The Return

by Walter De la Mare

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Lawford slept far into the cloudy Monday morning, to wake steeped insleep, lethargic, and fretfully haunted by inconclusive remembrancesof the night before. When Sheila, with obvious and capacious composure,brought him his breakfast tray, he watched her face for some timewithout speaking.

  'Sheila,' he began, as she was about to leave the room again.

  She paused, smiling.

  'Did anything happen last night? Would you mind telling me, Sheila? Whowas it was here?'

  Her lids the least bit narrowed. 'Certainly, Arthur; Mr Danton washere.'

  'Then it was not a dream?'

  'Oh no,' said Sheila.

  'What did I say? What did HE say? It was hopeless, anyhow.'

  'I don't quite understand what you mean by "hopeless," Arthur. And mustI answer the other questions?'

  Lawford drew his hand over his face, like a tired child. 'Hedidn't--believe?'

  'No, dear,' said Sheila softly.

  'And you, Sheila?' came the subdued voice.

  Sheila crossed slowly to the window. 'Well, quite honestly, Arthur, Iwas not very much surprised. Whatever we are agreed about on the whole,you were scarcely yourself last night.'

  Lawford shut his eyes, and re-opened them full on his wife's calmscrutiny, who had in that moment turned in the light of the one drawnblind to face him again.

  'Who is? Always?'

  'No,' said Sheila; 'but--it was at least unfortunate. We can't, Isuppose, rely on Dr Bethany alone.'

  Lawford crouched over his food. 'Will he blab?'

  'Blab! Mr Danton is a gentleman, Arthur.'

  Lawford rolled his eyes as if in temporary vertigo. 'Yes,' he said. AndSheila once more prepared to make a reposeful exit.

  'I don't think I can see Simon this morning.'

  'Oh. Who, then?'

  'I mean I would prefer to be left alone.'

  'Believe me, I had no intention to intrude.' And this time the doorreally closed.

  'He is in a quiet, soothing sleep,' said Sheila a few minutes later.

  'Nothing could be better,' said Dr Simon; and Lawford, to hisinexpressible relief, heard the fevered throbbing of the doctor's carreverse, and turned over and shut his eyes, dulled and exhausted inthe still unfriendliness of the vacant room. His spirits had sunk,he thought, to their lowest ebb. He scarcely heeded the fragments ofdreams--clear, green landscapes, amazing gleams of peace, thesudden broken voices, the rustling and calling shadowiness ofsubconsciousness--in this quiet sunlight of reality. The clouds hadbroken, or had been withdrawn like a veil from the October skies. Onethought alone was his refuge; one face alone haunted him with itspeace; one remembrance soothed him--Alice. Through all his scatteredand purposeless arguments he strove to remember her voice, theloving-kindness of her eyes, her untroubled confidence.

  In the afternoon he got up and dressed himself. He could not bringhimself to stand before the glass and deliberately shave. He even smiledat the thought of playing the barber to that lean chin. He dressed bythe fireplace.

  'I couldn't rest,' he told Sheila, when she presently came in on oneof her quiet, cautious, heedful visits; 'and one tires of reading evenQuain in bed.'

  'Have you found anything?' she inquired politely.

  'Oh yes,' said Lawford wearily; 'I have discovered that infinitelyworse things are infinitely commoner. But that there's nothing quite sopicturesque.'

  'Tell me,' said Sheila, with refreshing naivete. 'How does it feel? doesit even in the slightest degree affect your mind?'

  He turned his back and looked up at his broad gilt portrait forinspiration. 'Practically, not at all,' he said hollowly. 'Of course,one's nerves--that fellow Danton--when one's overtired. You have'--hisvoice, in spite of every effort, faintly quavered--'YOU haven't noticedanything? My mind?'

  'Me? Oh dear, no! I never was the least bit observant; you knowthat, Arthur. But apart from that, and I hope you will not think meunsympathetic--but don't you think we must sooner or later be thinkingof what's to be done? At present, though I fully agree with Mr Bethanyas to the wisdom of hushing this unhappy business up as long aspossible, at least from the gossiping outside world, still we are onlystanding still. And your malady, dear, I suppose, isn't. You WILL helpme, Arthur? You will try and think? Poor Alice!'

