The Return

by Walter De la Mare

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  What's in a name?' laughed Herbert. 'But it really is a queer show-up ofhuman oddity. A fellow comes in here, searching; that's all.' His backwas turned, as he stood staring absently out, sipping his tea betweenhis sentences. 'He comes in--oh, it's a positive fact, for I've seen himmyself, just sitting back in my chair here, you know, watching him asone would a tramp in one's orchard.' He cast a candid glance over hisshoulder. 'First he looks round, like a prying servant. Then he comescautiously on--a kind of grizzled, fawn-coloured face, middle-size, withbig hands; and then just like some quiet, groping, nocturnal creature,he begins his precious search--shelves, drawers that are not here,cupboards gone years ago, questing and nosing no end, and quitemethodically too, until he reaches the window. Then he stops, looksback, narrows his foxy lids, listens--quite perceptibly, you know, akind of gingerish blur; then he seems to open this corner bookcase here,as if it were a door and goes out along what I suppose might at sometime have been an outside gallery or balcony, unless, as I rather fancy,the house extended once beyond these windows. Anyhow, out he goes quitedeliberately, treading the air as lightly as Botticelli's angels,until, however far you lean out of the window, you can't follow him anyfurther. And then--and this is the bit that takes one's fancy--when youhave contentedly noddled down again to whatever you may have been doingwhen the wretch appeared, or are sitting in a cold sweat, with boltingeyes awaiting developments, just according to your school of thought,or of nerves, the creature comes back--comes back; and with what looksuncommonly like a lighted candle in his hand. That really is a thrill, Iassure you.'

  'But you've seen this--you've really seen this yourself?'

  'Oh yes, twice,' replied Herbert cheerfully. 'And my sister, quiteby haphazard, once saw him from the garden. She was shelling peas oneevening for Sallie, and she distinctly saw him shamble out of the windowhere, and go shuffling along, mid-air, across the roaring washpot downbelow, turn sharp round the high corner of the house, sheer againstthe stars, in a kind of frightened hurry. And then, after five minutes'concentrated watching over the shucks, she saw him come shuffling backagain--the same distraction, the same nebulous snuff colour, and acandle trailing its smoke behind him as he whisked in home.'

  'And then?'

  'Ah, then,' said Herbert, lagging along the bookshelves, and scanningthe book-backs with eyes partially closed: he turned with lifted teapot,and refilled his visitor's cup; 'then, wherever you are--I mean,' headded, cutting up a little cake into six neat slices, 'wherever thechance inmate of the room happens to be, he comes straight for you, ata quite alarming velocity, and fades, vanishes, melts, or, as it were,silts inside.'

  Lawford listened in a curious hush that had suddenly fallen over hismind. '"Fades inside? silts?"--I'm awfully stupid, but what on earthdo you mean?' The room had slowly emptied itself of daylight; its owndarkness, it seemed, had met that of the narrowing night, and Herbertdeliberately lit a cigarette before replying. His clear pale face, withits smooth outline and thin mouth and rather long dark eyes, turned witha kind of serene good-humour towards his questioner.

  'Why,' he said, 'I mean frankly just that. Besides, it's Grisel's ownphrase; and an old nurse we used to have said much the same. He comes,or IT comes towards you, first just walking, then with a kind ofgradually accelerated slide or glide, and sweeps straight into you,' hetapped his chest, 'me, whoever it may be is here. In a kind of panic, Isuppose, to hide, or perhaps simply to get back again.'

  'Get back where?'

