The Return Part 17

'All you mean, Sheila, I suppose, is that I have failed.'

'"Failed" did not enter my mind. I thought, looking at you just now in your clothes on the bed, one might for the moment be deceived into thinking there was a slight--quite the slightest improvement. There was not quite that'--she hovered for the right word--'that tenseness.

Whether or not, whether you desired any such change or didn't, I should have supposed in any case it would have been better to act as far as possible like any ordinary person. You were certainly in an extraordinarily sound sleep. I was almost alarmed; until I remembered that it was a little after two when I looked up from reading aloud to keep myself awake and discovered that you had only just come home. I had no fire. You know how easily late hours bring on my headaches; a little thought might possibly have suggested that I should be anxious to hear.

But no; it seems I cannot profit by experience, Arthur. And even now you have not answered surely a very natural question. You do not recollect, perhaps, exactly what did happen last night? Did you go in the direction even of Widderstone?'

'Yes, Sheila, I went to Widderstone.'

'It was of course absurd to suppose that sitting on a seat beside the broken-down grave of a suicide would have the slightest effect on one's--one's physical condition; though possibly it might affect one's brain. It would mine; I am at least certain of that. It was your own prescription, however; and it merely occurred to me to inquire whether the actual experience has not brought you round to my own opinion.'

'Yes, I think it has,' Lawford answered calmly. 'But I don't quite see what suicide has got to do with it; unless--You know Widderstone, then, Sheila?'

'I drove there last Sat.u.r.day afternoon.'

'For prayer or praise?' Although Lawford had not actually raised his head, he became conscious rather of the wonderfully adjusted ma.s.s of hair than of the pained dignity in the face that was now closely regarding him.

'I went,' came the rigidly controlled retort, 'simply to test an inconceivable story.'

'And returned?'

'Convinced, Arthur, of its inconceivability. But if you would kindly inform me what precise formula you followed at Widderstone last night, I would tell you why I think the explanation, or rather your first account of the matter, is not an explanation of the facts.'

Lawford shot a rather doglike glance over his toast. 'Danton?' he said.

'Candidly, Arthur, Mr Danton doubts the whole story. Your very conduct--well, it would serve no useful purpose to go into that.

Candidly, on the other hand, Mr. Danton did make some extremely helpful suggestions--basing them, of course, on the TRUTH of your account. He has seen a good deal of life; and certainly very mysterious things do occur to quite innocent and well-meaning people without the faintest shadow of warning, and as Mr. Bethany himself said, evil birds do come home to roost, and often out of a clear sky, as it were. But there, every fresh solution that occurs to me only makes the thing more preposterous, more, I was going to say, disreputable--I mean, of course, to the outside world. And we have our duties to perform to them too, I suppose. Why, what can we say? What plausible account of ourselves have we? We shall never be able to look anybody in the face again. I can only--I am compelled to believe that G.o.d has been pleased to make this precise visitation upon us--an eye for an eye, I suppose, SOMEWHERE. And to that conviction I shall hold until actual circ.u.mstances convince me that it's false. What, however, and this is all that I have to say now, what I cannot understand are your amazing indiscretions.'

'Do you understand your own, Sheila?'

'My indiscretions, Arthur?'

'Well,' said Lawford, 'wasn't it indiscreet, don't you think, to risk divine retribution by marrying me? Shouldn't you have inquired? Wasn't it indiscreet to allow me to remain here in--in my "visitation?" Wasn't it indiscreet to risk the moral stigma this unhappy face of mine must cast on its surroundings? I am not sure whether such a change as this const.i.tutes cruelty.... Oh, what is the use of fretting and babbling on like this?'

'Am I to understand, then, that you refuse positively to discuss this horrible business any more? You are doing your best to drive me away, Arthur; you must see that. Will you be very disappointed if I refuse to go?'

Lawford rose from the bed. 'Listen just this once,' he said, seating himself on the corner of the dressing-table. 'Imagine all this--whatever you like to call it--obliterated. Take this,' he nodded towards the gla.s.s, 'entirely for itself, on its own merits, as it were. Let the dead past bury its dead. Which, now, precisely, REALLY do you prefer--him,'

he jerked his head in the direction of the dispa.s.sionate youthful picture on the wall, 'him or me?'