  'What about Alice?'

  'She mopes, dear, rather. She cannot, of course, quite understand whyshe must not see her father, and yet his not being, or, for the matterof that, even if he was, at death's door.'

  'At death's door,' murmured Lawford under his breath; 'who was itwas saying that? Have you ever, Sheila, in a dream, or just as one'sthoughts go sometimes, seen that door?...its ruinous stone lintel carvedinto lichenous stone heads...stonily silent in the last thin sunlight,hanging in peace unlatched. Heated, hunted, in agony--in that cold,green-clad shadowed porch is haven and sanctuary....But beyond--O God,beyond!'

  Sheila stood listening with startled eyes. 'And was all that in Quain?'she inquired rather flutteringly.

  Lawford turned a sidelong head, and looked steadily at his wife.

  She shook herself, with a slight shiver. 'Very well, then,' she said andpaused in the silence.

  Her husband yawned, and smiled, and almost as if lit with that thin lastsunshine seemed the smile that passed for an instant across the reverieof his shadowy face. He drew a hand wearily over his eyes. 'What has hebeen saying now?' he inquired like a fretful child.

  Sheila stood very quiet and still, as if in fear of scaring some rare,wild, timid creature by the least stir. 'Who?' she merely breathed.

  Lawford paused on the hearth-rug with his comb in his hand. 'It's justthe last rags of that beastly influenza,' he said, and began vigorouslycombing his hair. And yet, simple and frank though the action was, itmoved Sheila, perhaps, more than any other of the congested occurrencesof the last few days. Her forehead grew suddenly cold, the palms ofher hands began to ache, she had to hasten out of the room to avoidrevealing the sheer physical repulsion she had experienced.

  But Lawford, quite unmindful of the shock, continued in a kind ofheedless reverie to watch, as he combed, the still visionary thoughtsthat passed in tranced stillness before his eyes. He longed beyondmeasure for freedom that until yesterday he had not even dreamed existedoutside the covers of some old impossible romance--the magic of thedarkening sky, the invisible flocking presences of the dead, the shockof imaginations that had no words, of quixotic emotions which thestranger had stirred in that low, mocking, furtive talk beside thebroken stones of the Huguenot. Was the 'change' quite so monstrous, someaningless? How often, indeed, he remembered curiously had he seemed tobe standing outside these fast-shut gates of thought, that now had beenfreely opened to him.

  He drew ajar the door, and leant his ear to listen. From far away camea rich, long-continued chuckle of laughter, followed by the clatter of afalling plate, and then, still more uncontrollable laughter. There was afaint smell of toast on the air. Lawford ventured out on to the landingand into a little room that had once, in years gone by, been Alice'snursery. He stood far back from the strip of open window that showedbeneath the green blind, craning forward to see into the garden--thetrees, their knotted trunks, and then, as he stole nearer, a flower-bed,late roses, geraniums, calceolarias, the lawn and--yes, three wickerchairs, a footstool, a work-basket, a little table on the smooth grassin the honey-coloured sunshine; and Sheila sitting there in the autumnalsunlight, her hands resting on the arms of her chair, her head bent,evidently deeply engrossed in her thoughts. He crept an inch or twoforward, and stooped. There was a hat on the grass--Alice's big gardenhat--and beside it lay Flitters, nose on paws, long ears sagging. Hehad forgotten Flitters. Had Flitters forgotten him? Would he bark at thestrange, distasteful scent of a--Dr Ferguson? The coast was clear, then.He turned even softlier yet, to confront, rapt, still, and hoveringbetwixt astonishment and dread, the blue calm eyes of his daughter,looking in at the door. It seemed to Lawford as if they had both beensuddenly swept by some unseen power
into a still, unearthly silence.

  'We thought,' he began at last, 'we thought just to beckon Mrs Lawfordfrom the window. He--he is asleep.'

