The Return Part 28

No; he flatly refuses to be driven. We are going to walk.'

The two friends were left alone, face to face with a rather difficult silence, only the least degree of nervousness apparent, so far as Herbert was concerned, in that odd aloof sustained air of impersonality that had so baffled his companion in their first queer talk together.

'Your sister said just now, Herbert,' blurted Lawford at last. '"Here's Nicholas Sabathier come to say good-bye" well, I--what I want you to understand is that it is Sabathier, the worst he ever was; but also that it 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 such a very out-of-the-way life,' he went on, as if following up a train of thought.... '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 regarding your neighbour's tail as you follow it down into the Nowhere--it's that that seems to me the deadliest form of hypnotism. One must simply go one's own way, doing one's best to free one's mind of cant--and I dare say clearing some excellent stuff out with the rubbish. One consequence is that I don't think, however foolhardy it may be to say so, I don't think I care a groat for any opinion as human as my own, good or bad. My sister's a million times a better woman than I am a man. What possibly could 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 shadow duskily ajar. 'Well,' he said, 'we have talked, and we think it must be that, until, at least,' he smiled faintly, 'I can come as quietly as your old ghost you told me of; and in that case it may not be so very long to wait.'

Their eyes met fleetingly across the still, listening room. 'The more I think of it,' Lawford pushed slowly on, 'the less I understand the frantic purposelessness of all that has happened to me. Until I went down, as you said, "a G.o.dsend of a little Miss m.u.f.fet," and the inconceivable farce came off, I was fairly happy, fairly contented to dance my little wooden dance and wait till the showman should put me down into his box again. And now--well, here I am. The whole thing has gone by and scarcely left a trace of its visit. Here I am for all my friends to swear to; and yet, Herbert, if you'll forgive me troubling you with this stuff about myself, not a single belief, or thought, or desire 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, wanting to tell you, to say out frankly what, if mind could appeal direct to mind, would be merely as the wind pa.s.sing through the leaves of a tree with just one--one mult.i.tudinous rustle, but which, if I tried to put into words--well, daybreak would find us still groping on....' He turned; a peculiar wry smile on his face. 'It's a dumb world: but there we are. And some day you'll come again.'

'Well,' said Lawford, as if with an almost hopeless effort to turn thought into such primitive speech, 'that's where we stand, then.' He got 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 in actual answer to his entreaty, they heard the clinking of the cups on the little, old, green lacquer tray she was at that moment carrying into the room. She sat down on the window seat and put the tray down beside her. 'It will be before dark even now,' she said, glancing out at the faintly burning skies.

They had trudged on together with almost as deep a sense of physical exhaustion as peasants have who have been labouring in the fields since daybreak. And a little beyond the village, before the last, long road began that led in presently to the housed and scrupulous suburb, she stopped 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 hand on the cold moss-grown surface of the stone. 'Even now it's wet with dew.' She rose again and looked strangely into his face. 'Yes, yes, here it is,' she said, 'oh, and worse, worse than any fear. But nothing now can 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 them to her bosom. 'It's only how the day goes; and it has all, my one dear, happened scores and scores of times before--mother and child and friend--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. Take all 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 I should shake myself free. I could if you would help me. I don't know what you are or what your meaning is, only that I love you; care for nothing, wish for nothing but to see you and think of you. A flat, dull voice 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 one another, what is there else to say?'

'Nothing, nothing to say, except only good-bye. What could you tell me 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 peace did 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 was as still and cold as some grey unfathomable untraversed sea. Above them uncountable clouds drifted slowly across s.p.a.ce.

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

He touched her hand, peering out of the shadows that seemed to him to be gathering between their faces. He drew her closer and touched her lips with his fingers. Her beauty seemed to his distorted senses to fill earth and sky. This, then, was the presence, the grave and lovely overshadowing dream whose surrender made life a torment, and death the near fold of an immortal, starry veil. She broke from him with a faint cry. And he found himself running and running, just as he had run that other night, with death instead of life for inspiration, towards his earthly home.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

He was utterly wearied, but he walked on for a long while with a dogged unglancing pertinacity and without looking behind him. Then he rested under the dew-sodden hedgeside and buried his face in his hands. Once, indeed, he did turn and grind his way back with hard uplifted face for many minutes, but at the meeting with an old woman who in the late dusk pa.s.sed him unheeded on the road, he stopped again, and after standing awhile looking down upon the dust, trying to gather up the tangled threads of his thoughts, he once more set off homewards.