He was so close to her now that he could see the faintest tremor on the face that had suddenly become grey and still in the thin clear sunshine.

'I own it, I own it,' he went on, slowly; 'the change is more than skin-deep now. One can't go through what I have gone through these last few terrifying days, Sheila, unchanged. They have played the devil with my body; now begins the tampering with my mind. Not even Danton knows how it will end. But shall I tell you why you won't, why you can't answer me that one question--him or me? Shall I tell you?'

Sheila slowly raised her eyes.

'It is because, my dear, you don't care the ghost of a straw for either.

That one--he was worn out long ago, and we never knew it. I know it now.

Time and the sheer going-on of day by day, without either of us guessing at it, wore that down till it had no more meaning for you or me than any other faded remembrance in this interminable footling with truth that we call life. And this one--the whole abject meaning of it lies simply in the fact that it has pierced down and shown us up. I had no courage.

I couldn't see how feeble a hold I had on life--just one's friends'

opinions. It was all at second hand. What I want to know now is--leave me out; don't think, or care, or regard my living-on one shadow of an iota--all I ask is, What am I to do for you?' He turned away and stood staring down at the cinders in the fireless grate.

'I answer that mad wicked outburst with one plain question,' said a low, trembling voice; 'did you or did you not go to Widderstone yesterday?'

'I did go.'

'You sat there, just as you said you sat before; and with all your heart and soul strove to regain--yourself?'

Lawford lifted a still, colourless face into the sunlight. 'No,' he said; 'I spent the evening at the house of a friend.'

'Then I say it is infamous. You cast all this on me. You have brought me into contempt and poisoned Alice's whole life. You dream and idle on just as you used to do, without the least care or thought or consideration for others; and go out in this condition--go out absolutely unashamed--to spend the evening at a friend's. Peculiar friends they must be. Why, really, Arthur, you must be mad!'

Lawford paused. Like a flock of sheep streaming helter-skelter before the onset of a wolf were the thoughts that a moment before had seemed so orderly and sober.

'Not mad--possessed,' he said softly.

'And I add this,' cried Sheila, as it were out of a tragic mask, 'somewhere in the past, whether of your own life, or of the lives of those who brought you into the world--the world which you pretend so conveniently to despise--somewhere is hidden some miserable secret. G.o.d visits all sins. On you has fallen at last the payment. THAT I believe.

You can't run away, any more than a child can run away from the cupboard it has been locked into for a punishment. Who's going to hear you now?

You have deliberately refused to make a friend of me. Fight it out alone, then!'

Lawford heard the door close, and the dying away of the sound that had been the unceasing accompaniment of all these later years--the rustling of his wife's skirts, her crisp, authoritative footstep. And he turned towards the flooding sunlight that streamed in on the upturned surface of the looking-gla.s.s. No clear decisive thought came into his mind, only a vague recognition that so far as Sheila was concerned this was the end. No regret, no remorse visited him. He was just alone again, that was all--alone, as in reality he had always been alone, without having the sense or power to see or to acknowledge it. All he had said had been the mere flotsam of the moment, and now it stood stark and irrevocable between himself and the past.

He sat down dazed and stupid. Again and again a struggling recollection tried to obtrude itself; again and again he beat it back. And rather for something to distract his attention than for any real interest or enlightenment he might find in its pages, he took out the grimy dog's-eared book that Herbert had given him, and turned slowly over the leaves till he came to Sabathier once more. s.n.a.t.c.hes of remembrance of their long talk returned to him, but just as that dark, water-haunted house had seemed to banish remembrance and the reality of the room in which he now sat, and of the old familiar life; so now the house, the faces of yesterday seemed in their turn unreal, almost spectral, and the thick print on the smudgy page no more significant than a story one reads and throws away.

But a moment's comparison in the gla.s.s of the two faces side by side suddenly sharpened his attention--the resemblance was so oddly arresting, and yet, and yet, so curiously inconclusive. There was then something of the stolid old Saxon left, he thought. Or had it been regained? Which was it? Not merely the complexity of the question, but a half-conscious distaste of attempting to face it, set him reading very slowly and laboriously, for his French was little more than fragmentary recollection, the first few pages of the life of this buried Sabathier.

