your
+father, my dear young lady, I venture to think is now really on
+the road to recovery. Dr Simon makes excellent progress. But, of
+course--two heads, we know, are so much better than one when
+there's the least--the least difficulty. The great thing is
+quiet, rest, isolation, no possibility of a shock, else--' His
+voice fell away, his eloquence failed.
+
+For Alice stood gazing stirlessly on and on into this infinitely
+strange, infinitely familiar shadowy, phantasmal face. 'Oh yes,'
+she replied, 'I quite understand, of course; but if I might just
+peep even, it would--I should be so much, much happier. Do let me
+just see him, Dr Ferguson, if only his head on the pillow! I
+wouldn't even breathe. Couldn't it possibly help--even a
+faith-cure?' She leant forward impulsively, her voice trembling,
+anal her eyes still shining beneath their faint, melancholy
+smile.
+
+'I fear, my dear...it cannot be. He longs to see you. But with
+his mind, you know, in this state, it might--?'
+
+'But mother never told me,' broke in the girl desperately, 'there
+was anything wrong with his MIND. Oh, but that was quite unfair.
+You don't mean, you don't mean--that--?'
+
+Lawford scanned swiftly the little square beloved and memoried
+room that fate had suddenly converted for him into a cage of
+unspeakable pain and longing. 'Oh no; believe me, no! Not his
+brain, not that, not even wandering; really: but always thinking,
+always longing on and on for you, dear, only. Quite, quite master
+of himself, but--'
+
+'You talk,' she broke in again angrily, 'only in pretence! You
+are treating me like a child; and so does mother, and so it
+has been ever since I came home. Why, if mother can, and you can,
+why may not I? Why, if he can walk and talk in the night....'
+
+'But who--who "can walk and talk in the night?"' inquired a low
+stealthy voice out of the quietness behind her.
+
+Alice turned swiftly. Her mother was standing at a little
+distance, with all the calm and moveless concentration of a
+waxwork figure, looking up at her from the staircase.
+
+'I was--I was talking to Dr Ferguson, mother.'
+
+'But as I came up the stairs I understood you to be inquiring
+something of Dr Ferguson, "if," you were saying, "he can
+walk and talk in the night": you surely were not referring to
+your father, child? That could not possibly be, in his state.
+Dr Ferguson, I know, will bear me out in that at least. And
+besides, I really must insist on following out medical
+directions to the letter. Dr Ferguson I know, will fully concur.
+Do, pray, Dr Ferguson,' continued Sheila, raising her voice even
+now scarcely above a rapid murmur--'do pray assure my daughter
+that she must have patience; that however much even he himself
+may desire it, it is impossible that she should see her father
+yet. And now, my dear child, come down, I want to have a moment's
+talk with Dr Ferguson. I feared from his beckoning at the window
+that something was amiss.'
+
+Alice turned, dismayed, and looked steadily, almost with
+hostility, at the stranger, so curiously transfixed and isolated
+in her small old play-room. And in this scornful yet pleading
+confrontation her eye fell suddenly on the pin in his scarf--the
+claw and the pearl she had known all her life. From that her gaze
+flitted, like some wild demented thing's, over face, hair, hands,
+clothes, attitude, expression, and her heart stood still in
+an awful, inarticulate dread of the unknown. She turned slowly
+towards her mother, groped forward a few steps, turned once more,
+stretching out her hands towards the vague still figure whose
+eyes had called so piteously to her out of their depths, and fell
+fainting in the doorway. Lawford stood motionless, vacantly
+watching Sheila, who knelt, chafing the cold hands. 'She has
+fainted?' he said; 'oh, Sheila, tell me--only fainted?'
+
+Sheila made no answer; did not even raise her eyes.
+
+'Some day, Sheila' he began in a dull voice, and broke off, and
+without another word, without even another glance at the still
+face and blue, twitching lids, he passed her rapidly by, and in
+another instant Sheila heard the house-door shut. She got up
+quickly, and after a glance into the vacant bedroom turned the
+key; then she hastened upstairs for sal volatile and eau de
+cologne....
+
+It was yet clear daylight when Lawford appeared beneath the
+portico of his house. With a glance of circumspection that
+almost seemed to suggest a fear of pursuit, he descended the
+steps, only to be made aware in so doing that Ada was with a kind
+of furtive eagerness pointing out the mysterious Dr Ferguson to a
+steadily gazing cook. One or two well-known and many a
+well-remembered face he encountered in the thin stream of City men
+treading blackly along the pavement. It was a still, high evening,
+and something very like a forlorn compassion rose in his mind at
+sight of their grave, rather pretentious, rather dull, respectable
+faces.
+
+He found himself walking with an affectation of effrontery, and
+smiling with a faint contempt on all alike, as if to keep himself
+from slinking, and the wolf out of his eyes. He felt restless,
+and watchful, and suspicious, as if he had suddenly come down in
+the world. His, then, was a disguise as effectual as a shabby
+coat and a glazing eye. His heart sickened. Was it even worth
+while living on a crust of social respectability so thin and so
+exquisitely treacherous? He challenged no one. One or two actual
+acquaintances raised and lowered a faintly inquiring eyebrow in
+his direction. One even recalled in his confusion a smile of
+recognition just a moment too late. There was, it seemed, a
+peculiar aura in Lawford's presence, a shadow of a something in
+his demeanour that proved him alien.
+
+None the less green Widderstone kept calling him, much as a bell
+in the imagination tolls on and on, the echo of reality. If the
+worst should come to the worst, why--there is pasture in the
+solitary by-ways for the beast that strays. He quickened his pace
+along lonelier streets, and soon strode freely through the little
+flagged and cobbled village of shops, past the same small jutting
+window whose clock had told him the hour on that first dark
+hurried night. All was pale and faint with dying colours now; and
+decay was in the leaf, and the last swallows filled the gold air
+with their clashing stillness. No one heeded him here. He looked
+from side to side, exulting in the strangeness. Shops were left
+behind, the last milestone passed, and in a little while he was
+descending the hill beneath the elm boughs, which he remembered
+had stood like a turreted wall against the sunset when first he
+had wandered down into the churchyard.
+
+At the foot of the hill he passed by the green and white Rectory,
+and there was the parson, a short fat, pursy man with wrists
+protruding from his jacket sleeves as he stood on tip-toe tying
+up a rambling rose-shoot on his trim cedared lawn. The next house
+barely showed its old red chimney-tops, above its bowers; the
+next was empty, with windows vacantly gazing, its paths peopled
+with great bearded weeds that stood mutely watching and guarding
+the seldom-opened gate. Then came more lofty grandmotherly elms,
+a dense hedge of every leaf that pricks, and then Lawford found
+himself standing at the small canopied gate of the queer old
+wooden house that the stranger of his talk had in part described.
+
+It stood square and high and dark in a small amphitheatre of
+verdure. Roses here and there sprang from the grass, and a
+narrow box-edged path led to a small door in a low green-mantled
+wing, with its one square window above the porch. And while, with
+vacant mind, Lawford stood waiting, as one stands forebodingly
+upon the eve of a new experience he heard as if at a distance the
+sound of falling water. He still paused on the country roadside,
+scrutinising this strange, still, wooden presence; but at last
+with an effort he pushed open the gate, followed the winding
+path, and pulled the old iron hanging bell. There came presently
+a quiet tread, and Herbert himself opened the door which led into
+a little square wood-panelled hall, hung with queer old prints
+and obscure portraits in dark frames.
+
+'Ah, yes, come in, Mr Lawford,' he drawled; 'I was beginning to
+be afraid you were not coming.'
+
+Lawford laid hat and walking-stick on an oak bench, and followed
+his churchyard companion up a slightly inclined corridor and a
+staircase into a high room, covered far up the yellowish walls
+with old books on shelves and in cases, between which hung in
+little black frames, mezzo tints, etchings, and antiquated maps.
+A large table stood a few paces from the deep alcove of the
+window, which was surrounded by a low, faded, green seat, and was
+screened from the sunshine by wooden shutters. And here the
+tranquil surge of falling water shook incessantly on the air, for
+the three lower casements stood open to the fading sunset. On a
+smaller table were spread cups, old earthenware dishes of
+fruit, and a big bowl of damask roses.
+
+'Please sit down; I shan't be a moment; I am not sure that my
+sister is in; but if so, I will tell her we are ready for tea.'
+Left to himself in this quiet, strange old room, Lawford forgot
+for a while everything else, he was for the moment so
+taken up with his surroundings.
+
+What seized on his fancy and strangely affected his mind was this
+incessant changing roar of falling water. It must be the Widder,
+he said to himself, flowing close to the walls. But not until he
+had had the boldness to lean head and shoulders out of the
+nearest window did he fully realize how close indeed the Widder
+was. It came sweeping dark and deep and begreened and full with
+the early autumnal rains, actually against the lower walls of the
+house itself, and in the middle suddenly swerved in a black,
+smooth arch, and tumbled headlong into a great pool, nodding with
+tall slender water-weeds, and charged in its bubbled blackness
+here and there with the last crimson of the setting sun. To the
+left of the house, where the waters floated free again, stood
+vast, still trees above the clustering rushes; and in glimpses
+between their spreading boughs lay the far-stretching
+countryside, now dimmed with the first mists of approaching
+evening. So absorbed he became as he stood leaning over the
+wooden sill above the falling water, that eye and ear became
+enslaved by the roar and stillness. And in the faint atmosphere
+of age that seemed like a veil to hang about the odd old house
+and these prodigious branches, he fell into a kind of waking
+dream.
+
+When at last he did draw back into the room it was perceptibly
+darker, and a thin keen shaft of recollection struck across his
+mind--the recollection of what he was, and of how he came to be
+there, his reasons for coming and of that dark indefinable
+presence which like a raven had begun to build its dwelling in
+his mind. He sat on, his eyes restlessly wandering, his face
+leaning on his hands; and in a while the door opened and Herbert
+returned, carrying an old crimson and green teapot and a dish of
+hot cakes.
+
+'They're all out,' he said; 'sister, Sallie, and boy; but these
+were in the oven, so we won't wait. I hope you haven't been
+very much bored.'
+
+Lawford dropped his hands from his face and smiled. 'I have been
+looking at the water,' he said.
+
+'My sister's favorite occupation; she sits for hours and hours,
+with not even a book for an apology, staring down into the black
+old roaring pot. It has a sort of hypnotic effect after a time.
+And you'd be surprised how quickly one gets used to the noise. To
+me it's even less distracting than sheer silence. You don't know,
+after all, what on earth sheer silence means--even at
+Widderstone. But one can just realize a water-nymph. They chatter;
+but, thank Heaven, it's not articulate.' He handed Lawford a cup
+with a certain niceness and self-consciousness, lifting his
+eyebrows slightly as he turned.
+
+Lawford found himself listening out of a peculiar stillness of
+mind to the voice of this suave and rather inscrutable
+acquaintance. 'The curious thing is, do you know,' he began
+rather nervously,  'that though I must have passed your gate at
+least twice in the last few months, I have never noticed it
+before, never even caught the sound of the water.'
+
+'No, that's the best of it; nobody ever does. We are just buried
+alive. We have lived here for years, and scarcely know a soul--
+not even our own, perhaps. Why on earth should one? Acquaintances,
+after all, are little else than a bad habit.'
+
+'But then, what about me?' said Lawford.
+
+'But that's just it,' said Herbert. 'I said ACQUAINTANCES; that's
+just exactly what I'm going to prove--what very old friends
+we are. You've no idea! It really is rather queer.' He took up
+his cup and sauntered over to the window.
+
+Lawford eyed him vacantly for a moment, and, following rather his
+own curious thoughts than seeking any light on this somewhat
+vague explanation, again broke the silence. 'It's odd, I suppose,
+but this house affects me much in the same way as Widderstone
+does. I'm not particularly fanciful--at least, I used not to be.
+But sitting here I seem, I hope it isn't a  very frantic remark,
+it seems as though, if only my ears would let me, I should hear--
+well, voices. It's just what you said about the silence. I
+suppose it's the age of the place; it IS very old?'
+
+'Pretty old, I suppose; it's worm-eaten and rat-eaten and tindery
+enough in all conscience; and the damp doesn't exactly
+foster it. It's a queer old shanty. There are two or three
+accounts of it in some old local stuff I have. And of course
+there's a ghost.'
+
+'A ghost?' echoed Lawford, looking up.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE
+
+What's in a name?' laughed Herbert. 'But it really is a queer
+show-up of human oddity. A fellow comes in here, searching;
+that's all.' His back was turned, as he stood staring absently
+out, sipping his tea between his sentences. 'He comes in--oh,
+it's a positive fact, for I've seen him myself, just sitting back
+in my chair here, you know, watching him as one would a tramp in
+one's orchard.' He cast a candid glance over his shoulder. 'First
+he looks round, like a prying servant. Then he comes cautiously
+on--a kind of grizzled, fawn-coloured face, middle-size, with big
+hands; and then just like some quiet, groping, nocturnal
+creature, he begins his precious search--shelves, drawers that
+are not here, cupboards gone years ago, questing and nosing no
+end, and quite methodically too, until he reaches the window.
+Then he stops, looks back, narrows his foxy lids, listens--quite
+perceptibly, you know, a kind of gingerish blur; then he seems to
+open this corner bookcase here, as if it were a door and goes out
+along what I suppose might at some time have been an outside
+gallery or balcony, unless, as I rather fancy, the house extended
+once beyond these windows. Anyhow, out he goes quite deliberately,
+treading the air as lightly as Botticelli's angels, until, however
+far you lean out of the window, you can't follow him any further.
+And then--and this is the bit that takes one's fancy--when you
+have contentedly noddled down again to whatever you may have been
+doing when the wretch appeared, or are sitting in a cold sweat,
+with bolting eyes awaiting developments, just according to your
+school of thought, or of nerves, the creature comes back--comes
+back; and with what looks uncommonly like a lighted candle in his
+hand. That really is a thrill, I assure you.'
+
+'But you've seen this--you've really seen this yourself?'
+
+'Oh yes, twice,' replied Herbert cheerfully. 'And my sister,
+quite by haphazard, once saw him from the garden. She was
+shelling peas one evening for Sallie, and she distinctly saw him
+shamble out of the window here, and go shuffling along, mid-air,
+across the roaring washpot down below, turn sharp round the high
+corner of the house, sheer against the stars, in a kind of
+frightened hurry. And then, after five minutes' concentrated
+watching over the shucks, she saw him come shuffling back again--
+the same distraction, the same nebulous snuff colour, and a
+candle trailing its smoke behind him as he whisked in home.'
+
+'And then?'
+
+'Ah, then,' said Herbert, lagging along the bookshelves, and
+scanning the book-backs with eyes partially closed: he turned
+with lifted teapot, and refilled his visitor's cup; 'then,
+wherever you are--I mean,' he added, cutting up a little cake
+into six neat slices, 'wherever the chance inmate of the room
+happens to be, he comes straight for you, at a quite alarming
+velocity, and fades, vanishes, melts, or, as it were, silts
+inside.'
+
+Lawford listened in a curious hush that had suddenly fallen over
+his mind. '"Fades inside? silts?"--I'm awfully stupid, but what on
+earth do you mean?' The room had slowly emptied itself of daylight;
+its own darkness, it seemed, had met that of the narrowing night,
+and Herbert deliberately lit a cigarette before replying. His clear
+pale face, with its smooth outline and thin mouth and rather long
+dark eyes, turned with a kind of serene good-humour towards his
+questioner.
+
+'Why,' he said, 'I mean frankly just that. Besides, it's Grisel's
+own phrase; and an old nurse we used to have said much the same.
+He comes, or IT comes towards you, first just walking, then with
+a kind of gradually accelerated slide or glide, and sweeps
+straight into you,' he tapped his chest, 'me, whoever it may be
+is here. In a kind of panic, I suppose, to hide, or perhaps
+simply to get back again.'
+
+'Get back where?'
+
+'Be resumed, as it were, via you. You see, I suppose he is
+compelled to regain his circle, or Purgatory, or Styx, whatever
+you like to call it, via consciousness. No one present, then no
+revenant or spook, or astral body, or hallucination: what's in a
+name? And of course even an hallucination is mind-stuff, and on
+its own, as it were. What I mean is that the poor devil must have
+some kind of human personality to get back through in order to
+make his exit from our sphere of consciousness into his. And
+naturally, of course to make his entrance too. If like a tenuous
+smoke he can get in, the probability is that he gets out in
+precisely the same fashion. For really, if you weren't
+consciously expecting the customary impact (you actually jerk
+forward in the act of resistance unresisted), you would not
+notice his going. I am afraid I must be horribly boring you with
+all these tangled theories. All I mean is, that if you were
+really absorbed in what you happened to be doing at the time, the
+thing might come and go, with your mind for entrance and exit, as
+it were, without your being conscious of it at all.' There was a
+longish pause, in which Herbert slowly inhaled and softly breathed
+out his smoke.
+
+'And what--what is the poor wretch searching FOR? And what--why,
+what becomes of him when he does go?'
+
+'Ah, there you have me! One merely surmises just as one's
+temperament or convictions lean. Grisel says it's some poor
+derelict soul in search of peace--that the poor beggar wants
+finally to die, in fact, and can't. Sallie smells crime. After
+all, what is every man?' he talked on; 'a horde of ghosts--like a
+Chinese nest of boxes--oaks that were acorns that were oaks.
+Death lies behind us, not in front--in our ancestors, back and
+back, until--'
+
+'"Until?"' Lawford managed to remark.
+
+'Ah, that settles me again. Don't they call it an amoeba? But
+really I am abjectly ignorant of all that kind of stuff. We
+are ALL we are, and all in a sense we care to dream we are. And
+for that matter, anything outlandish, bizarre, is a godsend
+in this rather stodgy life. It is after all just what the old boy
+said--it's only the impossible that's credible; whatever
+credible may mean....'
+
+It seemed to Lawford as if the last remark had wafted him bodily
+into the presence of his kind, blinking, intensely anxious old
+friend, Mr Bethany. And what leagues asunder the two men were who
+had happened on much the same words to express their convictions.
+
+He drew his hand gropingly over his face, half rose, and again
+seated himself. 'Whatever it may be,' he said, 'the whole thing
+reminds me, you know--it is in a way so curiously like my own--my
+own case.'
+
+Herbert sat on, a little drawn up in his chair, quietly smoking.
+The crash of the falling water, after seeming to increase in
+volume with the fading of evening, had again died down in the
+darkness to a low multitudinous tumult as of countless
+inarticulate, echoing voices.
+
+'"Bizarre," you said; God knows I am.' But Herbert still remained
+obdurately silent. 'You remember, perhaps,' Lawford faintly began
+again, 'our talk the other night?'
+
+'Oh, rather,' replied the cordial voice out of the dusk.
+
+'I suppose you thought I was insane?'
+
+'Insane!' There was a genuinely amused astonishment in the echo.
+'You were lucidity itself. Besides--well, honestly, if I may
+venture, I don't put very much truck in what one calls one's
+sanity: except, of course, as a bond of respectability and a
+means of livelihood.'
+
+'But did you realise in the least from what I said how I really
+stand? That I went down into that old shadowy hollow one man, and
+came back--well--this?'
+
+'I gathered vaguely something like that. I thought at first it
+was merely an affectation--that what you said was an
+affectation, I mean--until--well, to be frank, it was the "this"
+that so immensely interested me. Especially,' he added almost
+with a touch of gaiety, 'especially the last glimpse. But if it's
+really not a forbidden question, what precisely was the other?
+What precise manner of man, I mean, came down into Widderstone?'
+
+'It is my face that is changed, Mr Herbert. If you'll try to
+understand me--my FACE. What you see now is not what I really
+am, not what I was. Oh, it is all quite different. I know
+perfectly well how absurd it must sound. And you won't press me
+further. But that's the truth: that's what they have done for
+me.'
+
+It seemed to Lawford as if a remote tiny shout of laughter had
+been suddenly caught back in the silence that had followed this
+confession. He peered in vain in the direction of his companion.
+Even his cigarette revealed no sign of him. 'I know, I know,' he
+went gropingly on; 'I felt it would sound to you like nothing but
+frantic incredible nonsense. YOU can't see it. YOU can't feel it.
+YOU can't hear these hooting voices. It's no use at all blinking
+the fact; I am simply on the verge, if not over it, of insanity.'
+
+'As to that, Mr Lawford,' came the still voice out of the
+darkness; 'the very fact of your being able to say so seems to
+me all but proof positive that you're not. Insanity is on another
+plane, isn't it? in which one can't compare one's states.
+As for what you say being credible, take our precious noodle of a
+spook here! Ninety-nine hundredths of this amiable world of ours
+would have guffawed the poor creature into imperceptibility ages
+ago. To such poor credulous creatures as my sister and I he is no
+more and no less a fact, a personality, an amusing reality than--
+well, this teacup. Here we are, amazing mysteries both of us in
+any case; and all round us are scores of books, dealing just with
+life, pure, candid, and unexpurgated; and there's not a single
+one among them but reads like a taradiddle. Yet grope between the
+lines of any autobiography, it's pretty clear what one has got--a
+feeble, timid, creeping attempt to describe the indescribable. As
+for what you say your case is, the bizarre--that kind very seldom
+gets into print at all. In all our make-believe, all our pretence,
+how, honestly, could it? But there, this is immaterial. The real
+question is, may I, can I help? What I gather is this: You just
+trundled down into Widderstone all among the dead men, and--but one
+moment, I'll light up.'
+
+A light flickered up in the dark. Shading it in his hand from the
+night air straying through the open window, Herbert lit the two candles that
+stood upon the little chimneypiece behind Lawford's
+head. Then sauntering over to the window again, almost as if with
+an affectation of nonchalance, he drew one of the shutters, and
+sat down. 'Nothing much struck me,' he went on, leaning back on
+his hands, 'I mean on Sunday evening, until you said good-bye. It
+was then that I caught in the moon a distinct glimpse of your
+face.'
+
+'This,' said Lawford, with a sudden horrible sinking of the
+heart.
+
+Herbert nodded. 'The fact is, I have a print of it,' he said.
+
+'A print of it?'
+
+'A miserable little dingy engraving.'
+
+'Of this?' Herbert nodded, with eyes fixed. 'Where?'
+
+'That's the nuisance. I searched high and low for it the instant
+I got home. For the moment it has been mislaid; but it must be
+somewhere in the house and it will turn up all in good time. It's
+the frontispiece of one of a queer old hotchpotch of pamphlets,
+sewn up together by some amateur enthusiast in a marbled paper
+cover--confessions, travels, trials and so on. All eighteenth
+century, and all in French.'
+
+'And mine?' said Lawford, gazing stonily across the candlelight.
+
+Herbert, from a head slightly stooping, gazed back in an almost
+birdlike fashion across the room at his visitor.
+
+'Sabathier's,' he said.
+
+'Sabathier's!'
+
+'A really curious resemblance. Of course, I am speaking only from
+memory; and perhaps it's not quite so vivid in this light; but
+still astonishingly clear.'
+
+Lawford sat drawn up, staring at his companion's face in an
+intense and helpless silence. His mouth opened but no words came.
+
+'Of course,' began Herbert again, 'I don't say there's anything
+in it--except the--the mere coincidence,' he paused and
+glanced out of the open casement beside him. 'But there's just
+one obvious question. Do you happen to know of any strain of
+French blood in your family?'
+
+Lawford shut his eyes, even memory seemed to be forsaking him at
+last. 'No,' he said, after a long pause, 'there's a little
+Dutch, I think, on my mother's side, but no French.'
+
+'No Sabathier, then?' said Herbert, smiling. 'And then there's
+another question--this change; is it really as complete as
+you suppose? Has it--please just warn me off if I am in the least
+intruding--has it been noticed?'
+
+Lawford hesitated. 'Oh, yes,' he said slowly, 'it has been
+noticed--my wife, a few friends.'
+
+'Do you mind this infernal clatter?' said Herbert, laying his
+fingers on the open casement.
+
+'No, no. And you think?'
+
+'My dear fellow, I don't think anything. It's all the craziest
+conjecture. Stranger things even than this have happened. There
+are dozens here--in print. What are we human beings after all?
+Clay in the hands of the potter. Our bodies are merely an
+inheritance, packed tight and corded up. We have practically no
+control over their main functions. We can't even replace a little
+finger-nail. And look at the faces of us--what atrocious
+mockeries most of them are of any kind of image! But we know our
+bodies change--age, sickness, thought, passion, fatality. It
+proves they are amazingly plastic. And merely even as a theory it
+is not in the least untenable that by force of some violent
+convulsive effort from outside one's body might change. It
+answers with odd voluntariness to friend or foe, smile or snarl.
+As for what we call the laws of Nature, they are pure assumptions
+to-day, and may be nothing better than scrap-iron tomorrow. Good
+Heavens, Lawford, consider man's abysmal impudence.' He smoked on
+in silence for a moment. 'You say you fell asleep down there?'
+
+Lawford nodded. Herbert tapped his cigarette on the sill. 'Just
+following up our ludicrous conjecture, you know,' he remarked
+musingly, 'it wasn't such a bad opportunity for the poor chap.'
+
+'But surely,' said Lawford, speaking as it were out of a dream of
+candle-light and reverberating sound and clearest darkness,
+towards this strange deliberate phantom with the unruffled
+clear-cut features--'surely then, in that case, he is here now?
+And yet, on my word of honour, though every friend I ever had in
+the world should deny it, I am the same. Memory stretches back
+clear and sound to my childhood. I can see myself with
+extraordinary lucidity, how I think, my motives and all that; and
+in spite of these voices that I seem to hear, and this peculiar
+kind of longing to break away, as it were, just to press on--it
+is I,--I myself, that am speaking to you now out of this--this
+mask.'
+
+Herbert glanced reflectively at his companion. 'You mustn't let
+me tire you,' he said; 'but even on our theory it would not
+necessarily follow that you yourself would be much affected. It's
+true this fellow Sabathier really was something of a personality.
+He had a rather unusual itch for life, for trying on and on to
+squeeze something out of experience that isn't there; and he
+seemed never to weary of a magnificent attempt to find in his
+fellow-creatures, especially in the women he met, what even--if
+they have it--they cannot give. The little book I wanted to show
+you is partly autobiographical and really does manage to set the
+fellow on his feet. Even there he does absolutely take one's
+imagination. I shall never forget the thrill of picking him up in
+the Charing Cross Road. You see, I had known the queer old
+tombstone for years. He's enormously vivid--quite beyond my
+feebleness to describe, with a kind of French verve and rapture.
+Unluckily we can't get nearer than two years to his death. I
+shouldn't mind guessing some last devastating dream swept over
+him, held him the breath of an instant too long beneath the wave,
+and he caved in. We know he killed himself; and perhaps lived to
+regret it ever after.
+
+'After all, what is this precious dying we talk so much about?'
+Herbert continued after a while, his eyes restlessly wandering
+from shelf to shelf. 'You remember our talk in the churchyard? We
+all know that the body fades quick enough when its occupant is
+gone. Supposing even in the sleep of the living it lies very
+feebly guarded. And supposing in that state some infernally
+potent thing outside it, wandering disembodied, just happens on
+it--like some hungry sexton beetle on the carcase of a mouse.
+Supposing--I know it's the most outrageous theorising--but
+supposing all these years of sun and dark, Sabathier's emanation,
+or whatever you like to call it, horribly restless, by some
+fatality longing on and on just for life, or even for the face,
+the voice, of some "impossible she" whom he couldn't get in this
+muddled world, simply loathing all else; supposing he has been
+lingering in ambush down beside those poor old dusty bones that
+had poured out for him such marrowy hospitality--oh, I know it;
+the dead do. And then, by a chance, one quiet autumn evening, a
+veritable godsend of a little Miss Muffet comes wandering down
+under the shade of his immortal cypresses, half asleep, fagged
+out, depressed in mind and body, perhaps: imagine yourself in his
+place, and he in yours!' Herbert stood up in his eagerness, his
+sleek hair shining. 'The one clinching chance of a century!
+Wouldn't you have made a fight for it? Wouldn't you have risked
+the raid? I can just conceive it--the amazing struggle in that
+darkness within a darkness; like some dazed alien bee bursting
+through the sentinels of a hive; one mad impetuous clutch at
+victory; then the appalling stirring on the other side; the
+groping back to a house dismantled, rearranged, not, mind you,
+disorganised or disintegrated....' He broke off with a smile,
+as if of apology for his long, fantastic harangue.
+
+Lawford sat listening, his eyes fixed on Herbert's colourless
+face. There was not a sound else, it seemed, than that slightly
+drawling scrupulous voice poking its way amid a maze of enticing,
+baffling thoughts. Herbert turned away with a shrug. 'It's
+tempting stuff,' he said, choosing another cigarette. 'But
+anyhow, the poor beggar failed.'
+
+'Failed?'
+
+'Why, surely; if he had succeeded I should not now be talking to
+a mere imperfect simulacrum, to the outward illusion of a passing
+likeness to the man, but to Sabathier himself!' His eyes moved
+slowly round and dwelt for a moment with a dark, quiet scrutiny
+on his visitor.
+
+'You say a passing likeness; do you MEAN that?'
+
+Herbert smiled indulgently. 'If one CAN mean what is purely a
+speculation. I am only trying to look at the thing
+dispassionately, you see. We are so much the slaves of mere
+repetition. Here is life--yours and mine--a kind of plenum in
+vacuo. It is only when we begin to play the eavesdropper; when
+something goes askew; when one of the sentries on the frontier of
+the unexpected shouts a hoarse "Qui vive?"--it is only then we
+begin to question; to prick our aldermen and pinch the calves of
+our kings. Why, who is there can answer to anybody's but his own
+satisfaction just that one fundamental question--Are we the
+prisoners, the slaves, the inheritors, the creatures, or the
+creators of our bodies? Fallen angels or horrific dust? As for
+identity or likeness or personality, we have only our neighbours'
+nod for them, and just a fading memory. No, the old fairy tales
+knew better; and witchcraft's witchcraft to the end of the
+chapter. Honestly, and just of course on that one theory,
+Lawford, I can't help thinking that Sabathier's raid only just so
+far succeeded as to leave his impression in the wax. It doesn't,
+of course, follow that it will necessarily end there. It might--
+it may be even now just gradually fading away. It may, you know,
+need driving out--with whips and scorpions. It might, perhaps,
+work in.'
+
+Lawford sat cold and still. 'It's no good, no good,' he said, 'I
+don't understand; I can't follow you. I was always stupid, always
+bigoted and cocksure. These things have never seemed anything but
+old women's tales to me. And now I must pay for it. And this
+Nicholas Sabathier; you say he was a blackguard?'
+
+'Well,' said Herbert with a faint smile, 'that depends on your
+definition of the word. He wasn't a flunkey, a fool, or a prig,
+if that's what you mean. He wasn't perhaps on Mrs Grundy's
+visiting list. He wasn't exactly gregarious. And yet in a sense
+that kind of temperament is so rare that Sappho, Nelson, and
+Shelley shared it. To the stodgy, suety world of course it's
+little else than sheer moonshine, midsummer madness. Naturally,
+in its own charming and stodgy way the world kept flickering cold
+water in his direction. Naturally it hissed.... I shall find the
+book. You shall have the book; oh yes.'
+
+'There's only one more question,' said Lawford in a dull, slow
+voice, stooping and covering his face with his hands. 'I know
+it's impossible for you to realise--but to me time seems like
+that water there, to be heaping up about me. I wait, just as one
+waits when the conductor of an orchestra lifts his hand and in a
+moment the whole surge of brass and wood, cymbal and drum will
+crash out--and sweep me under. I can't tell you Herbert, how it
+all is, with just these groping stirrings of that mole in my
+mind's dark. You say it may be this face, working in! God knows.
+I find it easy to speak to you--this cold, clear sense, you know.
+The others feel too much, or are afraid, or-- Let me think--yes,
+I was going to ask you a question. But no one can answer it.' He
+peered darkly, with white face suddenly revealed between his
+hands. 'What remains now? Where do I come in? What is there left
+for ME to do?'