  Alice nodded. Her whole face was in a moment flooded with red. It ebbedand left her pale. 'I will go down and tell mother you want to see her.It was very silly of me. I did not quite recognise at first...I suppose,thinking of my father--' The words faltered, and the eyes were lifted tohis face again with a desolate, incredulous appeal. Lawford turned awayheartsick and trembling.

  'Certainly, certainly, by no means,' he began, listening vaguely to theglib patter that seemed to come from another mouth. 'Your father,my dear young lady, I venture to think is now really on the road torecovery. Dr Simon makes excellent progress. But, of course--two heads,we know, are so much better than one when there's the least--the leastdifficulty. The great thing is quiet, rest, isolation, no possibility ofa shock, else--' His voice fell away, his eloquence failed.

  For Alice stood gazing stirlessly on and on into this infinitelystrange, infinitely familiar shadowy, phantasmal face. 'Oh yes,' shereplied, 'I quite understand, of course; but if I might just peep even,it would--I should be so much, much happier. Do let me just see him,Dr Ferguson, if only his head on the pillow! I wouldn't even breathe.Couldn't it possibly help--even a faith-cure?' She leant forwardimpulsively, her voice trembling, anal her eyes still shining beneaththeir faint, melancholy smile.

  'I fear, my dear...it cannot be. He longs to see you. But with his mind,you know, in this state, it might--?'

  'But mother never told me,' broke in the girl desperately, 'there wasanything wrong with his MIND. Oh, but that was quite unfair. You don'tmean, you don't mean--that--?'

  Lawford scanned swiftly the little square beloved and memoried room thatfate had suddenly converted for him into a cage of unspeakable painand longing. 'Oh no; believe me, no! Not his brain, not that, not evenwandering; really: but always thinking, always longing on and on foryou, dear, only. Quite, quite master of himself, but--'

  'You talk,' she broke in again angrily, 'only in pretence! You aretreating me like a child; and so does mother, and so it has been eversince I came home. Why, if mother can, and you can, why may not I? Why,if he can walk and talk in the night....'

  'But who--who "can walk and talk in the night?"' inquired a low stealthyvoice out of the quietness behind her.

  Alice turned swiftly. Her mother was standing at a little distance, withall the calm and moveless concentration of a waxwork figure, looking upat her from the staircase.

  'I was--I was talking to Dr Ferguson, mother.'

  'But as I came up the stairs I understood you to be inquiring somethingof Dr Ferguson, "if," you were saying, "he can walk and talk in thenight": you surely were not referring to your father, child? That couldnot possibly be, in his state. Dr Ferguson, I know, will bear me outin that at least. And besides, I really must insist on following outmedical directions to the letter. Dr Ferguson I know, will fully concur.Do, pray, Dr Ferguson,' continued Sheila, raising her voice even nowscarcely above a rapid murmur--'do pray assure my daughter that she musthave patience; that however much even he himself may desire it, it isimpossible that she should see her father yet. And now, my dear child,come down, I want to have a moment's talk with Dr Ferguson. I fearedfrom his beckoning at the window that something was amiss.'

  Alice turned, dismayed, and looked steadily, almost with hostility,at the stranger, so curiously transfixed and isolated in her small oldplay-room. And in this scornful yet pleading confrontation her eye fellsuddenly on the pin in his scarf--the claw and the pearl she had knownall her life. From that her gaze flitted, like some wild dementedthing's, over face, hair, hands, clothes, attitude, expression, and herheart stood still in an awful, inarticulate dread of the unknown. Sheturned slowly towards her mother, groped forward a few steps, turnedonce more, stretching out her hands towards the vague still figurewhose eyes had called so piteously to her out of their depths, and fellfainting in the doorway. Lawford stood motionless, vacantly watchingSheila, who knelt, chafing the cold hands. 'She has fainted?' he said;'oh, Sheila, tell me--only fainted?'

  Sheila made no answer; did not even raise her eyes.

  'Some day, Sheila' he began in a dull voice, and broke off, and withoutanother word, without even another glance at the still face and blue,twitching lids, he passed her rapidly by, and in another instant Sheilaheard the house-door shut. She got up quickly, and after a glance intothe vacant bedroom turned the key; then she hastened upstairs for salvolatile and eau de cologne....

