The Return Part 15

'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 got home. For the moment it has been mislaid; but it must be somewhere in the house and it will turn up all in good time. It's the frontispiece of one of a queer old hotchpotch of pamphlets, sewn up together by some 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 birdlike fashion across the room at his visitor.

'Sabathier's,' he said.

'Sabathier's!'

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

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

'Of course,' began Herbert again, 'I don't say there's anything in it--except the--the mere coincidence,' he paused and glanced out of the open cas.e.m.e.nt beside him. 'But there's just one obvious question. Do you happen 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, on my mother's side, but no French.'

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

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

'Do you mind this infernal clatter?' said Herbert, laying his fingers on the open cas.e.m.e.nt.

'No, no. And you think?'

'My dear fellow, I don't think anything. It's all the craziest conjecture. Stranger things even than this have happened. There are dozens here--in print. What are we human beings after all? Clay in the hands of the potter. Our bodies are merely an inheritance, packed tight and 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 of us--what atrocious mockeries most of them are of any kind of image! But we know our bodies change--age, sickness, thought, pa.s.sion, fatality. It proves they are amazingly plastic. And merely even as a theory it is not in the least untenable that by force of some violent convulsive effort from outside one's body might change. It answers with odd voluntariness to friend or foe, smile or snarl. As for what we call the laws of Nature, they are pure a.s.sumptions to-day, and may be nothing better than sc.r.a.p-iron tomorrow. Good Heavens, Lawford, consider man's abysmal impudence.' He smoked on in silence for a moment. 'You say you fell asleep down there?'

Lawford nodded. Herbert tapped his cigarette on the sill. 'Just following 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 of candle-light and reverberating sound and clearest darkness, towards this strange deliberate phantom with the unruffled clear-cut features--'surely then, in that case, he is here now? And yet, on my word of honour, though every friend I ever had in the world should deny it, I am the same. Memory stretches back clear and sound to my childhood. I can see myself with extraordinary lucidity, how I think, my motives 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, just to press on--it is I,--I myself, that am speaking to you now out of this--this mask.'

Herbert glanced reflectively at his companion. 'You mustn't let me tire you,' he said; 'but even on our theory it would not necessarily follow that you yourself would be much affected. It's true this fellow Sabathier really was something of a personality. He had a rather unusual itch for life, for trying on and on to squeeze something out of experience that isn't there; and he seemed never to weary of a magnificent attempt to find in his fellow-creatures, especially in the women he met, what even--if they have it--they cannot give. The little book I wanted to show you is partly autobiographical and really does manage to set the fellow on his feet. Even there he does absolutely take one's imagination. I shall never forget the thrill of picking him up in the Charing Cross Road. You see, I had known the queer old tombstone for years. He's enormously vivid--quite beyond my feebleness to describe, with a kind of French verve and rapture. Unluckily we can't get nearer than two years to his death. I shouldn't mind guessing some last devastating dream swept over him, held him the breath of an instant too long beneath the wave, and he caved in. We know he killed himself; and perhaps lived to regret it ever after.

'After all, what is this precious dying we talk so much about?' Herbert continued after a while, his eyes restlessly wandering from shelf to shelf. 'You remember our talk in the churchyard? We all know that the body fades quick enough when its occupant is gone. Supposing even in the sleep of the living it lies very feebly guarded. And supposing in that state some infernally potent thing outside it, wandering disembodied, just happens on it--like some hungry s.e.xton beetle on the carcase of a mouse. Supposing--I know it's the most outrageous theorising--but supposing all these years of sun and dark, Sabathier's emanation, or whatever you like to call it, horribly restless, by some fatality longing on and on just for life, or even for the face, the voice, of some "impossible she" whom he couldn't get in this muddled world, simply loathing all else; supposing he has been lingering in ambush down beside those poor old dusty bones that had poured out for him such marrowy hospitality--oh, I know it; the dead do. And then, by a chance, one quiet autumn evening, a veritable G.o.dsend of a little Miss m.u.f.fet comes wandering down under the shade of his immortal cypresses, half asleep, f.a.gged out, depressed in mind and body, perhaps: imagine yourself in his place, and he in yours!' Herbert stood up in his eagerness, his sleek hair shining. 'The one clinching chance of a century! Wouldn't you have made a fight for it? Wouldn't you have risked the raid? I can just conceive 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 the other 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 drawling scrupulous voice poking its way amid a maze of enticing, baffling thoughts. Herbert turned away with a shrug. 'It's tempting stuff,' he said, choosing another cigarette. 'But anyhow, the poor beggar failed.'

