The Return

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  She came out into the sunlight, and they went through the little gatetogether. She walked quickly, without speaking, over the bridge, past alittle cottage whose hollyhocks leaned fading above its low flint wall.Skirting a field of stubble, she struck into a wood by a path that ransteeply up the hillside. And by and by they came to a glen where thewoodmen of a score of years ago had felled the trees, leaving a greenhollow of saplings in the midst of their towering neighbours.

  'There,' she said, holding out her hand to him, 'now we are alone. Justsix hours or so--and then the sun will be there,' she pointed to thetree-tops to the west, 'and then you will have to go; for good, forgood--you your way, and I mine. What a tangle--a tangle is this life ofours. Could I have dreamt we should ever be talking like this, you andI? Friends of an hour. What will you think of me? Does it matter? Don'tspeak. Say nothing--poor face, poor hands. If only there were somethingto look to--to pray to!' She bent over his hand and pressed it to herbreast. 'What worlds we've seen together, you and I. And then--anotherparting.'

  They wandered on a little way, and came back and listened to the firstfew birds that flew up into the higher branches, noonday being past, tosing.

  They talked, and were silent, and talked again with out question, orsadness, or regret, or reproach; she mocking even at themselves, mockingat this 'change'--'Why, and yet without it, would you ever even havedreamed once a poor fool of a Frenchman went to his restless grave forme--for me? Need we understand? Were we told to pry? Who made ushuman must be human too. Why must we take such care, and make such afret--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 asolitary instant lift it on the finger from its cage. Well, we have; andnow, soon, back it must go, back it must go, and try its best to whistlethe day out. And yet, do you know, perhaps the very freedom does alittle shake its--its monotony. It's true, you see, they have liveda long time; these Worldly Wisefolk they were wise before they wereswaddled....

  'There, and you are hungry?' she asked him, laughing in his eyes. `Ofcourse, of course you are--scarcely a mouthful since that first stillwonderful supper. And you haven't slept a wink, except like a tired-outchild after its first party, on that old garden chair. I sat andwatched, and yes, almost hoped you'd never wake in case--in case. Comealong, see, down there. I can't go home just yet. There's a little oldinn--we'll go and sit down there--as if we were really trying to beromantic! I know the woman quite well; we can talk there--just the dayout.'

  They sat at a little table in the garden of 'The Cherry Trees,' itsthick green apple branches burdened with ripened fruit. And Grisel triedto 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 mysteriouslight.

  '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. Andfaintness will double the difficulty.' She lightly touched his hand asif to compel him to smile with her. 'There, I'll peel it; and this isEden; and soon it will be the cool of the evening. And then, oh yes, thevoice will come. What nonsense I am talking. Never mind.'

  They sat on in the quiet sunshine, and a spider slid softly throughthe air and with busy claws set to its nets; and those small ghosts therobins went whistling restlessly among the heavy boughs.

  A child presently came out of the porch of the inn into the garden, andstood with its battered doll in its arms, softly watching them awhile.But when Grisel smiled and tried to coax her over, she burst outlaughing 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 itbe this evening? If you only knew how far they have driven me. If youonly knew what we should only detest each other for saying andfor listening to. The whole thing's dulled and staled. Who wantsa changeling? Who wants a painted bird? Who does not loathe theconverted?--and I'm converted to Sabathier's God. Should we be sittinghere 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 caughtred-handed, come in the flesh to a hideous and righteous judgment. Ihear myself saying all these things; and yet, Grisel, I do, I do loveyou with all the dull best I ever had. Not now, then; I don't ask neweven. I can, I would begin again. God knows my face has changed enougheven as it is. Think of me as that poor wandering ghost of yours; howeasily 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 couldcome back. May I try?'

  'I can't answer you. I can't reason. Only, still, I do know, talk, putoff, forget as I may, must is must. Right and wrong, who knows whatTHEY 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 losethe savour of both. Oh, then, and I know, too, you'd weary of me. I knowyou, Monsieur Nicholas, better than you can ever know yourself, thoughyou have risen from your grave. You follow a dream, no voice or face orflesh and blood; and not to do what the one old raven within you criesyou must, would be in time to hate the very sound of my footsteps. Youshall go back, poor turncoat, and face the clearness, the utterly moredifficult, bald, and heartless clearness, as together we faced the dark.Life is a little while. And though I have no words to tell what alwaysare and must be foolish reasons because they are not reasons at all butghosts of memory, I know in my heart that to face the worst is your onlyhope of peace. Should I have staked so much on your finding that, andnow throw up the game? Don't let us talk any more. I'll walk halfthe way, perhaps. Perhaps I will walk all the way. I think my brotherguesses--at least MY madness. I've talked and talked him nearly past hispatience. And then, when you are quite safely, oh yes, quite safely andsoundly gone, then I shall go away for a little, so that we can't evenhear each other speak, except in dreams. Life!--well, I always thoughtit was much too plain a tale to have as dull an ending. And with us thepowers beyond have played a newer trick, that's all. Another hour, andwe will go. Till then there's just the solitary walk home and only thedull old haunted house that hoards as many ghosts as we ourselves towatch our coming.'