+
+And at that moment there sounded, even above the monotonous roar
+of the water beyond the window--there fell the sound of a light
+footfall approaching along the corridor.
+
+'Listen,' said Herbert; 'here's my sister coming; we'll ask her.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTEEN
+
+The door opened. Lawford rose, and into the further rays of the
+candlelight entered a rather slim figure in a light summer gown.
+
+'Just home?' said Herbert.
+
+'We've been for a walk--'
+
+'My sister always forgets everything,' said Herbert, turning to
+Lawford; 'even tea-time. This is Mr Lawford, Grisel. We've been
+arguing no end. And we want you to give a decision. It's just
+this: Supposing if by some impossible trick you had come in now,
+not the charming familiar sister you are, but shorter, fatter,
+fair and round-faced, quite different, physically, you know--what
+would you do?'
+
+'What nonsense you talk, Herbert!'
+
+'Yes, but supposing: a complete transmogrification--by some
+unimaginable ingression or enchantment, by nibbling a bunch of
+roses, or whatever you like to call it?'
+
+'Only physically?'
+
+'Well, yes, actually; but potentially, why--that's another
+matter.'
+
+The dark eyes passed slowly from her brother's face and rested
+gravely on their visitor's.
+
+'Is he making fun of me?'
+
+Lawford almost imperceptibly shook his head.
+
+'But what a question! And I've had no tea.' She drew her gloves
+slowly through her hand. 'The thing, of course, isn't possible, I
+know. But shouldn't I go mad, don't you think?'
+
+Lawford gazed quietly back into the clear, grave, deliberate
+eyes. 'Suppose, suppose, just for the sake of argument--NOT,' he
+suggested.
+
+She turned her head and reflected, glancing from one to the other
+of the pure, steady candle-flames.
+
+'And what was your answer?' she said, looking over her shoulder
+at her brother.
+
+'My dear child, you know what my answers are like!'
+
+'And yours?'
+
+Lawford took a deep breath, gazing mutely, forlornly, into the
+lovely untroubled peace of her eyes, and without the least
+warning tears swept up into his own. With an immense effort he
+turned, and choking back every sound, beating hack every thought,
+groped his way towards the square black darkness of the open
+door.
+
+'I must think, I must think,' he managed to whisper, lifting his
+hand and steadying himself. He caught over his shoulder the
+glimpse of a curiously distorted vision, a lifted candle, and a
+still face gazing after him with infinitely grieved eyes, then
+found himself groping and stumbling down the steep, uneven
+staircase into the darkness of the queer old wooden and hushed
+and lonely house. The night air cold on his face calmed his mind.
+He turned and held out his hand.
+
+'You'll come again?' Herbert was saying, with a hint of anxiety,
+even of apology in his voice.
+
+Lawford nodded, with eyes fixed blankly on the candle, and
+turning once more, made his way slowly down the narrow
+green-bordered path upon which the stars rained a scattered light
+so feeble it seemed but as a haze that blurred the darkness. He
+pushed open the little white wicket and turned his face towards
+the soundless, leaf-crowned hill. He had advanced hardly a score
+of steps in the thick dust when almost as if its very silence had
+struck upon his ear he remembered the black broken grave with its
+sightless heads that lay beyond the leaves. And fear, vast and
+menacing, fear such as only children know, broke like a sea of
+darkness on his heart. He stopped dead--cold, helpless, trembling.
+And, in the silence he heard a faint cry behind him and light
+footsteps pursuing him. He turned again. In the thick close gloom
+beneath the enormous elm-boughs the grey eyes shone clearly
+visible in the face upturned to him. 'My brother,' she began
+breathlessly--'the little French book. It was I who--who mislaid
+it.'
+
+The set, stricken face listened unmoved.
+
+'You are ill. Come back! I am afraid you are very ill.'
+
+'It's not that, not that,' Lawford muttered; 'don't leave me; I
+am alone. Don't question me,' he said strangely, looking down
+into her face, clutching her hand; 'only understand that I can't,
+I can't go on.' He swept a lean arm towards the unseen
+churchyard. 'I am afraid.'
+
+The cold hand clasped his closer. 'Hush, don't speak! Come back;
+come back. I am with you, a friend, you see; come back.'
+
+Lawford clutched her hand as a blind man in sudden peril might
+clutch the hand of a child. He saw nothing clearly; spoke almost
+without understanding his words.
+
+'Oh, but it's MUST,' he said; 'I MUST go on. You see--why,
+everything depends on struggling through: the future! But if you
+only knew-- There!' Again his arm swept out, and the lean
+terrified face turned shuddering from the dark.
+
+'I do know; believe me, believe me! I can guess. See, I am coming
+with you; we will go together. As if, as if I did not know what
+it is to be afraid. Oh, believe me; no one is near; we go on; and
+see! it gradually, gradually lightens. How thankful I am I came.'
+
+She had turned and they were steadily ascending as if pushing
+their way, battling on through some obstacle of the mind rather
+than of the senses beneath the star-powdered callous vault of
+night. And it seemed to Lawford as if, as they pressed on
+together, some obscure detestable presence as slowly, as doggedly
+had drawn worsted aside. He could see again the peaceful
+outspread branches of the trees, the lych-gate standing in
+clear-cut silhouette against the liquid dusk of the sky. A
+strange calm stole over his mind. The very meaning and memory of
+his fear faded out and vanished, as the passed-away clouds of a
+storm that leave a purer, serener sky.
+
+They stopped and stood together on the brow of the little hill,
+and Lawford, still trembling from head to foot, looked back
+across the hushed and lightless countryside. 'It's all gone now,'
+he said wearily, 'and now there's nothing left. You see, I cannot
+even ask your forgiveness--and a stranger!'
+
+'Please don't say that--unless--unless--a "pilgrim" too. I think,
+surely, you must own we did have the best of it that time. Yes--
+and I don't care WHO may be listening--but we DID win through.'
+
+'What can I say? How shall I explain? How shall I make you
+understand?'
+
+The clear grey eyes showed not the faintest perturbation. 'But I
+do; I do indeed, in part; I do understand, ever so faintly.'
+
+'And now I will come back with you.'
+
+They paused in the darkness face to face, the silence of the sky,
+arched in its vastness above the little hill, the only witness of
+their triumph.
+
+She turned unquestioningly. And laughing softly almost as children
+do, the stalking shadows of a twilight wood behind them--they trod
+in silence back to the house. They said good-bye at the gate, and
+Lawford started once more for home. He walked slowly, conscious
+of an almost intolerable weariness, as if his strength had
+suddenly been wrested away from him. And at some distance beyond
+the top of the hill he sat down on the bank beside a nettled
+ditch, and with his book pressed down upon the wayside grass
+struck a match, and holding it low in the scented, windless air
+turned slowly the cockled leaf.
+
+Few of them were alike except for the dinginess of the print and
+the sinister smudge of the portraits. All were sewn roughly
+together into a mould-stained, marbled cover. He lit a second
+match, and as he did so glanced as if inquiringly over his
+shoulder. And a score or so of pages before the end he came at
+last upon the name he was seeking, and turned the page.
+
+It was a likeness even more striking in its crudeness of ink and
+line and paper than the most finished of portraits could have
+been. It repelled, and yet it fascinated him. He had not for a
+moment doubted Herbert's calm conviction. And yet as he stooped
+in the grass, closely scrutinising the blurred obscure features,
+he felt the faintest surprise not so much at the significant
+resemblance but at his own composure, his own steady, unflinching
+confrontation with this sinister and intangible adversary. The
+match burned down to his fingers. It hissed faintly in the grass.
+
+He stuffed the book into his pocket, and stared into the pale
+dial of his watch. It was a few minutes after eleven. Midnight,
+then, would just see him in. He rose stiffly and yawned in sheer
+exhaustion. Then, hesitating, he turned his head and looked back
+towards the hollow. But a vague foreboding held him back. A sour
+and vacuous incredulity swept over him. What was the use of all
+this struggling and vexation. What gain in living on? Once dead
+his sluggish spirit at least would find its rest. Dust to dust it
+would indeed be for him. What else, in sober earnest, had he been
+all his daily stolid life but half dead, scarce conscious, without
+a living thought, or desire, in head or heart?
+
+And while he was still gloomily debating within himself he had
+turned towards home, and soon was walking in a kind of reverie,
+even his extreme tiredness in part forgotten, and only a far-away
+dogged recollection in his mind that in spite of shame, in spite of
+all his miserable weakness, the words had been uttered once for all,
+and in all sincerity, 'We DID win through.'
+
+Yet a desolate and odd air of strangeness seemed to drape his
+unlighted house as he stood looking up in a kind of furtive
+communion with its windows. It affected him with that
+discomforting air of extreme and meaningless novelty that things
+very familiar sometimes take upon themselves. In this leaden
+tiredness no impression could be trustworthy. His lids shut of
+themselves as he softly mounted the steps. It seemed a needlessly
+wide door that soundlessly admitted him. But however hard he
+pressed the key his bedroom door remained stubbornly shut until
+he found that it was already unlocked and he had only to turn the
+handle. A night-light burned in a little basin on the washstand.
+The room was hung, as it were, with the stillness of night. And
+half lying on the bed in her dressing-gown, her head leaning on
+the rail at the foot, was Alice, just as sleep had overtaken her.
+
+Lawford returned to the door and listened. It seemed he heard a
+voice talking downstairs, and yet not talking, for it ran on and
+on in an incessant slightly argumentative monotony that had
+neither break nor interruption. He closed the door, and stooping
+laid his hand softly on Alice's narrow, still childish hand that
+lay half-folded on her knee. Her eyes opened instantly and gazed
+widely into his face. A slow vacant smile of sleep came and went
+and her fingers tightened gently over his as again her lids
+drooped down over the drowsy blue eyes.
+
+'At last, at last, dear,' she said; 'I have been waiting such a
+time. But we mustn't talk much. Mother is waiting up, reading.'
+
+Faintly through the close-shut door came the sound of that
+distant expressionless voice monotonously rising and falling.
+
+'Why didn't you tell me, dear?' Alice still sleepily whispered.
+'Would I have asked a single question? How could I? Oh, if you
+had only trusted me!'
+
+'But the change--the change, Alice! You must have seen that. You
+spoke to me, you did think I was only a stranger; and even when
+you knew, it was only fear on your face, dearest, and aversion;
+and you turned to your mother first. Don't think, Alice, that I
+am...God only knows--I'm not complaining. But truth is best
+whatever it is. I do feel that. You mustn't be afraid of hurting
+me, my dear.'
+
+Her very hands seemed to quicken in his as now, with sleep quite
+gone, the fret of memory returned, and she must reassure both
+herself and him. 'But you see, dear, mother had told me that
+you--besides, I did know you at once, really; quite inside, you
+know, deep down. I know I was perplexed; I didn't understand; but
+that was all. Why, even when you came up in the dark, and we
+talked--if you only knew how miserable I had been--though I knew
+even then there was something different, still I was not a bit
+afraid. Was I? And shouldn't I have been afraid, horribly afraid,
+if YOU had not been YOU?' She repressed a little shudder, and
+clasped his hand more closely. 'Don't let us say anything more
+about it, she implored him; 'we are just together again, you and
+I; that is all that matters.' But her words were like brave
+soldiers who have fought their way through an ambuscade but have
+left all confidence behind them.
+
+Lawford listened; and that was enough just now--that she still,
+in spite of doubt, believed in him, and thought and cared for
+him. He was too tired to have refused the least kindness. He made
+no answer, but leant his head on the cool, slender fingers in
+gratitude and peace. And, just as he was, he almost instantly
+fell asleep. He woke in the darkness to find himself alone. He
+groped his way heavily to the door and turned the handle. But now
+it was really locked. Energy failed him. 'I suppose--Sheila...'
+he muttered.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOURTEEN
+
+Sheila, calm, alert, reserved, was sitting at the open window
+when he awoke again. His breakfast tray stood on a little table
+beside the bed. He raised himself on his elbow and looked at his
+wife. The morning light shone full on her features as she turned
+quickly at sound of his stirring.
+
+'You have slept late,' she said, in a low, mellow voice.
+
+'Have I, Sheila? I suppose I was tired out. It is very kind of
+you to have got everything ready like this.'
+
+'I am afraid, Arthur, I was thinking rather of the maids. I like
+to inconvenience them as little as possible; in their usual
+routine, I mean. How are you feeling, do you think, this
+morning?'
+
+'I--I haven't seen the glass, Sheila.'
+
+She paused to place a little pencil tick at the foot of the page
+of her butcher's book. 'And did you--did you try?'
+
+'Did I try? Try what?'
+
+'I understood,' she said, turning slowly in her chair, 'you gave
+me to understand that you went out with the specific intention of
+trying to regain.... But there, forgive me, Arthur; I think I
+must be getting a little bit hardened to the position, so far at
+least as any hope is in my mind of rather amateurish experiments
+being of much help. I may seem unsympathetic in saying frankly
+what I feel. But amateurish or no, you are curiously erratic.
+Why, if you really were the Dr Ferguson whose part you play so
+admirably you could scarcely spend a more active life.'
+
+'All you mean, Sheila, I suppose, is that I have failed.'
+
+'"Failed" did not enter my mind. I thought, looking at you just
+now in your clothes on the bed, one might for the moment be
+deceived into thinking there was a slight--quite the slightest
+improvement. There was not quite that'--she hovered for the right
+word--'that tenseness. Whether or not, whether you desired any
+such change or didn't, I should have supposed in any case it
+would have been better to act as far as possible like any
+ordinary person. You were certainly in an extraordinarily sound
+sleep. I was almost alarmed; until I remembered that it was a
+little after two when I looked up from reading aloud to keep
+myself awake and discovered that you had only just come home. I
+had no fire. You know how easily late hours bring on my
+headaches; a little thought might possibly have suggested that I
+should be anxious to hear. But no; it seems I cannot profit by
+experience, Arthur. And even now you have not answered surely a
+very natural question. You do not recollect, perhaps, exactly
+what did happen last night? Did you go in the direction even of
+Widderstone?'
+
+'Yes, Sheila, I went to Widderstone.'
+
+'It was of course absurd to suppose that sitting on a seat beside
+the broken-down grave of a suicide would have the slightest
+effect on one's--one's physical condition; though possibly it
+might affect one's brain. It would mine; I am at least certain of
+that. It was your own prescription, however; and it merely
+occurred to me to inquire whether the actual experience has not
+brought you round to my own opinion.'
+
+'Yes, I think it has,' Lawford answered calmly. 'But I don't
+quite see what suicide has got to do with it; unless-- You know
+Widderstone, then, Sheila?'
+
+'I drove there last Saturday afternoon.'
+
+'For prayer or praise?' Although Lawford had not actually raised
+his head, he became conscious rather of the wonderfully adjusted
+mass of hair than of the pained dignity in the face that was now
+closely regarding him.
+
+'I went,' came the rigidly controlled retort, 'simply to test an
+inconceivable story.'
+
+'And returned?'
+
+'Convinced, Arthur, of its inconceivability. But if you would
+kindly inform me what precise formula you followed at Widderstone
+last night, I would tell you why I think the explanation, or
+rather your first account of the matter, is not an explanation of
+the facts.'
+
+Lawford shot a rather doglike glance over his toast. 'Danton?' he
+said.
+
+'Candidly, Arthur, Mr Danton doubts the whole story. Your very
+conduct--well, it would serve no useful purpose to go into that.
+Candidly, on the other hand, Mr. Danton did make some extremely
+helpful suggestions--basing them, of course, on the TRUTH of your
+account. He has seen a good deal of life; and certainly very
+mysterious things do occur to quite innocent and well-meaning
+people without the faintest shadow of warning, and as Mr. Bethany
+himself said, evil birds do come home to roost, and often out of
+a clear sky, as it were. But there, every fresh solution that
+occurs to me only makes the thing more preposterous, more, I was
+going to say, disreputable--I mean, of course, to the outside
+world. And we have our duties to perform to them too, I suppose.
+Why, what can we say? What plausible account of ourselves have
+we? We shall never be able to look anybody in the face again. I
+can only--I am compelled to believe that God has been pleased to
+make this precise visitation upon us--an eye for an eye, I
+suppose, SOMEWHERE. And to that conviction I shall hold until
+actual circumstances convince me that it's false. What, however,
+and this is all that I have to say now, what I cannot understand
+are your amazing indiscretions.'
+
+'Do you understand your own, Sheila?'
+
+'My indiscretions, Arthur?'
+
+'Well,' said Lawford, 'wasn't it indiscreet, don't you think, to
+risk divine retribution by marrying me? Shouldn't you have
+inquired? Wasn't it indiscreet to allow me to remain here in--in
+my "visitation?" Wasn't it indiscreet to risk the moral stigma
+this unhappy face of mine must cast on its surroundings? I am not
+sure whether such a change as this constitutes cruelty.... Oh,
+what is the use of fretting and babbling on like this?'
+
+'Am I to understand, then, that you refuse positively to discuss
+this horrible business any more? You are doing your best to drive
+me away, Arthur; you must see that. Will you be very disappointed
+if I refuse to go?'
+
+Lawford rose from the bed. 'Listen just this once,' he said,
+seating himself on the corner of the dressing-table. 'Imagine all
+this--whatever you like to call it--obliterated. Take this,' he
+nodded towards the glass, 'entirely for itself, on its own
+merits, as it were. Let the dead past bury its dead. Which, now,
+precisely, REALLY do you prefer--him,' he jerked his head in the
+direction of the dispassionate youthful picture on the wall, 'him
+or me?'
+
+He was so close to her now that he could see the faintest tremor
+on the face that had suddenly become grey and still in the thin
+clear sunshine.
+
+'I own it, I own it,' he went on, slowly; 'the change is more
+than skin-deep now. One can't go through what I have gone through
+these last few terrifying days, Sheila, unchanged. They have
+played the devil with my body; now begins the tampering with my
+mind. Not even Danton knows how it will end. But shall I tell you
+why you won't, why you can't answer me that one question--him or
+me? Shall I tell you?'
+
+Sheila slowly raised her eyes.
+
+'It is because, my dear, you don't care the ghost of a straw for
+either. That one--he was worn out long ago, and we never knew it.
+I know it now. Time and the sheer going-on of day by day, without
+either of us guessing at it, wore that down till it had no more
+meaning for you or me than any other faded remembrance in this
+interminable footling with truth that we call life. And this
+one--the whole abject meaning of it lies simply in the fact that
+it has pierced down and shown us up. I had no courage. I couldn't
+see how feeble a hold I had on life--just one's friends'
+opinions. It was all at second hand. What I want to know now is--
+leave me out; don't think, or care, or regard my living-on one
+shadow of an iota--all I ask is, What am I to do for you?' He
+turned away and stood staring down at the cinders in the fireless
+grate.
+
+'I answer that mad wicked outburst with one plain question,' said
+a low, trembling voice; 'did you or did you not go to Widderstone
+yesterday?'
+
+'I did go.'
+
+'You sat there, just as you said you sat before; and with all
+your heart and soul strove to regain--yourself?'
+
+Lawford lifted a still, colourless face into the sunlight. 'No,'
+he said; 'I spent the evening at the house of a friend.'
+
+'Then I say it is infamous. You cast all this on me. You have
+brought me into contempt and poisoned Alice's whole life. You
+dream and idle on just as you used to do, without the least care
+or thought or consideration for others; and go out in this
+condition--go out absolutely unashamed--to spend the evening at a
+friend's. Peculiar friends they must be. Why, really, Arthur, you
+must be mad!'
+
+Lawford paused. Like a flock of sheep streaming helter-skelter
+before the onset of a wolf were the thoughts that a moment before
+had seemed so orderly and sober.
+
+'Not mad--possessed,' he said softly.
+
+'And I add this,' cried Sheila, as it were out of a tragic mask,
+'somewhere in the past, whether of your own life, or of the lives
+of those who brought you into the world--the world which you
+pretend so conveniently to despise--somewhere is hidden some
+miserable secret. God visits all sins. On you has fallen at last
+the payment. THAT I believe. You can't run away, any more than a
+child can run away from the cupboard it has been locked into for
+a punishment. Who's going to hear you now? You have deliberately
+refused to make a friend of me. Fight it out alone, then!'
+
+Lawford heard the door close, and the dying away of the sound
+that had been the unceasing accompaniment of all these later
+years--the rustling of his wife's skirts, her crisp,
+authoritative footstep. And he turned towards the flooding
+sunlight that streamed in on the upturned surface of the
+looking-glass. No clear decisive thought came into his mind, only
+a vague recognition that so far as Sheila was concerned this was
+the end. No regret, no remorse visited him. He was just alone
+again, that was all--alone, as in reality he had always been
+alone, without having the sense or power to see or to acknowledge
+it. All he had said had been the mere flotsam of the moment, and
+now it stood stark and irrevocable between himself and the past.
+
+He sat down dazed and stupid. Again and again a struggling
+recollection tried to obtrude itself; again and again he beat it
+back. And rather for something to distract his attention than for
+any real interest or enlightenment he might find in its pages, he
+took out the grimy dog's-eared book that Herbert had given him,
+and turned slowly over the leaves till he came to Sabathier once
+more. Snatches of remembrance of their long talk returned to him,
+but just as that dark, water-haunted house had seemed to banish
+remembrance and the reality of the room in which he now sat, and
+of the old familiar life; so now the house, the faces of
+yesterday seemed in their turn unreal, almost spectral, and the
+thick print on the smudgy page no more significant than a story
+one reads and throws away.
+
+But a moment's comparison in the glass of the two faces side by
+side suddenly sharpened his attention--the resemblance was so
+oddly arresting, and yet, and yet, so curiously inconclusive.
+There was then something of the stolid old Saxon left, he
+thought. Or had it been regained? Which was it? Not merely the
+complexity of the question, but a half-conscious distaste of
+attempting to face it, set him reading very slowly and
+laboriously, for his French was little more than fragmentary
+recollection, the first few pages of the life of this buried
+Sabathier. But with a disinclination almost amounting to aversion
+he made very slow progress. Many of the words were meaningless to
+him, and every other moment he found himself listening with
+intense concentration for the least hint of what Sheila was
+doing, of what was going on in the house beneath him. He had not
+very long to wait. He was sitting with his head leaning on his
+hand, the book unheeded beneath the other on the table, when the
+door opened again behind him, and Sheila entered. She stood for a
+moment, calm and dignified, looking down on him through her veil.
+
+'Please understand, Arthur, that I am not taking this step in
+pique, or even in anger. It would serve no purpose to go on like
+this--this incessant heedlessness and recrimination. There have
+been mistakes, misconceptions, perhaps, on both sides. To me
+naturally yours are most conspicuous. That need not, however,
+blind me to my own.'
+
+She paused in vain for an answer.
+
+'Think the whole thing over candidly and quietly,' she began
+again in a quiet rapid voice. 'Have you really shown the
+slightest regard, I won't say for me, or even for Alice, but for
+just the obvious difficulties and--and proprieties of our
+position? I have given up as far as I can brooding on and on over
+the same horrible impossible thoughts. I withdraw unreservedly
+what I said just now about punishment. Whatever the evidence, it
+is not even a wife's place to judge like that. You will forgive
+me that?'
+
+Lawford did not turn his head. 'Of course,' he said, looking
+rather vacantly out of the window, 'it was only in the heat of
+the moment, Sheila; though, who knows? it may be true.'
+
+'Well,' she took hold of the great brass knob at the foot of the
+bed with one gloved hand--'well, I feel it is my duty to withdraw
+it. Apart from it, I see only too clearly that even though all
+that has happened in these last few days was in reality nothing
+but a horrible nightmare, I see that even then what you have said
+about our married life together can never be recalled. You have
+told me quite deliberately that for years past your life has been
+nothing but a pretence--a sham. You implied that mine had been
+too. Honestly, I was not aware of it, Arthur. But supposing all
+that has happened to you had been merely what might happen at any
+moment to anybody, some actual defacement (you will forgive me
+suggesting such a horrible thing--why, if what you say is true,
+even in that case my sympathy would have been only a continual
+fret and annoyance to you. And this--this change, I own, is
+infinitely harder to bear. It would be an outrage on common sense
+and on all that we hold seemly and--and sacred in life, even in
+some trumpery story. You do, you must see all that, Arthur?'
+
+'Oh yes,' said Lawford, narrowing his eyes to pierce through the
+sunlight, 'I see all that.'
+
+'Then we need not go over it all again. Whatever others may say,
+or think, I shall still, at least so long as nothing occurs to
+the contrary, keep firmly to my present convictions. Mr Bethany
+has assured me repeatedly that he has no--no misgivings; that he
+understands. And even if I still doubted, which I don't, Arthur,
+though it would be rather trying to have to accept one's husband
+at second-hand, as it were, I should have to be satisfied. I dare
+say even such an unheard-of thing as what we are discussing now,
+or something equally ghastly, does occur occasionally. In foreign
+countries, perhaps. I have not studied such things enough to say.
+We were all very much restricted in our reading as children, and
+I honestly think, not unwisely. It is enough for the present to
+repeat that I do believe, and that whatever may happen--and I
+know absolutely nothing about the procedure in such cases--but
+whatever may happen, I shall still be loyal; I shall always have
+your interests at heart.' Her words faltered and she turned her
+head away. 'You did love me once, Arthur, I can't forget that.'
+The contralto voice trembled ever so little, and the gloved hand
+smoothed gently the brass knob beneath.
+
+'If,' said Lawford, resting his face on his hands, and curiously
+watching the while his moving reflection in the looking-glass
+before him--'if I said I still loved you, what then?
+
+'But you have already denied it, Arthur.'
+
+'Yes; but if I said that that too was said only in haste, that
+brooding over the trouble this--this metamorphosis was bringing
+on us all had driven me almost beyond endurance: supposing that I
+withdrew all that, and instead said now that I do still love you,
+just as I--' he turned a little, and turned back again, 'like
+this?'
+
+Sheila paused. 'Could ANY woman answer such a question?' she
+almost sighed at last.
+
+'Yes, but,' Lawford pressed on, in a voice almost naive and
+stubborn as a child's, 'If I tried to--to make you? I did once,
+Sheila.'
+
+'I can't, I can't conceive such a position. Surely that alone is
+almost as frantic as it is heartless! Is it, is it even right?'
+
+'Well, I have not actually asked it. I own,' he added moodily,
+almost under his breath, 'it would be--dangerous.... But there,
+Sheila, this poor old mask of mine is wearing out. I am somehow
+convinced of that. What will be left, God only knows. You were
+saying--' He rose abruptly. 'Please, please sit down,' he said;
+'I did not notice you were standing.'
+
+'I shall not keep you a moment,' she answered hurriedly; 'I will
+sit here. The truth is, Arthur,' she began again almost solemnly,
+'apart from all sentiment and--and good intentions, my presence
+here only harasses you and keeps you back. I am not so bound up
+in myself that I cannot realise THAT. The consequence is that
+after calmly--and I hope considerately--thinking the whole thing
+over, I have come to the conclusion that it would arouse very
+little comment, the least possible perhaps in the circumstances,
+if I just went away for a few days. You are not in any sense ill.
+In fact, I have never known you so--so robust, so energetic. You
+will be alone: Mr Bethany, perhaps.... You could go out and come
+in just as you pleased. Possibly,' Sheila smiled frankly beneath
+her veil, 'even this Dr Ferguson you have invented will be a
+help. It's only the servants that remain to be considered.'
+
+'I should prefer to be quite alone.'
+
+'Then do not worry about THEM. I can easily explain. And if you
+would not mind letting her in, Mrs Gull can come in every other
+day or so just to keep things in order. She's entirely
+trustworthy and discreet. Or perhaps, if you would prefer--'
+
+'Mrs Gull will do nicely, Sheila. It's very good of you to have
+given me so much thought.' A long and rather arduous pause
+followed.
+
+'Oh, one other thing, Arthur. You sent out to Mr Critchett--do
+you remember?--the night you first came home. I think, too, after
+the first awful shock, when we were sitting in our bedroom, you
+actually referred to--to violent measures. You will promise me, I
+may perhaps at least ask that, you will promise me on your word
+of honour, for Alice's sake, if not for mine, to do nothing
+rash.'
+
+'Yes, yes,' said Lawford, sinking lower even than he had supposed
+possible into the thin and lightless chill of ennui--'nothing
+rash.'
+
+Sheila rose with a sigh only in part suppressed. 'I have not seen
+Mr Bethany again. I think, however, it would be better to let
+Harry know; I mean, dear, of your derangement. After all, he is
+one of the family--at least, of mine. He will not interfere. He
+would, perhaps quite naturally, be hurt if we did not take him
+into our confidence. Otherwise there is no pressing cause for
+haste, at least for another week or so. After that, I suppose,
+something will have to be done. Then there's Mr Wedderburn;
+wouldn't it be as well to let him know that at least for the
+present you are quite unable to think of returning to town? That,
+too, in time will have to be arranged, I suppose, if nothing
+happens meanwhile; I mean if things don't come right. And I do
+hope, Arthur, you will not set your mind too closely on what
+may only prove false hopes. This is all intensely painful to me;
+of course, to us both.'
+
+Again Lawford, even though he did not turn to confront it, became
+conscious of the black veil turned towards him tentatively,
+speculatively, impenetrably.
+
+'Yes,' he said, 'I'll write to Wedderburn; he's had his ups and
+downs too.'
+
+'I always rather fancied so,' said Sheila reflectively, 'he looks
+rather a--a restless man. Oh, and then again,' she broke off
+quickly, 'there's the question of money. I suppose--it is only a
+conjecture--I suppose it would be better to do nothing in that
+direction just for the present. Ada has now gone to the Bank.
+Fifty pounds, Arthur; it is out of my own private account--do you
+think that will be enough, just, of course, for your PRESENT
+needs?'
+
+'As a bribe, hush-money, or a thank-offering, Sheila?' murmured
+her husband wearily.
+
+'I don't follow you,' replied the discreet voice from beneath the
+veil.
+
+He did actually turn this time and glance steadily over his
+shoulder. 'How long are you going for? and where?'
+
+'I proposed to go to my cousin's, Bettie Lovat's; that is, of
+course, if you have no objection. It's near; it will be a
+long-deferred visit; and she need know very little. And, of
+course, if for the least thing in the world you should want me,
+there I am within call, as it were. And you will write? We ARE
+acting for the best, Arthur?'
+
+'So long as it is your best, Sheila.'
+
+Sheila pondered. 'You think, you mean, they'll all say I ought to
+have stayed. Candidly, I can't see it in that light. Surely every
+experience of life proves that in intimate domestic matters, and
+especially in those between husband and wife, only the parties
+concerned have any means of judging what is best for them? It has
+been our experience at any rate: though I must in fairness
+confess that, outwardly at least, I haven't had much of that kind
+of thing to complain of.' Sheila paused again for a reply.
+
+'What kind of thing?'
+
+'Domestic experience, dear.'
+
+The house was quiet. There was not a sound stirring in the still
+sunny road of orchards and discreet and drowsy villas. A long
+silence followed, immensely active and alert on the one side,
+almost morbidly lethargic so far as the stooping figure in front
+of the looking-glass was concerned. At last the last haunting
+question came in a kind of croak, as if only by a supreme effort
+could it be compelled to produce itself for consideration.
+
+'And Alice, Sheila?"
+
+'Alice, dear, of course goes with ME.'
+
+'You realise,' he stirred uneasily, `you realise it may be
+final.'
+
+'My dear Arthur,' cried Sheila, 'it is surely, apart from
+mere delicacy, a parental obligation to screen the poor child
+from the shock. Could she be at such a time in any better keeping
+than her mother's? At present she only vaguely guesses. To know
+definitely that her father, infinitely worse than death, had--
+had-- Oh, is it possible to realise anything in this awful cloud?
+It would kill her outright.'
+
+Lawford made no stir. The quietest of raps came at the door. 'The
+money from the Bank, ma'am,' said a faint voice.