  'Be resumed, as it were, via you. You see, I suppose he is compelled toregain his circle, or Purgatory, or Styx, whatever you like to call it,via consciousness. No one present, then no revenant or spook, orastral body, or hallucination: what's in a name? And of course even anhallucination is mind-stuff, and on its own, as it were. What I mean isthat the poor devil must have some kind of human personality to get backthrough in order to make his exit from our sphere of consciousnessinto his. And naturally, of course to make his entrance too. If likea tenuous smoke he can get in, the probability is that he gets outin precisely the same fashion. For really, if you weren't consciouslyexpecting the customary impact (you actually jerk forward in the act ofresistance unresisted), you would not notice his going. I am afraid Imust be horribly boring you with all these tangled theories. All I meanis, that if you were really absorbed in what you happened to be doing atthe time, the thing might come and go, with your mind for entrance andexit, as it were, without your being conscious of it at all.' There wasa longish pause, in which Herbert slowly inhaled and softly breathed outhis smoke.

  'And what--what is the poor wretch searching FOR? And what--why, whatbecomes of him when he does go?'

  'Ah, there you have me! One merely surmises just as one's temperament orconvictions lean. Grisel says it's some poor derelict soul in search ofpeace--that the poor beggar wants finally to die, in fact, and can't.Sallie smells crime. After all, what is every man?' he talked on; 'ahorde of ghosts--like a Chinese nest of boxes--oaks that were acornsthat were oaks. Death lies behind us, not in front--in our ancestors,back and back, until--'

  '"Until?"' Lawford managed to remark.

  'Ah, that settles me again. Don't they call it an amoeba? But really Iam abjectly ignorant of all that kind of stuff. We are ALL we are, andall in a sense we care to dream we are. And for that matter, anythingoutlandish, bizarre, is a godsend in this rather stodgy life. It isafter all just what the old boy said--it's only the impossible that'scredible; whatever credible may mean....'

  It seemed to Lawford as if the last remark had wafted him bodily intothe presence of his kind, blinking, intensely anxious old friend, MrBethany. And what leagues asunder the two men were who had happened onmuch the same words to express their convictions.

  He drew his hand gropingly over his face, half rose, and again seatedhimself. 'Whatever it may be,' he said, 'the whole thing reminds me, youknow--it is in a way so curiously like my own--my own case.'

  Herbert sat on, a little drawn up in his chair, quietly smoking. Thecrash of the falling water, after seeming to increase in volume withthe fading of evening, had again died down in the darkness to a lowmultitudinous tumult as of countless inarticulate, echoing voices.

  '"Bizarre," you said; God knows I am.' But Herbert still remainedobdurately silent. 'You remember, perhaps,' Lawford faintly began again,'our talk the other night?'

  'Oh, rather,' replied the cordial voice out of the dusk.

  'I suppose you thought I was insane?'

  'Insane!' There was a genuinely amused astonishment in the echo. 'Youwere lucidity itself. Besides--well, honestly, if I may venture, I don'tput very much truck in what one calls one's sanity: except, of course,as a bond of respectability and a means of livelihood.'

  'But did you realise in the least from what I said how I reallystand? That I went down into that old shadowy hollow one man, and cameback--well--this?'

  'I gathered vaguely something like that. I thought at first it wasmerely an affectation--that what you said was an affectation, Imean--until--well, to be frank, it was the "this" that so immenselyinterested me. Especially,' he added almost with a touch of gaiety,'especially the last glimpse. But if it's really not a forbiddenquestion, what precisely was the other? What precise manner of man, Imean, came down into Widderstone?'

  'It is my face that is changed, Mr Herbert. If you'll try to understandme--my FACE. What you see now is not what I really am, not what I was.Oh, it is all quite different. I know perfectly well how absurd it mustsound. And you won't press me further. But that's the truth: that's whatthey have done for me.'

  It seemed to Lawford as if a remote tiny shout of laughter had beensuddenly caught back in the silence that had followed this confession.He peered in vain in the direction of his companion. Even his cigaretterevealed no sign of him. 'I know, I know,' he went gropingly on; 'I feltit would sound to you like nothing but frantic incredible nonsense. YOUcan't see it. YOU can't feel it. YOU can't hear these hooting voices.It's no use at all blinkin
g the fact; I am simply on the verge, if notover it, of insanity.'

