The Return

by Walter De la Mare

  CHAPTER TEN

  Lawford listened awhile before opening his door. He heard voices in thedining-room. A light shone faintly between the blinds of his bedroom. Hevery gently let himself in, and unheard, unseen, mounted the stairs. Hesat down in front of the fire, tired out and bitterly cold in spiteof his long walk home. But his mind was wearier even than his body. Hetried in vain to catch up the thread of his thoughts. He only knew forcertain that so far as his first hope and motives had gone his errandhad proved entirely futile. 'How could I possibly fall asleep with thatfellow talking there?' he had said to himself angrily; yet knew in hisheart that their talk had driven every other idea out of his mind. Hehad not yet even glanced into the glass. His every thought was vainlywandering round and round the one curious hint that had drifted in, butwhich he had not yet been able to put into words.

  Supposing, though, that he had really fallen into a deep sleep, withnone to watch or spy--what then? However ridiculous that idea, it wasnot more ridiculous, more incredible than the actual fact. If he hadremained there, he might, it was just possible that he would by now,have actually awakened just his own familiar every-day self again. Andthe thought of that--though he hardly realised its full import--actuallydid send him on tip-toe for a glance that more or less effectually setthe question at rest. And there looked out at him, it seemed, thesame dark sallow face that had so much appalled him only two nightsago--expressionless, cadaverous, with shadowy hollows beneath theglittering eyes. And even as he watched it, its lips, of their ownvolition, drew together and questioned him--'Whose?'

  He was not to be given much leisure, however, for fantastic reverieslike this. As he leaned his head on his hands, gladly conscious that hecould not possibly bear this incessant strain for long, Sheila openedthe door. He started up.

  'I wish you would knock,' he said angrily; 'you talk of quiet; you tellme to rest, and think; and here you come creeping and spying on me asif I was a child in a nursery. I refuse to be watched and guarded andpeeped on like this.' He knew that his hands were trembling, that hecould not keep his eyes fixed, that his voice was nearly inarticulate.

  Sheila drew in her lips. 'I have merely come to tell you, Arthur, thatMr Bethany has brought Mr Danton in to supper. He agrees with me itreally would be advisable to take such a very old and prudent andpractical friend into our confidence. You do nothing I ask of you. Isimply cannot bear the burden of this incessant anxiety. Look, now, whatyour night walk has done for you! You look positively at death's door.'

  'What--what an instinct you have for the right word,' said Lawfordsoftly. 'And Danton, of all people in the world! It was surely rather acurious, a thoughtless choice. Has he had supper?'

  'Why do you ask?'

  'He won't believe: too--bloated.'

  'I think,' said Sheila indignantly, 'it is hardly fair to speak of avery old and a very true friend of mine in such--well, vulgar terms asthat. Besides, Arthur, as for believing--without in the least desiringto hurt your feelings--I must candidly warn you, some people won't.'

  'Come along,' said Lawford, with a faint gust of laughter; 'let's see.'

  They went quickly downstairs, Sheila with less dignity, perhaps, thanshe had been surprised into since she had left a slimmer girlhoodbehind. She swept into the gaze of the two gentlemen standing togetheron the hearthrug; and so was caught, as it were, between a rain ofconflicting glances, for her husband had followed instantly, and stoodnow behind her, stooping a little, and with something between contemptand defiance confronting an old fat friend, whom that one briefchallenging instant had congealed into a condition of passive andimmovable hostility.

  Mr Danton composed his chin in his collar, and deliberatelyturned himself towards his companion. His small eyes wandered, andinstantaneously met and rested on those of Mrs Lawford.

  'Arthur thought he would prefer to come down and see you himself.'

  'You take such formidable risks, Lawford,' said Mr Bethany in a dry,difficult voice.

  'Am I really to believe,' Danton began huskily. 'I am sure, Bethany,you will--My dear Mrs Lawford!' said he, stirring vaguely, glancingrestlessly.