It was clear, starry, and quite dark when he reached the house. The lamp at the roadside obscurely lit its breadth and height. Lamp-light within, too, was showing yellow between the Venetian blinds; a cold gas-jet gleamed out of the bas.e.m.e.nt window. He seemed bereft now of all desire or emotion, simply the pa.s.sive witness of things external in a calm which, though he scarcely realised its cause, was an exquisite solace and relief. His senses were intensely sharpened with sleeplessness. The faintest sound belled clear and keen on his ear. The thinnest beam of light besprinkled his eyes with curious brilliance.

As quietly as some nocturnal creature he ascended the steps to the porch, and leaning between stone pilaster and wall, listened intently for any rumour of those within.

He heard a clear, rather languid and delicate voice quietly speak on until it broke into a little peal of laughter, followed, when it fell silent by Sheila's--rapid, rich, and low. The first speaker seemed to be standing. Probably, then, his evening visitors had only just come in, or were preparing to depart. He inserted his latchkey and gently pushed at the c.u.mbersome door. It was locked against him. With not the faintest thought of resentment or surprise, he turned back, stooped over the bal.u.s.trade and looked down into the kitchen. Nothing there was visible but a narrow strip of the white table, on which lay a black cotton glove, and beyond, the glint of a copper pan. What made all these mute and inanimate things so coldly hostile?

An extreme, almost nauseous distaste filled him at the thought of knocking for admission, of confronting Ada, possibly even Sheila, in the cold echoing gloom of the detestable porch; of meeting the first wild, almost metallic, flash of recognition. He swept softly down again, and paused at the open gate. Once before the voices of the night had called him: they would not summon him forever in vain. He raised his eyes again towards the window. Who were these visitors met together to drum the alien out? He narrowed his lids and smiled up at the vacuous unfriendly house. Then wheeling, on a sudden impulse he groped his way down the gravel path that led into the garden. As he had left it, the long white window was ajar.

With extreme caution he pushed it noiselessly up, and climbed in, and stood listening again in the black pa.s.sage on the other side. When he had fully recovered his breath, and the knocking of his heart was stilled, he trod on softly, till turning the corner he came in sight of the kitchen door. It was now narrowly open, just enough, perhaps, to admit a cat; and as he softly approached, looking steadily in, he could see Ada sitting at the empty table, beneath the single whistling chandelier, in her black dress and black straw hat. She was reading apparently; but her back was turned to him and he could not distinguish her arm beyond the elbow. Then almost in an instant he discovered, as, drawn up and unstirring he gazed on, that she was not reading, but had covertly and instantaneously raised her eyes from the print on the table beneath, and was transfixedly listening too. He turned his eyes away and waited. When again he peered in she had apparently bent once more over her magazine, and he stole on.

One by one, with a thin remote exultation in his progress, he mounted the kitchen stairs, and with each deliberate and groping step the voices above him became more clearly audible. At last, in the darkness of the hall, but faintly stirred by the gleam of lamplight from the c.h.i.n.k of the dining-room door, he stood on the threshold of the drawing-room door and could hear with varying distinctness what those friendly voices were so absorbedly discussing. His ear seemed as exquisite as some contrivance of science, registering pa.s.sively the least sound, the faintest syllable, and like it, in no sense meddling with the thought that speech conveyed. He simply stood listening, fixed and motionless, like some uncouth statue in the leafy hollow of a garden, stony, unspeculating.

'Oh, but you either refuse to believe, Bettie, or you won't understand that it's far worse than that.' Sheila seemed to be upbraiding, or at least reasoning with, the last speaker. 'Ask Mr Danton--he actually SAW him.'

