The Return Part 11

'Yes, a suicide; that's why our Christian countrymen have buried him outside of the fold. Dead or alive, they try to keep the wolf out.'

'Is this, then, unconsecrated ground?' said Lawford.

'Haven't you noticed,' drawled the other, 'how green the gra.s.s grows down here, and how very sharp are poor old Sabathier's thorns? Besides, he was a stranger, and they--kept him out.'

'But, surely,' said Lawford, 'was it so entirely a matter of choice--the laws of the Church? If he did kill himself, he did.'

The stranger turned with a little shrug. 'I don't suppose it's a matter of much consequence to HIM. I fancied I was his only friend. May I venture to ask why you are interested in the poor old thing?'

Lawford's mind was as calm and shallow as a millpond. 'Oh, a rather unusual thing happened to me here,' he said. 'You say you often come?'

'Often,' said the stranger rather curtly.

'Has anything--ever--occurred?'

'"Occurred?"' He raised his eyebrows. 'I wish it had. I come here simply, as I have said, because it's quiet; because I prefer the company of those who never answer me back, and who do not so much as condescend to pay me the least attention.' He smiled and turned his face towards the quiet fields.

Lawford, after a long pause, lifted his eyes. 'Do you think,' he said softly, 'it is possible one ever could?'

'"One ever could?"'

'Answer back?'

There was a low rotting wall of stone encompa.s.sing Sabathier's grave; on this the stranger sat down. He glanced up rather curiously at his companion. 'Seldom the time and the place and the revenant altogether.

The thought has occurred to others,' he ventured to add.

'Of course, of course,' said Lawford eagerly. 'But it is an absolutely new one to me. I don't mean that I have never had such an idea, just in one's own superficial way; but'--he paused and glanced swiftly into the fast-thickening twilight--'I wonder: are they, do you think, really, all quite dead?'

'Call and see!' taunted the stranger softly.

'Ah, yes, I know,' said Lawford. 'But I believe in the resurrection of the body; that is what we say; and supposing, when a man dies--supposing it was most frightfully against one's will; that one hated the awful inaction that death brings, shutting a poor devil up like a child kicking against the door in a dark cupboard; one might surely one might--just quietly, you know, try to get out? wouldn't you?' he added.

'And, surely,' he found himself beginning gently to argue again, 'surely, what about, say, him?' He nodded towards the old and broken grave that lay between them.

'What, Sabathier?' the other echoed, laying his hand upon the stone.

And a sheer enormous abyss of silence seemed to follow the unanswerable question.

'He was a stranger; it says so. Good G.o.d!' said Lawford, 'how he must have wanted to get home! He killed himself, poor wretch, think of the fret and fever he must have been in--just before. Imagine it.'

'But it might, you know,' suggested the other with a smile--'might have been sheer indifference.'

'"Nicholas Sabathier, Stranger to this parish"--no, no,' said Lawford, his heart beating as if it would choke him, 'I don't fancy it was indifference.'

It was almost too dark now to distinguish the stranger's features but there seemed a faint suggestion of irony in his voice. 'And how do you suppose your angry naughty child would set about it? It's narrow quarters; how would he begin?'

Lawford sat quite still. 'You say--I hope I am not detaining you--you say you have come here, sat here often, on this very seat; have you ever had--have you ever fallen asleep here?'

'Why do you ask?' inquired the other curiously.

'I was only wondering,' said Lawford. He was cold and shivering. He felt instinctively it was madness to sit on here in the thin gliding mist that had gathered in swathes above the gra.s.s, milk-pale in the rising moon. The stranger turned away from him.

'"For in that sleep of death what dreams may come must give us pause,"'

he said slowly, with a little satirical catch on the last word. 'What did you dream?'