  'As to that, Mr Lawford,' came the still voice out of the darkness;'the very fact of your being able to say so seems to me all but proofpositive that you're not. Insanity is on another plane, isn't it?in which one can't compare one's states. As for what you say beingcredible, take our precious noodle of a spook here! Ninety-ninehundredths of this amiable world of ours would have guffawed thepoor creature into imperceptibility ages ago. To such poor credulouscreatures as my sister and I he is no more and no less a fact, apersonality, an amusing reality than--well, this teacup. Here we are,amazing mysteries both of us in any case; and all round us are scoresof books, dealing just with life, pure, candid, and unexpurgated; andthere's not a single one among them but reads like a taradiddle. Yetgrope between the lines of any autobiography, it's pretty clear whatone has got--a feeble, timid, creeping attempt to describe theindescribable. As for what you say your case is, the bizarre--that kindvery seldom gets into print at all. In all our make-believe, all ourpretence, how, honestly, could it? But there, this is immaterial. Thereal question is, may I, can I help? What I gather is this: You justtrundled down into Widderstone all among the dead men, and--but onemoment, I'll light up.'

  A light flickered up in the dark. Shading it in his hand from the nightair straying through the open window, Herbert lit the two candlesthat stood upon the little chimneypiece behind Lawford's head. Thensauntering over to the window again, almost as if with an affectationof nonchalance, he drew one of the shutters, and sat down. 'Nothing muchstruck me,' he went on, leaning back on his hands, 'I mean on Sundayevening, until you said good-bye. It was then that I caught in the moona distinct glimpse of your face.'

  'This,' said Lawford, with a sudden horrible sinking of the heart.

  Herbert nodded. 'The fact is, I have a print of it,' he said.

  'A print of it?'

  'A miserable little dingy engraving.'

  'Of this?' Herbert nodded, with eyes fixed. 'Where?'

  'That's the nuisance. I searched high and low for it the instant I gothome. For the moment it has been mislaid; but it must be somewhere inthe house and it will turn up all in good time. It's the frontispieceof one of a queer old hotchpotch of pamphlets, sewn up together bysome amateur enthusiast in a marbled paper cover--confessions, travels,trials and so on. All eighteenth century, and all in French.'

  'And mine?' said Lawford, gazing stonily across the candlelight.

  Herbert, from a head slightly stooping, gazed back in an almost birdlikefashion across the room at his visitor.

  'Sabathier's,' he said.

  'Sabathier's!'

  'A really curious resemblance. Of course, I am speaking only frommemory; and perhaps it's not quite so vivid in this light; but stillastonishingly clear.'

  Lawford sat drawn up, staring at his companion's face in an intense andhelpless silence. His mouth opened but no words came.

  'Of course,' began Herbert again, 'I don't say there's anything init--except the--the mere coincidence,' he paused and glanced out of theopen casement beside him. 'But there's just one obvious question. Do youhappen to know of any strain of French blood in your family?'

  Lawford shut his eyes, even memory seemed to be forsaking him at last.'No,' he said, after a long pause, 'there's a little Dutch, I think, onmy mother's side, but no French.'

  'No Sabathier, then?' said Herbert, smiling. 'And then there's anotherquestion--this change; is it really as complete as you suppose? Hasit--please just warn me off if I am in the least intruding--has it beennoticed?'

  Lawford hesitated. 'Oh, yes,' he said slowly, 'it has been noticed--mywife, a few friends.'

  'Do you mind this infernal clatter?' said Herbert, laying his fingers onthe open casement.

  'No, no. And you think?'