+
+Sheila carefully opened the door a few inches. She laid the blue
+envelope on the dressing-table at her husband's elbow. 'You had
+better perhaps count it,' she said in a low voice--'forty in
+notes, the rest in gold,' and narrowed her eyes beneath her veil
+upon her husband's very peculiar method of forgetting his
+responsibilities.
+
+'French?' she said with a nod. 'How very quaint"
+
+Lawford's eyes fell and rested gravely on the dingy page of
+Herbert's mean-looking bundle of print. A queer feeling of cold
+crept over him. 'Yes,' he said vaguely, 'French,' and hopelessly
+failed to fill in the silence that seemed like some rather sleek
+nocturnal creature quietly waiting to be fed.
+
+Sheila swept softly towards the door. 'Well, Arthur, I think that
+is all. The servants will have gone by this evening. I have
+ordered a carriage for half-past twelve. Perhaps you would first
+write down anything that occurs to you to be necessary? Perhaps,
+too, it would be better if Dr Simon were told that we shall not
+need him any more, that you are thinking of a complete change of
+scene, a voyage. He is obviously useless. Besides, Mr Bethany, I
+think, is going to discuss a specialist with you. I have written
+him a little note, just briefly explaining. Shall I write to Dr
+Simon too?'
+
+'You remember everything,' said Lawford, and it seemed to him it
+was a remark he had heard ages and ages ago. 'It's only this
+money, Sheila; will you please take that away?'
+
+'Take it away?'
+
+'I think, Sheila, if I do take a voyage I should almost prefer to
+work my passage. As for a mere "change of scene," that's quite
+uncostly.'
+
+'It is only your face, Arthur,' said Sheila solemnly, 'that
+suggest these wicked stabs. Some day you will perhaps repent of
+every one.'
+
+'It is possible, Sheila; we none of us stand still, you know. One
+rips open a lid sometimes and the wax face rots before one's
+eyes. Take back your blue envelope; and thank you for thinking of
+me. It's always the woman of the house that has the head.'
+
+'I wish,' said Sheila almost pathetically, and yet with a faint
+quaver of resignation, 'I wish it could be said that the man of
+the house sometimes has the heart. Think it over, Arthur!'
+
+Sheila, with her husband's luncheon tray, brought also her
+farewells. Lawford surveyed, not without a faint, shy stirring of
+incredulity, the superbly restrained presence. He stood before
+her dry-lipped, inarticulate, a schoolboy caught redhanded in the
+shabbiest of offences.
+
+'It is your wish then that I go, Arthur?' she said pleadingly.
+
+He handed her her money without a word.
+
+'Very well, Arthur; if you won't take it,' she said. 'I should
+scarcely have thought this the occasion for mere pride.'
+
+'The tenth,' she continued, as she squeezed the envelope into her
+purse, with only the least hardening of voice, 'although I
+daresay you have not troubled to remember it--the tenth will be
+the eighteenth anniversary of our wedding-day. It makes parting,
+however advisable, and though only for the few days we should
+think nothing of in happier circumstances, a little harder to
+bear. But there, all will come right. You will see things in a
+different light, perhaps. Words may wound, but time will heal.'
+But even as she now looked closely into his colourless sunken
+face some distant memory seemed to well up irresistibly--the
+memory of eyes just as ingenuous, and as unassuming that even in
+claiming her love had expressed only their stolid unworthiness.
+
+'Did you know it? have you seen it?' she said, stooping forward a
+little. 'I believe in spite of all....' He gazed on solemnly,
+almost owlishly, out of his fading mask.
+
+'Wait till Mr Bethany tells you; you will believe it perhaps from
+him.' He saw the grey-gloved hand a little reluctantly lifted
+towards him.
+
+'Good-bye, Sheila,' he said, and turned mechanically back to the
+window.
+
+She hesitated, listening to a small far-away voice that kept
+urging her with an almost frog-like pertinacity to do, to say
+something, and yet as stubbornly would not say what; and she was
+gone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIFTEEN
+
+Raying and gleaming in the sunlight the hired landau drove up to
+the gate. Lawford, peeping between the blinds, looked down on the
+coachman, with reins hanging loosely from his red squat-thumbed
+hand, seated in his tight livery and indescribable hat on the
+faded cushions. One thing only was in his mind; and it was almost
+with an audible cry that he turned towards the figure that edged,
+white and trembling, into the chill room, to fling herself into
+his arms. 'Don't look at me,' he begged her, 'only remember,
+dearest, I would rather have died down there and been never seen
+again than have given you pain. Run--run, your mother's calling.
+Write to me, think of me; good-bye!'
+
+He threw himself on the bed and lay there till evening--till the
+door had shut gently behind the last rat to leave the sinking
+ship. All the clearness, the calmness were gone again. Round and
+round in dizzy sickening flare and clatter his thoughts whirled.
+Contempt, fear, loathing, blasphemy, laughter, longing: there was
+no end. Death was no end. There was no meaning, no refuge, no
+hope, no possible peace. To give up was to go to perdition: to go
+forward was to go mad. And even madness--he sat up with trembling
+lips in the twilight--madness itself was only a state, only a
+state. You might be bereaved, and the pain and hopelessness of
+that would pass. You might be cast out, betrayed, deserted, and
+still be you, still find solitude lovely and in a brave face a
+friend. But madness!--it surged in on him with all the clearness
+and emptiness of a dream. And he sat quite still, his hand
+clutching the bedclothes, his head askew, waiting for the sound
+of footsteps, for the presences and the voices that have their
+thin-walled dwelling beneath the shallow crust of consciousness.
+
+Inky blackness drifted up in wisps, in smoke before his eyes; he
+was powerless to move, to cry out. There was no room to turn; no
+air to breathe. And yet there was a low, continuous,
+never-varying stir as of an enormous wheel whirling in the gloom.
+Countless infinitesimal faces arched like glimmering pebbles the
+huge dim-coloured vault above his head. He heard a voice above
+the monstrous rustling of the wheel, clamouring, calling him
+back. He was hastening headlong, muttering to himself his own
+flat meaningless name, like a child repeating as he runs his
+errand. And then as if in a charmed cold pool he awoke and opened
+his eyes again on the gathering darkness of the great bedroom,
+and heard a quick, importunate, long-continued knocking on the
+door below, as of some one who had already knocked in vain.
+
+Cramped and heavy-limbed, he felt his way across the room and lit
+a candle. He stood listening awhile: his eyes fixed on the door
+that hung a little open. All in the room seemed acutely
+fantastically still. The flame burned dim, misled in the sluggish
+air. He stole slowly to the door, looked out, and again listened.
+Again the knocking broke out, more impetuously and yet with a
+certain restraint and caution. Shielding the flame of his candle
+in the shell of his left hand, Lawford moved slowly, with chin
+uplifted, to the stairs. He bent forward a little, and stood
+motionless and drawn up, the pupils of his eyes slowly
+contracting and expanding as he gazed down into the carpeted
+vacant gloom; past the dim louring presence that had fallen back
+before him.
+
+His mouth opened. 'Who's there?' at last he called.
+
+'Thank God, thank God!' he heard Mr Bethany mutter. 'I mustn't
+call, Lawford,' came a hurried whisper as if the old gentleman
+were pressing his lips to speak through the letter-box. 'Come
+down and open the door; there's a good fellow! I've been knocking
+no end of a time.'
+
+'Yes, I am coming,' said Lawford. He shut his mouth and held his
+breath, and stair by stair he descended, driving steadily before
+him the crouching, gloating menacing shape, darkly lifted up
+before him against the darkness, contending the way with him.
+
+'Are you ill? Are you hurt? Has anything happened, Lawford?' came
+the anxious old voice again, striving in vain to be restrained.
+
+'No, no,' muttered Lawford. 'I am coming; coming slowly.' He
+paused to breathe, his hands trembling, his hair lank with sweat,
+and still with eyes wide open he descended against the phantom
+lurking in the darkness--an adversary that, if he should but for
+one moment close his lids, he felt would master sanity and
+imagination with its evil. 'So long as you don't get in,' he
+heard himself muttering, 'so long as you don't get in, my
+friend!'
+
+'What's that you're saying?' came up the muffled, querulous
+voice; 'I can't for the life of me hear, my boy.'
+
+'Nothing, nothing,' came softly the answer from the foot of the
+stairs. 'I was only speaking to myself.'
+
+Deliberately, with candle held rigidly on a level with his eyes,
+Lawford pushed forward a pace or two into the airless, empty
+drawing-room, and grasped the handle of the door. He gazed in
+awhile, a black oblique shadow flung across his face, his eyes
+fixed like an animal's, then drew the door steadily towards him.
+And suddenly some power that had held him tense seemed to fail.
+He thrust out his head, and, his face quivering with fear and
+loathing, spat defiance as if in a passion of triumph into the
+gloom.
+
+Still muttering, he shut the door and turned the key. In another
+moment his light was gleaming out on the grey perturbed face and
+black narrow shoulders of his visitor.
+
+'You gave me quite a fright,' said the old man almost angrily;
+'have you hurt your foot, or something?'
+
+'It was very dark,' said Lawford, 'down the stairs.'
+
+'What!' said Mr Bethany still more angrily, blinking out of his
+unspectacled eyes; 'has she cut off the gas, then?'
+
+'You got the note?' said Lawford, unmoved.
+
+'Yes, yes; I got the note.... Gone?'
+
+'Oh, yes; all gone. It was my choice. I preferred it so.'
+
+Mr Bethany sat down on one of the hard old wooden chairs that
+stood on either side of the lofty hall, and breathing rather
+thickly, rested his hands on his knees. 'What's happened?' he
+inquired, looking up into the candle. 'I forgot my glasses, old
+fool that I am, and can't, my dear fellow, see you very plainly.
+But your voice--'
+
+'I think,' said Lawford, 'I think it's beginning to come back.'
+
+'What, the whole thing! Oh no, my dear, dear man; be frank with
+me; not the whole thing?'
+
+'Yes,' said Lawford, 'the whole thing--very, very gradually,
+imperceptibly. I think even Sheila noticed. But I rather feel it
+than see it; that is all.... I'm cornering him.'
+
+'Him?'
+
+Lawford jerked his candle as if towards some definite goal. 'In
+time,' he said.
+
+The two faces with the candle between them seemed as it were to
+gain light each from the other.
+
+'Well, well,' said Mr Bethany, 'every man for himself, Lawford;
+it's the only way. But what's going to be done? We must be
+cautious; must think of--of the others?'
+
+'Oh, that,' said Lawford; 'she's going to squeeze me out.'
+
+'You've--squabbled? Oh, but my dear, honest old, HONEST old
+idiot, there are scores of families here in this parish, within a
+stone's throw, that squabble, wrangle, all but politely tear each
+other's eyes out, every day of their earthly lives. It's
+perfectly natural. Where should we poor old busybodies be else.
+Peace on earth we bring, and it's mainly between husband and
+wife.'
+
+'Yes,' said Lawford, 'but you see, this was not our earthly life.
+It was between US.'
+
+'Listen, listen to the dear mystic!' exclaimed the old creature
+scoffingly. 'What depths we're touching. Here's the first serious
+break of his lifetime, and he's gone stark staring transcendental.
+Ah well.' He paused and glanced quickly about him, with his
+curious bird-like poise of head. 'But you're not alone here?' he
+inquired suddenly; 'not absolutely alone?'
+
+'Yes,' said Lawford. 'But there's plenty to think about--and
+read. I haven't thought or read for years.'
+
+'No, nor I; after thirty, my dear boy, one merely annotates, and
+the book's called Life. Bless me, his solemn old voice is
+grinding epigrams out of even this poor old parochial
+barrel-organ. You don't suppose, you cannot be supposing you are
+the only serious person in the world? What's more, it's only skin
+deep.'
+
+Lawford smiled. 'Skin deep. But think quietly over it; you'll see
+I'm done.'
+
+'Come here,' said Mr Bethany. 'Where's the whiskey, where's the
+cigars? You shall smoke and drink, and I'll watch. If it weren't
+for a pitiful old stomach, I'd join you. Come on!' He led the way
+into the dining-room.
+
+He looked sparer, more wizened and sinewy than ever as he stooped
+to open the sideboard. 'Where on earth do they keep everything?'
+he was muttering to himself.
+
+Lawford put the candlestick down on the table. 'There's only one
+thing,' he said, watching his visitor's rummaging; 'what
+precisely do you think they will do with me?'
+
+'Look here, Lawford,' snapped Mr Bethany; 'I've come round here,
+hooting through your letter-box, to tally sense, not sentiment.
+Why has your wife deserted you? Without a servant, without a
+single-- It's perfectly monstrous.'
+
+'On my word of honour, I prefer it so. I couldn't have gone on.
+Alone I all but forget this--this lupus. Every turn of her little
+finger reminded me of it. We are all of us alone, whether we know
+it or not; you said so yourself. And it's better to realize it
+stark and unconfused. Besides, you have no idea what--what odd
+things.... There may be; there IS something on the other side.
+I'll win through to that.'
+
+Mr Bethany had been listening attentively. He scrambled up from
+his knees with a half-empty syphon of sodawater. 'See here,
+Lawford,' he said; 'if you really want to know what's your most
+insidious and most dangerous symptom just now, it is spiritual
+pride. You've won what you think a domestic victory; and you can
+scarcely bear the splendour. Oh, you may shrug! Pray, what IS
+this "other side" which the superior double-faced creature's
+going to win through to now?' He rapped it out almost bitterly,
+almost contemptuously.
+
+Lawford hardly heard the question. Before his eyes had suddenly
+arisen the peace, the friendly unquestioning stillness, the
+thunderous lullaby old as the grave. 'It's only a fancy. It
+seemed I could begin again.'
+
+'Well, look here,' said Mr Bethany, his whole face suddenly
+lined and grey with age. 'You can't. It's the one solitary thing
+I've got to say, as I've said it to myself morn, noon, and night
+these scores of years. You can't begin again; it's all a delusion
+and a snare. You say we're alone. So we are. The world's a dream,
+a stage, a mirage, a rack, call it what you will--but YOU don't
+change, YOU'RE no illusion. There's no crying off for YOU no
+ravelling out, no clean leaves. You've got this--this trouble,
+this affliction--my dear, dear fellow what shall I say to tell
+you how I grieve and groan for you oh yes, and actually laughed,
+I confess it, a vile hysterical laughter, to think of it. You've
+got this almost intolerable burden to bear; it's come like a
+thief in the night; but bear it you must, and ALONE! They say
+death's a going to bed; I doubt it; but anyhow life's a long
+undressing. We came in puling and naked, and every stitch must
+come off before we get out again. We must stand on our feet in
+all our Rabelaisian nakedness, and watch the world fade. Well
+then, and not another word of sense shall you worm out of my
+worn-out old brains after today--all I say is, don't give in! Why,
+if you stood here now, freed from this devilish disguise, the
+old, fat, sluggish fellow that sat and yawned his head off under
+my eyes in his pew the Sunday before last, if I know anything
+about human nature I'd say it to your face, and a fig for your
+vanity and resignation--your last state would be worse than the
+first. There!'
+
+He bunched up a big white handkerchief and mopped it over his
+head. 'That's done,' he said, 'and we won't go back. What I want
+to know now is what are you going to do? Where are you sleeping?
+What are you going to think about? I'll stay--yes, yes, that's
+what it must be: I must stay. And I detest strange beds. I'll
+stay, you SHAN'T be alone. Do you hear me, Lawford?--you SHAN'T
+be alone!'
+
+Lawford gazed gravely. 'There is just one little thing I want to
+ask you before you go. I've wormed out an extraordinary old
+French book; and--just as you say--to pass the time, I've been
+having a shot at translating it. But I'm frightfully rusty; it's
+old French; would you mind having a look?'
+
+Mr Bethany blinked and listened. He tried for the twentieth time
+to judge his friend's eyes, to gain as best he could some
+sustained and unobserved glance at this baffling face. 'Where is
+your precious French book?' he said irritably.
+
+'It's upstairs.'
+
+'Fire away, then!' Lawford rose and glanced about the room.
+'What, no light there either?' snapped Mr Bethany. 'Take this; I
+don't mind the dark. There'll be plenty of that for me soon.'
+
+Lawford hesitated at the door, looking rather strangely back.
+'No,' he said, 'there are matches upstairs.' He shut the
+door after him. The darkness seemed cold and still as water. He
+went slowly up, with eyes fixed wide on the floating luminous
+gloom, and out of memory seemed to gather, as faintly as in the
+darkness which they had exorcised for him, the strange pitiful
+eyes of the night before. And as he mounted a chill, terrible,
+physical peace seemed to steal over him.
+
+Mr Bethany was sitting as he had left him, looking steadily on
+the floor, when Lawford returned. He flattened out the book on
+the table with a sniff of impatience. And dragging the candle
+nearer, and stooping his nose close to the fusty print, he began
+to read.
+
+'Was this in the house?' he inquired presently.
+
+'No,' said Lawford; 'it was lent to me by a friend--Herbert.'
+
+'H'm! don't know him. Anyhow, precious poor stuff this is. This
+Sabathier, whoever he is, seems to be a kind of clap-trap
+eighteenth-century adventurer who thought the world would be
+better off, apparently, for a long account of all his sentimental
+amours. Rousseau, with a touch of Don Quixote in his composition,
+and an echo of that prince of bogies, Poe! What, in the name of
+wonder, induced you to fix on this for your holiday reading?'
+
+'Sabathier's alive, isn't he?'
+
+'I never said he wasn't. He's a good deal too much alive for my
+old wits, with his Mam'selle This and Madame the Other;
+interesting enough, perhaps, for the professional literary nose
+with a taste for patchouli.'
+
+'Yet I suppose even that is not a very rare character?' Mr
+Bethany peered up from the dingy book at his ingenuous
+questioner. 'I should say decidedly that the fellow was a very
+rare character, so long as by rare you don't mean good. It's one
+of the dullest stupidities of the present day, my dear fellow, to
+dote on a man simply because he's different from the rest of us.
+Once a man strays out of the common herd, he's more likely to
+meet wolves in the thickets than angels. From what I can gather
+in just these few pages this Sabathier appears to have been an
+amorous, adventurous, emotional Frenchman, who went to the dogs
+as easily and as rapidly as his own nature and his period
+allowed. And I should say, Lawford, that he made precious bad
+reading for a poor old troubled hermit like yourself at the
+present moment.'
+
+'There's a portrait of him a few pages back.'
+
+Mr Bethany, with some little impatience, turned back to the
+engraving. '"Nicholas de Sabathier,"'s he muttered. '"De,"
+indeed!' He poked in at the foxy print with narrowed eyes. 'I
+don't deny it's a striking, even perhaps, a rather taking face. I
+don't deny it.' He gazed on with an even more acute
+concentration, and looked up sharply. 'Look here, Lawford, what
+in the name of wonder--what trick are you playing on me now?'
+
+'Trick?' said Lawford; and the world fell with the tiniest plash
+in the silence, like a vivid little float upon the surface of a
+shadowy pool.
+
+The old face flushed. 'What conceivable bearing, I say, has this
+dead and gone old roue on us now?'
+
+'You don't think, then, you see any resemblance--ANY resemblance
+at all?'
+
+'Resemblance?' repeated Mr Bethany in a flat voice, and without
+raising his face again to meet Lawford's direct scrutiny.
+'Resemblance to whom?'
+
+'To me? To me, as I am?'
+
+'But even, my dear fellow (forgive my dull old brains!), even if
+there was just the faintest superficial suggestion of--of that;
+what then?'
+
+'Why,' said Lawford, 'he's buried in Widderstone.'
+
+'Buried in Widderstone?' The keen childlike blue eyes looked
+almost stealthily up across the book; the old man sat without
+speaking, so still that it might even be supposed he himself was
+listening for a quiet distant footfall.
+
+'He is buried in the grave beside which I fell asleep,' said
+Lawford; 'all green and still and broken,' he added faintly. 'You
+remember,' he went on in a repressed voice--'you remember you
+asked me if there was anybody else in sight, any eavesdropper?
+You don't think--him?'
+
+Mr. Bethany pushed the book a few inches away from him. 'Who, did
+you say--who was it you said put the thing into your head? A
+queer friend surely?' he paused helplessly. 'And how, pray, do
+you know,' he began again more firmly, 'even if there is a
+Sabathier buried at Widderstone, how do you know it is this
+Sabathier? It's not, I think,' he added boldly, 'a very uncommon
+name; with two b's at any rate. Whereabouts is the grave?'
+
+'Quite down at the bottom, under the trees. And the little seat I
+told you of is there, too, where I fell asleep. You see,' he
+explained, 'the grave's almost isolated; I suppose because he
+killed himself.'
+
+Mr Bethany clasped his knuckled fingers on the tablecloth. 'It's
+no good,' he concluded after a long pause; 'the fellow's got up
+into my head. I can't think him out. We must thrash it out
+quietly in the morning with the blessed sun at the window; not
+this farthing dip. To me the whole idea is as revolting as it is
+incredible. Why, above a century--no, no! And on the other hand,
+how easily one's fancy builds! A few straws and there's a nest
+and squawking fledglings, all complete. Is that why--is that why
+that good, practical wife of yours and all your faithful
+household have absconded? Does it'--he threw up his head as if
+towards the house above them-- 'does it REEK with him?'
+
+Lawford shook his head. 'She hasn't seen him: not--not apart. I
+haven't told her.'
+
+Mr Bethany tossed the hugger-mugger of pamphlets across the
+table. 'Then, for simple sanity's sake, don't. Hide it; burn it;
+put the thing completely out of your mind. A friend! Who, where
+is this wonderful friend?'
+
+'Not very far from Widderstone. He lives--practically alone.'
+
+'And all that stumbling and muttering on the stairs?' he leant
+forward almost threateningly. 'There isn't anybody here,
+Lawford?'
+
+'Oh, no,' said Lawford. 'We are practically alone with this, you
+know,' he pointed to the book, and smiled frankly, however
+faintly.
+
+Again Mr Bethany sank into a fixed yet uneasy reverie, and again
+shook himself and raised his eyes.
+
+'Well then,' he said, in a voice all but morose in its
+fretfullness, 'what I suggest is that first you keep quiet here;
+and next, that you write and get your wife back. You say you are
+better. I think you said she herself noticed a slight
+improvement. Isn't it just exactly as I foresaw? And yet she's
+gone! But that's not our business. Get her back. And don't for a
+single instant waste a thought on the other; not for a single
+instant, I implore you, Lawford. And in a week the whole thing
+will be no more than a dreary, preposterous dream.... You don't
+answer me!' he cried impulsively.
+
+'But can one so easily forget a dream like this?'
+
+'You don't speak out, Lawford; you mean SHE won't.'
+
+'It must at least seem to have been in part of my own seeking, or
+contriving; or at any rate--she said it--of my own hereditary or
+unconscious deserving.'
+
+'She said that!' Mr Bethany sat back. 'I see, I see,' he said.
+'I'm nothing but a fumbling old meddler. And there was I, not ten
+minutes ago, preaching for all I was worth on a text I knew
+nothing about. God bless me, Lawford, how long we take
+a-learning. I'll say no more. But what an illusion. To think
+this--this--he laid a long lean hand at arm's length flat upon
+the table towards his friend--'to think this is our old jog-trot
+Arthur Lawford! From henceforth I throw you over, you old wolf in
+sheep's wool. I wash my hands of you. And now where am I going to
+sleep?'
+
+He covered up his age and weariness for an instant with a small
+crooked hand.
+
+Lawford took a deep breath. 'You're going, old friend, to sleep
+at home. And I--I'm going to give you my arm to the Vicarage
+gate. Here I am, immeasurably relieved, fitter than I've been
+since I was a dolt of a schoolboy. On my word of honour: I can't
+say why, but I am. I don't care THAT, vicar, honestly--puffed up
+with spiritual pride. If a man can't sleep with pride for a
+bed-fellow, well, he'd better try elsewhere. It's no good; I'm as
+stubborn as a mule; that's at least a relic of the old Adam. I
+care no more,' he raised his voice firmly and gravely--'I don't
+care a jot for solitude, not a jot for all the ghosts of all the
+catacombs!'
+
+Mr. Bethany listened, grimly pursed up his lips. 'Not a jot for
+all the ghosts of all the catechisms!' he muttered. `Nor the
+devil himself, I suppose?' He turned once more to glance sharply
+in the direction of the face he could so dimly--and of set
+purpose--discern; and without a word trotted off into the hall.
+Lawford followed with the candle.
+
+''Pon my word, you haven't had a mouthful of supper. Let me
+forage; just a quarter of an hour, eh?'
+
+'Not me,' said Mr Bethany; 'if you won't have me, home I go. I
+refuse to encourage this miserable grass-widowering. What WOULD
+they say? What would the busybodies say? Ghouls and graves and
+shocking mysteries--Selina! Sister Anne! Come on."
+
+He shuffled on his hat and caught firm hold of his knobbed
+umbrella. 'Better not leave a candle,' he said.
+
+Lawford blew out the candle.
+
+'What? What?' called the old man suddenly. But no voice had
+spoken.
+
+A thin trickle of light from the lamp in the street stuck up
+through the fanlight as, with a smile that could be described
+neither as mischievous, saturnine, nor vindictive, and was yet
+faintly suggestive of all three, Lawford quietly opened the
+drawing-room door and put down the candlestick on the floor
+within.
+
+'What on earth, my good man, are you fumbling after now?' came
+the almost fretful question from under the echoing porch.
+
+'Coming, coming,' said Lawford, and slammed the door behind them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIXTEEN
+
+The first faint streaks of dawn were silvering across the stars
+when Lawford again let himself into his deserted house. He
+stumbled down to the pantry and cut himself a crust of bread and
+cheese, and ate it, sitting on the table, watching the leafy
+eastern sky through the painted bars of the area window. He
+munched on, hungry and tired. His night walk had cooled head and
+heart. Having obstinately refused Mr Bethany's invitation to
+sleep at the Vicarage, he had sat down on an old low wall, and
+watched until his light had shone out at his bedroom window. Then
+he had simply wandered on, past rustling glimmering gardens,
+under the great timbers of yellowing elms, hardly thinking,
+hardly aware of himself except as in a far-away vision of a
+sluggish insignificant creature struggling across the tossed-up
+crust of an old, incomprehensible world.
+
+The secret of his content in that long leisurely ramble had been
+that repeatedly by a scarcely realised effort it had not lain in
+the direction of Widderstone. And now, as he sat hungrily
+devouring his breakfast on the table in the kitchen, with the
+daybreak comforting his eyes, he thought with a positive mockery
+of that poor old night-thing he had given inch by inch into the
+safe keeping of his pink and white drawing-room. Don Quixote,
+Poe, Rousseau--they were familiar but not very significant labels
+to a mind that had found very poor entertainment in reading. But
+they were at least representative enough to set him wondering
+which of their influences it was that had inflated with such a
+gaseous heroism the Lawford of the night before. He thought of
+Sheila with a not unkindly smile, and of the rest. 'I wonder what
+they'll do?' had been a question almost as much in his mind
+during these last few hours as had 'What am I to do?' in the
+first bout of his 'visitation.'
+
+But the 'they' was not very precisely visualised. He saw Sheila,
+and Harry, and dainty pale-blue Bettie Lovat, and cautious old
+Wedderburn, and Danton, and Craik, and cheery, gossipy Dr
+Sutherland, and the verger, Mr Dutton, and Critchett, and the
+gardener, and Ada, and the whole vague populous host that keep
+one as definitely in one's place in the world's economy as a
+firm-set pin the camphored moth. What his place was to be only
+time could show. Meanwhile there was in this loneliness at least
+a respite.
+
+Solitude!--he bathed his weary bones in it. He laved his eyelids
+in it, as in a woodland brook after the heat of noon. He sat on
+in calmest reverie till his hunger was satisfied. Then,
+scattering out his last crumbs to the birds from the barred
+window, he climbed upstairs again, past his usual bedroom, past
+his detested guest room, up into the narrow sweetness of Alice's,
+and flinging himself on her bed fell into a long and dreamless
+sleep.
+
+By ten next morning Lawford had bathed and dressed. And at half-
+past ten he got up from Sheila's fat little French dictionary and
+his Memoirs to answer Mrs Gull's summons on the area bell. The
+little woman stood with arms folded over an empty and capacious
+bag, with an air of sustained melancholy on her friendly face.
+She wished him a very nervous 'Good morning,' and dived down into
+the kitchen. The hours dragged slowly by in a silence broken only
+by an occasional ring at the bell. About three she emerged from
+the house and climbed the area steps with her bag hooked over her
+arm. He watched the little black figure out of sight, watched a
+man in a white canvas hat ascend the steps to push a blue-printed
+circular through the letter-box. It had begun to rain a little.
+He returned to the breakfast-room and with the window wide open
+to the rustling coolness of the leaves, edged his way very slowly
+across from line to line of the obscure French print.
+
+Sabathier none the less, and in spite of his unintelligible
+literariness, did begin to take shape and consistency. The man
+himself, breathing, and thinking, began to live for Lawford even
+in those few half-articulate pages, though not in quite so
+formidable a fashion as Mr Bethany had summed him up. But as the
+west began to lighten with the declining sun, the same old
+disquietude, the same old friendless and foreboding ennui stole
+over Lawford's solitude once more. He shut his books, placed a
+candlestick and two boxes of matches on the hall table, lit a
+bead of gas, and went out into the rainy-sweet streets again.
+
+At a mean little barber's with a pole above his lettered door he
+went in to be shaved. And a few steps further on he sat down at
+the crumb-littered counter of a little baker's shop to have some
+tea. It pleased him almost to childishness to find how easily he
+could listen and even talk to the oiled and crimpy little barber,
+and to the pretty, consumptive-looking, print-dressed baker's
+wife. Whatever his face might now be conniving at, the Arthur
+Lawford of last week could never have hob-nobbed so affably with
+his social 'inferiors.'
+
+For no reason in the world, unless to spend a moment or two
+longer in the friendly baker's shop, he bought six-penny-worth of
+cakes. He watched them as they were deposited one by one in the
+bag, and even asked for one sort to be exchanged for another,
+flushing a little at the pretty compliment he had ventured on.
+
+He climbed out of the shop, and paused on the wooden doorstep.
+'Do you happen to know Mr Herbert Herbert's?' he said.
+
+The baker's wife glanced up at him with clear, reflective eyes.
+'Mr Herbert's?--that must be some little way off, sir. I don't
+know any such name, and I know most, just round about like.'
+
+'Well, yes, it is,' said Lawford, rather foolishly; 'I hardly
+know why I asked. It's past the churchyard at Widderstone.'
+
+'Oh yes, sir,' she encouraged him.
+
+'A big, wooden-looking house.'
+
+'Really, sir. Wooden?'
+
+Lawford looked into her face, but could find nothing more to say,
+so he smiled again rather absently, and ascended into the street.
+
+He sat down outside the churchyard gate on the very bank where he
+had in the sourness of the nettles first opened Sabathier's
+Memoirs. The world lay still beneath the pale sky. Presently the
+little fat rector walked up the hill, his wrists still showing
+beneath his sleeves. Lawford meditatively watched him pass by. A
+small boy with a switch, a tiny nose, and a swinging gallipot,
+his cheeks lit with the sunset, followed soon after. Lawford
+beckoned him with his finger and held out the bag of tarts. He
+watched him, half incredulous of his prize, and with many a
+cautious look over his shoulder, pass out of sight. For a long
+while he sat alone, only the evening birds singing out of the
+greenness and silence of the churchyard. What a haunting
+inescapable riddle life was.
+
+Colour suddenly faded out of the light streaming between the
+branches. And depression, always lying in ambush of the novelty
+of his freedom, began like mist to rise above his restless
+thoughts. It was all so devilish empty--this raft of the world
+floating under evening's shadow. How many sermons had he listened
+to, enriched with the simile of the ocean of life. Here they
+were, come home to roost. He had fallen asleep, ineffectual
+sailor that he was, and a thief out of the cloudy deep had stolen
+oar and sail and compass, leaving him adrift amid the riding of
+the waves.