Lawford glanced helplessly about him. The moon cast lean grey beams of light between the cypresses. But to his wide and wandering eyes it seemed that a radiance other than hers haunted these mounds and leaning stones. 'Have you ever noticed it?' he said, putting out his hand towards his unknown companion; 'this stone is cracked from head to foot?... But there'--he rose stiff and chilled--'I am afraid I have bored you with my company. You came here for solitude, and I have been trying to convince you that we are surrounded with witnesses. You will forgive my intrusion?' There was a kind of old-fashioned courtesy in his manner that he himself was dimly aware of. He held out his hand.

'I hope you will think nothing of the kind,' said the other earnestly; 'how could it be in any sense an intrusion? It's the old story of Bluebeard. And I confess I too should very much like a peep into his cupboard. Who wouldn't? But there, it's merely a matter of time, I suppose.' He paused, and together they slowly ascended the path already glimmering with a heavy dew. At the porch they paused once more. And now it was the stranger that held out his hand.

'Perhaps,' he said, 'you will give me the pleasure of some day continuing our talk. As for our friend below, it so happens that I have managed to pick up a little more of his history than the s.e.xton seems to have heard of--if you would care some time or other to share it. I live only at the foot of the hill, not half a mile distant. Perhaps you could spare the time now?'

Lawford took out his watch, 'You are really very kind,' he said. 'But, perhaps--well, whatever that history may be, I think you would agree that mine is even--but, there, I've talked too much about myself already. Perhaps to-morrow?'

'Why, to-morrow, then,' said his companion. 'It's a flat wooden house, on the left-hand side. Come at any time of the evening'; he paused again and smiled--'the third house after the Rectory, which is marked up on the gate. My name is Herbert--Herbert Herbert to be precise.'

Lawford took out his pocket-book and a card. 'Mine,' he said, handing it gravely to his companion. 'is Lawford--at least...' It was really the first time that either had seen the other's face at close quarters and clear-lit; and on Lawford's a moon almost at the full shone dazzlingly. He saw an expression--dismay, incredulity, overwhelming astonishment--start suddenly into the dark, rather indifferent eyes.

'What is it?' he cried, hastily stooping close.

'Why,' said the other, laughing and turning away, 'I think the moon must have bewitched me too.'

CHAPTER TEN

Lawford listened awhile before opening his door. He heard voices in the dining-room. A light shone faintly between the blinds of his bedroom. He very gently let himself in, and unheard, unseen, mounted the stairs. He sat down in front of the fire, tired out and bitterly cold in spite of his long walk home. But his mind was wearier even than his body. He tried in vain to catch up the thread of his thoughts. He only knew for certain that so far as his first hope and motives had gone his errand had proved entirely futile. 'How could I possibly fall asleep with that fellow talking there?' he had said to himself angrily; yet knew in his heart that their talk had driven every other idea out of his mind. He had not yet even glanced into the gla.s.s. His every thought was vainly wandering round and round the one curious hint that had drifted in, but which he had not yet been able to put into words.

Supposing, though, that he had really fallen into a deep sleep, with none to watch or spy--what then? However ridiculous that idea, it was not more ridiculous, more incredible than the actual fact. If he had remained there, he might, it was just possible that he would by now, have actually awakened just his own familiar every-day self again. And the thought of that--though he hardly realised its full import--actually did send him on tip-toe for a glance that more or less effectually set the question at rest. And there looked out at him, it seemed, the same dark sallow face that had so much appalled him only two nights ago--expressionless, cadaverous, with shadowy hollows beneath the glittering eyes. And even as he watched it, its lips, of their own volition, drew together and questioned him--'Whose?'

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

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

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

'What--what an instinct you have for the right word,' said Lawford softly. 'And Danton, of all people in the world! It was surely rather a curious, 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 a very old and a very true friend of mine in such--well, vulgar terms as that. Besides, Arthur, as for believing--without in the least desiring to 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, than she had been surprised into since she had left a slimmer girlhood behind. She swept into the gaze of the two gentlemen standing together on the hearthrug; and so was caught, as it were, between a rain of conflicting glances, for her husband had followed instantly, and stood now behind her, stooping a little, and with something between contempt and defiance confronting an old fat friend, whom that one brief challenging instant had congealed into a condition of pa.s.sive and immovable hostility.

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