But with a disinclination almost amounting to aversion he made very slow progress. Many of the words were meaningless to him, and every other moment he found himself listening with intense concentration for the least hint of what Sheila was doing, of what was going on in the house beneath him. He had not very long to wait. He was sitting with his head leaning on his hand, the book unheeded beneath the other on the table, when the door opened again behind him, and Sheila entered. She stood for a moment, calm and dignified, looking down on him through her veil.

'Please understand, Arthur, that I am not taking this step in pique, or even in anger. It would serve no purpose to go on like this--this incessant heedlessness and recrimination. There have been mistakes, misconceptions, perhaps, on both sides. To me naturally yours are most conspicuous. That need not, however, blind me to my own.'

She paused in vain for an answer.

'Think the whole thing over candidly and quietly,' she began again in a quiet rapid voice. 'Have you really shown the slightest regard, I won't say for me, or even for Alice, but for just the obvious difficulties and--and proprieties of our position? I have given up as far as I can brooding on and on over the same horrible impossible thoughts. I withdraw unreservedly what I said just now about punishment. Whatever the evidence, it is not even a wife's place to judge like that. You will forgive me that?'

Lawford did not turn his head. 'Of course,' he said, looking rather vacantly out of the window, 'it was only in the heat of the moment, Sheila; though, who knows? it may be true.'

'Well,' she took hold of the great bra.s.s k.n.o.b at the foot of the bed with one gloved hand--'well, I feel it is my duty to withdraw it. Apart from it, I see only too clearly that even though all that has happened in these last few days was in reality nothing but a horrible nightmare, I see that even then what you have said about our married life together can never be recalled. You have told me quite deliberately that for years past your life has been nothing but a pretence--a sham. You implied that mine had been too. Honestly, I was not aware of it, Arthur.

But supposing all that has happened to you had been merely what might happen at any moment to anybody, some actual defacement (you will forgive me suggesting such a horrible thing)--why, if what you say is true, even in that case my sympathy would have been only a continual fret and annoyance to you. And this--this change, I own, is infinitely harder to bear. It would be an outrage on common sense and on all that we hold seemly and--and sacred in life, even in some trumpery story. You do, you must see all that, Arthur?'

'Oh yes,' said Lawford, narrowing his eyes to pierce through the sunlight, 'I see all that.'

'Then we need not go over it all again. Whatever others may say, or think, I shall still, at least so long as nothing occurs to the contrary, keep firmly to my present convictions. Mr Bethany has a.s.sured me repeatedly that he has no--no misgivings; that he understands. And even if I still doubted, which I don't, Arthur, though it would be rather trying to have to accept one's husband at second-hand, as it were, I should have to be satisfied. I dare say even such an unheard-of thing as what we are discussing now, or something equally ghastly, does occur occasionally. In foreign countries, perhaps. I have not studied such things enough to say. We were all very much restricted in our reading as children, and I honestly think, not unwisely. It is enough for the present to repeat that I do believe, and that whatever may happen--and I know absolutely nothing about the procedure in such cases--but whatever may happen, I shall still be loyal; I shall always have your interests at heart.' Her words faltered and she turned her head away. 'You did love me once, Arthur, I can't forget that.' The contralto voice trembled ever so little, and the gloved hand smoothed gently the bra.s.s k.n.o.b beneath.

'If,' said Lawford, resting his face on his hands, and curiously watching the while his moving reflection in the looking-gla.s.s before him--'if I said I still loved you, what then?

'But you have already denied it, Arthur.'

'Yes; but if I said that that too was said only in haste, that brooding over the trouble this--this metamorphosis was bringing on us all had driven me almost beyond endurance: supposing that I withdrew all that, and instead said now that I do still love you, just as I--' he turned a little, and turned back again, 'like this?'

Sheila paused. 'Could ANY woman answer such a question?' she almost sighed at last.

'Yes, but,' Lawford pressed on, in a voice almost naive and stubborn as a child's, 'If I tried to--to make you? I did once, Sheila.'