The Return

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Raying and gleaming in the sunlight the hired landau drove up to thegate. Lawford, peeping between the blinds, looked down on the coachman,with reins hanging loosely from his red squat-thumbed hand, seated inhis tight livery and indescribable hat on the faded cushions. One thingonly was in his mind; and it was almost with an audible cry that heturned towards the figure that edged, white and trembling, into thechill room, to fling herself into his arms. 'Don't look at me,' hebegged her, 'only remember, dearest, I would rather have died downthere and been never seen again than have given you pain. Run--run, yourmother's calling. Write to me, think of me; good-bye!'

  He threw himself on the bed and lay there till evening--till the doorhad shut gently behind the last rat to leave the sinking ship. Allthe clearness, the calmness were gone again. Round and round in dizzysickening flare and clatter his thoughts whirled. Contempt, fear,loathing, blasphemy, laughter, longing: there was no end. Death was noend. There was no meaning, no refuge, no hope, no possible peace. Togive up was to go to perdition: to go forward was to go mad. And evenmadness--he sat up with trembling lips in the twilight--madness itselfwas only a state, only a state. You might be bereaved, and the painand hopelessness of that would pass. You might be cast out, betrayed,deserted, and still be you, still find solitude lovely and in a braveface a friend. But madness!--it surged in on him with all the clearnessand emptiness of a dream. And he sat quite still, his hand clutching thebedclothes, his head askew, waiting for the sound of footsteps, for thepresences and the voices that have their thin-walled dwelling beneaththe shallow crust of consciousness.

  Inky blackness drifted up in wisps, in smoke before his eyes; he waspowerless to move, to cry out. There was no room to turn; no air tobreathe. And yet there was a low, continuous, never-varying stir as ofan enormous wheel whirling in the gloom. Countless infinitesimal facesarched like glimmering pebbles the huge dim-coloured vault above hishead. He heard a voice above the monstrous rustling of the wheel,clamouring, calling him back. He was hastening headlong, muttering tohimself his own flat meaningless name, like a child repeating as he runshis errand. And then as if in a charmed cold pool he awoke and openedhis eyes again on the gathering darkness of the great bedroom, and hearda quick, importunate, long-continued knocking on the door below, as ofsome one who had already knocked in vain.

  Cramped and heavy-limbed, he felt his way across the room and lit acandle. He stood listening awhile: his eyes fixed on the door that hunga little open. All in the room seemed acutely fantastically still. Theflame burned dim, misled in the sluggish air. He stole slowly to thedoor, looked out, and again listened. Again the knocking broke out, moreimpetuously and yet with a certain restraint and caution. Shielding theflame 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 stoodmotionless and drawn up, the pupils of his eyes slowly contracting andexpanding as he gazed down into the carpeted vacant gloom; past the dimlouring 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 pressinghis 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 hisbreath, and stair by stair he descended, driving steadily before him thecrouching, gloating menacing shape, darkly lifted up before him againstthe darkness, contending the way with him.

  'Are you ill? Are you hurt? Has anything happened, Lawford?' came theanxious old voice again, striving in vain to be restrained.

  'No, no,' muttered Lawford. 'I am coming; coming slowly.' He paused tobreathe, his hands trembling, his hair lank with sweat, and stillwith eyes wide open he descended against the phantom lurking in thedarkness--an adversary that, if he should but for one moment close hislids, he felt would master sanity and imagination with its evil. 'Solong as you don't get in,' he heard himself muttering, 'so long as youdon't get in, my friend!'

  'What's that you're saying?' came up the muffled, querulous voice; 'Ican'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, Lawfordpushed forward a pace or two into the airless, empty drawing-room, andgrasped the handle of the door. He gazed in awhile, a black obliqueshadow flung across his face, his eyes fixed like an animal's, then drewthe door steadily towards him. And suddenly some power that had held himtense seemed to fail. He thrust out his head, and, his face quiveringwith fear and loathing, spat defiance as if in a passion of triumph intothe gloom.

  Still muttering, he shut the door and turned the key. In another momenthis light was gleaming out on the grey perturbed face and black narrowshoulders of his visitor.

  'You gave me quite a fright,' said the old man almost angrily; 'have youhurt your foot, or something?'

  'It was very dark,' said Lawford, 'down the stairs.'

  'What!' said Mr Bethany still more angrily, blinking out of hisunspectacled 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 oneither side of the lofty hall, and breathing rather thickly, rested hishands on his knees. 'What's happened?' he inquired, looking up into thecandle. 'I forgot my glasses, old fool that I am, and can't, my dearfellow, 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; notthe whole thing?'

  'Yes,' said Lawford, 'the whole thing--very, very gradually,imperceptibly. I think even Sheila noticed. But I rather feel it thansee 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 gainlight each from the other.

  'Well, well,' said Mr Bethany, 'every man for himself, Lawford; it's theonly way. But what's going to be done? We must be cautious; must thinkof--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, thereare scores of families here in this parish, within a stone's throw, thatsquabble, wrangle, all but politely tear each other's eyes out, everyday of their earthly lives. It's perfectly natural. Where should we poorold busybodies be else. Peace on earth we bring, and it's mainly betweenhusband and wife.'