+
+'Are they worth, do you think, quite a penny?' suddenly inquired
+a quiet voice in the silence. He looked up into the almost
+colourless face, into the grey eyes beneath their clear narrow
+brows.
+
+'I was thinking,' he said, 'what a curious thing life is, and
+wondering--'
+
+'The first half is well worth the penny--its originality! I can't
+afford twopence. So you must GIVE me what you were wondering.'
+
+Lawford gazed rather blankly across the twilight fields. 'I was
+wondering,' he said with an oddly naive candour, 'how long it
+took one to sink.'
+
+'They say, you know,' Grisel replied solemnly, 'drowned sailors
+float midway, suffering their sea change; purgatory. But what a
+splendid pennyworth. All pure philosophy!'
+
+'"Philosophy!"' said Lawford; 'I am a perfect fool. Has your
+brother told you about me?'
+
+She glanced at him quickly. 'We had a talk.'
+
+'Then you do know--?' He stopped dead, and turned to her. 'You
+really realise it, looking at me now?'
+
+'I realise,' she said gravely, 'that you look even a little more
+pale and haggard than when I saw you first the other night. We
+both, my brother and I, you know, thought for certain you'd come
+yesterday. In fact, I went into the Widderstone in the evening to
+look for you, knowing your nocturnal habits....' She glanced
+again at him with a kind of shy anxiety.
+
+'Why--why is your brother so--why does he let me bore him so
+horribly?'
+
+'Does he? He's tremendously interested; but then, he's pretty
+easily interested when he's interested at all. If he can possibly
+twist anything into the slightest show of a mystery, he will.
+But, of course, you won't, you can't, take all he says seriously.
+The tiniest pinch of salt, you know. He's an absolute fanatic at
+talking in the air. Besides, it doesn't really matter much.'
+
+'In the air?'
+
+'I mean if once a theory gets into his head--the more far-fetched,
+so long as it's original, the better--it flowers out into a
+positive miracle of incredibilities. And of course you can rout
+out evidence for anything under the sun from his dingy old
+folios. Why did he lend you that PARTICULAR book?'
+
+'Didn't he tell you that, then?'
+
+'He said it was Sabathier.' She seemed to think intensely for the
+merest fraction of a moment, and turned. 'Honestly, though, I
+think he immensely exaggerated the likeness. As for...'
+
+He touched her arm, and they stopped again, face to face. 'Tell
+me what difference exactly you see,' he said. 'I am quite myself
+again now, honestly; please tell me just the very worst you
+think.'
+
+'I think, to begin with,' she began, with exaggerated candour,
+'his is rather a detestable face.'
+
+'And mine?' he said gravely.
+
+'Why--very troubled; oh yes--but his was like some bird of prey.
+Yours--what mad stuff to talk like this!--not the least symptom,
+that I can see, of--why, the "prey," you know.'
+
+They had come to the wicket in the dark thorny hedge. 'Would it
+be very dreadful to walk on a little--just to finish?'
+
+'Very,' she said, turning as gravely at his side.
+
+'What I wanted to say was--' began Lawford, and forgetting
+altogether the thread by which he hoped to lead up to what he
+really wanted to say, broke off lamely; 'I should have thought
+you would have absolutely despised a coward.'
+
+'It would be rather absurd to despise what one so horribly well
+understands. Besides, we weren't cowards--we weren't cowards a
+bit. My childhood was one long, reiterated terror--nights and
+nights of it. But I never had the pluck to tell any one. No one
+so much as dreamt of the company I had. Ah, and you didn't see
+either that my heart was absolutely in my mouth, that I was
+shrivelled up with fear, even at sight of the fear on your face
+in the dark. There's absolutely nothing so catching. So, you see,
+I do know a little what nerves are; and dream too sometimes,
+though I don't choose charnelhouses if I can get a comfortable
+bed. A coward! May I really say that to ask my help was one of
+the bravest things in a man I ever heard of. Bullets--that kind
+of courage--no real woman cares twopence for bullets. An old aunt
+of mine stared a man right out of the house with the thing in her
+face. Anyhow, whether I may or not, I do say it. So now we are
+quits.'
+
+'Will you--' began Lawford, and stopped. 'What I wanted to say
+was,' he jerked on, 'it is sheer horrible hypocrisy to be talking
+to you like this--though you will never have the faintest idea of
+what it has meant and done for me. I mean... And yet, and yet,
+I do feel when just for the least moment I forget what I am, and
+that isn't very often, when I forget what I have become and what
+I must go back to--I feel that I haven't any business to be
+talking with you at all. "Quits!" And here I am, an outcast from
+decent society. Ah, you don't know--'
+
+She bent her head and laughed under her breath. 'You do really
+stumble on such delicious compliments. And yet, do you know, I
+think my brother would be immensely pleased to think you were an
+outcast from decent society if only he could be thought one too.
+He has been trying half his life to wither decent society with
+neglect and disdain--but it doesn't take the least notice. The
+deaf adder, you know. Besides, besides; what is all this meek
+talk? I detest meek talk--gods or men. Surely in the first and
+last resort all we are is ourselves. Something has happened; you
+are jangled, shaken. But to us, believe me, you are simply one of
+fewer friends-and I think, after struggling up Widderstone Lane
+hand in hand with you in the dark, I have a right to say
+"friends" than I could count on one hand. What are we all if we
+only realized it? We talk of dignity and propriety, and we are
+like so many children playing with knucklebones in a giant's
+scullery. Come along, he will, some suppertime, for us, each in
+turn--and how many even will so much as look up from their play
+to wave us good-bye? that's what I mean--the plot of silence we
+are all in. If only I had my brother's lucidity, how much better
+I would have said all this. It is only, believe me, that I want
+ever so much to help you, if I may--even at risk, too,' she
+added, rather shakily, 'of having that help--well--I know it's
+little good.'
+
+The lane had narrowed. They had climbed the arch of a narrow
+stone bridge that spanned the smooth dark Widder. A few late
+starlings were winging far above them. Darkness was coming on
+apace. They stood for awhile looking down into the black flowing
+water, with here and there the mild silver of a star dim leagues
+below. 'I am afraid,' said Grisel, looking quietly up, 'you have
+led me into talking most pitiless nonsense. How many hours, I
+wonder, did I lie awake in the dark last night, thinking of you?
+Honestly, I shall never, NEVER forget that walk. It haunted me,
+on and on.'
+
+'Thinking of me? Do you really mean that? Then it was not all
+imagination; it wasn't just the drowning man clutching at a
+straw?"
+
+The grey eyes questioned him. 'You see,' he explained in a
+whisper, as if afraid of being overheard, 'it--it came back
+again, and--I don't mind a bit how much you laugh at me! I had
+been asleep, and had had a most awful dream, one of those dreams
+that seem to hint that some day THAT will be our real world, that
+some day we may awake where dreaming then will be of this; and I
+woke--came back--and there was a tremendous knocking going on
+downstairs. I knew there was no one else in the house--'
+
+'No one else in the house? And you like this?'
+
+'Yes,' said Lawford, stolidly. 'they were all out as it happened.
+And, of course,' he went on quickly, 'there was nothing for me to
+do but simply to go down and open the door. And yet, do you know,
+at first I simply couldn't move. I lit a candle, and then--then
+somehow I got to know that waiting for me was just--but there,'
+he broke off half-ashamed, 'I mustn't bother you with all this
+morbid stuff. Will your brother be in now, do you think?'
+
+'My brother will be in, and, of course, expecting you. But as for
+"bother," believe me--well, did I quite deserve it?' She stooped
+towards him. 'You lit a candle--and then?'
+
+They turned and retraced their way slowly up the hill.
+
+'It came again.'
+
+'It?'
+
+'That--that presence, that shadow. I don't mean, of course, it's
+a real shadow. It comes, doesn't it, from--from within? As if
+from out of some unheard-of hiding place, where it has been
+lurking for ages and ages before one's childhood; at least, so it
+seems to me now. And yet although it does come from within, there
+it is, too, in front of you, before your eyes, feeding even on
+your fear, just watching, waiting for-- What nonsense all this
+must seem to you!'
+
+'Yes, yes; and then?'
+
+'Then, and you must remember the poor old boy had been knocking
+all this time--my old friend--Mr Bethany, I mean--knocking and
+calling through the letter-box, thinking I was in extremis, or
+something; then--how shall I describe it?--well YOU came, your
+eyes, your face, as clear as when, you know, the night before
+last, we went up the hill together. And then...'
+
+'And then?'
+
+'And then, we--you and I, you know--simply drove him downstairs,
+and I could hear myself grunting as if it was really a physical
+effort; we drove him, step by step, downstairs. And--' He laughed
+outright, and boyishly continued his adventure. 'What do you
+think I did then, without the ghost of a smile, too, at the
+idiocy of the thing? I locked the poor beggar in the
+drawing-room. I saw him there, as plainly as I ever saw anything
+in my life, and the furniture glimmering, though it was pitch
+dark: I can't describe it. It all seemed so desperately real,
+absolutely vital then. It all seems so meaningless and impossible
+now. And yet, although I am utterly played out and done for, and
+however absurd it may sound, I wouldn't have lost it; I wouldn't
+go back for any bribe there is. I feel just as if a great bundle
+had been rolled off my back. Of course, the queerest, the most
+detestable part of the whole business is that it--the thing on
+the stairs--was this'--he lifted a grave and haggard face towards
+her again--'or rather that,' he pointed with his stick towards
+the starry churchyard. 'Sabathier,' he said.
+
+Again they had paused together before the white gate, and this
+time Lawford pushed it open, and followed his companion up the
+narrow path.
+
+She stayed a moment, her hand on the bell. 'Was it my brother who
+actually put that horrible idea into your mind?--about Sabathier?'
+
+'Oh no, not really put it into my head,' said Lawford hollowly.
+'He only found it there; lit it up.'
+
+She laid her hand lightly on his arm. 'Whether he did or not,'
+she said with an earnestness that was almost an entreaty, 'of
+course, you MUST agree that we every one of us have some such
+experience--that kind of visitor, once at least, in a lifetime.'
+'Ah, but,' began Lawford, turning forlornly away, 'you didn't
+see, you can't have realized--the change.'
+
+She pulled the bell almost as if in some inward triumph. 'But
+don't you think,' she suggested, 'that that, like the other,
+might be, as it were, partly imagination too? If now you thought
+back.'
+
+But a little old woman had opened the door, and the sentence, for
+the moment, was left unfinished.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
+
+There was no one in the room, and no light, when they entered. For
+a moment Grisel stood by the open window, looking out. Then she
+turned impulsively. 'My brother, of course, will ask you too,'
+she said; 'we had made up our minds to do so if you came again;
+but I want you to promise me now that you won't dream of going
+back to-night. That surely would be tempting--well, not
+Providence. I couldn't rest if I thought you might be alone; like
+that again.' Her voice died away into the calling of the waters.
+A light moved across the dingy old rows of books and as his
+sister turned to go out Herbert appeared in the doorway, carrying
+a green-shaded lamp, with an old leather quarto under his arm.
+
+'Ah, here you are,' he said. 'I guessed you had probably met.' He
+drew up, burdened, before his visitor. But his clear black
+glance, instead of wandering off at his first greeting, had
+intensified. And it was almost with an air of absorption that he
+turned away. He dumped his book on to a chair and it turned over
+with scattered leaves on to the floor. He put the lamp down and
+stooped after it, so that his next words came up muffled, and as
+if the remark had been forced out of him. 'You don't feel worse,
+I hope?' He got up and faced his visitor for the answer. And for
+the moment Lawford stood considering his symptoms.
+
+'No,' he said almost gaily; 'I feel enormously better.' But
+Herbert's long, oval, questioning eyes beneath the sleek black
+hair were still fixed on his face. 'I am afraid, my dear fellow,'
+he said, with something more than his usual curiously indifferent
+courtesy, 'the struggle has frightfully pulled you to pieces.'
+
+'The question is,' answered Lawford, with a kind of tired yet
+whimsical melancholy in his voice, 'though I am not sure that the
+answer very much matters--what's going to put me together again?
+It's the old story of Humpty Dumpty, Herbert. Besides, one thing
+you said has stuck out in a quite curious way in my memory. I
+wonder if you will remember?'
+
+'What was that?' said Herbert with unfeigned curiosity.
+
+'Why, you said even though Sabathier had failed, though I was
+still my own old stodgy self, that you thought the face--the
+face, you know, might work in. Somehow, sometimes I think it has.
+It does really rather haunt me. In that case--well, what then?'
+Lawford had himself listened to this involved explanation much as
+one watches the accomplishment of a difficult trick, marvelling
+more at its completion at all than at the difficulty involved in
+the doing of it.
+
+'"Work in,"' repeated Herbert, like a rather blase child
+confronted with a new mechanical toy; 'did I really say that?
+well, honestly, it wasn't bad; it's what one would expect on that
+hypothesis. You see, we are only different, as it were, in our
+differences. Once the foot's over the threshold, it's nine points
+of the law! But I don't remember saying it.' He shamefacedly and
+naively confessed it: 'I say such an awful lot of things. And I'm
+always changing my mind. It's a standing joke against me with
+my sister. She says the recording angel will have two sides to my
+account: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; and Tuesdays,
+Thursdays, and Saturdays--diametrically opposite convictions, and
+both kinds wrong. On Sundays I am all things to all men. As for
+Sabathier, by the way, I do want particularly to have another go
+at him. I've been thinking him over, and I'm afraid in some ways
+he won't quite wash. And that reminds me, did you read the poor
+chap?'
+
+'I just grubbed through a page or two; but most of my French was
+left at school. What I did do, though, was to show the book to an
+old friend of ours--my wife's and mine--just to skim--a Mr
+Bethany. He's an old clergyman--our vicar, in fact.'
+
+Herbert had sat down, and with eyes slightly narrowed was
+listening with peculiar attention. He smiled a little
+magnanimously. 'His verdict, I should think, must have been a
+perfect joy.'
+
+'He said,' said Lawford, in his rather low, monotonous voice, 'he
+said it was precious poor stuff, that it reminded him of
+patchouli; and that Sabathier--the print I mean--looked like a
+foxy old roue. They were, I think, his exact words. We were alone
+together, last night.'
+
+'You don't mean that he simply didn't see the faintest
+resemblance?'
+
+Lawford nodded. 'But then,' he added simply, 'whenever he comes
+to see me now he leaves his spectacles at home.'
+
+And at that, as if at some preconcerted signal, they both went
+off into a simple shout of laughter, unanimous and sustained.
+
+But this first wild bout of laughter over, the first real
+bursting of the dam, perhaps, for years, Lawford found himself at
+a lower ebb than ever.
+
+'You see,' he said presently, and while still his companion's
+face was smiling around the remembrance of his laughter like
+ripples after the splash of a stone, 'Bethany has been absolutely
+my sheet-anchor right through. And I was--it was--you can't
+possibly realise what a ghastly change it really was. I don't
+think any one ever will.'
+
+Herbert opened his hand and looked reflectively into its palm
+before allowing himself to reply. 'I wonder, you know; I have
+been wondering a good deal; simply taking the other point of view
+for a moment; WAS it? I don't mean "ghastly" exactly (like, say,
+smallpox, G.P.I, elephantiasis), but was it quite so complete, so
+radical, as in the first sheer gust of astonishment you fancied?'
+
+Lawford thought on a little further. 'You know how one sees
+oneself in a passion--why, how a child looks--the whole face
+darkened and drawn and possessed? That was the change. That's how
+it seems to come back to me. And something, somebody, dodging
+behind the eyes. Yes; more that than even any excessive change of
+feature, except, of course, that I also seemed-- Shall I ever
+forget that first cold, stifling stare into the looking-glass! I
+certainly was much darker, even my hair. But I've told you all
+this before,' he added wearily, 'and the scores and scores of
+times I've thought it. I used to sit up there in the big spare
+bedroom my wife put me up in, simply gloating. My flesh seemed
+nothing more than an hallucination: there I was, haunting my
+body, an old grinning tenement, and all that I thought I wanted,
+and couldn't do without, all I valued and prided myself on--
+stacked up in the drizzling street below. Why, Herbert, our
+bodies are only glass or cloud. They melt, don't they, like wax
+in the sun once we're out. But those first few days don't make
+very pleasant thinking. Friday night was the first, when I sat
+there like a twitching waxwork, soberly debating between Bedlam
+here and Bedlam hereafter. I even sometimes wonder whether its
+very repetition has not dulled the memory or distorted it. My
+wife,' he added ingenuously, 'seems to think there are signs of
+a slight improvement--a going back, I mean. But I'm not sure
+whether she meant it.'
+
+Herbert surveyed his visitor critically. 'You say "dark," he
+said; 'but surely, Lawford, your hair now is nearly grey; well-
+flecked at least.'
+
+Although the remark carried nothing comparatively of a shock with
+it, yet it seemed to Lawford as if an electric current had passed
+over his scalp, coldly stirring every hair upon his head. But
+somehow or other it was easier to sit quietly on, to express no
+surprise, to let them do or say what they liked. 'Well' he
+retorted with an odd, crooked smile, 'you must remember I am a
+good deal older than I was last Saturday. I grew grey in the
+grave, Herbert.'
+
+'But it's like this, you know,' said Herbert, rising excitedly,
+and at the next moment, on reflection, composedly reseating
+himself. 'How many of your people actually saw it? How many owned
+to its being as bad, as complete, as you made out? I don't want
+for a moment to cut right across what you said last night--our
+talk--but there are two million sides to every question, and as
+often as not the less conspicuous have sounder--well--roots.
+That's all.'
+
+'I think really, do you know, I would rather not go over the
+detestable thing again. Not many; my wife, though, and a man I
+know called Danton, who--who's prejudiced. After all, I have
+myself to think about too. And right through, right through--
+there wasn't the least doubt of that--they all in their hearts
+knew it was me. They knew I was behind. I could feel that
+absolutely always; it's not just eyes and ears we use, there's us
+ourselves to consider, though God alone knows what that means.
+But the password was there, as you might say; and they all knew I
+knew it, all--except'--he looked up as if in bewilderment--
+'except just one, a poor old lady, a very old friend of my
+mother's, whom I--I Sabathiered!'
+
+'Whom--you--Sabathiered!' repeated Herbert carefully, with
+infinite relish, looking sidelong at his visitor. 'And it is just
+precisely that....'
+
+But at that moment his sister appeared in the doorway to say that
+supper was ready. And it was not until Herbert was actually
+engaged in carving a cold chicken that he followed up his
+advantage. 'Mr. Lawford, Grisel,' he said, 'has just enriched our
+jaded language with a new verb--to Sabathier. And if I may
+venture to define it in the presence of the distinguished
+neologist himself, it means, "To deal with histrionically"; or,
+rather, that's what it will mean a couple of hundred years hence.
+For the moment it means, "To act under the influence of
+subliminalization'; "To perplex, or bemuse, or estrange with
+OTHERNESS." Do tell us, Lawford, more about the little old lady.'
+He passed with her plate a little meaningful glance at his
+sister, and repeated, 'Do!'
+
+'But I've been plaguing your sister enough already. You'll
+wish...' Lawford began, and turned his tired-out eyes towards
+those others awaiting them so frankly they seemed in their
+perfect friendliness a rest from all his troubles. 'You see,' he
+went on, 'what I kept on thinking and thinking of was to get a
+quite unbiased and unprejudiced view. She had known me for
+years, though we had not actually met more than once or twice
+since my mother's death. And there she was sitting with me at the
+other end of just such another little seat as'--he turned--to
+Herbert 'as ours, at Widderstone. It was on Bewley Common: I can
+see it all now; it was sunset. And I simply turned and asked her
+in a kind of a whining affected manner if she remembered me; and
+when after a long time she came round to owning that to all
+intents and purposes she did not--I professed to have made a
+mistake in recognising her. I think,' he added, glancing up from
+one to the other of his two strange friends, 'I think it was the
+meanest trick I can remember.'
+
+'H'm,' said Herbert solemnly: 'I wish I had as sensitive a
+conscience. But as your old friend didn't recognise you, who's
+the worse? As for her not doing so, just think of the difference
+a few years makes to a man, and any severe shock. Life wears so
+infernally badly. Who, for that matter, does not change, even in
+character and yet who professes to see it? Mind, I don't say in
+essence! But then how many of the human ghosts one meets does one
+know in essence? One doesn't want to. It would be positively
+cataclysmic. And that's what brings me around to feel, Lawford,
+if I may venture to say so, that you may have brooded a little
+too keenly on--on your own case. Tell any one you feel ill; he
+will commiserate with you to positive nausea. Tell any priest
+your soul is in danger; will he wait for proof? It's misereres
+and penances world without end. Tell any woman you love her; will
+she, can she, should she, gainsay you? There you are. The cat's
+out of the bag, you see. My sister and I sat up half the night
+talking the thing over. I said I'd take the plunge. I said I'd
+risk appearing the crassest, contradictoriest wretch that ever
+drew breath. I don't deny that what I hinted at the other night
+must seem in part directly contrary to what I'm going to say
+now.'
+
+He wheeled his black eyes as if for inspiration, and helped
+himself to salad. 'It's this,' he said. 'Isn't it possible, isn't
+it even probable that being ill, and overstrung, moping a little
+over things more or less out of the common ruck, and sitting
+there in a kind of trance--isn't it possible that you may have
+very largely IMAGINED the change? Hypnotised yourself into
+believing it much worse--more profound, radical, acute--and
+simply absolutely hypnotizing others into thinking so, too.
+Christendom is just beginning to rediscover that there is such a
+thing as faith, that it is just possible that, say, megrims or
+melancholia may be removed at least as easily as mountains. The
+converse, of course, is obvious on the face of it. A man fails
+because he thinks himself a failure. It's the men that run away
+that lose the battle. Suppose then, Lawford'--he leaned forward,
+keen and suave--'suppose you have been and "Sabathiered"
+yourself!'
+
+Lawford had grown accustomed during the last few days to finding
+himself gazing out like a child into reality, as if from the
+windows of a dream. He had in a sense followed this long, loosely
+stitched, preliminary argument; he had at least in part realised
+that he sat there between two clear friendly minds acting in the
+friendliest and most obvious collusion. But he was incapable of
+fixing his attention very closely on any single fragment of
+Herbert's apology, or of rousing himself into being much more
+than a dispassionate and not very interested spectator of the
+little melodrama that Fate, it appeared, had at the last moment
+decided rather capriciously to twist into a farce. He turned with
+a smile to the face so keenly fixed and enthusiastic with the
+question it had so laboriously led up to: 'But surely, I don't
+quite see...'
+
+Herbert lifted his glass as if to his visitor's acumen and set it
+down again without tasting it. 'Why, my dear fellow,' he said
+triumphantly, 'even a dream must have a peg. Yours was this
+unforgettable old suicide. Candidly now, how much of Sabathier was
+actually yours? In spite of all that that fantastical fellow,
+Herbert, said last night, dead men DON'T tell tales. The last
+place in the world to look for a ghost is where his traitorous
+bones lie crumbling. Good heavens, think what irrefutable masses
+of evidence there would be at our finger-tips if every tombstone
+hid its ghost! No; the fellow just arrested you with his creepy
+epitaph: an epitaph, mind you, that is in a literary sense
+distinctly fertilizing. It catches one's fancy in its own crude
+way, as pages and pages of infinitely more complicated stuff take
+possession of, germinate, and sprout in one's imagination in
+another way. We are all psychical parasites. Why, given his
+epitaph, given the surroundings, I wager any sensitive
+consciousness could have guessed at his face; and guessing, as it
+were, would have feigned it. What do you think, Grisel?'
+
+'I think, dear, you are talking absolute nonsense; what do they
+call it--"darkening counsel"? It's "the hair of the dog," Mr
+Lawford.'
+
+'Well, then, you see,' said Herbert over a hasty mouthful, and
+turning again to his victim--'then you see, when you were just in
+the pink of condition to credit any idle tale you heard, then I
+came in. What, with the least impetus, can one NOT see by
+moonlight? The howl of a dog turns the midnight into a Brocken;
+the branch of a tree stoops out at you like a Beelzebub crusted
+with gadflies. I'd, mind you, sipped of the deadly old Huguenot
+too. I'd listened to your innocent prattle about the child
+kicking his toes out on death's cupboard door; what more likely
+thing in the world, then, than that with that moon, in that
+packed air, I should have swallowed the bait whole, and seen
+Sabathier in every crevice of your skin? I don't say there wasn't
+any resemblance; it was for the moment extraordinary; it was even
+when you were here the other night distinctly arresting. But now
+(poor old Grisel, I'm nearly done) all I want to say is this:
+that if we had the "foxy old roue" here now, and Grisel played
+Paris between the three of us, she'd hand over the apple not to
+you but to me.'
+
+'I don't quite see where poor Paris comes in,' suggested Grisel
+meekly.
+
+'No, nor do I,' said Herbert. 'All that I mean, sagacious child,
+is, that Mr Lawford no more resembles the poor wretch now than I
+resemble the Apollo Belvedere. If you had only heard my sister
+scolding me, railing at me for putting such ideas into your
+jangled head! They don't affect ME one iota. I have, I suppose,
+what is usually called imagination; which merely means that I can
+sup with the devil, spoon for spoon, and could sleep in
+Bluebeard's linen-closet without turning a hair. You, if I am not
+very much mistaken, are not much troubled with that very
+unprofitable quality, and so, I suppose, when a crooked and
+bizarre fancy does edge into your mind it roots there.'
+
+And that said, not without some little confusion, and covert
+glance of inquiry at his sister, Herbert made all the haste he
+could to catch up the course that his companions had already
+finished.
+
+If only, Lawford thought, this insufferable weariness would lift
+awhile he could enjoy the quiet, absurd, heedless talk, and this
+very friendly topsy-turvy effort to ease his mind and soothe his
+nerves. He might even take an interest again in his 'case.'
+
+'You see,' he said, turning to Grisel, 'I don't think it really
+very much matters how it all came about. I never could believe it
+would last. It may perhaps--some of it at least may be fancy. But
+then, what isn't? What is trustworthy? And now your brother tells
+me my hair's turning grey. I suppose I have been living too
+slowly, too sluggishly, and they thought it was high time to stir
+me up.'
+
+He saw with extraordinary vividness the low panelled room; the
+still listening face; the white muslin shoulders and dark hair;
+and the eyes that seemed to recall some far-off desolate longing
+for home and childhood. It was all a dream. That was the end of
+the matter. Even now, perhaps, his tired old stupid body was
+lying hunched up, drenched with dew upon the little old seat
+under the mist-wreathed branches. Soon it would bestir itself and
+wake up and go off home--home to Sheila, to the old deadly round
+that once had seemed so natural and inevitable, to the old dull
+Lawford--eyes and brain and heart.
+
+They returned up the dark shallow staircase to Herbert's
+book-room, and he talked on to very quiet and passive listeners
+in his own fantastic endless fashion. And ever and again Lawford
+would find himself intercepting fleeting and anxious glances at
+his face, glances almost of remorse and pity; and thought he
+detected beneath this irresponsible contradictory babble an
+unceasing effort to clear the sky, to lure away too pressing
+memories, to put his doubts and fears completely to rest.
+
+Herbert even went so far as to plead guilty, when Grisel gave him
+the cue, of having a little heightened and overcoloured his story
+of the restless phantasmal old creature that haunted their queer
+wooden hauntable old house. And when they rose, laughing and
+yawning to take up their candles, it was, after all, after a
+rather animated discussion, with many a hair-raising ghost story
+brought in for proof between brother and sister, as to exactly
+how many times that snuff-coloured spectre had made his
+appearance; and, with less unanimity still, as to the precise
+manner in which he was in the habit of making his precipitant
+exit.
+
+'You do at any rate acknowledge, Grisel, that the old creature
+does appear, and that you saw him yourself step out into space
+when you were sitting down there under the willow shelling peas.
+I've seen him twice for certain, once rather hazily; Sallie saw
+him so plainly she asked his business: that's five. I resign.'
+
+'Acknowledge!' said Grisel; 'of course I do. I'd acknowledge
+anything in the world to save argument. Why, I don't know what I
+should do without him. If only, now Mr Lawford would give him a
+fair chance to show himself reading quietly here about ten
+minutes to one, or shelling peas even, if he prefers it. If only
+he'd stay long enough for THAT. Wouldn't it be the very thing for
+them both!'
+
+'Of course,' said Herbert cordially, 'the very thing.'
+
+Lawford looked up at neither of them. He shook his head.
+
+But he needed little persuasion to stay at least one night. The
+prospect of that long solitary walk, of that tired stupid
+stooping figure dragging itself along the interminable country
+roads seemed a sheer impossibility. 'It is not--it isn't, I swear
+it--the other that beeps me back,' he had solemnly assured the
+friend that half smiled her relief at his acceptance, 'but--if
+you only knew how empty it's all got now; all reason gone even to
+go on at all.'
+
+'But doesn't it follow? Of course it's empty. And now life is
+going to begin again. I assure you it is, I do indeed. Only, only
+have courage--just the will to win on.'
+
+He said good-night; shut-to the latched door of his long low
+room, ceilinged with rafters close under the steep roof, its
+brown walls hung with quiet, dark, pondering and beautiful faces
+looking gravely across at him. And with his candle in his hand he
+sat down on the bedside. All speculation was gone. The noisy
+clock of his brain had run down again. He turned towards the old
+oval looking-glass on the dressing-table without the faintest
+stirring of interest, suspense, or anxiety. What did it matter
+what a man looked like--a now familiar but enfeebled and
+deprecating voice seemed to say. He knew that a change had come.
+Even Sheila had noticed it. And since then what had he not gone
+through? What now was here seemed of little moment, so far at
+least as this world was concerned.
+
+At last with an effort he rose, crossed the uneven floor, and
+looked in unmovedly on what was his own poor face come back to
+him: changed indeed almost beyond belief from the sleek
+self-satisfied genial yet languid Arthur Lawford of the past
+years, and still haunted with some faint trace of the set and icy
+sharpness, and challenge, and affront of the dark Adventurer, but
+that--how immeasurably dimmed and blunted and faded. He had
+expected to find it so. Would it (the thought vanished across his
+mind) would it have been as unmistakably there had he come
+hot-foot, fearing, expecting to find the other? But--was he
+disappointed!
+
+He hardly knew how long he stood there, leaning on his hands,
+surveying almost listlessly in the candle-light that lined,
+bedraggled, grey, hopeless countenance, those dark-socketed,
+smouldering eyes, whose pupils even now were so dilated that a
+casual glance would have failed to detect the least hint of any
+iris. 'It must have been something pretty bad you were, you know,
+or something pretty bad you did,' they seemed to be trying to say
+to him, 'to drag us down to this.'
+
+He knelt down by force of habit to say his prayers; but no words
+came. Well, between earthly friends a betrayal such as this would
+have caused a livelong estrangement and hostility. The God the
+old Lawford used to pray to would forgive him, he thought
+wearily, if just for the present he was a little too sore at
+heart to play the hypocrite. But if, while kneeling, he said
+nothing, he saw a good many things in such tranquillity and
+clearness as the mere eyes of the body can share but rarely with
+their sisters of the imagination. And now it was Alice who looked
+mournfully out of the dark at him; and now the little old
+charwoman, Mrs Gull, with her bag hooked over her arm, climbed
+painfully up the area steps; and now it was the lean vexed face
+of a friend, nursing some restless and anxious grievance against
+him--Mr Bethany; and then and ever again it was the face of one
+who seemed pure dream and fantasy and yet... He listened intently
+and fancied even now he could hear the voices of brother and
+sister talking quietly and circumspectly together in the room
+beneath.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
+
+A quiet knocking aroused him in the long, tranquil bedroom; and
+Herbert's head was poked into the room. 'There's a bath behind
+that door over there,' he whispered, `or if you like I'm off for
+a bathe in the Widder. It's a luscious day. Shall I wait? All
+right,' and the head was withdrawn. 'Don't put much on,' came the
+voice at the panel; 'we'll be home again in twenty minutes.'