'"Saw him,"' repeated a thick, still voice. 'He stood there, in that very doorway, Mrs Lovat, and positively railed at me. He stood there and streamed out all the names he could lay his tongue to. I wasn't--unfriendly to the poor beggar. When Bethany let me into it I thought it was simply--I did indeed, Mrs Lawford--a monstrous exaggeration. Flatly, I didn't believe it; shall I say that? But when I stood face to face with him, I could have taken my oath that that was no more poor old Arthur Lawford than--well, I won't repeat what particular word occurred to me. But there,' the corpulent shrug was almost audible, 'we all know what old Bethany is. A sterling old chap, mind you, so far as mere character is concerned; the right man in the right place; but as gullible and as soft-hearted as a tom-t.i.t. I've said all this before, I know, Mrs Lawford, and been properly snubbed for my pains. But if I had been Bethany I'd have sifted the whole story at the beginning, the moment he put his foot into the house. Look at that Tichborne fellow--went for months and months, just picking up one day what he floored old Hawkins--wasn't it?--with the next. But of course,' he added gloomily, 'now that's all too late. He's moaned himself into a tolerably tight corner. I'd just like to see, though, a British jury comparing this claimant with his photograph, 'pon my word I would. Where would he be then, do you think?'

'But my dear Mr Danton,' went on the clear, languid voice Lawford had heard break so light-heartedly into laughter, 'you don't mean to tell me that a woman doesn't know her own husband when she sees him--or, for the matter of that, when she doesn't see him? If Tom came home from a ramble as handsome as Apollo to-morrow, I'd recognise him at the very first blush--literally! He'd go nuzzling off to get his slippers, or complain that the lamps had been smoking, or hunt the house down for last week's paper. Oh, besides, Tom's Tom--and there's an end of it.'

'That's precisely what I think, Mrs Lovat; one is saturated with one's personality, as it were.'

'You see, that's just it! That's just exactly every woman's husband all over; he is saturated with his personality. Bravo, Mr Craik!'

'Good Lord,' said Danton softly. 'I don't deny it!'

'But that,' broke in Sheila crisply--'that's just precisely what I asked you all to come in for. It's because I know now, apart altogether from the mere evidence, that--that he is Arthur. Mind, I don't say I ever really doubted. I was only so utterly shocked, I suppose. I positively put posers to him; but his memory was perfect in spite of the shock which would have killed a--a more sensitive nature.' She had risen, it seemed, and was moving with all her splendid impressiveness of silk and presence across the general line of vision. But the hall was dark and still; her eyes were dimmed with light. Lawford could survey her there unmoved.

'Are you there, Ada?' she called discreetly.

'Yes, ma'am,' answered the faint voice from below.

'You have not heard anything--no knock?'

'No, ma'am, no knock.'

'The door is open if you should call.'

'Yes, ma'am.'

'The girl's scared out of her wits,' said Sheila returning to her audience. 'I've told you all that miserable Ferguson story--a piece of calm, callous presence of mind I should never have dreamed my husband capable of. And the curious thing is--at least, it is no longer curious in the light of the ghastly facts I am only waiting for Mr Bethany to tell you--from the very first she instinctively detested the very mention of his name.'

'I believe, you know,' said Mr Craik with some decision, 'that servants must have the same wonderful instinct as dogs and children; they are natural, intuitive judges of character.'

'Yes,' said Sheila gravely, 'and it's only through that that I got to hear of the--the mysterious friend in the little pony-carriage. Ada's magnificently loyal--I will say that.'

'I don't want to suggest anything, Mrs Lawford,' began Mr Craik rather hurriedly, 'but wouldn't it perhaps be wiser not to wait for Mr Bethany?

It is not at all unusual for him to be kept a considerable time in the vestry after service, and to-day is the Feast of St Michael's and all Angels, you know. Mightn't your husband be--er--coming back, don't you think?'

'Craik's right, Mrs Lawford; it's not a bit of good waiting. Bethany would stick there till midnight if any old woman's spiritual state could keep her going so long. Here we all are, and at any moment we may be interrupted. Mind you, I promise nothing--only that there shall be no scene. But here I am, and if he does come knocking and ringing and lunging out in the disgusting manner he--well, all I ask is permission to speak for YOU. 'Pon my soul, to think what you must have gone through! It isn't the place for ladies just now--honestly it ain't.'

'Besides, supposing the romantic lady of the pony-carriage has friends?

Are YOU a pugilist, Mr Craik?'

'I hope I could give some little account of myself, Mrs Lovat; but you need have no anxiety about that.'

'There, Mr Danton. So as there is not the least cause for anxiety even if poor Arthur SHOULD return to his earthly home, may we share your dreadful story at once, Sheila; and then, perhaps, hear Mr Bethany's exposition of it when he DOES arrive? We are amply guarded.'