  'My dear fellow, I don't think anything. It's all the craziestconjecture. Stranger things even than this have happened. There aredozens here--in print. What are we human beings after all? Clay in thehands of the potter. Our bodies are merely an inheritance, packed tightand corded up. We have practically no control over their main functions.We can't even replace a little finger-nail. And look at the faces ofus--what atrocious mockeries most of them are of any kind of image! Butwe know our bodies change--age, sickness, thought, passion, fatality. Itproves they are amazingly plastic. And merely even as a theory it is notin the least untenable that by force of some violent convulsive effortfrom outside one's body might change. It answers with odd voluntarinessto friend or foe, smile or snarl. As for what we call the laws ofNature, they are pure assumptions to-day, and may be nothing betterthan scrap-iron tomorrow. Good Heavens, Lawford, consider man's abysmalimpudence.' He smoked on in silence for a moment. 'You say you fellasleep down there?'

  Lawford nodded. Herbert tapped his cigarette on the sill. 'Justfollowing up our ludicrous conjecture, you know,' he remarked musingly,'it wasn't such a bad opportunity for the poor chap.'

  'But surely,' said Lawford, speaking as it were out of a dream ofcandle-light and reverberating sound and clearest darkness, towardsthis strange deliberate phantom with the unruffled clear-cutfeatures--'surely then, in that case, he is here now? And yet, on myword of honour, though every friend I ever had in the world shoulddeny it, I am the same. Memory stretches back clear and sound to mychildhood. I can see myself with extraordinary lucidity, how I think, mymotives and all that; and in spite of these voices that I seem to hear,and this peculiar kind of longing to break away, as it were, justto press on--it is I,--I myself, that am speaking to you now out ofthis--this mask.'

  Herbert glanced reflectively at his companion. 'You mustn't let me tireyou,' he said; 'but even on our theory it would not necessarilyfollow that you yourself would be much affected. It's true this fellowSabathier really was something of a personality. He had a ratherunusual itch for life, for trying on and on to squeeze something outof experience that isn't there; and he seemed never to weary of amagnificent attempt to find in his fellow-creatures, especially in thewomen he met, what even--if they have it--they cannot give. The littlebook I wanted to show you is partly autobiographical and really doesmanage to set the fellow on his feet. Even there he does absolutely takeone's imagination. I shall never forget the thrill of picking him up inthe Charing Cross Road. You see, I had known the queer old tombstone foryears. He's enormously vivid--quite beyond my feebleness to describe,with a kind of French verve and rapture. Unluckily we can't get nearerthan two years to his death. I shouldn't mind guessing some lastdevastating dream swept over him, held him the breath of an instant toolong beneath the wave, and he caved in. We know he killed himself; andperhaps lived to regret it ever after.

  'After all, what is this precious dying we talk so much about?' Herbertcontinued after a while, his eyes restlessly wandering from shelf toshelf. 'You remember our talk in the churchyard? We all know that thebody fades quick enough when its occupant is gone. Supposing even in thesleep of the living it lies very feebly guarded. And supposing in thatstate some infernally potent thing outside it, wandering disembodied,just happens on it--like some hungry sexton beetle on the carcase ofa mouse. Supposing--I know it's the most outrageous theorising--butsupposing all these years of sun and dark, Sabathier's emanation,or whatever you like to call it, horribly restless, by some fatalitylonging on and on just for life, or even for the face, the voice, ofsome "impossible she" whom he couldn't get in this muddled world, simplyloathing all else; supposing he has been lingering in ambush down besidethose poor old dusty bones that had poured out for him such marrowyhospitality--oh, I know it; the dead do. And then, by a chance, onequiet autumn evening, a veritable godsend of a little Miss Muffet comeswandering down under the shade of his immortal cypresses, half asleep,fagged out, depressed in mind and body, perhaps: imagine yourself in hisplace, and he in yours!' Herbert stood up in his eagerness, his sleekhair shining. 'The one clinching chance of a century! Wouldn't youhave made a fight for it? Wouldn't you have risked the raid? I can justconceive it--the amazing struggle in that
darkness within a darkness;like some dazed alien bee bursting through the sentinels of a hive;one mad impetuous clutch at victory; then the appalling stirring on theother side; the groping back to a house dismantled, rearranged, not,mind you, disorganised or disintegrated....' He broke off with a smile,as if of apology for his long, fantastic harangue.