+
+The green and brightness of the morning must have been prepared
+for overnight by spiders and the dew. Everywhere the gleaming
+nets were hung, and everywhere there rose a tiny splendour from
+the waterdrops, so clear and pure and changeable it seemed with
+their fire and colour they shook a tiny crystal music in the air.
+Herbert led the way along a clayey downward path beneath hazels
+tossing softly together their twigs of nuts, until they came out
+into a rounded hollow that, mounded with thyme, sloped gently
+down to the green banks of the Widder. The water poured like
+clearest glass beneath a rain of misty sunbeams.
+
+'My sister always says that this is the very dell Boccaccio had
+in his mind's eye when he wrote the "Decameron." There really is
+something almost classic in those pines. And I'd sometimes swear
+with my eyes just out of the water I've seen Dryads half in
+hiding peeping between those beeches. Good Lord, Lawford,
+what a world we wretched moderns have made, and missed!'
+
+The water was violently cold. It seemed to Lawford, as it swept
+up over his body, and as he plunged his night-distorted eyes
+beneath its blazing surface, that it was charged with some
+strange, powerful enchantment to wash away in its icy clearness
+even the memory of the dull and tarnished days behind him. If one
+could but tie up anyhow that stained bundle of inconsequent
+memories called life, and fling it into a cupboard remoter even
+than Bluebeard's, and lock the door, and drop the quickly-rusting
+key into these living waters!
+
+He dressed himself with window thrown open to the blackbirds and
+thrushes, and the occasional shrill solitary whistling of a
+robin. But, like the sour-sweet fragrance of the brier, its
+wandering desolate burst of music had power to wake memory, and
+carried him instantly back to that first aimless descent into the
+evening gloom of Widderstone from which it was in vain to hope
+ever to climb again. Surely never a more ghoulish face looked out
+on its man before than that which confronted him as with borrowed
+razor he stood shaving those sunken chaps, that angular chin.
+
+And even now, beneath the lantern of broad daylight, just as
+within that other face had lurked the undeniable ghost and
+presence of himself, so beneath the sunken features seemed to
+float, tenuous as smoke, scarcely less elusive than a dream,
+between eye and object, the sinister darkness of the face that in
+those two bouts with fear he had by some strange miracle managed
+to repel.
+
+'Work in,' the chance phrase came back. It had worked in in sober
+earnest; and so far as the living of the next few weeks went,
+surely it might prove an ally without which he simply could not
+conceive himself as struggling on at all.
+
+But as dexterous minds as even restless Sabathier's had him just
+now in safe and kindly keeping. All the quiet October morning
+Herbert kept him talking and stooping over his extraordinary
+collection of books.
+
+'The point is,' he explained to Lawford, standing amid a positive
+archipelago of precious 'finds,' with his foot hoisted onto a
+chair and a patched-up, sea-stained folio on his knee, 'I
+honestly detest the mere give and take of what we are fools
+enough to call life. I don't deny Life's there,' he swept his
+hand towards the open window--'in that frantic Tophet we call
+London; but there's no focus, no point of vantage. Even a
+scribbler only gets it piecemeal and through a dulled medium. We
+learn to read before we know how to see; we swallow our tastes,
+convictions, and emotions whole; so that nine-tenths of the
+world's nectar is merely honeydew.' He smiled pleasantly into the
+fixed vacancy of his visitor's face. 'That's why I've just gone
+on,' he continued amiably, 'collecting this particular kind of
+stuff--what you might call riff-raff. There's not a book here,
+Lawford, that hasn't at least a glimmer of the real thing in it--
+just Life, seen through a living eye, and felt. As for
+literature, and style, and all that gallimaufry, don't fear for
+them if your author has the ghost of a hint of genius in his
+making.'
+
+'But surely,' said Lawford, trying for the twentieth time to
+pretend to himself that these endless books carried the faintest
+savour of the delight to him which they must, he rather forlornly
+supposed, shower upon Herbert, 'surely genius is a very rare
+thing!'
+
+'Rare! the world simply swarms with it. But before you can bottle
+it up in a book it's got to be articulate. Just for a single
+instant imagine yourself Falstaff, and if there weren't hundreds
+of Falstaffs in every generation, to be examples of his ungodly
+life, he'd be as dead as a doornail to-morrow--imagine yourself
+Falstaff, and being so, sitting down to write "Henry IV," or "The
+Merry Wives." It's simply preposterous. You wouldn't be such a
+fool as to waste the time. A mere Elizabethan scribbler comes
+along with a gift of expression and an observant eye, lifts the
+bloated old tippler clean out of life, and swims down the ages as
+the greatest genius the world has ever seen. Whereas, surely,
+though you mustn't let me bore you with all this piffle, it's
+Falstaff is the genius, and W. S. merely a talented reporter.
+
+'Lear, Macbeth, Mercutio--they live on their own, as it were. The
+newspapers are full of them, if we were only the Shakespeares to
+see it. Have you ever been in a Police Court? Have you ever
+WATCHED tradesmen behind their counters? My soul, the secrets
+walking in the streets! You jostle them at every corner. There's
+a Polonius in every first-class railway carriage, and as many
+Juliets as there are boarding-schools. What the devil are you,
+my dear chap, but genius itself, with all the world brand new
+upon your shoulders? And who'd have thought it of you ten days
+ago?
+
+'It's simply and solely because we're all, poor wretches, dumb--
+dumb as butts of Malmsez; dumb as drummerless drums. Here am I,
+ass that I am, trickling out this--this whey that no more
+expresses me than Tupper does Sappho. But that's what I want to
+mean. How inexhaustibly rich everything is, if you only stick to
+life. Here it is packed away behind these rotting covers, just
+the real thing, no respectable stodge; no mere parasitic stuff;
+not more than a dozen poets; scores of outcasts and vagabonds--
+and the real thing in vagabonds is pretty rare in print, I can
+tell you. We're all, every one of us, sodden with facts, drugged
+with the second-hand, and barnacled with respectability until--
+until the touch comes. Goodness knows where from; but there's no
+mistaking it; oh no!'
+
+'But what,' said Lawford uneasily, 'what on earth do you mean by
+the touch?'
+
+'I mean when you cease to be a puppet only and sit up in the
+gallery too. When you squeeze through to the other side. When you
+suffer a kind of conversion of the mind; become aware of your
+senses. When you get a living inkling. When you become articulate
+to yourself. When you SEE.'
+
+'I am awfully stupid,' Lawford murmured, 'but even now I don't
+really follow you a bit. But when, as you say, you do become
+articulate to yourself, what happens then?'
+
+'Why, then,' said Herbert with a shrug almost of despair, 'then
+begins the weary tramp back. One by one drop off the truisms, and
+the Grundyisms, and the pedantries, and all the stillborn
+claptrap of the marketplace sloughs off. Then one can seriously
+begin to think about saving one's soul.'
+
+'Saving one's soul,' groaned Lawford; 'why, I am not even sure of
+my own body yet.' He walked slowly over to the window and with
+every thought in his head as quiet as doves on a sunny wall,
+stared out into the garden of green things growing, leaves fading
+and falling water. 'I tell you what,' he said, turning
+irresolutely, 'I wonder if you could possibly find time to write
+me out a translation of Sabathier. My French is much too hazy to
+let me really get at the chap. He's gone now; but I really should
+like to know what kind of stuff exactly he has left behind.'
+
+'Oh, Sabathier!' said Herbert, laughing. 'What do you think of
+that, Grisel?' he asked, turning to his sister, who at that
+moment had looked in at the door. 'Here's Mr Lawford asking me to
+make a translation of Sabathier. Lunch, Lawford.'
+
+Lawford sighed. And not until he had slowly descended half the
+narrow uneven stairs that led down to the dining-room did he
+fully realise the guile of a sister that could induce a hopeless
+bookworm to waste a whole morning over the stupidest of
+companions, simply to keep his tired-out mind from rankling, and
+give his Sabathier a chance to go to roost.
+
+'I think, do you know,' he managed to blurt out at last 'I think
+I ought to be getting home again. The house is empty--and--'
+
+'You shall go this evening,' said Herbert, 'if you really must
+insist on it. But honestly, Lawford, we both think that after
+what the last few days must have been, it is merely common sense
+to take a rest. How can you possibly rest with a dozen empty
+rooms echoing every thought you think? There's nothing more to
+worry about; you agree to that. Send your people a note saying
+that you are here, safe and sound. Give them a chance of lighting
+a fire, and driving in the fatted calf. Stay on with us just the
+week out.'
+
+Lawford turned from one to the other of the two friendly faces.
+But what was dimly in his mind refused to express itself. 'I
+think, you know, I--' he began falteringly.
+
+'But it's just this thinking that's the deuce--this preposterous
+habit of having continually to make up one's mind. Off with his
+head, Grisel! My sister's going to take you for a picnic; we go
+every other fine afternoon; and you can argue it out with her.'
+
+Once alone again with Grisel, however, Lawford found talking
+unnecessary. Silences seemed to fall between them as quietly and
+restfully as evening flows into night. They walked on slowly
+through the fading woods, and when they had reached the top of
+the hill that sloped down to the dark and foamless Widder they
+sat down in the honey-scented sunshine on a knoll of heather and
+bracken, and Grisel lighted the little spirit-kettle she had
+brought with her, and busied herself very methodically over
+making tea.
+
+That done, she clasped her hands round her knees, and sat now
+gossiping, now silent, in the pale autumnal beauty. There was a
+bird wistfully twittering in the branches overhead, and ever and
+again a withered leaf would slip circling down from the
+motionless beech boughs arched in their stillness above their
+heads beneath the thin blue sky.
+
+'Men, you know,' she began again suddenly, starting out of
+reverie, 'really are absurdly blind; and just a little bit
+absurdly kindly stupid. How many times have I been at the point
+of laughing out at my brother's delicious naive subtleties. But
+you do, you will, understand, Mr Lawford, that he was, that we
+are both "doing our best"--to make amends?'
+
+
+'I understand--I do indeed--a tenth part of all your kindness.'
+
+'Yes, but that's just it--that horrible word "kindness"! If ever
+there were two utterly self-absorbed people, without a trace,
+with an absolute horror of kindness, it is just my brother and I.
+It's most of it false and most of it useless. We all surely must
+take what comes in this topsy-turvy world. I believe in saying
+out:--that the more one thinks about life the worse it becomes.
+There are only two kinds of happiness in this world--a wooden
+post's and Prometheus's. And who ever heard of any one having the
+impudence to be kind to Prometheus? As for a miserable "medium"
+like me, not quite a post and leagues and leagues from even
+envying a Prometheus, she's better for the powder without the
+jam. But that's all nothing. What I can't help thinking--and it's
+not a bit giving my brother away, because we both think it--that
+it was partly our thoughtlessness that added at least something
+to--to the rest. It was perfectly absurd. He saw you were ill; he
+saw--he must have seen even in that first Sunday talk--that your
+nerves were all askew. And who doesn't know what "nerves" means
+nowadays? And yet he deliberately chattered. He loves it--just at
+large, you know, like me. I told him before I came out that I
+intended, if I could, to say all this. And now it's said you'll
+please forgive me for going back to it.'
+
+'Please don't talk about forgiveness. But when you say he
+chattered, you mean about Sabathier, of course. And that, you
+know, I don't care a fig for now. We can settle all that between
+ourselves--him and me, I mean. And now tell me candidly again--Is
+there any "prey" in my face now?'
+
+She looked up fleetingly into his eyes, leant back her head and
+laughed. '"Prey," there never was a glimpse.'
+
+'And "change"?' Their eyes met again in an infinitely brief,
+infinitely bewildering argument.
+
+'Really, really, scarcely perceptible,' she assured him, 'except,
+of course, how horribly, horribly ill you look. And that only
+seems to prove to me you must be hiding something else. No
+illusion on earth could--could have done that to your face.'
+
+'You think, I know,' he persisted, 'that I must be persuaded and
+cosseted and humoured. Yes, you do; it's my poor old sanity
+that's really in both your minds. Perhaps I am--not absolutely
+sound. Anyhow. I've been watching it in your looks at each other
+all the time. And I can never, never say, never tell you what you
+have done for me. But you see, after all, we did win through; I
+keep on telling myself that. So that now it's purely from the
+most selfish and practical motives that I want you to be
+perfectly frank with me. I have to go back, you know; and some of
+them, one or two of my friends I mean, are not all on my side.
+Think of me as I was when you came into the room, three centuries
+ago, and you turned and looked, frowning at me in the
+candle-light; remember that and look at me now. What is the
+difference? Does it shock you? Does it make the whole world seem
+a trick, a sham? Does it simply sour your life to think such a
+thing possible? Oh, the hours I've spent gloating on
+Widderstone's miserable mask of skin and bone, as I was saying to
+your brother only last night, and never knew until they shuffled
+me that the old self too was nothing better than a stifling
+suffocating mask.'
+
+'But don't you see,' she argued softly, turning her face away a
+little, 'you were a stranger then (though I certainly didn't mean
+to frown). And then a little while after we were, well, just
+human beings, shoulder to shoulder, and if friendship does not
+mean that, I don't know what it does mean. And now, you are--
+well, just you: the you, you know, of three centuries ago! And if
+you mean to ask me whether at any precise moment I have been
+conscious that this you I am now speaking to was not the you of
+last night, or of that dark climb up the hill, why, it is simply
+frantic to think it could ever be necessary to say over and over
+again, No. But if you mean, Have you changed else? All I could
+answer is, Don't we all change as we grow to know one another?
+What were just features, what just dingily represented one, as it
+were, is forgotten, or rather gets remembered. Of course, the
+first glimpse is the landscape under lightning as it were. But
+afterwards isn't it surely like the alphabet to a child; what was
+first a queer angular scrawl becomes A, and is always ever after
+A, undistinguished, half-forgotten, yet standing at last for
+goodness knows what real wonderful things--or for just the dry
+bones of soulless words? Is that it?" She stole a sidelong glance
+into his brooding face, leaning her head on her hand.
+
+'Yes, yes,' came the rather dissatisfied reply. "I do agree;
+perfectly. But then, you see--I told you I was going to talk of
+nothing but myself--what did at first happen to me was something
+much worse, and, I suppose, something quite different from that.'
+
+'And yet, didn't you tell us, that of all your friends not one
+really denied in their hearts your--what they would call, I
+suppose--your IDENTITY; except that poor little offended old
+lady. And even she, if my intuition is worth a penny piece, even
+she when you go soon and talk to her will own that she did know
+you, and that it was not because you were a stranger that she was
+offended, but because you so ungenerously pretended to be one.
+That was a little mad, now, if you like!'
+
+'Oh yes,' said Lawford, 'I am going to ask her forgiveness. I
+don't know what I didn't vow to take her for a peace-offering if
+the chance should ever come--and the courage--to make my peace
+with her. But now that the chance has come, and I think the
+courage, it is the desire that's gone. I don't seem to care
+either way. I feel as if I had got past making my peace with any
+one.'
+
+But this time no answer helped him out.
+
+'After all,' he went plodding on, 'there is more than just the
+mere day to day to consider. And one doesn't realise that one's
+face actually IS one's fortune without a shock. And that THAT
+gone, one is, as your brother said, just like a bee come back to
+the wrong hive. It undermines,' he smiled rather bitterly, 'one's
+views rather. And it certainly shifts one's friends. If it hadn't
+been just for my old'--he stopped dead, and again pushed slowly
+on--'if it hadn't been for our old friend, Mr Bethany, I doubt if
+we should now have had a soul on our side. I once read somewhere
+that wolves always chase the old and weak and maimed out of the
+pack. And after all, what do we do? Where do we keep the homeless
+and the insane? And yet, you know,' he added ruminatingly, 'it is
+not as if mine was ever a particularly lovely or lovable face!
+While as for the poor wretch behind it, well, I really cannot see
+what meaning, or life even, he had before--'
+
+'Before?'
+
+Lawford met bravely the clear whimsical eyes. 'Before, I was
+Sabathiered.'
+
+Grisel laughed outright.
+
+'You think,' he retorted almost bitterly, 'you think I am talking
+like a child.'
+
+'Yes,' she sighed cheerfully, 'I was quite envying you.'
+
+'Well, there I am,' said Lawford inconsequently. 'And now; well,
+now, I suppose, the whole thing's to begin again. I can't help
+beginning to wonder what the meaning of it all is; why one's duty
+should always seem so very stupid a thing. And then, too, what
+can there be on earth that even a buried Sabathier could desire?'
+He glanced up in a really animated perplexity at the still, dark
+face turned in the evening light towards the darkening valley.
+And perplexity deepened into a disquieted frown--like that of a
+child who is roused suddenly from a daydream by the
+half-forgotten question of a stranger. He turned his eyes almost
+furtively away as if afraid of disturbing her; and for awhile
+they sat in silence... At last he turned again almost shyly. 'I
+hope some day you will let me bring my daughter to see you.'
+
+'Yes, yes,' said Grisel eagerly; 'we should both LOVE it, of
+course. Isn't it curious?--I simply KNEW you had a daughter.
+Sheer intuition!'
+
+'I say "some day,"' said Lawford; 'I know, though, that that some
+day will never come.'
+
+'Wait; just wait,' replied the quiet confident voice, 'that will
+come too. One thing at a time, Mr Lawford. You've won your old
+self back again; you'll win your old love of life back again in a
+little while; never fear. Oh, don't I know that awful Land's End
+after illness; and that longing, too, that gnawing longing, too,
+for Ultima Thule. So, it's a bargain between us that you bring
+your daughter soon.' She busied herself over the tea things.
+'And, of course,' she added, as if it were an afterthought,
+looking across at him in the pale green sunlight as she knelt,
+'you simply won't think of going back to-night.... Solitude, I
+really do think, solitude just now would be absolute madness.
+You'll write to-day and go, perhaps, to-morrow!'
+
+Lawford looked across in his mind at his square ungainly house,
+full-fronting the afternoon sun. He tried to repress a shudder.
+'I think, do you know, I ought to go to-day.'
+
+'Well, why not? Why not? Just to reassure yourself that all's
+well. And come back here to sleep. If you'd really promise that
+I'd drive you in. I'd love it. There's the jolliest little
+governess-cart we sometimes hire for our picnics. Way I? You've
+no idea how much easier in our minds my brother and I would be if
+you would. And then to-morrow, or at any rate the next day, you
+shall be surrendered, whole and in your right mind. There, that's
+a bargain too. Now we must hurry.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINETEEN
+
+Herbert himself went down to order the governess cart, and packed
+them in with a rug. And in the dusk Grisel set Lawford down at
+the corner of his road and drove on to an old bookseller's with a
+commission from her brother, promising to return for him in an
+hour. Dust and a few straws lay at rest as if in some abstruse
+arrangement on the stones of the porch just as the last faint
+whirling gust of sunset had left them. Shut lids of sightless
+indifference seemed to greet the wanderer from the curtained
+windows.
+
+He opened the door and went in. For a moment he stood in the
+vacant hall; then he peeped first into the blind-drawn
+dining-room, faintly, dingily sweet, like an empty wine-bottle.
+He went softly on a few paces and just opening the door looked in
+on the faintly glittering twilight of the drawing-room. But the
+congealed stump of candle that he had set in the corner as a
+final rancorous challenge to the beaten Shade was gone. He slowly
+and deliberately ascended the stairs, conscious of a peculiar
+sense of ownership of what in even so brief an absence had taken
+on so queer a look of strangeness. It was almost as if he might
+be some lone heir come in the rather mournful dusk to view what
+melancholy fate had unexpectedly bestowed on him.
+
+'Work in'--what on earth else could this chill sense of
+strangeness mean? Would he ever free his memory from that one
+haphazard, haunting hint? And as he stood in the doorway of the
+big, calm room, which seemed even now to be stirring with the
+restless shadow of these last few far-away days; now pacing
+sullenly to and fro; now sitting hunched-up to think; and now
+lying impotent in a vain, hopeless endeavour only for the breath
+of a moment to forget--he awoke out of reverie to find himself
+smiling at the thought that a changed face was practically at the
+mercy of an incredulous world, whereas a changed heart was no
+one's deadly dull affair but its owner's. The merest breath of
+pity even stole over him for the Sabathier who after all had
+dared and had needed, perhaps, nothing like so arrogant and
+merciless a coup de grace to realise that he had so ignominiously
+failed.
+
+'But there, that's done!' he exclaimed out loud, not without a
+tinge of regret that theories, however brilliant and bizarre,
+could never now be anything else--that now indeed that the
+symptoms had gone, the 'malady,' for all who had not been
+actually admitted into the shocked circle, was become nothing
+more than an inanely 'tall' story; stuffing not even savoury
+enough for a goose. How wide exactly, he wondered, would Sheila's
+discreet, shocked circle prove? He stood once more before the
+looking-glass, hearing again Grisel's words in the still green
+shadow of the beech-tree, 'Except of course, horribly, horribly
+ill.' 'What a fool, what a coward she thinks I am!'
+
+There was still nearly an hour to be spent in this great barn of
+faded interests. He lit a candle and descended into the kitchen.
+A mouse went scampering to its hole as he pushed open the door.
+The memory of that ravenous morning meal nauseated him. It was
+sour and very still here; he stood erect; the air smelt faint of
+earth. In the breakfast-room the bookcase still swung open. Late
+evening mantled the garden; and in sheer ennui again he sat down
+to the table, and turned for a last not unfriendly hob-a-nob with
+his poor old friend Sabathier. He would take the thing back.
+Herbert, of course, was going to translate it for him. Now if the
+patient old Frenchman had stormed Herbert instead--that surely
+would have been something like a coup! Those frenzied books. The
+absurd talk of the man. Herbert was perfectly right--he could
+have entertained fifty old Huguenots without turning a hair. 'I'm
+such an awful stodge.'
+
+He turned the woolly leaves over very slowly. He frowned
+impatiently, and from the end backwards turned them over again.
+Then he laid the book softly down on the table and sat back. He
+stared with narrowed lids into the flame of his quiet friendly
+candle. Every trace, every shred of portrait and memoir were
+gone. Once more, deliberately, punctiliously, he examined page by
+page the blurred and unfamiliar French--the sooty heads, the
+long, lean noses, the baggy eyes passing like figures in a
+peepshow one by one under his hand--to the last fragmentary and
+dexterously mended leaf. Yes, Sabathier was gone. Quite the old
+slow Lawford smile crept over his face at the discovery. It was a
+smile a little sheepish too, as he thought of Sheila's quiet
+vigilance.
+
+And the next instant he had looked up sharply, with a sudden
+peculiar shrug, and a kind of cry, like the first thin cry of an
+awakened child, in his mind. Without a moment's hesitation he
+climbed swiftly upstairs again to the big sepulchral bedroom. He
+pressed with his fingernail the tiny spring in the looking-glass.
+The empty drawer flew open. There were finger-marks still in the
+dust.
+
+Yet, strangely enough, beneath all the clashing thoughts that
+came flocking into his mind as he stood with the empty drawer in
+his hand, was a wounding yet still a little amused pity for his
+old friend Mr Bethany. So far as he himself was concerned the
+discovery--well, he would have plenty of time to consider
+everything that could possibly now concern himself. Anyhow, it
+could only simplify matters.
+
+He remembered waking to that old wave of sickening horror on the
+first unhappy morning; he remembered the keen yet owlish old face
+blinking its deathless friendliness at him, and the steady
+pressure of the cold, skinny hand. As for Sheila, she had never
+done anything by halves; certainly not when it came to throwing
+over a friend no longer necessary to one's social satisfaction.
+But she would edge out cleverly, magnanimously, triumphantly
+enough, no doubt, when the day of reckoning should come, the day
+when, her nets wide spread, her bait prepared, he must stand up
+before her outraged circle and positively prove himself her
+lawful husband, perhaps even to the very imprint of his thumb.
+
+'Poor old thing!' he said again; and this time his pity was
+shared almost equally between both witnesses to Mr Bethany's
+ingenuous little document, the loss of which had fallen so softly
+and pathetically that he felt only ashamed of having discovered
+it so soon.
+
+He shut back the tell-tale drawer, and after trying to collect
+his thoughts in case anything should have been forgotten, he
+turned with a deep trembling sigh to descend the stairs. But on
+the landing he drew back at the sound of voices, and then a
+footstep. Soon came the sound of a key in the lock. He blew out
+his candle and leant listening over the balusters.
+
+'Who's there?' he called quietly.
+
+'Me, sir,' came the feeble reply out of the darkness.
+
+'What is it, Ada? What have you come for?'
+
+'Only, sir, to see that all was safe, and you were in, sir.'
+
+'Yes,' he said. 'All's safe; and I am in. What if I had been
+out?' It was like dropping tiny pebbles into a deep well--so long
+after came the answering feeble splash.
+
+'Then I was to go back, sir.' And a moment after the discreet
+voice floated up with the faintest tinge of effrontery out of the
+hush. 'Is that Dr Ferguson, too sir?'
+
+'No, Ada; and please tell your mistress from me that Dr Ferguson
+is unlikely to call again.' A keen but rather forlorn smile
+passed over his face. 'He's dining with friends no doubt at
+Holloway. But of course if she should want to see him he will see
+her to-morrow at any hour at Mrs Lovat's. And--Ada!'
+
+'Yes, sir?'
+
+'Say that I'm a little better; your mistress will be relieved to
+hear that I'm a little better; still not quite myself say, but, I
+think, a little better.'
+
+'Yes, sir; and I'm sure I'm very glad to hear it,' came fainter
+still.
+
+'What voice was that I heard just now?'
+
+'Miss Alice's, sir; but she came quite against my wishes, and I
+hope you won't repeat it, sir. She promised if she came that
+mistress shouldn't know. I was only afraid she might disturb you,
+or--or Dr Ferguson. And did you say, sir, that I was to tell
+mistress that he MIGHT be coming back?'
+
+'Ah, that I don't know; so perhaps it would be as well not to
+mention him at all. Is Miss Alice there?'
+
+'I said I would tell her if you were alone. But I hope you'll
+understand that it was only because she begged so. Mistress has
+gone to St Peter's bazaar; and that's how it was.'
+
+'I quite understand. Beckon to her.'
+
+There came a hasty step in the hall and a hurried murmur of
+explanation. Lawford heard her call as she ran up the stairs; and
+the next moment he had Alice's hand in his and they were groping
+together through the gloaming back into the solitude of the empty
+room again.
+
+'Don't he alarmed, dear,' he heard himself imploring. Just hold
+tight to that clear common sense, and above all you won't tell?
+It must be our secret; a dead, dead secret from every one, even
+your mother, for just a little while; just a mere two days or
+so--in case. I'm--I'm better, dear.'
+
+He fumbled with the little box of matches, dropped one, broke
+another; but at last the candle-flame dipped, brightened, and
+with the door shut and the last pale blueness of dusk at the
+window Lawford turned and looked at his daughter. She stood with
+eyes wide open, like the eyes of a child walking in its sleep;
+then twisted her fingers more tightly within his. 'Oh, dearest,
+how ill, how ill you look,' she whispered. 'But there, never
+mind--never mind. It was all a miserable dream, then; it won't,
+it can't come back? I don't think I could bear its coming back.
+And mother told me such curious things; as if I were a child and
+understood nothing. And even after I knew that you were you--I
+mean before I sat up here in the dark to see you--she said that
+you were gone and would never come back; that a terrible thing
+had happened--a disgrace which we must never speak of; and that
+all the other was only a pretence to keep people from talking.
+But I did not believe then, and how could I believe afterwards?'
+
+'There, never mind now, dear, what she said. It was all meant for
+the best, perhaps. But here I am; and not nearly so ill as I
+look, Alice; and there's nothing more to trouble ourselves about;
+not even if it should be necessary for me to go away for a time.
+And this is our secret, mind; ours only; just a dead secret
+between you and me.'
+
+They sat for awhile without speaking or stirring. And faintly
+along the hushed road Lawford heard in the silence a leisurely
+indolent beat of little hoofs approaching, and the sound of
+wheels. A sudden wave of feeling swept over him. He took Alice's
+quiet loving face in his hands and kissed her passionately. 'Do
+not so much as think of me yet, or doubt, or question: only love
+me, dearest. And soon--and soon--'
+
+'We'll just begin again, just begin again, won't we? all three of
+us together, just as we used to be. I didn't mean to have said
+all those horrid things about mother. She was only dreadfully
+anxious and meant everything for the best. You'll let me tell her
+soon?'
+
+The haggard face turned slowly, listening. 'I hear, I understand,
+but I can't think very clearly now, Alice; I can't, dear; my
+miserable old tangled nerves. I just stumble along as best I can.
+You'll understand better when you get to be a poor old thing like
+me. We must do the best we can. And of course you'll see, Dillie,
+how awfully important it is not to raise false hopes. You
+understand? I mustn't risk the least thing in the world, must I?
+And now goodbye; only for a few hours now. And not a word, not a
+word to a single living soul.'
+
+He extinguished the candle again, and led the way to the top of
+the stairs. 'Are you there, Ada?'
+
+'Yes, sir,' answered the quiet imperturbable voice from under the
+black straw brim. Alice went slowly down, but at the foot of the
+stairs, looking out into the cold, blue, lamplit street she
+paused as if at a sudden recollection, and ran hastily up again.
+
+'There was nothing more, dear?' She said, leaning back to peer
+up.
+
+'"Nothing more?" What?'
+
+She stood panting a little in the darkness, listening to some
+cautious yet uneasy thought that seemed to haunt her mind. 'I
+thought--it seemed there was something we had not said, something
+I could not understand. But there, it is nothing! You know what a
+fanciful old silly I am. You do love me? Quite as much as ever?'
+
+'More, sweetheart, more!'
+
+'Good-night again, then; and God bless you, dear.'
+
+The outer door closed softly, the footsteps died away. Lawford
+still hesitated. He took hold of the stairs above his head as he
+stood on the landing and leaned his head upon his hands, striving
+calmly to disentangle the perplexity of his thoughts. His pulses
+were beating in his ear with a low muffled roar. He looked down
+between the blinds to where against the blue of the road beneath
+the straggling yellow beams of the lamp stood the little cart and
+drooping, shaggy pony, and Grisel sitting quietly there awaiting
+him. He shut his eyes as if in hope by some convulsive effort of
+mind to break through this subtle glasslike atmosphere of dream
+that had stolen over consciousness, and blotted out the
+significance, almost the meaning of the past. He turned abruptly.
+Empty as the empty rooms around him, unanswering were mind and
+heart. Life was a tale told by an idiot--signifying nothing.
+
+He paused at the head of the staircase. And even then the doubt
+confronted him: Would he ever come back? Who knows? he thought;
+and again stood pondering, arguing, denying. At last he seemed to
+have come to a decision. He made his way downstairs, opened and
+left ajar a long narrow window in a passage to the garden beyond
+the kitchen. He turned on his heel as he reached the gate and
+waved his hand as if in a kind of forlorn mockery towards the
+darkly glittering windows. The drowsy pony awoke at touch of the
+whip.
+
+Grisel lifted the rug and squeezed a little closer into the
+corner. She had drawn a veil over her face, so that to Lawford
+her eyes seemed to be dreaming in a little darkness of their own
+as he laid his hand on the side of the cart. 'It's a most curious
+thing,' he said, 'but peeping down at you just now when the sound
+of the wheels came, a memory came clearly back to me of years and
+years ago--of my mother. She used to come to fetch me at school
+in a little cart like this, and a little pony just like this,
+with a thick dusty coat. And once I remember I was simply sick of
+everything, a failure, and fagged out, and all that, and was
+looking out in the twilight; I fancy even it was autumn too. It
+was a little side staircase window; I was horribly homesick. And
+she came quite unexpectedly. I shall never forget it--the misery,
+and then, her coming.' He lifted his eyes, cowed with the
+incessant struggle, and watched her face for some time in
+silence. 'Ought I to stay?'
+
+'I see no "ought,"' she said. 'No one is there?'
+
+'Only a miserable broken voice out of a broken cage--called
+Conscience.'
