The Return Part 19

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 cus.h.i.+ons. 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 s.h.i.+p. 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 pa.s.s. 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. s.h.i.+elding the flame of his candle in the sh.e.l.l 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 G.o.d, thank G.o.d!' 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 m.u.f.fled, 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 pa.s.sion 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 gla.s.ses, 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 st.i.tch 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 pa.s.s 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?'