  Lawford sat listening, his eyes fixed on Herbert's colourless face.There was not a sound else, it seemed, than that slightly drawlingscrupulous voice poking its way amid a maze of enticing, bafflingthoughts. Herbert turned away with a shrug. 'It's tempting stuff,' hesaid, choosing another cigarette. 'But anyhow, the poor beggar failed.'

  'Failed?'

  'Why, surely; if he had succeeded I should not now be talking to a mereimperfect simulacrum, to the outward illusion of a passing likenessto the man, but to Sabathier himself!' His eyes moved slowly round anddwelt for a moment with a dark, quiet scrutiny on his visitor.

  'You say a passing likeness; do you MEAN that?'

  Herbert smiled indulgently. 'If one CAN mean what is purely aspeculation. I am only trying to look at the thing dispassionately, yousee. We are so much the slaves of mere repetition. Here is life--yoursand mine--a kind of plenum in vacuo. It is only when we begin to playthe eavesdropper; when something goes askew; when one of the sentries onthe frontier of the unexpected shouts a hoarse "Qui vive?"--it is onlythen we begin to question; to prick our aldermen and pinch the calvesof our kings. Why, who is there can answer to anybody's but his ownsatisfaction just that one fundamental question--Are we the prisoners,the slaves, the inheritors, the creatures, or the creators of ourbodies? Fallen angels or horrific dust? As for identity or likenessor personality, we have only our neighbours' nod for them, and just afading memory. No, the old fairy tales knew better; and witchcraft'switchcraft to the end of the chapter. Honestly, and just of course onthat one theory, Lawford, I can't help thinking that Sabathier's raidonly just so far succeeded as to leave his impression in the wax.It doesn't, of course, follow that it will necessarily end there. Itmight--it may be even now just gradually fading away. It may, you know,need driving out--with whips and scorpions. It might, perhaps, work in.'

  Lawford sat cold and still. 'It's no good, no good,' he said, 'I don'tunderstand; I can't follow you. I was always stupid, always bigoted andcocksure. These things have never seemed anything but old women's talesto me. And now I must pay for it. And this Nicholas Sabathier; you sayhe was a blackguard?'

  'Well,' said Herbert with a faint smile, 'that depends on yourdefinition of the word. He wasn't a flunkey, a fool, or a prig, ifthat's what you mean. He wasn't perhaps on Mrs Grundy's visitinglist. He wasn't exactly gregarious. And yet in a sense that kind oftemperament is so rare that Sappho, Nelson, and Shelley shared it. Tothe stodgy, suety world of course it's little else than sheer moonshine,midsummer madness. Naturally, in its own charming and stodgy waythe world kept flickering cold water in his direction. Naturally ithissed.... I shall find the book. You shall have the book; oh yes.'

  'There's only one more question,' said Lawford in a dull, slow voice,stooping and covering his face with his hands. 'I know it's impossiblefor you to realise--but to me time seems like that water there, to beheaping up about me. I wait, just as one waits when the conductor of anorchestra lifts his hand and in a moment the whole surge of brass andwood, cymbal and drum will crash out--and sweep me under. I can't tellyou Herbert, how it all is, with just these groping stirrings of thatmole in my mind's dark. You say it may be this face, working in! Godknows. I find it easy to speak to you--this cold, clear sense, you know.The others feel too much, or are afraid, or--Let me think--yes, Iwas going to ask you a question. But no one can answer it.' He peereddarkly, with white face suddenly revealed between his hands. 'Whatremains now? Where do I come in? What is there left for ME to do?'

  And at that moment there sounded, even above the monotonous roar ofthe water beyond the window--there fell the sound of a light footfallapproaching along the corridor.

  'Listen,' said Herbert; 'here's my sister coming; we'll ask her.'