  'Yes,' said Lawford, 'but you see, this was not our earthly life. It wasbetween US.'

  'Listen, listen to the dear mystic!' exclaimed the old creaturescoffingly. 'What depths we're touching. Here's the first serious breakof his lifetime, and he's gone stark staring transcendental. Ah well.'He paused and glanced quickly about him, with his curious bird-likepoise of head. 'But you're not alone here?' he inquired suddenly; 'notabsolutely alone?'

  'Yes,' said Lawford. 'But there's plenty to think about--and read. Ihaven't thought or read for years.'

  'No, nor I; after thirty, my dear boy, one merely annotates, and thebook's called Life. Bless me, his solemn old voice is grinding epigramsout of even this poor old parochial barrel-organ. You don't suppose, youcannot be supposing you are the only serious person in the world? What'smore, it's only skin deep.'

  Lawford smiled. 'Skin deep. But think quietly over it; you'll see I'mdone.'

  '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 apitiful old stomach, I'd join you. Come on!' He led the way into thedin
ing-room.

  He looked sparer, more wizened and sinewy than ever as he stooped toopen the sideboard. 'Where on earth do they keep everything?' he wasmuttering 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 thinkthey will do with me?'

  'Look here, Lawford,' snapped Mr Bethany; 'I've come round here, hootingthrough your letter-box, to tally sense, not sentiment. Why has yourwife deserted you? Without a servant, without a single--It's perfectlymonstrous.'

  'On my word of honour, I prefer it so. I couldn't have gone on. AloneI all but forget this--this lupus. Every turn of her little fingerreminded me of it. We are all of us alone, whether we know it ornot; you said so yourself. And it's better to realize it stark andunconfused. Besides, you have no idea what--what odd things.... Theremay be; there IS something on the other side. I'll win through to that.'

  Mr Bethany had been listening attentively. He scrambled up from hisknees with a half-empty syphon of sodawater. 'See here, Lawford,' hesaid; 'if you really want to know what's your most insidious and mostdangerous symptom just now, it is spiritual pride. You've won what youthink a domestic victory; and you can scarcely bear the splendour.Oh, you may shrug! Pray, what IS this "other side" which the superiordouble-faced creature's going to win through to now?' He rapped it outalmost bitterly, almost contemptuously.

  Lawford hardly heard the question. Before his eyes had suddenly arisenthe peace, the friendly unquestioning stillness, the thunderous lullabyold 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 andgrey 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'realone. So we are. The world's a dream, a stage, a mirage, a rack, callit what you will--but YOU don't change, YOU'RE no illusion. There'sno crying off for YOU no ravelling out, no clean leaves. You've gotthis--this trouble, this affliction--my dear, dear fellow what shallI say to tell you how I grieve and groan for you oh yes, and actuallylaughed, I confess it, a vile hysterical laughter, to think of it.You've got this almost intolerable burden to bear; it's come like athief in the night; but bear it you must, and ALONE! They say death's agoing to bed; I doubt it; but anyhow life's a long undressing. We camein puling and naked, and every stitch must come off before we get outagain. We must stand on our feet in all our Rabelaisian nakedness, andwatch the world fade. Well then, and not another word of sense shall youworm out of my worn-out old brains after today--all I say is, don't givein! Why, if you stood here now, freed from this devilish disguise, theold, fat, sluggish fellow that sat and yawned his head off under my eyesin his pew the Sunday before last, if I know anything about human natureI'd say it to your face, and a fig for your vanity and resignation--yourlast 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 nowis what are you going to do? Where are you sleeping? What are you goingto think about? I'll stay--yes, yes, that's what it must be: I muststay. And I detest strange beds. I'll stay, you SHAN'T be alone. Do youhear me, Lawford?--you SHAN'T be alone!'

  Lawford gazed gravely. 'There is just one little thing I want to askyou 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 attranslating it. But I'm frightfully rusty; it's old French; would youmind having a look?'

  Mr Bethany blinked and listened. He tried for the twentieth time tojudge his friend's eyes, to gain as best he could some sustained andunobserved glance at this baffling face. 'Where is your precious Frenchbook?' he said irritably.

  'It's upstairs.'

  'Fire away, then!' Lawford rose and glanced about the room. 'What, nolight there either?' snapped Mr Bethany. 'Take this; I don't mind thedark. 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. Thedarkness seemed cold and still as water. He went slowly up, with eyesfixed wide on the floating luminous gloom, and out of memory seemed togather, 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 thefloor, when Lawford returned. He flattened out the book on the tablewith a sniff of impatience. And dragging the candle nearer, and stoopinghis 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-trapeighteenth-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 thatprince of bogies, Poe! What, in the name of wonder, induced you to fixon 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 oldwits, 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 Bethanypeered up from the dingy book at his ingenuous questioner. 'I should saydecidedly that the fellow was a very rare character, so long as by rareyou don't mean good. It's one of the dullest stupidities of the presentday, my dear fellow, to dote on a man simply because he's differentfrom the rest of us. Once a man strays out of the common herd, he'smore likely to meet wolves in the thickets than angels. From what I cangather in just these few pages this Sabathier appears to have beenan amorous, adventurous, emotional Frenchman, who went to the dogs aseasily and as rapidly as his own nature and his period allowed. And Ishould say, Lawford, that he made precious bad reading for a poor oldtroubled 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 atthe foxy print with narrowed eyes. 'I don't deny it's a striking, evenperhaps, a rather taking face. I don't deny it.' He gazed on withan even more acute concentration, and looked up sharply. 'Look here,Lawford, what in the name of wonder--what trick are you playing on menow?'