+
+'Don't you think, perhaps, that even that has a good many
+disguises--convention, cowardice, weakness, ennui; they all take
+their turn at hooting in its feathers? You must, you really must
+have rest. You don't know; you don't see; I do. Just a little
+snap, some one last exquisite thread gives way, and then it is
+all over. You see I have even to try to frighten you, for I can't
+tell you how you distress me.'
+
+'Why do I distress you?--my face, my story you mean?'
+
+'No; I mean you: your trouble, that horrible empty house, and--
+oh, dear me, yes, your courage too.'
+
+'Listen,' said Lawford, stooping forward. He could scarcely see
+the pale, veiled face through this mist that had risen up over
+his eyes. 'I have no courage apart from you; no courage and no
+hope. Ask me to come!--a stranger with no history, no mockery, no
+miserable rant of a grave and darkness and fear behind me. Are we
+not all haunted--every one? That forgotten, and the fool I was,
+and the vacillating, and the pretence--oh, how it all sweeps
+clear before me; without a will, without a hope or glimpse or
+whisper of courage. Be just the memory of my mother, the face,
+the friend I've never seen; the voice that every dream leaves
+echoing. Ask me to come.'
+
+She sat unstirring; and then as if by some uncontrollable impulse
+stooped a little closer to him and laid her gloved hand on his.
+
+'I hear, you know; I hear too,' she whispered. 'But we mustn't
+listen. Come now. It's growing late.'
+
+The little village echoed back from its stone walls the clatter
+of the pony's hoofs. Night had darkened to its deepest when their
+lamp shone white on the wicket in the hedge. They had scarcely
+spoken. Lawford had simply watched pass by, almost without a
+thought, the arching trees, the darkening fields; had watched
+rise up in a mist of primrose light the harvest moon to shine in
+saffron on the faces and shoulders of the few wayfarers they met,
+or who passed them by. The still grave face beneath the shadow of
+its veil had never turned, though the moon poured all her flood
+of brilliance upon the dark profile. And once when as if in
+sudden alarm he had lifted his head and looked at her, a sudden
+doubt had assailed him so instantly that he had half put out his
+hand to touch her, and had as quickly withdrawn it, lest her
+beauty and stillness should be, even as the moment's fancy had
+suggested, only a far-gone memory returned in dream.
+
+Herbert hailed them from the darkness of an open window. He came
+down, and they talked a little in the cold air of the garden. He
+lit a cigarette, and climbed languidly into the cart, and drove
+the drowsy little pony off into the moonlight.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY
+
+It was a quiet supper the three friends sat down to.  Herbert sat
+narrowing his eyes over his thoughts, which, when the fancy took
+him, he scattered out upon the others' silence. Lawford
+apparently had not yet shaken himself free from the sorcery of
+the moonlight. His eyes shone dark and full like those of a child
+who has trespassed beyond its hour for bed, and sits marvelling
+at reality in a waking dream.
+
+Long after they had bidden each other good-night, long after
+Herbert had trodden on tiptoe with his candle past his closed
+door, Lawford sat leaning on his arms at the open window, staring
+out across the motionless moonlit trees that seemed to stand like
+draped and dreaming pilgrims, come to the peace of their Nirvana
+at last beside the crashing music of the waters. And he himself,
+the self that never sleeps beneath the tides and waves of
+consciousness, was listening, too, almost as unmovedly and
+unheedingly to the thoughts that clashed in conflict through his
+brain.
+
+Why, in a strange transitory life was one the slave of these
+small cares? What if even in that dark pit beneath, which seemed
+to whisper Lethe to the tumultuous, swirling waters--what if
+there, too, were merely a beginning again, and to seek a
+slumbering refuge there merely a blind and reiterated plunge into
+the heat and tumult of another day? Who was that poor, dark,
+homeless ghoul, Sabathier? Who was this Helen of an impossible
+dream? Her face with its strange smile, her eyes with their still
+pity and rapt courage had taken hope away. 'Here's not your rest,'
+cried one insistent voice; 'she is the mystery that haunts day
+and night, past all the changing of the restless hours. Chance
+has given you back eyes to see, a heart that can be broken. Chance
+and the stirrings of a long-gone life have torn down the veil age
+spins so thick and fast. Pride and ambition; what dull fools men
+are! Effort and duty, what dull fools men are!' He listened on
+and on to these phantom pleadings and to the rather coarse old
+Lawford conscience grunting them mercilessly down, too weary even
+to try to rest.
+
+Rooks at dawn came sweeping beneath the turquoise of the sky. He
+saw their sharp-beaked heads turn this way, that way, as they
+floated on outspread wings across the misty world. Except for the
+hoarse roar of the water under the huge thin-leafed trees, not a
+sound was stirring. 'One thing,' he seemed to hear himself mutter
+as he turned with a shiver from the morning air, 'it won't be for
+long. You can, at least, poor devil, wait the last act out.' If
+in this foolish hustling mob of the world, hired anywhere and
+anywhen for the one poor dubious wage of a penny--if it was only
+his own small dull part to carry a mock spear, and shout huzza
+with the rest--there was nothing for it, he grunted obstinately
+to himself, shout he would with the loudest.
+
+He threw himself on to the bed with eyes so wearied with want of
+sleep it seemed they had lost their livelong skill in finding it.
+Not the echo of triumph nor even a sigh of relief stirred the
+torpor of his mind. He knew vaguely that what had been the misery
+and madness of the last few days was gone. But the thought had no
+power to move him now. Sheila's good sense, and Mr Bethany's
+stubborn loyalty were alike old stories that had lost their
+savour and meaning. Gone, too, was the need for that portentous
+family gathering that had sat so often in his fancy during these
+last few days around his dining-room table, discussing with
+futile decorum the problem of how to hush him up, to muffle him
+down. Half dreaming, half awake, he saw the familiar door slowly
+open and, like the timely hero in a melodrama, his own figure
+appear before the stricken and astonished company. His eyes
+opened half-fearfully, and glanced up in the morning twilight.
+Their perplexity gave place to a quiet, almost vacant smile; the
+lids slowly closed again, and at last the lean hands twitched
+awhile in sleep.
+
+Next morning he spent rummaging among the old books, dipping
+listlessly here and there as the tasteless fancy took him, while
+Herbert sat writing with serene face and lifted eyebrows at his
+open window. But the unfamiliar long S's, the close type, and the
+spelling of the musty old books wearied eye and mind. What he
+read, too, however far-fetched, or lively, or sententious, or
+gross, seemed either to be of the same texture as what had become
+his everyday experience, and so baffled him with its nearness, or
+else was only the meaningless ramblings of an idle pen. And this,
+he thought to himself, looking covertly up at the spruce
+clear-cut profile at the window, this is what Herbert had called
+Life.
+
+'Am I interrupting you, Herbert; are you very busy?' he asked at
+last, taking refuge on a chair in a far corner of the room.
+
+'Bless me, no; not a bit--not a bit,' said Herbert amiably,
+laying down his pen. 'I'm afraid the old leatherjackets have been
+boring you. It's a habit this beastly reading; this gorge and
+glint and fever all at second-hand--purely a bad habit, like
+morphia, like laudanum. But once in, you know there's no recovery
+Anyhow, I'm neck-deep, and to struggle would be simply to drown.'
+
+'I was only going to say how sorry I am for having left Sabathier
+at home.'
+
+'My dear fellow--' began Herbert reassuringly.
+
+'It was only because I wanted so very much to have your
+translation. I get muddled up with other things groping through
+the dictionary.'
+
+Herbert surveyed him critically. 'What exactly is your interest
+now, Lawford? You don't mean that my old "theory" has left any
+sting now?'
+
+'No sting; oh no. I was only curious. But you yourself still
+think it really, don't you?'
+
+Herbert turned for a moment to the open window.
+
+'I was simply trying then to find something to fit the facts as
+you experienced them. But now that the facts have gone--and they
+have, haven't they?--exit, of course, my theory!'
+
+'I see,' was the cryptic answer. 'And yet, Herbert,' Lawford
+solemnly began again, 'it has changed me; even in my way of
+thinking. When I shut my eyes now--I only discovered it by
+chance--I see immediately faces quite strange to me; or places,
+sometimes thronged with people; and once an old well with some
+one sitting in the shadow. I can't tell you how clearly, and yet
+it is all altogether different from a dream. Even when I sit with
+my eyes open, I am conscious, as it were, of a kind of faint,
+colourless mirage. In the old days--I mean before Widderstone,
+what I saw was only what I'd seen already. Nothing came uncalled
+for, unexplained. This makes the old life seem so blank; I did
+not know what extraordinarily real things I was doing without.
+And whether for that reason or another, I can't quite make out
+what in fact I did want then, and was always fretting and
+striving for. I can see no wisdom or purpose in anything now but
+to get to one's journey's end as quickly and bravely as one can.
+And even then, even if we do call life a journey, and death the
+inn we shall reach at last in the evening when it's over; that,
+too, I feel will be only as brief a stopping-place as any other
+inn would be. Our experience here is so scanty and shallow--
+nothing more than the moment of the continual present. Surely
+that must go on, even if one does call it eternity. And so we
+shall all have to begin again. Probably Sabathier himself.... But
+there, what on earth are we, Herbert, when all is said? Who is it
+has--has done all this for us--what kind of self? And to what
+possible end? Is it that the clockwork has been wound up and must
+still jolt on a while with jarring wheels? Will it never run
+down, do you think?'
+
+Herbert smiled faintly, but made no answer.
+
+'You see,' continued Lawford, in the same quiet, dispassionate
+undertone, 'I wouldn't mind if it was only myself. But there are
+so many of us, so many selves, I mean; and they all seem to have
+a voice in the matter. What is the reality to this infernal
+dream?'
+
+'The reality is, Lawford, that you are fretting your life out
+over this rotten illusion. Be guided by me just this once. We'll
+go, all three of us, a good ten-mile walk to-day, and thoroughly
+tire you out. And to-night you shall sleep here--a really sound,
+refreshing sleep. Then to-morrow, whole and hale, back you shall
+go; honestly. It's only professional strong men should ask
+questions. Babes like you and me must keep to slops.'
+
+So, though Lawford made no answer, it was agreed. Before noon the
+three of them had set out on their walk across the fields. And
+after rambling on just as caprice took them, past reddening
+blackberry bushes and copses of hazel, and flaming beech, they
+sat down to spread out their meal on the slope of a hill,
+overlooking quiet ploughed fields and grazing cattle. Herbert
+stretched himself with his back to the earth, and his placid face
+to the pale vacant sky, while Lawford, even more dispirited after
+his walk, wandered up to the crest of the hill.
+
+At the foot of the hill, upon the other side, lay a farm and its
+out-buildings, and a pool of water beneath a group of elms. It
+was vacant in the sunlight, and the water vividly green with a
+scum of weed. And about half a mile beyond stood a cluster of
+cottages and an old towered church. He gazed idly down, listening
+vaguely to the wailing of a curlew flitting anxiously to and fro
+above the broken solitude of its green hill. And it seemed as if
+a thin and dark cloud began to be quietly withdrawn from over his
+eyes. Hill and wailing cry and barn and water faded out. And he
+was staring as if in an endless stillness at an open window
+against which the sun was beating in a bristling torrent of gold,
+while out of the garden beyond came the voice of some evening
+bird singing with such an unspeakable ecstasy of grief it seemed
+it must be perched upon the confines of another world. The light
+gathered to a radiance almost intolerable, driving back with its
+raining beams some memory, forlorn, remorseless, remote. His body
+stood dark and senseless, rocking in the air on the hillside as
+if bereft of its spirit. Then his hands were drawn over his eyes.
+He turned unsteadily and made his way, as if through a thick,
+drizzling haze, slowly back.
+
+'What is that--there?' he said almost menacingly, standing with
+bloodshot eyes looking down upon Herbert.
+
+'"That!"--what?' said Herbert, glancing up startled from his
+book. 'Why, what's wrong, Lawford?'
+
+'That,' said Lawford sullenly, yet with a faintly mournful
+cadence in his voice; 'those fields and that old empty farm--that
+village over there? Why did you bring me here?'
+
+Grisel had not stirred. 'The village...'
+
+'Ssh!' she said, catching her brother's sleeve; 'that's Detcham,
+yes, Detcham.'
+
+Lawford turned wide vacant eyes on her. He shook his head and
+shuddered. 'No, no; not Detcham. I know it; I know it; but it has
+gone out of my mind. Not Detcham; I've been there before; don't
+look at me. Horrible, horrible. It takes me back--I can't think.
+I stood there, trying, trying; it's all in a blur. Don't ask me--
+a dream.'
+
+Grisel leaned forward and touched his hand. 'Don't think; don't
+even try. Why should you? We can't; we MUSTN'T go back.'
+
+Lawford, still gazing fixedly, turned again a darkened face
+towards the steep of the hill. 'I think, you know,' he said,
+stooping and whispering, 'HE would know--the window and the sun
+and the singing. And oh, of course it was too late. You
+understand--too late. And once... you can't go back; oh no. You
+won't leave me? You see, if you go, it would only be all. I could
+not be quite so alone. But Detcham--Detcham? perhaps you will not
+trust me--tell me? That was not the name.' He shuddered violently
+and turned dog-like beseeching eyes. 'To-morrow--yes, to-morrow,'
+he said, 'I will promise anything if you will not leave me now.
+Once--' But again the thread running so faintly through that
+inextricable maze of memory eluded him. 'So long as you won't
+leave me now!' he implored her.
+
+She was vainly trying to win back her composure, and could not
+answer him at once....
+
+In the evening after supper Grisel sat her guest down in front of
+a big wood fire in the old book-room, where, staring into the
+playing flames, he could fall at peace into the almost motionless
+reverie which he seemed merely to harass and weary himself by
+trying to disperse. She opened the little piano at the far end of
+the room and played on and on as fancy led--Chopin and Beethoven,
+a fugue from Bach, and lovely forlorn old English airs, till the
+music seemed not only a voice persuading, pondering, and
+lamenting, but gathered about itself the hollow surge of the
+water and the darkness; wistful and clear, as the thoughts of a
+solitary child. Ever and again a log burnt through its strength,
+and falling amid sparks, stirred, like a restless animal, the
+stillness; or Herbert in his corner lifted his head to glance
+towards his visitor, and to turn another page. At last the music,
+too, fell silent, and Lawford stood up with his candle in his
+hand and eyed with a strange fixity brother and sister. His
+glance wandered slowly round the quiet flame-lit room.
+
+'You won't,' he said, stooping towards them as if in extreme
+confidence, 'you won't much notice? They come and go. I try not
+to--to speak. It's the only way through. It is not that I don't
+know they're only dreams. But if once the--the others thought
+there had been any tampering'--he tapped his forehead meaningly--
+'here: if once they thought that, it would, you know, be quite
+over then. How could I prove...?' He turned cautiously towards
+the door, and with laborious significance nodded his head at
+them.
+
+Herbert bent down and held out his long hands to the fire.
+'Tampering, my dear chap: That's what the lump said to the
+leaven.'
+
+'Yes, yes,' said Lawford, putting out his hand, 'but you know
+what I mean, Herbert. Anything I tried to do then would be quite,
+quite hopeless. That would be poisoning the wells.'
+
+They watched him out of the room, and listened till quite
+distinctly in the still night-shaded house they heard his door
+gently close. Then, as if by consent, they turned and looked long
+and questioningly into each other's faces.
+
+'Then you are not afraid?' Herbert said quietly.
+
+Grisel gazed steadily on, and almost imperceptibly shook her
+head.
+
+'You mean?' he questioned her; but still he had again to read her
+answer in her eyes.
+
+'Oh, very well, Grisel,' he said quietly, 'you know best,' and
+returned once more to his writing.
+
+For an hour or two Lawford slept heavily, so heavily that when a
+little after midnight he awoke, with his face towards the
+uncurtained window, though for many minutes he lay brightly
+confronting all Orion, that from blazing helm to flaming dog at
+heel filled high the glimmering square, he could not lift or stir
+his cold and leaden limbs. He rose at last and threw off the
+burden of his bedclothes, and rested awhile, as if freed from the
+heaviness of an unrememberable nightmare. But so clear was his
+mind and so extraordinarily refreshed he seemed in body that
+sleep for many hours would not return again. And he spent almost
+all the remainder of the lagging darkness pacing softly to and
+fro; one face only before his eyes, the one sure thing, the one
+thing unattainable in a world of phantoms.
+
+Herbert waited on in vain for his guest next morning, and after
+wandering up and down the mossy lawn at the back of the house,
+went off cheerfully at last alone for his dip. When he returned
+Lawford was in his place at the breakfast-table. He sat on, moody
+and constrained, until even Herbert's haphazard talk trickled
+low.
+
+'I fancy my sister is nursing a headache,' he said at last, 'but
+she'll be down soon. And I'm afraid from the looks of you,
+Lawford, your night was not particularly restful.' He felt his
+way very heedfully. 'Perhaps we walked you a little too far
+yesterday. We are so used to tramping that--' Lawford kept
+thoughtful eyes fixed on the deprecating face.
+
+'I see what it is, Herbert--you are humouring me again. I have
+been wracking my brains in vain to remember what exactly DID
+happen yesterday. I feel as if it was all sunk oceans deep in
+sleep. I get so far--and then I'm done. It won't give up a hint.
+But you really mustn't think I'm an invalid, or--or in my second
+childhood. The truth is,' he added, 'it's only my FIRST, come
+back again. But now that I've got so far, now that I'm really
+better, I--' He broke off rather vacantly, as if afraid of his
+own confidence. 'I must be getting on,' he summed up with an
+effort, 'and that's the solemn fact. I keep on forgetting I'm--
+I'm a ratepayer!'
+
+Herbert sat round in his chair. 'You see, Lawford, the very term
+is little else than Double-Dutch to me. As a matter of fact
+Grisel sends all my hush-money to the horrible people that do the
+cleaning up, as it were. I can't catch their drift. Government to
+me is merely the spectacle of the clever, or the specious,
+managing the dull. It deals merely with the physical, and just
+the fringe of consciousness. I am not joking. I think I follow
+you. All I mean is that the obligations--mainly tepid, I take it--
+that are luring you back to the fold would be the very ones that
+would scare me quickest off. The imagination, the appeal faded:
+we're dead.'
+
+Lawford opened his mouth; 'TEMPORARILY tepid,' he at last all but
+coughed out.
+
+'Oh yes, of course,' said Herbert intelligently. 'Only
+temporarily. It's this beastly gregariousness that's the devil.
+The very thought of it undoes me--with an absolute shock of
+sheepishness. I suddenly realise my human nakedness: that here we
+are, little better than naked animals, bleating behind our
+illusory wattles on the slopes of--of infinity. And nakedness,
+after all, is a wholesome thing to realize only when one thinks
+too much of one's clothes. I peer sometimes, feebly enough, out
+of my wool, and it seems to me that all these busybodies, all
+these fact-devourers, all this news-reading rabble, are nothing
+brighter than very dull-witted children trying to play an
+imaginative game, much too deep for their poor reasons. I don't
+mean that YOUR wanting to go home is anything gregarious, but I
+do think THEIR insisting on your coming back at once might be.
+And I know you won't visit this stuff on me as anything more than
+just my "scum," as Grisel calls the fine flower of my maiden
+meditations. All that I really want to say is that we should both
+be more than delighted if you'd stay just as long as it will not
+be a bore for you to stay. Stay till you're heartily tired of us.
+Go back now, if you MUST; tell them how much better you are. Bolt
+off to a nerve specialist. He'll say complete rest--change of
+scene, and all that. They all do. Instinct via intellect. And why
+not take your rest here? We are such miserably dull company to
+one another it would be a greater pleasure to have you with us
+than I can say. I mean it from the very bottom of my heart. Do!'
+
+Lawford listened. 'I wish--,' he began, and stopped dead again.
+'Anyhow, I'll go back. I am afraid, Herbert, I've been playing
+truant. It was all very well while-- To tell you the truth I
+can't think QUITE straight yet. But it won't last for ever.
+Besides--well, anyhow, I'll go back.'
+
+'Right you are,' said Herbert, pretending to be cheerful. 'You
+can't expect, you really can't, everything to come right straight
+away. Just have patience. And now, let's go out and sit in the
+sun. They've mixed September up with May.'
+
+And about half an hour afterwards he glanced up from his book to
+find his visitor fast asleep in his garden chair.
+
+Grisel had taken her brother's place, with a little pile of
+needlework beside her on the grass, when Lawford again opened his
+eyes under the rosy shade of a parasol. He watched her for a
+while, without speaking.
+
+'How long have I been asleep?' he said at last.
+
+She started and looked up from her needle.
+
+'That depends on how long you have been awake,' she said,
+smiling. 'My brother tells me,' she went on, beginning to stitch,
+'that you have made up your mind to leave us to-day. Perhaps we
+are only flattering ourselves it has been a rest. But if it has--
+is that, do you think, quite wise?'
+
+He leant forward and hid his face in his hands. 'It's because--
+it's because it's the only "must" I can see.'
+
+'But even "musts"--well, we have to be sure even of "musts,"
+haven't we? Are YOU?' She glanced up and for an instant their
+eyes met, and the falling water seemed to be sounding out of a
+distance so remote it might be but the echo of a dream. She
+stooped once more over her work.
+
+'Supposing,' he said very slowly, and almost as if speaking to
+himself, 'supposing Sabathier--and you know he's merely like a
+friend now one mustn't be seen talking to--supposing he came
+back; what then?'
+
+'Oh, but Sabathier's gone: he never really came. It was only a
+fancy--a mood. It was only you--another you.'
+
+'Who was that yesterday, then?'
+
+She glanced at him swiftly and knew the question was but a
+venture.
+
+'Yesterday?'
+
+'Oh, very well,' he said fretfully, 'you too! But if he did, if
+he did, come really back: "prey" and all?'
+
+'What is the riddle?' she said, taking a deep breath and facing
+him brightly.
+
+'Would MY "must" still be HIS?' The face he raised to her, as he
+leaned forward under the direct light of the sun, was so
+colourless, cadaverous and haggard, the thought crossed her mind
+that it did indeed seem little more than a shadowy mask that but
+one hour of darkness might dispel.
+
+'You said, you know, we did win through. Why then should we be
+even thinking of defeat now?'
+
+'"We"!'
+
+'Oh no, you!' she cried triumphantly.
+
+'You do not answer my question.'
+
+'Nor you mine! It WAS a glorious victory. Is there the ghost of a
+reason why you should cast your mind back? Is there, now?'
+
+'Only,' said Lawford, looking patiently up into her face, 'only
+because I love you': and listened in the silence to the words as
+one may watch a bird that has escaped for ever and irrevocably
+out of its cage, steadily flying on and on till lost to sight.
+
+For an instant the grey eyes faltered. 'But that, surely,' she
+began in a low voice, still steadily sewing, 'that was our
+compact last night--that you should let me help, that you should
+trust me just as you trusted the mother years ago who came in the
+little cart with the shaggy dusty pony to the homesick boy
+watching at the window. Perhaps,' she added, her fingers
+trembling, 'in this odd shuffle of souls and faces, I AM that
+mother, and most frightfully anxious you should not give in. Why,
+even because of the tiredness, even because the cause seems vain,
+you must still fight on--wouldn't she have said it? Surely there
+are prizes, a daughter, a career, no end! And even they gone--
+still the self undimmed, undaunted, that took its drubbing like a
+man.'
+
+'I know you know I'm all but crazed; you see this wretched mind
+all littered and broken down; look at me like that, then. Forget
+even you have befriended me and pretended-- Why must I blunder on
+and on like this? Oh, Grisel, my friend, my friend, if only you
+loved me!'
+
+Tears clouded her eyes. She turned vaguely as if for a
+hiding-place. 'We can't talk here. How mad the day is. Listen,
+listen! I do--I do love you--mother and woman and friend--from
+the very moment you came. It's all so clear, so clear: that, and
+your miserable "must," my friend. Come, we will go away by
+ourselves a little, and talk. That way. I'll meet you by the
+gate.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
+
+She came out into the sunlight, and they went through the little
+gate together. She walked quickly, without speaking, over the
+bridge, past a little cottage whose hollyhocks leaned fading
+above its low flint wall. Skirting a field of stubble, she struck
+into a wood by a path that ran steeply up the hillside. And
+by and by they came to a glen where the woodmen of a score of
+years ago had felled the trees, leaving a green hollow of saplings
+in the midst of their towering neighbours.
+
+'There,' she said, holding out her hand to him, 'now we are
+alone. Just six hours or so--and then the sun will be there,' she
+pointed to the tree-tops to the west, 'and then you will have to
+go; for good, for good--you your way, and I mine. What a tangle--
+a tangle is this life of ours. Could I have dreamt we should ever
+be talking like this, you and I? Friends of an hour. What will
+you think of me? Does it matter? Don't speak. Say nothing--poor
+face, poor hands. If only there were something to look to--to
+pray to!' She bent over his hand and pressed it to her breast.
+'What worlds we've seen together, you and I. And then--another
+parting.'
+
+They wandered on a little way, and came back and listened to the
+first few birds that flew up into the higher branches, noonday
+being past, to sing.
+
+They talked, and were silent, and talked again with out question,
+or sadness, or regret, or reproach; she mocking even at
+themselves, mocking at this 'change'--'Why, and yet without it,
+would you ever even have dreamed once a poor fool of a Frenchman
+went to his restless grave for me--for me? Need we understand?
+Were we told to pry? Who made us human must be human too. Why
+must we take such care, and make such a fret--this soul? I know
+it, I know it; it is all we have--"to save," they say, poor
+creatures. No, never to SPEND, and so they daren't for a solitary
+instant lift it on the finger from its cage. Well, we have; and
+now, soon, back it must go, back it must go, and try its best to
+whistle the day out. And yet, do you know, perhaps the very
+freedom does a little shake its--its monotony. It's true, you
+see, they have lived a long time; these Worldly Wisefolk they
+were wise before they were swaddled....
+
+'There, and you are hungry?' she asked him, laughing in his eyes.
+`Of course, of course you are--scarcely a mouthful since that
+first still wonderful supper. And you haven't slept a wink,
+except like a tired-out child after its first party, on that old
+garden chair. I sat and watched, and yes, almost hoped you'd
+never wake in case--in case. Come along, see, down there. I can't
+go home just yet. There's a little old inn--we'll go and sit down
+there--as if we were really trying to be romantic! I know the
+woman quite well; we can talk there--just the day out.'
+
+They sat at a little table in the garden of 'The Cherry Trees,'
+its thick green apple branches burdened with ripened fruit. And
+Grisel tried to persuade him to eat and drink, 'for to-morrow we
+die,' she said, her hands trembling, her face as it were veiled
+with a faint mysterious light.
+
+'There are dozens and dozens of old stories, you know,' she said,
+leaning on her elbows, 'dozens and dozens, meaning only us. You
+must, you must eat; look, just an apple. We've got to say
+good-bye. And faintness will double the difficulty.' She lightly
+touched his hand as if to compel him to smile with her. 'There,
+I'll peel it; and this is Eden; and soon it will be the cool of
+the evening. And then, oh yes, the voice will come. What nonsense
+I am talking. Never mind.'
+
+They sat on in the quiet sunshine, and a spider slid softly
+through the air and with busy claws set to its nets; and those
+small ghosts the robins went whistling restlessly among the heavy
+boughs.
+
+A child presently came out of the porch of the inn into the
+garden, and stood with its battered doll in its arms, softly
+watching them awhile. But when Grisel smiled and tried to coax
+her over, she burst out laughing and ran in again.
+
+Lawford stooped forward on his chair with a groan. 'You see,' he
+said, 'the whole world mocks me. You say "this evening"; need it
+be, must it be this evening? If you only knew how far they have
+driven me. If you only knew what we should only detest each other
+for saying and for listening to. The whole thing's dulled and
+staled. Who wants a changeling? Who wants a painted bird? Who
+does not loathe the converted?--and I'm converted to Sabathier's
+God. Should we be sitting here talking like this if it were not
+so? I can't, I can't go back.'
+
+She rose and stood with her hand pressed over her mouth, watching
+him.
+
+'Won't you understand?' he continued. 'I am an outcast--a felon
+caught red-handed, come in the flesh to a hideous and righteous
+judgment. I hear myself saying all these things; and yet, Grisel,
+I do, I do love you with all the dull best I ever had. Not now,
+then; I don't ask new even. I can, I would begin again. God knows
+my face has changed enough even as it is. Think of me as that
+poor wandering ghost of yours; how easily I could hide away--in
+your memory; and just wait, wait for you. In time even this wild
+futile madness too would fade away. Then I could come back. May I
+try?'
+
+'I can't answer you. I can't reason. Only, still, I do know,
+talk, put off, forget as I may, must is must. Right and wrong,
+who knows what THEY mean, except that one's to be done and one's
+to be forsworn; or--forgive, my friend, the truest thing I ever
+said--or else we lose the savour of both. Oh, then, and I know,
+too, you'd weary of me. I know you, Monsieur Nicholas, better
+than you can ever know yourself, though you have risen from your
+grave. You follow a dream, no voice or face or flesh and blood;
+and not to do what the one old raven within you cries you must,
+would be in time to hate the very sound of my footsteps. You
+shall go back, poor turncoat, and face the clearness, the utterly
+more difficult, bald, and heartless clearness, as together we
+faced the dark. Life is a little while. And though I have no
+words to tell what always are and must be foolish reasons because
+they are not reasons at all but ghosts of memory, I know in my
+heart that to face the worst is your only hope of peace. Should I
+have staked so much on your finding that, and now throw up the
+game? Don't let us talk any more. I'll walk half the way,
+perhaps. Perhaps I will walk all the way. I think my brother
+guesses--at least MY madness. I've talked and talked him nearly
+past his patience. And then, when you are quite safely, oh yes,
+quite safely and soundly gone, then I shall go away for a little,
+so that we can't even hear each other speak, except in dreams.
+Life!--well, I always thought it was much too plain a tale to
+have as dull an ending. And with us the powers beyond have played
+a newer trick, that's all. Another hour, and we will go. Till
+then there's just the solitary walk home and only the dull old
+haunted house that hoards as many ghosts as we ourselves to watch
+our coming.'
+
+Evening began to shine between the trees; they seemed to stand
+aflame, with a melancholy rapture in their uplifted boughs above
+their fading coats. The fields of the garnered harvest shone with
+a golden stillness, awhir with shimmering flocks of starlings.
+And the old birds that had sung in the spring sang now amid the
+same leaves, grown older too to give them harbourage.
+
+Herbert was sitting in his room when they returned, nursing his
+teacup on his knee while he pretended to be reading, with elbow
+propped on the table.
+
+'Here's Nicholas Sabathier, my dear, come to say goodbye awhile,'
+said Grisel. She stood for a moment in her white gown, her face
+turned towards the clear green twilight of the open window. 'I
+have promised to walk part of the way with him. But I think first
+we must have some tea. No; he flatly refuses to be driven. We are
+going to walk.'
+
+The two friends were left alone, face to face with a rather
+difficult silence, only the least degree of nervousness apparent,
+so far as Herbert was concerned, in that odd aloof sustained air
+of impersonality that had so baffled his companion in their first
+queer talk together.
+
+'Your sister said just now, Herbert,' blurted Lawford at last.
+'"Here's Nicholas Sabathier come to say good-bye" well, I--what I
+want you to understand is that it is Sabathier, the worst he ever
+was; but also that it is "good-bye."'
+
+Herbert slowly turned. 'I don't quite see why "goodbye," Lawford.
+And--frankly, there is nothing to explain. We have chosen to live
+such a very out-of-the-way life,' he went on, as if following up
+a train of thought.... 'The truth is if one wants to live at
+all--one's own life, I mean--there's no time for many friends.