  Evening began to shine between the trees; they seemed to stand aflame,with a melancholy rapture in their uplifted boughs above their fadingcoats. The fields of the garnered harvest shone with a golden stillness,awhir with shimmering flocks of starlings. And the old birds that hadsung in the spring sang now amid the same leaves, grown older too togive them harbourage.

  Herbert was sitting in his room when they returned, nursing his teacupon his knee while he pretended to be reading, with elbow propped on thetable.

  'Here's Nicholas Sabathier, my dear, come to say goodbye awhile,'said Grisel. She stood for a moment in her white gown, her face turnedtowards the clear green twilight of the open window. 'I have promised towalk 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 difficultsilence, only the least degree of nervousness apparent, so far asHerbert was concerned, in that odd aloof sustained air of impersonalitythat had so baffled his companion in their first queer talk together.

  'Your sister said just now, Herbert,' blurted Lawford at last. '"Here'sNicholas Sabathier come to say good-bye" well, I--what I want you tounderstand is that it is Sabathier, the worst he ever was; but also thatit 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 sucha very out-of-the-way life,' he went on, as if following up a train ofthought.... '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 regardingyour neighbour's tail as you follow i
t down into the Nowhere--it's thatthat seems to me the deadliest form of hypnotism. One must simply goone's own way, doing one's best to free one's mind of cant--and I daresay clearing some excellent stuff out with the rubbish. One consequenceis that I don't think, however foolhardy it may be to say so, I don'tthink I care a groat for any opinion as human as my own, good or bad. Mysister's a million times a better woman than I am a man. What possiblycould 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 shadowduskily ajar. 'Well,' he said, 'we have talked, and we think it mustbe that, until, at least,' he smiled faintly, 'I can come as quietly asyour old ghost you told me of; and in that case it may not be so verylong to wait.'

  Their eyes met fleetingly across the still, listening room. 'The moreI think of it,' Lawford pushed slowly on, 'the less I understand thefrantic purposelessness of all that has happened to me. Until Iwent down, as you said, "a godsend of a little Miss Muffet," and theinconceivable farce came off, I was fairly happy, fairly contented todance my little wooden dance and wait till the showman should put medown into his box again. And now--well, here I am. The whole thing hasgone by and scarcely left a trace of its visit. Here I am for all myfriends to swear to; and yet, Herbert, if you'll forgive me troublingyou with this stuff about myself, not a single belief, or thought, ordesire 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, wantingto tell you, to say out frankly what, if mind could appeal direct tomind, would be merely as the wind passing through the leaves of a treewith just one--one multitudinous rustle, but which, if I tried toput into words--well, daybreak would find us still groping on....' Heturned; a peculiar wry smile on his face. 'It's a dumb world: but therewe are. And some day you'll come again.'

  'Well,' said Lawford, as if with an almost hopeless effort to turnthought into such primitive speech, 'that's where we stand, then.' Hegot 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 inactual answer to his entreaty, they heard the clinking of the cups onthe little, old, green lacquer tray she was at that moment carrying intothe room. She sat down on the window seat and put the tray down besideher. 'It will be before dark even now,' she said, glancing out at thefaintly burning skies.

  They had trudged on together with almost as deep a sense of physicalexhaustion as peasants have who have been labouring in the fields sincedaybreak. And a little beyond the village, before the last, long roadbegan that led in presently to the housed and scrupulous suburb, shestopped 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 handon the cold moss-grown surface of the stone. 'Even now it's wet withdew.' She rose again and looked strangely into his face. 'Yes, yes, hereit is,' she said, 'oh, and worse, worse than any fear. But nothing nowcan 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 themto her bosom. 'It's only how the day goes; and it has all, my onedear, happened scores and scores of times before--mother and child andfriend--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. Takeall 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 Ishould shake myself free. I could if you would help me. I don't knowwhat you are or what your meaning is, only that I love you; care fornothing, wish for nothing but to see you and think of you. A flat, dullvoice 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 oneanother, what is there else to say?'

  'Nothing, nothing to say, except only good-bye. What could you tellme 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 peacedid 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 wasas still and cold as some grey unfathomable untraversed sea. Above themuncountable clouds drifted slowly across space.

  'Why do they all keep whispering together?' he said in a low voice, withcowering face. 'Oh if you knew, Grisel, how they have hemmed me in; howthey have come pressing in through the narrow gate I left ajar. Only tomock and mislead. It's all dark and unintelligible.'

  He touched her hand, peering out of the shadows that seemed to him to begathering between their faces. He drew her closer and touched her lipswith his fingers. Her beauty seemed to his distorted senses to fillearth and sky. This, then, was the presence, the grave and lovelyovershadowing dream whose surrender made life a torment, and death thenear fold of an immortal, starry veil. She broke from him with a faintcry. And he found himself running and running, just as he had run thatother night, with death instead of life for inspiration, towards hisearthly home.