'Failed?'

'Why, surely; if he had succeeded I should not now be talking to a mere imperfect simulacrum, to the outward illusion of a pa.s.sing likeness to the man, but to Sabathier himself!' His eyes moved slowly round and dwelt for a moment with a dark, quiet scrutiny on his visitor.

'You say a pa.s.sing likeness; do you MEAN that?'

Herbert smiled indulgently. 'If one CAN mean what is purely a speculation. I am only trying to look at the thing dispa.s.sionately, you see. We are so much the slaves of mere repet.i.tion. Here is life--yours and mine--a kind of plenum in vacuo. It is only when we begin to play the eavesdropper; when something goes askew; when one of the sentries on the frontier of the unexpected shouts a hoa.r.s.e "Qui vive?"--it is only then we begin to question; to p.r.i.c.k our aldermen and pinch the calves of our kings. Why, who is there can answer to anybody's but his own satisfaction just that one fundamental question--Are we the prisoners, the slaves, the inheritors, the creatures, or the creators of our bodies? Fallen angels or horrific dust? As for ident.i.ty or likeness or personality, we have only our neighbours' nod for them, and just a fading memory. No, the old fairy tales knew better; and witchcraft's witchcraft to the end of the chapter. Honestly, and just of course on that one theory, Lawford, I can't help thinking that Sabathier's raid only just so far succeeded as to leave his impression in the wax.

It doesn't, of course, follow that it will necessarily end there. It might--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't understand; I can't follow you. I was always stupid, always bigoted and c.o.c.ksure. These things have never seemed anything but old women's tales to me. And now I must pay for it. And this Nicholas Sabathier; you say he was a blackguard?'

'Well,' said Herbert with a faint smile, 'that depends on your definition of the word. He wasn't a flunkey, a fool, or a prig, if that's what you mean. He wasn't perhaps on Mrs Grundy's visiting list. He wasn't exactly gregarious. And yet in a sense that kind of temperament is so rare that Sappho, Nelson, and Sh.e.l.ley shared it. To the stodgy, suety world of course it's little else than sheer moonshine, midsummer madness. Naturally, in its own charming and stodgy way the world kept flickering cold water in his direction. Naturally it hissed.... 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 impossible for you to realise--but to me time seems like that water there, to be heaping up about me. I wait, just as one waits when the conductor of an orchestra lifts his hand and in a moment the whole surge of bra.s.s and wood, cymbal and drum will crash out--and sweep me under. I can't tell you Herbert, how it all is, with just these groping stirrings of that mole in my mind's dark. You say it may be this face, working in! G.o.d knows. 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, I was going to ask you a question. But no one can answer it.' He peered darkly, with white face suddenly revealed between his hands. 'What remains 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 of the water beyond the window--there fell the sound of a light footfall approaching along the corridor.

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

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The door opened. Lawford rose, and into the further rays of the candlelight entered a rather slim figure in a light summer gown.

'Just home?' said Herbert.

'We've been for a walk--'

'My sister always forgets everything,' said Herbert, turning to Lawford; 'even tea-time. This is Mr Lawford, Grisel. We've been arguing no end.

And we want you to give a decision. It's just this: Supposing if by some impossible trick you had come in now, not the charming familiar sister you are, but shorter, fatter, fair and round-faced, quite different, physically, you know--what would you do?'

'What nonsense you talk, Herbert!'

'Yes, but supposing: a complete transmogrification--by some unimaginable ingression or enchantment, by nibbling a bunch of roses, or whatever you like to call it?'

'Only physically?'

'Well, yes, actually; but potentially, why--that's another matter.'

The dark eyes pa.s.sed slowly from her brother's face and rested gravely on their visitor's.

'Is he making fun of me?'

Lawford almost imperceptibly shook his head.

'But what a question! And I've had no tea.' She drew her gloves slowly through her hand. 'The thing, of course, isn't possible, I know. But shouldn't I go mad, don't you think?'

Lawford gazed quietly back into the clear, grave, deliberate eyes.

'Suppose, suppose, just for the sake of argument--NOT,' he suggested.