+And just steadfastly regarding your neighbour's tail as you
+follow it down into the Nowhere--it's that that seems to me the
+deadliest form of hypnotism. One must simply go one's own way,
+doing one's best to free one's mind of cant--and I dare say
+clearing some excellent stuff out with the rubbish. One
+consequence is that I don't think, however foolhardy it may be to
+say so, I don't think I care a groat for any opinion as human as
+my own, good or bad. My sister's a million times a better woman
+than I am a man. What possibly could there be, then, for me to
+say?' He turned with a nervous smile. 'Why should it be good-bye?'
+
+Lawford glanced involuntarily towards the door that stood in
+shadow duskily ajar. 'Well,' he said, 'we have talked, and we
+think it must be that, until, at least,' he smiled faintly, 'I
+can come as quietly as your old ghost you told me of; and in that
+case it may not be so very long to wait.'
+
+Their eyes met fleetingly across the still, listening room. 'The
+more I think of it,' Lawford pushed slowly on, 'the less I
+understand the frantic purposelessness of all that has happened
+to me. Until I went down, as you said, "a godsend of a little
+Miss Muffet," and the inconceivable farce came off, I was fairly
+happy, fairly contented to dance my little wooden dance and wait
+till the showman should put me down into his box again. And now--
+well, here I am. The whole thing has gone by and scarcely left a
+trace of its visit. Here I am for all my friends to swear to; and
+yet, Herbert, if you'll forgive me troubling you with this stuff
+about myself, not a single belief, or thought, or desire remains
+unchanged. You will remember all that, I hope. It's not, of
+course, the ghost of an apology, only the mere facts.'
+
+Herbert rose and paced slowly across to the window. 'The longer I
+live, Lawford, the more I curse this futile gift of speech. Here
+am I, wanting to tell you, to say out frankly what, if mind could
+appeal direct to mind, would be merely as the wind passing
+through the leaves of a tree with just one--one multitudinous
+rustle, but which, if I tried to put into words--well, daybreak
+would find us still groping on....' He turned; a peculiar wry
+smile on his face. 'It's a dumb world: but there we are. And some
+day you'll come again.'
+
+'Well,' said Lawford, as if with an almost hopeless effort to
+turn thought into such primitive speech, 'that's where we stand,
+then.' He got up suddenly like a man awakened in the midst of
+unforeseen danger, 'Where is your sister?' he cried, looking into
+the shadow. And as if in actual answer to his entreaty, they
+heard the clinking of the cups on the little, old, green lacquer
+tray she was at that moment carrying into the room. She sat down
+on the window seat and put the tray down beside her. 'It will be
+before dark even now,' she said, glancing out at the faintly
+burning skies.
+
+They had trudged on together with almost as deep a sense of
+physical exhaustion as peasants have who have been labouring in
+the fields since daybreak. And a little beyond the village,
+before the last, long road began that led in presently to the
+housed and scrupulous suburb, she stopped with a sob beside an
+old scarred milestone by the wayside. 'This--is as far as I can
+go,' she said. She stooped, and laid her hand on the cold
+moss-grown surface of the stone. 'Even now it's wet with dew.'
+She rose again and looked strangely into his face. 'Yes, yes,
+here it is,' she said, 'oh, and worse, worse than any fear. But
+nothing now can trouble you again of that. We're both at least
+past that.'
+
+'Grisel,' he said, 'forgive me, but I can't--I can't go on.'
+
+'Don't think, don't think,' she said, taking his hands, and
+lifting them to her bosom. 'It's only how the day goes; and it
+has all, my one dear, happened scores and scores of times before
+--mother and child and friend--and lovers that are all these too,
+like us. We mustn't cry out. Perhaps it was all before even we
+could speak--this sorrow came. Take all the hope and all the
+future: and then may come our chance.'
+
+'What's life to me now. You said the desire would come back; that
+I should shake myself free. I could if you would help me. I don't
+know what you are or what your meaning is, only that I love you;
+care for nothing, wish for nothing but to see you and think of
+you. A flat, dull voice keeps saying that I have no right to be
+telling you all this. You will know best. I know I am nothing. I
+ask nothing. If we love one another, what is there else to say?'
+
+'Nothing, nothing to say, except only good-bye. What could you
+tell me that I have not told myself over and over again? Reason's
+gone. Thinking's gone. Now I am only sure.' She smiled shadowily.
+'What peace did HE find who couldn't, perhaps, like you, face
+the last good-bye?'
+
+They stood in utter solitude awhile in the evening gloom. The air
+was as still and cold as some grey unfathomable untraversed sea.
+Above them uncountable clouds drifted slowly across space.
+
+'Why do they all keep whispering together?' he said in a low
+voice, with cowering face. 'Oh if you knew, Grisel, how they have
+hemmed me in; how they have come pressing in through the narrow
+gate I left ajar. Only to mock and mislead. It's all dark and
+unintelligible.'
+
+He touched her hand, peering out of the shadows that seemed to
+him to be gathering between their faces. He drew her closer and
+touched her lips with his fingers. Her beauty seemed to his
+distorted senses to fill earth and sky. This, then, was the
+presence, the grave and lovely overshadowing dream whose
+surrender made life a torment, and death the near fold of an
+immortal, starry veil. She broke from him with a faint cry. And
+he found himself running and running, just as he had run that
+other night, with death instead of life for inspiration, towards
+his earthly home.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
+
+He was utterly wearied, but he walked on for a long while with a
+dogged unglancing pertinacity and without looking behind him.
+Then he rested under the dew-sodden hedgeside and buried his face
+in his hands. Once, indeed, he did turn and grind his way back
+with hard uplifted face for many minutes, but at the meeting with
+an old woman who in the late dusk passed him unheeded on the
+road, he stopped again, and after standing awhile looking down
+upon the dust, trying to gather up the tangled threads of his
+thoughts, he once more set off homewards.
+
+It was clear, starry, and quite dark when he reached the house.
+The lamp at the roadside obscurely lit its breadth and height.
+Lamp-light within, too, was showing yellow between the Venetian
+blinds; a cold gas-jet gleamed out of the basement window. He
+seemed bereft now of all desire or emotion, simply the passive
+witness of things external in a calm which, though he scarcely
+realised its cause, was an exquisite solace and relief. His
+senses were intensely sharpened with sleeplessness. The faintest
+sound belled clear and keen on his ear. The thinnest beam of
+light besprinkled his eyes with curious brilliance.
+
+As quietly as some nocturnal creature he ascended the steps to
+the porch, and leaning between stone pilaster and wall, listened
+intently for any rumour of those within.
+
+He heard a clear, rather languid and delicate voice quietly speak
+on until it broke into a little peal of laughter, followed, when
+it fell silent by Sheila's--rapid, rich, and low. The first
+speaker seemed to be standing. Probably, then, his evening
+visitors had only just come in, or were preparing to depart. He
+inserted his latchkey and gently pushed at the cumbersome door.
+It was locked against him. With not the faintest thought of
+resentment or surprise, he turned back, stooped over the
+balustrade and looked down into the kitchen. Nothing there was
+visible but a narrow strip of the white table, on which lay a
+black cotton glove, and beyond, the glint of a copper pan. What
+made all these mute and inanimate things so coldly hostile?
+
+An extreme, almost nauseous distaste filled him at the thought of
+knocking for admission, of confronting Ada, possibly even Sheila,
+in the cold echoing gloom of the detestable porch; of meeting the
+first wild, almost metallic, flash of recognition. He swept
+softly down again, and paused at the open gate. Once before the
+voices of the night had called him: they would not summon him
+forever in vain. He raised his eyes again towards the window. Who
+were these visitors met together to drum the alien out? He
+narrowed his lids and smiled up at the vacuous unfriendly
+house. Then wheeling, on a sudden impulse he groped his way down
+the gravel path that led into the garden. As he had left it, the
+long white window was ajar.
+
+With extreme caution he pushed it noiselessly up, and climbed in,
+and stood listening again in the black passage on the other side.
+When he had fully recovered his breath, and the knocking of his
+heart was stilled, he trod on softly, till turning the corner he
+came in sight of the kitchen door. It was now narrowly open, just
+enough, perhaps, to admit a cat; and as he softly approached,
+looking steadily in, he could see Ada sitting at the empty table,
+beneath the single whistling chandelier, in her black dress and
+black straw hat. She was reading apparently; but her back was
+turned to him and he could not distinguish her arm beyond the
+elbow. Then almost in an instant he discovered, as, drawn up and
+unstirring he gazed on, that she was not reading, but had
+covertly and instantaneously raised her eyes from the print on
+the table beneath, and was transfixedly listening too. He turned
+his eyes away and waited. When again he peered in she had
+apparently bent once more over her magazine, and he stole on.
+
+One by one, with a thin remote exultation in his progress, he
+mounted the kitchen stairs, and with each deliberate and groping
+step the voices above him became more clearly audible. At last,
+in the darkness of the hall, but faintly stirred by the gleam of
+lamplight from the chink of the dining-room door, he stood on the
+threshold of the drawing-room door and could hear with varying
+distinctness what those friendly voices were so absorbedly
+discussing. His ear seemed as exquisite as some contrivance of
+science, registering passively the least sound, the faintest
+syllable, and like it, in no sense meddling with the thought that
+speech conveyed. He simply stood listening, fixed and motionless,
+like some uncouth statue in the leafy hollow of a garden, stony,
+unspeculating.
+
+'Oh, but you either refuse to believe, Bettie, or you won't
+understand that it's far worse than that.' Sheila seemed to be
+upbraiding, or at least reasoning with, the last speaker. 'Ask Mr
+Danton--he actually SAW him.'
+
+'"Saw him,"' repeated a thick, still voice. 'He stood there, in
+that very doorway, Mrs Lovat, and positively railed at me. He
+stood there and streamed out all the names he could lay his
+tongue to. I wasn't--unfriendly to the poor beggar. When Bethany
+let me into it I thought it was simply--I did indeed, Mrs
+Lawford--a monstrous exaggeration. Flatly, I didn't believe it;
+shall I say that? But when I stood face to face with him, I could
+have taken my oath that that was no more poor old Arthur Lawford
+than--well, I won't repeat what particular word occurred to me.
+But there,' the corpulent shrug was almost audible, 'we all know
+what old Bethany is. A sterling old chap, mind you, so far as
+mere character is concerned; the right man in the right place;
+but as gullible and as soft-hearted as a tom-tit. I've said all
+this before, I know, Mrs Lawford, and been properly snubbed for
+my pains. But if I had been Bethany I'd have sifted the whole
+story at the beginning, the moment he put his foot into the
+house. Look at that Tichborne fellow--went for months and months,
+just picking up one day what he floored old Hawkins--wasn't it?--
+with the next. But of course,' he added gloomily, 'now that's all
+too late. He's moaned himself into a tolerably tight corner. I'd
+just like to see, though, a British jury comparing this claimant
+with his photograph, 'pon my word I would. Where would he be
+then, do you think?'
+
+'But my dear Mr Danton,' went on the clear, languid voice Lawford
+had heard break so light-heartedly into laughter, 'you don't mean
+to tell me that a woman doesn't know her own husband when she
+sees him--or, for the matter of that, when she doesn't see him?
+If Tom came home from a ramble as handsome as Apollo to-morrow,
+I'd recognise him at the very first blush--literally! He'd go
+nuzzling off to get his slippers, or complain that the lamps had
+been smoking, or hunt the house down for last week's paper. Oh,
+besides, Tom's Tom--and there's an end of it.'
+
+'That's precisely what I think, Mrs Lovat; one is saturated with
+one's personality, as it were.'
+
+'You see, that's just it! That's just exactly every woman's
+husband all over; he is saturated with his personality. Bravo, Mr
+Craik!'
+
+'Good Lord,' said Danton softly. 'I don't deny it!'
+
+'But that,' broke in Sheila crisply--'that's just precisely what
+I asked you all to come in for. It's because I know now, apart
+altogether from the mere evidence, that--that he is Arthur. Mind,
+I don't say I ever really doubted. I was only so utterly shocked,
+I suppose. I positively put posers to him; but his memory was
+perfect in spite of the shock which would have killed a--a more
+sensitive nature.' She had risen, it seemed, and was moving with
+all her splendid impressiveness of silk and presence across the
+general line of vision. But the hall was dark and still; her eyes
+were dimmed with light. Lawford could survey her there unmoved.
+
+'Are you there, Ada?' she called discreetly.
+
+'Yes, ma'am,' answered the faint voice from below.
+
+'You have not heard anything--no knock?'
+
+'No, ma'am, no knock.'
+
+'The door is open if you should call.'
+
+'Yes, ma'am.'
+
+'The girl's scared out of her wits,' said Sheila returning to her
+audience. 'I've told you all that miserable Ferguson story--a
+piece of calm, callous presence of mind I should never have
+dreamed my husband capable of. And the curious thing is--at
+least, it is no longer curious in the light of the ghastly facts
+I am only waiting for Mr Bethany to tell you--from the very first
+she instinctively detested the very mention of his name.'
+
+'I believe, you know,' said Mr Craik with some decision, 'that
+servants must have the same wonderful instinct as dogs and
+children; they are natural, intuitive judges of character.'
+
+'Yes,' said Sheila gravely, 'and it's only through that that I
+got to hear of the--the mysterious friend in the little
+pony-carriage. Ada's magnificently loyal--I will say that.'
+
+'I don't want to suggest anything, Mrs Lawford,' began Mr Craik
+rather hurriedly, 'but wouldn't it perhaps be wiser not to wait
+for Mr Bethany? It is not at all unusual for him to be kept a
+considerable time in the vestry after service, and to-day is the
+Feast of St Michael's and all Angels, you know. Mightn't your
+husband be--er--coming back, don't you think?'
+
+'Craik's right, Mrs Lawford; it's not a bit of good waiting.
+Bethany would stick there till midnight if any old woman's
+spiritual state could keep her going so long. Here we all are,
+and at any moment we may be interrupted. Mind you, I promise
+nothing--only that there shall be no scene. But here I am, and if
+he does come knocking and ringing and lunging out in the
+disgusting manner he--well, all I ask is permission to speak for
+YOU. 'Pon my soul, to think what you must have gone through! It
+isn't the place for ladies just now--honestly it ain't.'
+
+'Besides, supposing the romantic lady of the pony-carriage has
+friends? Are YOU a pugilist, Mr Craik?'
+
+'I hope I could give some little account of myself, Mrs Lovat;
+but you need have no anxiety about that.'
+
+'There, Mr Danton. So as there is not the least cause for anxiety
+even if poor Arthur SHOULD return to his earthly home, may we
+share your dreadful story at once, Sheila; and then, perhaps,
+hear Mr Bethany's exposition of it when he DOES arrive? We are
+amply guarded.'
+
+'Honestly, you know, you are a bit of a sceptic, Mrs Lovat,'
+pleaded Danton playfully. 'I've SEEN him.'
+
+'And seeing is disbelieving, I suppose. Now then, Sheila.'
+
+'I don't think there's the least chance of Arthur returning
+to-night,' said Sheila solemnly. 'I am perfectly well aware it's
+best to be as cheerful as one can--and as resolved; but I think,
+Bettie, when even you know the whole horrible secret, you won't
+think Mr Danton was--was horrified for nothing. The ghastly, the
+awful truth is that my husband--there is no other word for it--
+is--possessed!'
+
+'"Possessed," Sheila! What in the name of all the creeps is
+that?'
+
+'Well, I dare say Mr Craik will explain it much better than I
+can. By a devil, dear.' The voice was perfectly poised and
+restrained, and Mr Craik did not see fit for the moment to
+embellish the definition.
+
+Lawford, with an almost wooden immobility, listened on.
+
+'But THE devil, or A devil? Isn't there a distinction?' inquired
+Mrs Lovat.
+
+'It's in the Bible, Bettie, over and over again. It was quite a
+common thing in the Middle Ages; I think I'm right in saying
+that, am I not, Mr Craik?' Mr Craik must have solemnly nodded or
+abundantly looked his unwilling affirmation. 'And what HAS been,'
+continued Sheila temperately, 'I suppose may be again.'
+
+'When the fellow began raving at me the other night,' began
+Danton huskily, as if out of an unfathomable pit of reflection,
+'among other things he said that I haven't any wish to remember
+was that I was a sceptic. And Bethany said DITTO to it. I don't
+mind being called a sceptic: why, I said myself Mrs Lovat was a
+sceptic just now! But when it comes to "devils," Mrs Lawford--I
+may be convinced about the other, but "devils"! Well, I've been
+in the City nearly twenty-five years, and it's my impression
+human nature can raise all the devils WE shall ever need. And
+another thing,' he added, as if inspired, and with an immensely
+intelligent blink, 'is it just precisely that word in the Revised
+Version--eh, Craik?'
+
+'I'll certainly look it up, Danton. But I take it that Mrs
+Lawford is not so much insisting on the word, as on the--the
+manifestation. And I'm bound to confess that the Society for
+Psychical Research, which has among its members quite eminent and
+entirely trustworthy men of science--I am bound to admit they
+have some very curious stories to tell. The old idea was, you
+know, that there are seventy-two princely devils, and as many as
+seven million--er--commoners. It may very well sound quaint to
+our ears, Mrs Lovat; but there it is. But whether that has any
+bearing on--on what you were saying, Danton, I can't say. Perhaps
+Mrs Lawford will throw a little more light on the subject when
+she tells us on what precise facts her--her distressing theory is
+based.'
+
+Lawford had soundlessly stolen a pace or two nearer, and by
+stooping forward a little he could, each in turn, scrutinise the
+little intent company sitting over his story around the lamp at
+the further end of the table; squatting like little children with
+their twigs and pins, fishing for wonders on the brink of the
+unknown.
+
+'Yes,' Mrs Lovat was saying, 'I quite agree, Mr Craik.
+Seventy-two princes, and no princesses. Oh, these masculine
+prejudices! But do throw a little more modern light on the
+subject, Sheila.'
+
+'I mean this,' said Sheila firmly. 'When I went in for the last
+time to say good-bye--and of course it was at his own wish that I
+did leave him; and precisely WHY he wished it is now unhappily
+only too apparent--I had brought him some money from the bank--
+fifty pounds, I think; yes, fifty pounds. And quite by the merest
+chance I glanced down, in passing, at a book he had apparently
+been reading, a book which he seemed very anxious to conceal with
+his hand. Arthur is not a great reader, though I believe he
+studied a little before we were married, and--well, I detest
+anything like subterfuge, and I said it out without thinking,
+"Why, you're reading French, Arthur!" He turned deathly white but
+made no answer.'
+
+'And can't you even confide to us the title, Sheila?' sighed Mrs
+Lovat reproachfully.
+
+'Wait a minute,' said Sheila; 'you shall make as much fun of the
+thing as you like, Bettie, when I've finished. I don't know why,
+but that peculiar, stealthy look haunted me. "Why French?" I kept
+asking myself. "Why French?" Arthur hasn't opened a French book
+for years. He doesn't even approve of the entente. His argument
+was that we ought to be friends with the Germans because they are
+more hostile. Never mind. When Ada came back the next evening and
+said he was out, I came the following morning--by myself--and
+knocked. No one answered, and I let myself in. His bed had not
+been slept in. There were candles and matches all over the house
+--one even burnt nearly to the stick on the floor in the corner
+of the drawing-room. I suppose it was foolish, but I was alone,
+and just that, somehow, horrified me. It seemed to point to such
+a peculiar state of mind. I hesitated; what was the use of looking
+further? Yet something seemed to say to me--and it was surely
+providential--"Go downstairs!" And there in the breakfast-room
+the first thing I saw on the table was this book--a dingy, ragged,
+bleared, patched-up, oh, a horrible, a loathsome little book
+(and I have read bits too here and there); and beside it was my
+own little school dictionary, my own child's 'She looked up
+sharply. 'What was that? Did anybody call?'
+
+'Nobody I heard,' said Danton, staring stonily round.
+
+'It may have been the passing of the wind,' suggested Mr Craik,
+after a pause.
+
+'Peep between the blinds, Mr Craik; it may be poor Mr Bethany
+confronting Pneumonia in the porch.'
+
+'There's no one there, Mrs Lovat,' said the curate, returning
+softly from his errand. 'Please continue your--your narrative,
+Mrs Lawford.'
+
+'We are panting for the "devil," my dear.'
+
+'Well, I sat down and, very much against my inclination, turned
+over the pages. It was full of the most revolting confessions and
+trials, so far as I could see. In fact, I think the book was
+merely an amateur collection of--of horrors. And the faces, the
+portraits! Well, then, can you imagine my feelings when towards
+the end of the book about thirty pages from the end, I came upon
+this--gloating up at me from the table in my house before my
+very eyes?'
+
+She cast a rapid glance over her shoulder, and gathering up her
+silk skirt, drew out, from the pocket beneath, the few crumpled
+pages, and passed them without a word to Danton. Lawford kept him
+plainly in view, as, lowering his great face, he slowly stooped,
+and holding the loose leaves with both fat hands between his
+knees, stared into the portrait. Then he truculently lifted his
+cropped head.
+
+'What did I say?' he said. 'What did I SAY? What did I tell old
+Bethany in this very room? What d'ye think of that, Mrs Lovat,
+for a portrait of Arthur Lawford? What d'ye make of that, Craik--
+eh? Devil--eh?'
+
+Mrs Lovat glanced with arched eyebrows, and with her finger-tips
+handed the sheets on to her neighbour, who gazed with a settled
+and mournful frown and returned them to Sheila.
+
+She took the pages, folded them and replaced them carefully in
+her pocket. She swept her hands over her skirts, and turned to
+Danton.
+
+'You agree,' she inquired softly, 'it's like?'
+
+'Like! It's the livin' livid image. The livin' image,' he
+repeated, stretching out his arm, 'as he stood there that very
+night.'
+
+'What will you say, then,' said Sheila, quietly, 'What will you
+say if I tell you that that man, Nicholas de Sabathier, has been
+in his grave for over a hundred years?'
+
+Danton's little eyes seemed, if anything, to draw back even
+further into his head. 'I'd say, Mrs Lawford, if you'll excuse
+the word, that it might be a damn horrible coincidence--I'd go
+farther, an almost incredible coincidence. But if you want the
+sober truth, I'd say it was nothing more than a crafty, clever,
+abominable piece of trickery. That's what I'd say. Oh, you don't
+know, Mrs Lovat. When a scamp's a scamp, he'll stop at nothing. I
+could tell you some tales.'
+
+'Ah, but that's not all,' said Sheila, eyeing them steadfastly
+one by one. 'We all of us know that my husband's story was that
+he had gone down to Widderstone--into the churchyard, for his
+convalescent ramble; that story's true. We all know that he said
+he had had a fit, a heart attack, and that a kind of--of stupor
+had come over him. I believe on my honour that's true too. But no
+one knows but he himself and Mr Bethany and I, that it was a
+wretched broken grave, quite at the bottom of the hill, that he
+chose for his resting place, nor--and I can't get the scene out
+of my head--nor that the name on that one solitary tombstone down
+there was--was...this!'
+
+Danton rolled his eyes. 'I don't begin to follow,' he said
+stubbornly.
+
+'You don't mean,' said Mr Craik, who had not removed his gaze
+from Sheila's face, 'I am not to take it that you mean, Mrs
+Lawford, the--the other?'
+
+'Yes,' said Sheila, 'HIS'--she patted her skirts--'Sabathier's.'
+
+'You mean,' said Mrs Lovat crisply, 'that the man in the grave is
+the man in the book, and that the man in the book is--is poor
+Arthur's changed face?'
+
+Sheila nodded.
+
+Danton rose cumbrously from his chair, looking beadily down on
+his three friends.
+
+'Oh, but you know, it isn't--it isn't right,' he began. 'Lord! I
+can see him now. Glassy--yes, that's the very word I said--
+glassy. It won't do, Mrs Lawford; on my solemn honour, it won't
+do. I don't deny it, call it what you like; yes, devils, if you
+like. But what I say as a practical man is that it's just rank--
+that's what it is! Bethany's had too much rope. The time's gone
+by for sentiment and all that foolery. Mercy's all very well, but
+after all it's justice that clinches the bargain. There's only
+one way: we must catch him; we must lay the poor wretch by the
+heels before it's too late. No publicity, God bless me, no. We'd
+have all the rags in London on us. They'd pillory us nine days on
+end. We'd never live it down. No, we must just hush it up--a home
+or something; an asylum. For my part,' he turned like a huge
+toad, his chin low in his collar--'and I'd say the same if it was
+my own brother, and, after all, he is your husband, Mrs Lawford--
+I'd sooner he was in his grave. It takes two to play at that
+game, that's what I say. To lay himself open! I can't stand it--
+honestly, I can't stand it. And yet,' he jerked his chin over the
+peak of his collar towards the ladies, 'and yet you say he's
+being fetched; comes creeping home, and is fetched at dark by a--
+a lady in a pony-carriage. God bless me! It's rank. What,' he
+broke out violently again, 'what was he doing there in a cemetery
+after dark? Do you think that beastly Frenchman would have played
+such a trick on Craik here? Would he have tried his little game
+on me? Deviltry be it, if you prefer the word, and all deference
+to you, Mrs Lawford. But I know this--a couple of hundred years
+ago they would have burnt a man at the stake for less than a
+tenth of this. Ask Craik here. I don't know how, and I don't know
+when: his mother, I've always heard say, was a little eccentric;
+but the truth is he's managed by some unholy legerdemain to get
+the thing at his finger's ends; that's what it is. Think of that
+unspeakable book. Left open on the table! Look at his Ferguson
+game. It's our solemn duty to keep him for good and all out of
+mischief. It reflects all round. There's no getting out of it;
+we're all in it. And tar sticks. And then there's poor little
+Alice to consider, and--and you yourself, Mrs. Lawford: I wouldn't
+give the fellow--friend though he was, in a way--it isn't safe to
+give him five minutes' freedom. We've simply got to save you from
+yourself, Mrs Lawford; that's what it is--and from old-fashioned
+sentiment. And I only wish Bethany was here now to dispute it!'
+
+He stirred himself down, as it were, into his clothes, and stood
+in the middle of the hearthrug, gently oscillating, with his
+hands behind his back. But at some faint rumour out of the silent
+house his posture suddenly stiffened, and he lifted a little,
+with heavy, steady lids, his head.
+
+'What is the matter, Danton?' said Mr Craik in a small voice;
+'why are you listening?'
+
+'I wasn't listening,' said Danton stoutly, 'I was thinking.'
+
+At the same moment, at the creak of a footstep on the kitchen
+stairs, Lawford also had drawn soundlessly back into the darkness
+of the empty drawing-room.
+
+'While Mr Danton is "thinking," Sheila,' Mrs Lovat was softly
+interposing, 'do please listen a moment to me. Do you mean really
+that that Frenchman--the one you've pocketed--is the poor
+creature in the grave?'
+
+'Yes, Mrs Lawford,' said Mr Craik, putting out his face a little,
+'are we to take it that you mean that?'
+
+'It's the same date, dear, the same name even to the spelling;
+what possibly else can I think?'
+
+'And that the poor creature in the grave actually climbed up out
+of the darkness and--well, what?'
+
+'I know no more than you do NOW, Bettie. But the two faces--you
+must remember you haven't seen my husband SINCE.' You must
+remember you haven't heard the peculiar--the most peculiar things
+he--Arthur himself--has said to me. Things such as a wife... And
+not in jest, Bettie; I assure you....'
+
+'And Mr Bethany?' interpolated Mr Craik modestly, feeling his
+way.
+
+'Pah, Bethany, Craik! He'd back Old Nick himself if he came with
+a good tale. We've got to act; we've got to settle his hash
+before he does any mischief.'
+
+'Well,' began Mrs Lovat, smiling a little remorsefully beneath
+the arch of her raised eyebrows, 'I sincerely hope you'll all
+forgive me; but I really am, heart and soul, with Old Nick, as Mr
+Danton seems on intimate terms enough to call him. Dead, he is
+really immensely alluring; and alive, I think, awfully--just
+awfully pitiful and--and pathetic. But if I know anything of
+Arthur he won't be beaten by a Frenchman. As for just the
+portrait, I think, do you know, I almost prefer dark men'--she
+glanced up at the face immediately in front of the clock--'at
+least,' she added softly, 'when they are not looking very
+vindictive. I suppose people are fairly often possessed, Mr
+Craik? HOW many "deadly sins" are there?'
+
+'As a matter of fact, Mrs Lovat, there are seven. But I think in
+this case Mrs Lawford intends to suggest not so much that--that
+her husband is in that condition; habitual sin, you know--grave
+enough, of course, I own--but that he is actually being
+compelled, even to the extent of a more or less complete change
+of physiognomy, to follow the biddings of some atrocious
+spiritual influence. It is no breach of confidence to say that I
+have myself been present at a death-bed where the struggle
+against what I may call the end was perfectly awful to witness. I
+don't profess to follow all the ramifications of the affair, but
+though possibly Mr Danton may seem a little harsh, such
+harshness, if I may venture to intercede, is not necessarily
+"vindictive." And--and personal security is a consideration.'
+
+'If you only knew the awful fear, the awful uncertainty I have
+been in, Bettie! Oh, it is worse, infinitely worse, than you can
+possibly imagine. I have myself heard the Voice speak out of
+him--a high, hard, nasal voice. I've seen what Mr Danton calls
+the "glassiness" come into his face, and an expression so wild
+and so appallingly depraved, as it were, that I have had to hurry
+downstairs to hide myself from the thought. I'm willing to
+sacrifice everything for my own husband and for Alice; but can it
+be expected of me to go on harbouring....' Lawford listened on in
+vain for a moment; poor Sheila, it seemed, had all but broken
+down.
+
+'Look here, Mrs Lawford,' began Danton huskily, 'you really
+mustn't give way; you really mustn't. It's awful, unspeakably
+awful, I admit. But here we are; friends, in the midst of
+friends. And there's absolutely nothing-- What's that? Eh? Who is
+it?... Oh, the maid!'
+
+Ada stood in the doorway looking in. 'All I've come to ask,
+ma'am,' she said in a low voice, 'is, am I to stay downstairs any
+longer? And are you aware there's somebody in the house?'
+
+'What's that? What's that you're saying?' broke out the husky
+voice again. 'Control yourself! Speak gently! What's that?'
+
+'Begging your pardon, sir, I'm perfectly under control. And all I
+say is that I can't stay any longer alone downstairs there.
+There's somebody in the house.'
+
+A concentrated hush seemed to have fallen on the little assembly.
+
+'"Somebody"--but who?' said Sheila out of the silence. 'You come
+up here, Ada, with these idle fancies. Who's in the house? There
+has been no knock--no footstep.'
+
+'No knock, no footstep, ma'am, that I've heard. It's Dr Ferguson,
+ma'am. He was here that first night; and he's been here ever
+since. He was here when I came on Tuesday; and he was here last
+night. And he's here now. I can't be deceived by my own feelings.
+It's not right, it's not out-spoken to keep me in the dark like
+this. And if you have no objection, I would like to go home.'
+
+Lawford in his utter weariness had nearly closed the door and now
+sat bent up on a chair, wondering vaguely when this poor play was
+coming to an end, longing with an intensity almost beyond
+endurance for the keen night air, the open sky. But still his
+ears drank in every tiniest sound or stir. He heard Danton's
+lowered voice muttering his arguments. He heard Ada quietly
+sniffing in the darkness of the hall. And this was his world!
+This was his life's panorama, creaking on at every jolt. This was
+the 'must' Grisel had sent him back to--these poor fools packed
+together in a panic at an old stale tale! Well, they
+would all come out presently, and cluster; and the crested,
+cackling fellow would lead them safely away out of the haunted
+farmyard.
+
+He started out of his reverie at Danton's voice close at hand.
+
+'Look here, my good girl, we haven't the least intention of
+keeping you in the dark. If you want to leave your mistress like
+this in the midst of her anxieties she says you can go and
+welcome. But it's not a bit of good in the world coming
+up with these cock-and-bull stories. The truth is your master's
+mad, that's the sober truth of it--hopelessly insane, you
+understand; and we've got to find him. But nothing's to be said,
+d'ye see? It's got to be done without fuss or scandal. But if
+there's any witness wanted, or anything of that kind, why, here
+you are; and,' he dropped his voice to an almost inaudible hoot,
+'and well worth your while! You did see him, eh? Step into the
+trap, and all that?'