  'It was not my wish, Vicar, to come at all,' said a voice from thedoorway. 'To tell you the truth, I am too tired to care a jot eitherway. And'--he lifted a long arm--'I must positively refuse to producethe least, the remotest proof that I am not, so far as I am personallyaware, even the Man in the Moon. Danton at heart was always anincorrigible sceptic. Aren't you, T. D.? You pride your dear old brawnon it in secret?'

  'I really--' began Danton in a rich still voice.

  'Oh, but you know you are,' drawled on the slightly hesitatinglong-drawn syllables; 'it's your parochial metier. Firm, unctuous,subtle, scepticism; and to that end your body flourishes. You were bornfat; you became fat; and fat, my dear Danton, has been deliberatelythrust on you--in layers! Lampreys! You'll perish of surfeit some day,of sheer Dantonism. And fat, postmortem, Danton. Oh, what a basting'sthere!'

  Mr Bethany, with a convulsive effort, woke. He turned swiftly on MrsLawford. 'Why, why, could you not have seen?' he cried.

  'It's no good, Vicar. She's all sheer Laodicean. Blow hot, blow cold.North, south, east, west--to have a weathercock for a wife is to marrythe wind. There's nothing to be got from poor Sheila but....

  'Lawford!' the little man's voice was as sharp as the crack of a whip;'I forbid it. Do you hear me? I forbid it. Some self-command; my deargood fellow, remember, remember it's only the will, the will that keepsus breathing.'

  Lawford peered as if out of a gathering dusk, that thickened andflickered with shadows before his eyes. 'What's he mean, then,' hemuttered huskily, 'coming here with his black, still carcase--peeping,peeping--what's he mean, I say?' There was a moment's silence. Then withlifted brows and wide eyes that to every one of his three witnessesleft an indelible memory of clear and wolfish light within their glassypupils, he turned heavily, and climbed back to his solitude.

  'I suppose,' began Danton, with an obvious effort to disentangle himselffrom the humiliation of the moment, 'I suppose he was--wandering?'

  'Bless me, yes,' said Mr Bethany cordially--'fever. We all know whatthat MEANS.'

  'Yes,' said Danton, taking refuge in Mrs Lawford's white and intentgaze.

  'Just think, think, Danton--the awful, incessant strain of such anordeal. Think for an instant what such a thing means!'

  Danton inserted a plump, white finger between collar and chin. 'Oh yes.But--eh?--needlessly abusive? I never SAID I disbelieved him.'

  'Do you?' said Mrs Lawford's voice.

  He poised himself, as if it were, on the monolithic stability of hislegs. 'Eh?' he said.

  Mr Bethany sat down at the table. 'I rather feared some such temporarybreakdown as this, Danton. I think I foresaw it. And now, just while weare all three alone here together in friendly conclave, wouldn't it beas well, don't you think, to confront ourselves with the difficulties?I know--we all know, that that poor half-demented creature IS ArthurLawford. This morning he was as sane, as lucid as I hope I am now. Anawful calamity has suddenly fallen upon him--this change. I own franklyat the first sheer shock it staggered me as I think for the moment ithas staggered you. But when I had seen the poor fellow face to face,heard him talk, and watched him there upstairs in the silence stir andawake and come up again to his trouble out of his sleep. I had no moredoubt in my own mind and heart that he was he than I have in my mindthat I--am I. We do in some mysterious way, you'll own at once, grow soaccustomed, so inured, if you like, to each other's faces (masksthough they be) that we hardly realise we see them when we are speakingtogether. And yet the slightest, the most infinitesimal change isinstantly apparent.'

