The Return Part 26

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 trespa.s.sed 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 cras.h.i.+ng 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 coa.r.s.e 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 s.h.i.+ver 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 m.u.f.fle 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 rea.s.suringly.

'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, dispa.s.sionate 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, refres.h.i.+ng 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 sc.u.m of weed.

And about half a mile beyond stood a cl.u.s.ter 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...'

'Ss.h.!.+' 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 hara.s.s 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.