  It was yet clear daylight when Lawford appeared beneath the portico ofhis house. With a glance of circumspection that almost seemed to suggesta fear of pursuit, he descended the steps, only to be made aware in sodoing that Ada was with a kind of furtive eagerness pointing out themysterious Dr Ferguson to a steadily gazing cook. One or two well-knownand many a well-remembered face he encountered in the thin stream ofCity men treading blackly along the pavement. It was a still, highevening, and something very like a forlorn compassion rose in his mindat sight of their grave, rather pretentious, rather dull, respectablefaces.

  He found himself walking with an affectation of effrontery, and smilingwith a faint contempt on all alike, as if to keep himself from slinking,and the wolf out of his eyes. He felt restless, and watchful, andsuspicious, as if he had suddenly come down in the world. His, then, wasa disguise as effectual as a shabby coat and a glazing eye. Hisheart sickened. Was it even worth while living on a crust of socialrespectability so thin and so exquisitely treacherous? He challengedno one. One or two actual acquaintances raised and lowered a faintlyinquiring eyebrow in his direction. One even recalled in his confusiona smile of recognition just a moment too late. There was, it seemed,a peculiar aura in Lawford's presence, a shadow of a something in hisdemeanour that proved him alien.

  None the less green Widderstone kept calling him, much as a bell in theimagination tolls on and on, the echo of reality. If the worst shouldcome to the worst, why--there is pasture in the solitary by-ways forthe beast that strays. He quickened his pace along lonelier streets,and soon strode freely through the little flagged and cobbled village ofshops, past the same small jutting window whose clock had told him thehour on that first dark hurried night. All was pale and faint with dyingcolours now; and decay was in the leaf, and the last swallows filledthe gold air with their clashing stillness. No one heeded him here. Helooked from side to side, exulting in the strangeness. Shops wereleft behind, the last milestone passed, and in a little while he wasdescending the hill beneath the elm boughs, which he remembered hadstood like a turreted wall against the sunset when first he had wandereddown into the churchyard.

  At the foot of the hill he passed by the green and white Rectory, andthere was the parson, a short fat, pursy man with wrists protruding fromhis jacket sleeves as he stood on tip-toe tying up a rambling rose-shooton his trim cedared lawn. The next house barely showed its old redchimney-tops, above its bowers; the next was empty, with windowsvacantly gazing, its paths peopled with great bearded weeds that stoodmutely watching and guarding the seldom-opened gate. Then came morelofty grandmotherly elms, a dense hedge of every leaf that pricks, andthen Lawford found himself standing at the small canopied gate ofthe queer old wooden house that the stranger of his talk had in partdescribed.

  It stood square and high and dark in a small amphitheatre of verdure.Roses here and there sprang from the grass, and a narrow box-edged pathled to a small door in a low green-mantled wing, with its one squarewindow above the porch. And while, with vacant mind, Lawford stoodwaiting, as one stands forebodingly upon the eve of a new experience heheard as if at a distance the sound of falling water. He still paused onthe country roadside, scrutinising this strange, still, wooden presence;but at last with an effort he pushed open the gate, followed the windingpath, and pulled the old iron hanging bell. There came presently aquiet tread, and Herbert himself opened the door which led into alittle square wood-panelled hall, hung with queer old prints and obscureportrai
ts in dark frames.

  'Ah, yes, come in, Mr Lawford,' he drawled; 'I was beginning to beafraid you were not coming.'

  Lawford laid hat and walking-stick on an oak bench, and followed hischurchyard companion up a slightly inclined corridor and a staircaseinto a high room, covered far up the yellowish walls with old books onshelves and in cases, between which hung in little black frames, mezzotints, etchings, and antiquated maps. A large table stood a few pacesfrom the deep alcove of the window, which was surrounded by a low,faded, green seat, and was screened from the sunshine by woodenshutters. And here the tranquil surge of falling water shook incessantlyon the air, for the three lower casements stood open to the fadingsunset. On a smaller table were spread cups, old earthenware dishes offruit, and a big bowl of damask roses.