  'Oh yes, Vicar; but you see--'

  Mr Bethany raised a small lean hand: 'One moment, please. I have heardLawford's own account. Conscious or unconscious, he has been throughsome terrific strain, some such awful conflict with the unseen powersthat we--thank God!--have only read about, and never perhaps, untildeath is upon us, shall witness for o
urselves. What more likely, moreinevitable than that such a thing should leave its scar, its cloud, itsmasking shadow?--call it what you will. A smile can turn a face we dreadinto a face we'd die for. Some experience, which would be nothing buta hideous cruelty and outrage to ask too closely about--one, perhaps,which he could, even if he would, poor fellow, give no account of--hasput him temporarily at the world's mercy. They made him a nine days'wonder, a byword. And that, my dear Danton, is just where we come in.We know the man himself; and it is to be our privilege to act as abuffer-state, to be intermediaries between him and the rest of thisdeadly, craving, sheepish world--for the time being; oh yes, just forthe time being. Other and keener and more knowledgeable minds than mineor yours will some day bring him back to us again. We don't attempt toexplain; we can't. We simply believe.'

  But Danton merely continued to stare, as if into the quiet of anaquarium.

  'My dear good Danton,' persisted Mr Bethany with cherubic patience, 'howold are you?'

  'I don't see quite...' smiled Danton with recovered ease, andrapidly mobilising forces. 'Excuse the confidence, Mrs Lawford, I'mforty-three.'

  'Good,' said Mr Bethany; 'and I'm seventy-one, and this child here'--hepointed an accusing finger at Sheila--is youth perpetual. So,' hebriskly brightened, 'say, between us we're six score all told. Arewe--can we, deliberately, with this mere pinch of years at our commandout of the wheeling millions that have gone--can we say, "This isimpossible," to any single phenomenon? CAN we?'

  'No, we can't, of course,' said Danton formidably. 'Not finally. That'sall very well, but'--he paused, and nodded, nodding his round headupward as if towards the inaudible overhead, 'I suppose he can't HEAR?'

  Mr Bethany rose cheerfully. 'All right, Danton; I am afraid you areexactly what the poor fellow in his delirium solemnly asseverated.And, jesting apart, it is in delirium that we tell our sheer, plain,unadulterated truth: you're a nicely covered sceptic. Personally, Irefuse to discuss the matter. Mere dull, stubborn prejudice; bigotry, ifyou like. I will only remark just this--that Mrs Lawford and I, in ourinmost hearts, know. You, my dear Danton, forgive the freedom, merelyincredulously grope. Faith versus Reason--that prehistoric Armageddon.Some day, and a day not far distant either, Lawford will come backto us. This--this shutter will be taken down as abruptly as by someinconceivably drowsy heedlessness of common Nature it has been putup. He'll win through; and of his own sheer will and courage. But now,because I ask it, and this poor child here entreats it, you will saynothing to a living soul about the matter, say, till Friday? Whatstep-by-step creatures we are, to be sure! I say Friday because itwill be exactly a week then. And what's a week?--to Nature scarcelythe unfolding of a rose. But still, Friday be it. Then, if nothing hasoccurred, we will, we shall HAVE to call a friendly gathering, we shallbe compelled to have a friendly consultation.'

  'I'm not, I hope, a brute, Bethany,' said Danton apologetically; 'but,honestly, speaking for myself, simply as a man of the world, it's abig risk to be taking on--what shall we call it?--on mere intuition.Personally, and even in a court of law--though Heaven forbid it everreaches that stage--personally, I could swear that the fellow that stoodabusing me there, in that revolting fashion, was not Lawford. It wouldbe easier even to believe in him, if there were not that--that glaze,that shocking simulation of the man himself, the very man. But then, Iam a sceptic; I own it. And 'pon my word, Mrs Lawford, there's plenty ofroom for sceptics in a world like this.'

  'Very well,' said Mr Bethany crisply, 'that's settled, then. With yourpermission, my dear,' he added, turning untarnishably clear childlikeeyes on Sheila, 'I will take all risks--even to the foot of the gibbet:accessory, Danton, AFTER the fact.' And so direct and cloudless was hisgaze that Sheila tried in vain to evade it and to catch a glimpseof Danton's small agate-like eyes, now completely under mastery, andawaiting confidently the meeting with her own.

  'Of course,' she said, 'I am entirely in your hands, dear Mr Bethany.'