+
+Ada stood silent a moment. 'I don't know, sir,' she began
+quietly, 'by what right you speak to me about what you call my
+cock-and-bull stories. If the master is mad, all I can say to
+anybody is I'm very sorry to hear it. I came to my mistress, sir,
+if you please; and I prefer to take my orders from one who has
+a right to give them. Did I understand you to say, ma'am, that
+you wouldn't want me any more this evening?'
+
+Sheila had swept solemnly to the door. 'Mr Danton meant all that
+he said quite kindly, Ada. I can perfectly understand your
+feelings--perfectly. And I'm very much obliged to you for all
+your kindness to me in very trying circumstances. We are all
+agreed--we are forced to the terrible conclusion which--which Mr
+Danton has just--expressed. And I know I can rely on your
+discretion. Don't stay on a moment if you really are afraid. But
+when you say "some one" Ada, do you mean--some one like you or
+me; or do you mean--the other?'
+
+'I've been sitting in the kitchen, ma'am, unable to move. I'm
+watched everywhere. The other evening I went into the
+drawing-room--I was alone in the house--and... I can't describe
+it. It wasn't dark; and yet it was all still and black, like the
+ruins after a fire. I don't mean I saw it, only that it was like
+a scene. And then the watching--I am quite aware to some it may
+sound all fancy. But I'm not superstitious, never was. I only
+mean--that I can't sit alone here. I daren't. Else, I'm quite
+myself. So if so be you don't want me any more; if I can't be of
+any further use to you or to--to Mr. Lawford, I'd prefer to go
+home.'
+
+'Very well, Ada; thank you. You can go out this way.'
+
+The door was unchained and unbolted, and 'Good-night' said. And
+Sheila swept back in sombre pomp to her absorbed friends.
+
+'She's quite a good creature at heart,' she explained frankly, as
+if to disclaim any finesse, 'and almost quixotically loyal. But
+what really did she mean, do you think? She is so obstinate. That
+maddening "some one"! How they do repeat themselves. It can't be
+my husband; not Dr Ferguson, I mean. You don't suppose--oh
+surely, not "some one" else!' Again the dark silence of the house
+seemed to drift in on the little company.
+
+Mr Craik cleared his throat. 'I failed to catch quite all that
+the maid said,' he murmured apologetically; 'but I certainly did
+gather it was to some kind of--of emanation she was referring.
+And the "ruin," you know. I'm not a mystic; and yet do you know,
+that somehow seemed to me almost offensively suggestive of--of
+demonic influence. You don't suppose, Mrs Lawford--and of course
+I wouldn't for a moment venture on such a conjecture unsupported-
+but even if this restless spirit (let us call it) did succeed in
+making a footing, it might possibly be rather in the nature of a
+lodging than a permanent residence. Moreover we are, I think,
+bound to remember that probably in all spheres of existence like
+attracts like; even the Gadarene episode seems to suggest a
+possible MULTIPICATION!' he peered largely. 'You don't suppose,
+Mrs Lawford...?'
+
+'I think Mr Craik doesn't quite relish having to break the news,
+Sheila dear,' explained Mrs Lovat soothingly, 'that perhaps
+Sabathier's out. Which really is quite a heavenly suggestion, for
+in that case your husband would be in, wouldn't he? Just our old
+stolid Arthur again, you know. And next Mr Craik is suggesting,
+and it certainly does seem rather fascinating, that poor Ada's
+got mixed up with the Frenchman's friends, or perhaps, even, with
+one of the seventy-two Princes Royal. I know women can't, or
+mustn't reason, Mr Danton, but you do, I hope, just catch the
+drift?'
+
+Danton started. 'I wasn't really listening to the girl,' be
+explained nonchalantly, shrugging his black shoulders and pursing
+up his eyes. 'Personally, Mrs Lovat, I'd pack the baggage off
+to-night, box and all. But it's not my business.'
+
+'You mustn't be depressed--must he, Mr Craik? After all, my dear
+man, the business, as you call it, is not exactly entailed. But
+really, Sheila, I think it must be getting very late. Mr Bethany
+won't come now. And the dear old thing ought certainly to have
+his say before we go any further; OUGHTN'T he, Mr Danton? So
+what's the use of worriting poor Ada's ghost any longer. And as
+for poor Arthur--I haven't the faintest desire in the world to
+hear the little cart drive up, simply in case it should be to
+leave your unfortunate husband behind it, Sheila. What it must be
+to be alone all night in this house with a dead and buried
+Frenchman's face--well, I shudder, dear!'
+
+'And yet, Mrs Lovat,' said Mr Craik, with some little show of
+returning bravado, 'as we make our bed, you know.'
+
+'But in this case, you see,' she replied reflectively, 'if all
+accounts are true, Mr Craik, it's manifestly the wicked Frenchman
+who has made the bed, and Sheila who refu--  But look; Mr Danton
+is fretting to get home.'
+
+'If you'll all go to the door,' said Danton, seizing a fleeting
+opportunity to raise his eyebrows more expressively even than if
+he had again shrugged his shoulders at Sheila, 'I'll put out the
+light.'
+
+The night air flowed into the dark house as Danton hastily groped
+his way out of the dining-room.
+
+'There's only one thing,' said Sheila slowly. 'When I last saw my
+husband, you know, he was, I think, the least bit better. He was
+always stubbornly convinced it would all come right in time.
+That's why, I think, he's been spending his--his evenings away
+from home. But supposing it did?'
+
+'For my part,' said Mrs Lovat, breathing the faint wind that was
+rising out of the west, 'I'd sigh; I'd rub my eyes; I'd thank God
+for such an exciting dream; and I'd turn comfortably over and go
+to sleep again. I'm all for Arthur--absolutely--back against the
+wall.'
+
+'For my part,' said Danton, looming in the dusk, 'friend or no
+friend, I'd cut the--I'd cut him dead. But don't fret, Mrs
+Lawford, devil or no devil, he's gone for good.'
+
+'And for my part--' began Mr Craik; but the door at that moment
+slammed.
+
+Voices, however, broke out almost immediately in the porch. And
+after a hurried consultation, Lawford in his stagnant retreat
+heard the door softly reopen, and the striking of a match. And Mr
+Craik, followed closely by Danton's great body, stole
+circumspectly across his dim chink, and the first adventurer went
+stumbling down the kitchen staircase.
+
+'I suppose,' muttered Lawford, turning his head in the darkness,
+'they have come back to put out the kitchen gas.'
+
+Danton began a busy tuneless whistle between his teeth.
+
+'Coming, Craik?' he called thickly, after a long pause.
+
+Apparently no answer had been returned to his inquiry: he waited
+a little longer, with legs apart, and eyeballs enveloped in
+brooding darkness. 'I'll just go and tell the ladies you're
+coming,' he suddenly bawled down the hollow. 'Do you hear,
+Craik? They're alone, you know.' And with that he resolutely
+wheeled and rapidly made his way down the steps into the garden.
+Some few moments afterwards Mr Craik shook himself free of the
+basement, hastened at a spirited trot to rejoin his companions,
+and in his absence of mind omitted to shut the front door.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
+
+Lawford sat on in the darkness, and now one sentence and now
+another of their talk would repeat itself in his memory, in much
+the same way as one listlessly turns over an antiquated diary, to
+read here and there a flattened and almost meaningless sentiment.
+Sometimes a footstep passed echoing along the path under the
+trees, then his thoughts would leave him, and he would listen and
+listen till it had died quite out. It was all so very far away.
+And they too--these talkers--so very far away; as remote and yet
+as clear as the characters in a play when they have made their
+final bow, and have left the curtained stage, and one is standing
+uncompanioned and nearly the last of the spectators, and the
+lights that have summoned back reality again are being
+extinguished. It was only by painful effort of mind that he kept
+recalling himself to himself--why he was here; what it all meant;
+that this was indeed actuality.
+
+Yet, after all, this by now was his customary loneliness: there
+was little else he desired for the present than the hospitality
+of the dark. He glanced around him in the clear, black, stirless
+air. Here and there, it seemed, a humped or spindled form held
+against all comers its passive place. Here and there a tiny
+faintness of light played. Night after night these chairs and
+tables kept their blank vigil. Why, he thought, pleased as an
+overtired child with the fancy, in a sense they were always
+alone, shut up in a kind of senselessness--just like us
+all. But what--what, he had suddenly risen from his chair to ask
+himself--what on earth are they alone with? No precise answer had
+been forthcoming to that question. But as in turning in the
+doorway, he looked out into the night, flashing here and there in
+dark spaces of the sky above the withering apple leaves--the long
+dark wall and quiet untrodden road--with the tumultuous beating
+of the stars--one thing at least he was conscious of having
+learned in these last few days: he knew what kind of a place he
+was alone IN.
+
+It seemed to weave a spell over him, to call up a nostalgia he
+had lost all remembrance of since childhood. And that queer
+homesickness, at any rate, was all Sabathier's doing, he thought,
+smiling in his rather careworn fashion. Sabathier! It was this
+mystery, bereft now of all fear, and this beauty together, that
+made life the endless, changing and yet changeless, thing it was.
+And yet mystery and loveliness alike were only really appreciable
+with one's legs, as it were, dangling down over into the grave.
+
+Just with one's lantern lit, on the edge of the whispering
+unknown, and a reiterated going back out of the solitude into the
+light and warmth, to the voices and glancing of eyes, to say
+good-bye:--that after all was this life on earth for those who
+watched as well as acted. What if one's earthly home were
+empty?--still the restless fretted traveller must tarry; 'for the
+horrible worst of it is, my friend,' he said, as if to some
+silent companion listening behind him, 'the worst of it is, YOUR
+way was just simply, solely suicide.' What was it Herbert
+had called it? Yes, a cul-de-sac--black, lofty, immensely still
+and old and picturesque, but none the less merely a contemptible
+cul-de-sac; no abiding place, scarcely even sufficing with its
+flagstones for a groan from the fugitive and deluded refugee.
+There was no peace for the wicked. The question of course
+then came in--Was there any peace anywhere, for anybody?
+
+He smiled at a sudden odd remembrance of a quiet, sardonic old
+aunt whom he used to stay with as a child. 'Children should be
+seen and not heard,' she would say, peering at him over his
+favourite pudding.
+
+His eyes rested vacantly on the darkling street. He fell again
+into reverie, gigantically brooded over by shapes only
+imagination dimly conceived of: the remote alleys of his mind
+astir with a shadowy and ceaseless traffic which it wasn't at
+least THIS life's business to hearken after, or regard. And as he
+stood there in a mysteriously thronging peaceful solitude such as
+he had never known before, faintly out of the silence broke the
+sound of approaching hoofs. His heart seemed to gather itself
+close; a momentary blindness veiled his eyes, so wildly had his
+blood surged up into cheek and brain. He remained, caught up,
+with head slightly inclined, listening, as, with an interminable
+tardiness, measureless anguished hope died down into nothing in
+his mind.
+
+Cold and heavy, his heart began to beat again, as if to catch up
+those laggard moments. He turned with an infinite revulsion of
+feeling to look out on the lamps of the old fly that had drawn up
+at his gate.
+
+He watched incuriously a little old lady rather arduously alight,
+pause, and look up at his darkened windows, and after a momentary
+hesitation, and a word over her shoulder to the cabman, stoop and
+fumble at the iron latch. He watched her with a kind of wondering
+aversion, still scarcely tinged with curiosity. She had succeeded
+in lifting the latch and in pushing her way through, and was even
+now steadily advancing towards him along the tiled path. And a
+minute after he recognised with the strangest reactions the quiet
+old figure that had shared a sunset with him ages and ages ago--
+his mother's old schoolfellow, Miss Sinnet.
+
+He was already ransacking the still faintly-perfumed dining-room
+for matches, and had just succeeded in relighting the still-warm
+lamp, when he heard her quiet step in the porch, even felt her
+peering in, in the gloom, with all her years' trickling
+customariness behind her, a little dubious of knocking on a
+wide-open door.
+
+But the lamp lit Lawford went out again and welcomed his visitor.
+'I am alone,' he was explaining gravely, 'my wife's away and the
+whole house topsy-turvy. How very, very kind of you!'
+
+The old lady was breathing a little heavily after her ascent of
+the steep steps, and seemed not to have noticed his outstretched
+hand. None the less she followed him in, and when she was well
+advanced into the lighted room, she sighed deeply, raised her
+veil over the front of her bonnet, and leisurely took out her
+spectacles.
+
+'I suppose,' she was explaining in a little quiet voice, 'you ARE
+Mr Arthur Lawford, but as I did not catch sight of a light in any
+of the windows I began to fear that the cabman might have set me
+down at the wrong house.'
+
+She raised her head, and first through, and then over her
+spectacles she deliberately and steadfastly regarded him.
+
+'Yes,' she said to herself, and turned, not as it seemed entirely
+with satisfaction, to look for a chair. He wheeled the most
+comfortable up to the table.
+
+'I have been visiting my old friend Miss Tucker--Rev W. Tucker's
+daughter--she, I knew, could give me your address; and sure
+enough she did. Your road, d'ye see, was on my way home. And I
+determined, in spite of the hour, just to inquire. You must
+understand, Mr Lawford, there was something that I rather
+particularly wanted to say to you. But there!--you're looking
+sadly, sadly ill; and,' she glanced round a little inquisitively,
+'I think my story had better wait for a more convenient
+occasion.'
+
+'Not at all, Miss Sinnet; please not,' Lawford assured her,
+'really. I have been ill, but I'm now practically quite myself
+again. My wife and daughter have gone away for a few days; and I
+follow to-morrow, so if you'll forgive such a very poor welcome,
+it may be my--my only chance. Do please let me hear.'
+
+The old lady leant back in her chair, placed her hands on its
+arms and softly panted, while out of the rather broad serenity of
+her face she sat blinking up at her companion as if after a long
+talk, instead of at the beginning of one. 'No,' she repeated
+reflectively, 'I don't like your looks at all; yet here we
+are, enjoying beautiful autumn weather, Mr Lawford, why not make
+use of it?'
+
+'Oh yes,' said Lawford, 'I do. I have been making tremendous use
+of it.'
+
+Her eyelid flickered at his candid glance. 'And does your
+business permit of much walking?'
+
+'Well, I've been malingering these last few days idling at home;
+but I am usually more or less my own man, Miss Sinnet. I walk a
+little.'
+
+'H'm, but not much in my direction, Mr Lawford?' she quizzed him,
+
+'All horrible indolence, Miss Sinnet. But I often--often think of
+you; and especially just lately.'
+
+'Well, now,' she wriggled round her head to get a better view of
+him rather stiffly seated on his chair, 'that's very peculiar;
+because I too have been thinking lately a great deal of you. And
+yet--I fancy I shall succeed in mystifying you presently--not
+precisely of you, but of somebody else!'
+
+'You do mystify me--"somebody else"!' he replied gallantly. 'And
+that is the story, I suppose?'
+
+'That's the story,' repeated Miss Sinnet with some little
+triumph. 'Now, let me see; it was on Saturday last--yes, Saturday
+evening; a wonderful sunset; Bewley Heath.'
+
+'Oh yes; my daughter's favourite walk.'
+
+'And your daughter's age now?'
+
+'She's nearly sixteen; Alice, you know.'
+
+'Ah, yes, Alice; to be sure. It is a beautiful walk, and if fine,
+I generally take mine there too. It's near; there's shade; it's
+very little frequented; and I can wander and muse undisturbed.
+And that I think is pretty well all that an old woman like me is
+fit for, Mr Lawford. "Nearly sixteen!" Is it possible?
+Dear, dear me? But let me get on. On my way home from the Heath,
+you may be aware, before one reaches the road again, there's a
+somewhat steep ascent. I haven't the strength I had, and whether
+I'm fatigued or not, I have always made it a rule to rest awhile
+on a most convenient little seat at the summit, admire
+the view--what I can see of it--and then make my way quietly,
+quietly home. On Saturday, however, and it most rarely occurs--
+once, I remember, when a very civil nursemaid was sitting with
+two charmingly behaved little children in the sunshine, and I
+heard they were my old friend Major Loder's son's children--on
+Saturday, as I was saying, my own particular little haunt was
+already occupied.' She glanced back at him from out of her
+thoughts, as it were. 'By a gentleman. I say, gentleman; though I
+must confess that his conduct--perhaps, too, a little something
+even in his appearance, somewhat belied the term. Anyhow,
+gentleman let us call him.'
+
+Lawford, all attention, nodded, and encouragingly smiled.
+
+'I'm not one of those tiresome, suspicious people, Mr Lawford,
+who distrust strangers. I have never been molested, and I have
+enjoyed many and many a most interesting, and sometimes
+instructive, talk with an individual whom I've never seen in my
+life before, and this side of the grave perhaps, am never likely
+to see again.' She lifted her head with pursed lips, and gravely
+yet still flickeringly regarded him once more. 'Well, I made some
+trifling remark--the weather, the view, what-not,' she explained
+with a little jerk of her shoulder--'and to my extreme
+astonishment he turned and addressed me by name--Miss Sinnet.
+Unmistakably--Sinnet. Now, perhaps, and very rightly, you won't
+considered THAT a very peculiar thing to do? But you will
+recollect, Mr Lawford, that I had been sitting there a
+considerable time. Surely, now, if you had recognised my face
+you would have addressed me at once?'
+
+'Was he, do you think, Miss Sinnet, a little uncertain, perhaps?'
+
+'Never mind, never mind; let me get on with my story first. The
+next thing my gentleman does is more mysterious still. His whole
+manner was a little peculiar, perhaps--a certain restlessness,
+what, in fact, one might be almost tempted to call a certain
+furtiveness of behaviour. Never mind. What he does next is to ask
+me a riddle! Perhaps you won't think that was peculiar either?'
+
+'What was the riddle?' smiled Lawford.
+
+'Why, to be sure, to guess his name! Simply guided, so I
+surmised, by some very faint resemblance in his face to his
+MOTHER, who was, he assured me, au old schoolfellow of mine at
+BRIGHTON. I thought and thought. I confess the adventure was
+beginning to be a little perplexing. But of course, very, very
+few of my old schoolfellows remain distinctly in my memory now;
+and I fear that grows more treacherous the longer I live. Their
+faces as girls are clear enough. But later in life most of them
+drifted out of sight--many, alas, are dead; and, well, at
+last I narrowed my man down to one. And who now, do you suppose
+that was?'
+
+Lawford sustained an expression of abysmal mystification. 'Do
+tell me--who?'
+
+'Your own poor dear mother, Mr Lawford.'
+
+'HE said so?'
+
+'No, no,' said the old lady, with some vexation, closing her
+eyes. 'I said so. He asked me to guess. And I guessed Mary
+Lawford; now do you see?'
+
+`Yes, yes. But WAS he like her, Miss Sinnet? That was really
+very, very extraordinary. Did you see any likeness in his face?'
+
+Miss Sinnet very deliberately took her spectacles out of their
+case again. 'Now, see here, sir; this is being practical, isn't
+it? I'm just going to take a leisurely glance at yours. But you
+mustn't let me forget the time. You must look after the time for
+me.'
+
+'It's about a quarter to ten,' said Lawford, having glanced first
+at the stopped clock on the chimney-piece and then at his watch.
+He then sat quite still and endeavoured to sit at ease, while the
+old lady lifted her bonneted head and ever so gravely and
+benignly surveyed him.
+
+'H'm,' she said at last. 'There's no mistaking YOU. It's Mary's
+chin, and Mary's brow--with just a little something, perhaps, of
+her dreamy eye. But you haven't all her looks, Mr Lawford, by any
+manner of means. She was a very beautiful girl, and so vivacious,
+so fanciful--it was, I suppose the foreign strain showing itself.
+Even marriage did not quite succeed in spoiling her.'
+
+'The foreign strain?' Lawford glanced with a kind of fleeting
+fixity at the quiet old figure. 'The foreign strain?'
+
+Your mother's maiden name, my dear Mr Lawford, surely memory does
+not deceive me in that, was van der Gucht. THAT, I believe, is a
+foreign name.'
+
+'Ah, yes,' said Lawford, his rising thoughts sinking quietly to
+rest again. 'Van der Gucht, of course. I--how stupid of me!'
+
+'As a matter of fact, your mother was very proud of her Dutch
+blood. But there,' she flung out little fin-like sleeves, 'if you
+don't let me keep to my story I shall go back as uneasy as I
+came. And you didn't,' she added even more fretfully, 'you didn't
+tell me the time.'
+
+Lawford stared at his watch again for some few moments without
+replying. 'It's a few minutes to ten,' he said at last.
+
+'Dear me! And I'm keeping the cabman! I mast hurry on. Well, now,
+I put it to you; you shall be my father confessor--though I
+detest the idea in real life--was I wrong? Was I justified in
+professing to the poor fellow that I detected a likeness when
+there was extremely little likeness there?'
+
+'What! None at all!' cried Lawford; 'not the faintest trace?'
+
+'My dear good Mr Lawford,' she expostulated, patting her lap,
+'there's very little more than a trace of my dear beautiful Mary
+in YOU, her own son. How could there be--how could you expect it
+in him, a complete stranger? No, it was nothing but my own
+foolish kindliness. It might have been Mary's son for all
+that I could recollect. I haven't for years, please remember, had
+the pleasure of receiving a visit from YOU. I am firmly of
+opinionthat I was justified. My motive was entirely benevolent.
+And then--to my positive amazement--well, I won't say hard things
+of the absent; but he suddenly turns round on me with a "Thank
+you, Miss Bennett." Bennett, hark ye! Perhaps you won't agree
+that I had any justification in being vexed and--and affronted
+at THAT.'
+
+'I think, Miss Sinnet,' said Lawford solemnly, 'that you were
+perfectly justified. Oh, perfectly. I wonder even you had the
+patience to give the real Arthur Lawford a chance to ask your
+forgiveness for--or the stranger.'
+
+'Well, candidly,' said Miss Sinnett severely. 'I was very much
+scandalised; and I shouldn't be here now telling you my story if
+it hadn't been for your mother.'
+
+'My mother!'
+
+The old lady rather grimly enjoyed his confusion. 'Yes, Mr
+Lawford, your mother. I don't know why--something in his manner,
+something in his face--so dejected, so unhappy, so--if it is not
+uncharitablse to say it--so wild: it has haunted me: I haven't
+been able to put the matter out of my mind. I have lain awake in
+my bed thinking of him. Why did he speak to me, I keep asking
+myself. Why did he play me so very aimless a trick? How had he
+learned my name? Why was he sitting there so solitary and so
+dejected? And worse even than that, what has become of him? A
+little more patience, a little more charity, perhaps--what might
+I not have done for him? The whole thing has harassed and
+distressed me more than I can say. Would you believe it, I have
+actually twice, and on one occasion, three times in a day made my
+way to the seat--hoping to see him there. And I am not so
+young as I was. And then, as I say, to crown all, I had a most
+remarkable dream about your mother. But that's my own affair.
+Elderly people like me are used--well, perhaps I won't say used--
+we're not surprised or disturbed by visits from those who have
+gone before. We live, in a sense, among the tombs; though I would
+not have you fancy it's in any way a morbid or unhappy life to
+lead. We don't talk about it--certainly not to young people. Let
+them enjoy their Eden while they can; though there's plenty of
+apples, I fear, on the Tree yet, Mr Lawford.'
+
+She leant forward and whispered it with a big, simple smile:--
+'We don't even discuss it much among ourselves. But as one gets
+nearer and nearer to the wicket-gate there's other company around
+one than you'll find in--in the directory. And that is why I have
+just come on here tonight. Very probably my errand may seem to
+have no meaning for you. You look ill, but you don't appear
+to be in any great trouble or adversity, as I feared in my--well,
+there--as I feared you might be. I must say, though, it seems a
+terribly empty house. And no lights, too!'
+
+She slowly, with a little trembling nodding of her bonnet, turned
+her head and glanced quietly, fixedly, and unflinchingly, out of
+the half-open door. 'But that's not my affair.' And again she
+looked at him for a little while.
+
+Then she stooped forward and touched him kindly and trustingly on
+the knee. 'Trouble or no trouble,' she said, 'it's never too late
+to remind a man of his mother. And I'm sure, Mr Lawford, I'm very
+glad to hear you are struggling up out of your illness again. We
+must keep a brave heart, forty or seventy, whichever we may be:
+"While the evil days come not nor the years draw nigh when thou
+shalt say, I have no pleasure in them," though they have not come
+to me even yet; and I trust from the bottom of my heart, not to
+YOU.'
+
+She looked at him without a trace of emotion or constraint in her
+large, quiet face, and their eyes met for a moment in that brief,
+fixed, baffling fashion that seems to prove that mankind is after
+all but a dumb masked creature saddled with the vain illusion of
+speech.
+
+'And now that I've eased my conscience,' said the old lady,
+pulling down her veil, 'I must beg pardon for intruding at such
+an hour of the evening. And may I have your arm down those
+dreadful steps? Really, Mr Lawford, judging from the houses they
+erect for us, the builders must have a very peculiar notion of
+mankind. Is the fly still there? I expressly told the man to
+wait, and what I am going to do if--!'
+
+'He's there,' Lawford reassured her, craning his neck in their
+slow progress to catch a peep into the quiet road. And like a
+flock of birds scared by a chance comer at their feeding in some
+deserted field, a whirring cloud of memories swept softly up in
+his mind--memories whose import he made no effort to discover.
+None the less, the leisurely descent became in their company
+something of a real experience even in such a brimming week.
+
+'I hope, some day, you will really tell me your dream?' he said,
+pushing the old lady's silk skirts in after her as she slowly
+climbed into the carriage.
+
+'Ah, my dear Lawford, when you are my age,' she called back to
+him, groping her way into the rather musty gloom, 'you'll dream
+such dreams for yourself. Life's not what's just the fashion. And
+there are queerer things to be seen and heard just quietly in
+one's solitude than this busy life gives us time to discover.
+But as for my mystifying Bewley acquaintance--I confess I cannot
+make head or tail of him.'
+
+'Was he,' said Lawford rather vaguely, looking up into the dim
+white face that with its plumes filled nearly the whole carriage
+window, 'was his face very unpleasing?'
+
+She raised a gloved hand. 'It has haunted me, haunted me, Mr
+Lawford; its--its conflict! Poor fellow; I hope, I do hope, he
+faced his trouble out. But I shall never see him again.'
+
+He squeezed the trembling, kindly old hand. 'I bet, Miss Sinnet,'
+he said earnestly, 'even your having thought kindly of the poor
+beggar eased his mind--whoever he may have been. I assure you,
+assure you of that.'
+
+'Ay, but I did more than THINK,' replied the old lady with a
+chuckle that might have seemed even a little derisive if it had
+not been so profoundly magnanimous.
+
+He watched the old black fly roll slowly off, and still smiling
+at Miss Sinnet's inscrutable finesse went back into the house.
+'And now, my friend,' he said, addressing peacefully the
+thronging darkness, 'the time's nearly up for me to go too.'
+
+He had made up his mind. Or, rather, it seemed as if in the
+unregarded silences of this last long talk his mind had made up
+itself. Only among impossibilities had he the shadow of a choice.
+In this old haunted house, amid this shallow turmoil no
+practicable clue could show itself of a way out. He would go away
+for a while.
+
+He left the door ajar behind him for the moments still left, and
+stood for a while thinking. Then, lamp in hand, he descended into
+the breakfast-room for pen, ink, and paper. He sat for some time
+in that underground calm, nibbling his pen like a harassed and
+self-conscious schoolboy. At last he began:
+
+'MY DEAR SHEILA,--I must tell you, to begin with, that the CHANGE
+has now all passed away. I am--as near as man can be--completely
+myself again. And next: that I overheard all that was said
+to-night in the dining-room.
+
+'I'm sorry for listening; but it's no good going over all that
+now. Here I am, and, as you said, for Alice's sake we must make
+the best of it. I am going away for a while, to get, if I can, a
+chance to quiet down. I suppose every one comes sooner or later
+to a time in life when there is nothing else to be done but just
+shut one's eyes and blunder on. And that's all I can do now--
+blunder on....'
+
+He paused, and suddenly, at the echo of the words in his mind, a
+revulsion of feeling--shame and hatred of himself surged up, and
+he tore his letter into tiny pieces. Once more he began, 'my dear
+Sheila,' dropped his pen, sat on for a long time, cold and inert,
+harbouring almost unendurably a pitiful, hopeless longing.... He
+would write to Grisel another day.
+
+He leant back in his chair, his fingers pressed against his
+eyelids. And clearer than those which myriad-hued reality can
+ever present, pictures of the imagination swam up before his
+eyes. It seemed, indeed, that even now some ghost, some revenant
+of himself was sitting there, in the old green churchyard,
+roofed only with a thousand thousand stars. The breath of
+darkness stirred softly on his cheek. Some little scampering
+shape slipped by. A bird on high cried weirdly, solemnly, over
+the globe. He shuddered faintly, and looked out again into the
+small lamplit room.
+
+Here, too, was quite as inexplicable a coming and going. A fly
+was walking on the table beneath his eyes, with the uneasy gait
+of one that has outlived his hour and most of his companions.
+Mice were scampering and shrieking in the empty kitchen. And all
+about him, in the viewless air, the phantoms of another life
+passed by, unmindful of his motionless body. He fell into a
+lethargy of the senses, and only gradually became aware after a
+while of the strange long-drawn sigh of rain at the window. He
+rose and opened it. The night air flowed in, chilled with its
+waters and faintly fragrant of the dust. It soothed away all
+thought for a while. He turned back to his chair. He would wait
+until the rain had lulled before starting....
+
+A little before midnight the door was softly, and with extreme
+care, pushed open, and Mr Bethany's old face, with an intense and
+sharpened scrutiny, looked in on the lamplit room. And as if
+still intent on the least sound within the empty walls around
+him, he came near, and stooping across the table, stared
+through his spectacles at the sidelong face of his friend, so
+still, with hands so lightly laid on the arms of his chair that
+the old man had need to watch closely to detect in his heavy
+slumber the slow measured rise and fall of his breast.
+
+He turned wearily away muttering a little, between an
+immeasurable relief and a now almost intolerable medley of
+vexations. What WAS this monstrous web of Craik's? What HAD the
+creature been nodding and ducketing about?--those whisperings,
+that tattling? And what in the end, when you were old and sour
+and out-strategied, what was the end to be of this urgent dream
+called Life? He sat quietly down and drew his hands over his
+face, pushed his lean knotted fingers up under his spectacles,
+then sat blinking--and softly slowly deciphered the solitary 'My
+dear Sheila' on Lawford's note-paper. 'H'm,' he muttered, and
+looked up again at the dark still eyelids that in the strange
+torpor of sleep might yet be dimly conveying to the dreaming
+brain behind them some hint of his presence. 'I wish to goodness,
+you wonderful old creature,' he muttered, wagging his head, 'I
+wish to goodness you'd wake up.'
+
+For some time he sat on, listening to the still soft downpour on
+the fading leaves. 'They don't come to me,' he said softly again;
+with a tiny smile on his old face. 'It's that old medieval Craik:
+with a face like a last year's rookery!' And again he sat, with
+head a little sidelong, listening now to the infinitesimal sounds
+of life without, now to the thoughts within, and ever and again
+he gazed steadfastly on Lawford.
+
+At last it seemed in the haunted quietness other thoughts came to
+him. A cloud, as it were of youth, drew over the wrinkled skin,
+composed the birdlike keenness; his head nodded. Once, like
+Lawford in the darkness at Widderstone, he glanced up sharply
+across the lamplight at his phantasmagorical shadowy companion,
+heard the steady surge of multitudinous rain-drops, like the roar
+of Time's winged chariot hurrying near; then he too, with
+spectacles awry, bobbed on in his chair, a weary old sentinel on
+the outskirts of his friend's denuded battlefield.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Return, by Walter de la Mare
+
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