  'Please sit down; I shan't be a moment; I am not sure that my sister isin; but if so, I will tell her we are ready for tea.' Left to himselfin this quiet, strange old room, Lawford forgot for a while everythingelse, he was for the moment so taken up with his surroundings.

  What seized on his fancy and strangely affected his mind was thisincessant changing roar of falling water. It must be the Widder, he saidto himself, flowing close to the walls. But not until he had had theboldness to lean head and shoulders out of the nearest window did hefully realize how close indeed the Widder was. It came sweeping darkand deep and begreened and full with the early autumnal rains, actuallyagainst the lower walls of the house itself, and in the middle suddenlyswerved in a black, smooth arch, and tumbled headlong into a greatpool, nodding with tall slender water-weeds, and charged in its bubbledblackness here and there with the last crimson of the setting sun. Tothe left of the house, where the waters floated free again, stood vast,still trees above the clustering rushes; and in glimpses between theirspreading boughs lay the far-stretching countryside, now dimmed with thefirst mists of approaching evening. So absorbed he became as he stoodleaning over the wooden sill above the falling water, that eye and earbecame enslaved by the roar and stillness. And in the faint atmosphereof age that seemed like a veil to hang about the odd old house and theseprodigious branches, he fell into a kind of waking dream.

  When at last he did draw back into the room it was perceptibly darker,and a thin keen shaft of recollection struck across his mind--therecollection of what he was, and of how he came to be there, his reasonsfor coming and of that dark indefinable presence which like a raven hadbegun to build its dwelling in his mind. He sat on, his eyes restlesslywandering, his face leaning on his hands; and in a while the door openedand Herbert returned, carrying an old crimson and green teapot and adish of hot cakes.

  'They're all out,' he said; 'sister, Sallie, and boy; but these were inthe oven, so we won't wait. I hope you haven't been very much bored.'

  Lawford dropped his hands from his face and smiled. 'I have been lookingat the water,' he said.

  'My sister's favorite occupation; she sits for hours and hours, with noteven a book for an apology, staring down into the black old roaring pot.It has a sort of hypnotic effect after a time. And you'd be surprisedhow quickly one gets used to the noise. To me it's even less distractingthan sheer silence. You don't know, after all, what on earth sheersilence means--even at Widderstone. But one can just realize awater-nymph. They chatter; but, thank Heaven, it's not articulate.' Hehanded Lawford a cup with a certain niceness and self-consciousness,lifting his eyebrows slightly as he turned.

  Lawford found himself listening out of a peculiar stillness of mindto the voice of this suave and rather inscrutable acquaintance. 'Thecurious thing is, do you know,' he began rather nervously, 'that thoughI must have passed your gate at least twice in the last few months, Ihave never noticed it before, never even caught the sound of the water.'

  'No, that's the best of it; nobody ever does. We are just buried alive.We have lived here for years, and scarcely know a soul--not even ourown, perhaps. Why on earth should one? Acquaintances, after all, arelittle else than a bad habit.'

  'But then, what about me?' said Lawford.

  'But that's just it,' said Herbert. 'I said ACQUAINTANCES; that's justexactly what I'm going to prove--what very old friends we are. You've noidea! It really is rather queer.' He took up his cup and sauntered overto the window.

  Lawford eyed him vacantly for a moment, and, following rather hisown curious thoughts than seeking any light on this somewhat vagueexplanation, again broke the silence. 'It's odd, I suppose, but thishouse affects me much in the same way as Widderstone does. I'm notparticularly fanciful--at least, I used not to be. But sitting here Iseem, I hope it isn't a very frantic remark, it seems as though, if onlymy ears would let me, I should hear--well, voices. It's just what yousaid about the silence. I suppose it's the age of the place; it IS veryold?'

  'Pretty old, I suppose; it's worm-eaten and rat-eaten and tindery enoughin all conscience; and the damp doesn't exactly foster it. It's a queerold shanty. There are two or three accounts of it in some old localstuff I have. And of course there's a ghost.'

  'A ghost?' echoed Lawford, looking up.