  'Trick?' said Lawford; and the world fell with the tiniest plash in thesilence, like a vivid little float upon the surface of a shadowy pool.

  The old face flushed. 'What conceivable bearing, I say, has this deadand gone old roue on us now?'

  'You don't think, then, you see any resemblance--ANY resemblance atall?'

  'Resemblance?' repeated Mr Bethany in a flat voice, and without raisinghis 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 therewas 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 almoststealthily up across the book; the old man sat without speaking, sostill that it might even be supposed he himself was listening for aquiet 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,' hewent on in a repressed voice--'you remember you asked me if there wasanybody else in sight, any eavesdropper? You don't think--him?'

  Mr. Bethany pushed the book a few inches away from him. 'Who, did yousay--who was it you said put the thing i
nto your head? A queer friendsurely?' he paused helplessly. 'And how, pray, do you know,' he beganagain 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 addedboldly, 'a very uncommon name; with two b's at any rate. Whereabouts isthe grave?'

  'Quite down at the bottom, under the trees. And the little seat I toldyou of is there, too, where I fell asleep. You see,' he explained, 'thegrave's almost isolated; I suppose because he killed himself.'

  Mr Bethany clasped his knuckled fingers on the tablecloth. 'It's nogood,' he concluded after a long pause; 'the fellow's got up intomy head. I can't think him out. We must thrash it out quietly in themorning with the blessed sun at the window; not this farthing dip. Tome the whole idea is as revolting as it is incredible. Why, above acentury--no, no! And on the other hand, how easily one's fancy builds! Afew 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 yourfaithful household have absconded? Does it'--he threw up his head as iftowards the house above them--'does it REEK with him?'

  Lawford shook his head. 'She hasn't seen him: not--not apart. I haven'ttold 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 thingcompletely out of your mind. A friend! Who, where is this wonderfulfriend?'

  'Not very far from Widderstone. He lives--practically alone.'

  'And all that stumbling and muttering on the stairs?' he leant forwardalmost 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 shookhimself 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 youwrite and get your wife back. You say you are better. I think you saidshe herself noticed a slight improvement. Isn't it just exactly as Iforesaw? 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 asingle instant, I implore you, Lawford. And in a week the whole thingwill be no more than a dreary, preposterous dream.... You don't answerme!' 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, orcontriving; or at any rate--she said it--of my own hereditary orunconscious deserving.'

  'She said that!' Mr Bethany sat back. 'I see, I see,' he said. 'I'mnothing but a fumbling old meddler. And there was I, not ten minutesago, preaching for all I was worth on a text I knew nothing about. Godbless me, Lawford, how long we take a-learning. I'll say no more. Butwhat an illusion. To think this--this--he laid a long lean hand at arm'slength flat upon the table towards his friend--'to think this is our oldjog-trot Arthur Lawford! From henceforth I throw you over, you old wolfin sheep's wool. I wash my hands of you. And now where am I going tosleep?'

  He covered up his age and weariness for an instant with a small crookedhand.

  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 aschoolboy. On my word of honour: I can't say why, but I am. I don't careTHAT, vicar, honestly--puffed up with spiritual pride. If a man can'tsleep with pride for a bed-fellow, well, he'd better try elsewhere. It'sno good; I'm as stubborn as a mule; that's at least a relic of the oldAdam. I care no more,' he raised his voice firmly and gravely--'Idon't care a jot for solitude, not a jot for all the ghosts of all thecatacombs!'

  Mr. Bethany listened, grimly pursed up his lips. 'Not a jot for all theghosts of all the catechisms!' he muttered. `Nor the devil himself, Isuppose?' He turned once more to glance sharply in the direction of theface he could so dimly--and of set purpose--discern; and without a wordtrotted off into the hall. Lawford followed with the candle.

  ''Pon my word, you haven't had a mouthful of supper. Let me forage; justa quarter of an hour, eh?'

  'Not me,' said Mr Bethany; 'if you won't have me, home I go. I refuseto encourage this miserable grass-widowering. What WOULD they say?What would the busybodies say? Ghouls and graves and shockingmysteries--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 throughthe fanlight as, with a smile that could be described neither asmischievous, saturnine, nor vindictive, and was yet faintly suggestiveof all three, Lawford quietly opened the drawing-room door and put downthe candlestick on the floor within.

  'What on earth, my good man, are you fumbling after now?' came thealmost fretful question from under the echoing porch.

  'Coming, coming,' said Lawford, and slammed the door behind them.