The Return

  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 thebed. Lawford sat down on the edge of it in complete isolation. He satwithout stirring, listening to his watch ticking in his pocket. Thechina clock on the chimney piece pointed cheerfully to the hour of dawn.It was exactly, he computed carefully, five hours and seven minutesfast. 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, hethought lamely. He felt no anger, no surprise or resentment, at thetrick. It was only to be expected. He could sit on till morning; easilytill morning. He had never noticed before how empty a well-furnishedroom could seem. It was his own room too; his best visitors' room. Hisfather-in-law had slept here, with his whiskers on that pillow. Hiswife's most formidable aunt had been all night here, alone with thesepictures. She certainly was... 'But what are you doing here?' cried avoice suddenly out of his reverie.

  He started up and stretched himself, and taking out the neat littlepacket 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, roseand lifted down from the wall above the fireplace a tinted photographof himself that Sheila had had enlarged about twelve years ago. It wasa brighter, younger, hairier, but unmistakably the same dull indolentLawford who had ventured into Widderstone churchyard that afternoon. Thecheek was a little plumper, the eyes not quite so full-lidded, the haira little more precisely parted, the upper lip graced with a small blondemoustache. He tilted the portrait into the candlelight, and compared itwith this reflection in the glass of what had come out of Widderstone,feature with feature, with perfect composure and extreme care, Then helaid down the massive frame on the table, and gazed quietly at the tinypacket.

  It was to be a day of queer experiences. He had never before realizedwith how many miracles mere everyday life is besieged. Here in thissmall punctilious packet lay a Sesame--a power of transformation besidewhich the transformation of that rather flaccid face of the noonday intothis tense, sinister face of midnight was but as a moving from houseto house--a change just as irrevocable and complete, and yet so verynormal. Which should it be, that, or--his face lifted itself once moreto the ice-like gloom of the looking-glass-that, or this?

  It simply gazed back with a kind of quizzical pity on its lean featuresunder the scrutiny of eyes so deep, so meaningful, so desolate, and yetso indomitably courageous. In the brain behind them a slow and stolidargument was in progress; the one baffling reply on the one side toevery appeal on the other being still simply. 'What dreams may come?'

  Those eyes surely knew something of dreams, else, why this violent andstubborn endeavour to keep awake.

  Lawford did indeed once actually frame the question, 'But who thedevil are you?' And it really seemed the eyes perceptibly widened orbrightened. The mere vexation of his unparalleled position. Sheila'spathetic incredulity, his old vicar's laborious kindness, the tiresomenetwork of experience into which he would be dragged struggling on themorrow, and on the morrow after that, and after that--the thought ofall these things faded for the moment from his mind, lost if not theirsignificance, at least their instancy.

  He simply sat face to face with the sheer difficulty of living onat all. He even concluded in a kind of lethargy that if nothing hadoccurred, no 'change,' he might still be sitting here, Arthur RennetLawford, in his best visitor's room, deciding between inscrutable lifeand just--death. He supposed he was tired out. His thoughts hadn't eventhe energy to complete themselves. None cared but himself and this--thisSilence.

  'But what does it all mean?' the insistent voice he was getting to knowso well began tediously inquiring again. And every time he raisedhis eyes, or, rather, as in many cases it seemed, his eyes raisedthemselves, they saw this haunting face there--a face he no longerbitterly rebelled at, nor dimmed with scrutiny, but a face that wasbecoming a kind of hold on life, even a kind of refuge, an ally. It wasa face that might have come out of a rather flashy book; or such as isrevered on the stage. 'A rotten bad face,' he whispered at it in his ownfamiliar 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?... 'Brazenit out,' a jubilant thought cried suddenly; 'follow it up; play thegame! give me just one opening. Think--think what I've risked!'

  And all these voices thought Lawford, in deadly lassitude, meant onlyone thing--insanity. A blazing, impotent indignation seized him. Heleaned near, peering as it were out of a red dusky mist. He snatched upthe china candlestick, and poised it above the sardonic reflection, asif to throw. Then slowly, with infinite pains, he drew back from theglass and replaced the candlestick on the table; stuffed his paperpacket into his pocket, took off his boots and threw himself on to thebed. In a little while, in the faint, still light, he opened drowsilywondering eyes. `Poor old thing!' his voice murmured, 'Poor old Sheila!'