The Return Part 29

'Honestly, you know, you are a bit of a sceptic, Mrs Lovat,' pleaded Danton playfully. 'I've SEEN him.'

'And seeing is disbelieving, I suppose. Now then, Sheila.'

'I don't think there's the least chance of Arthur returning to-night,'

said Sheila solemnly. 'I am perfectly well aware it's best to be as cheerful as one can--and as resolved; but I think, Bettie, when even you know the whole horrible secret, you won't think Mr Danton was--was horrified for nothing. The ghastly, the awful truth is that my husband--there is no other word for it--is--possessed!'

'"Possessed," Sheila! What in the name of all the creeps is that?'

'Well, I dare say Mr Craik will explain it much better than I can. By a devil, dear.' The voice was perfectly poised and restrained, and Mr Craik did not see fit for the moment to embellish the definition.

Lawford, with an almost wooden immobility, listened on.

'But THE devil, or A devil? Isn't there a distinction?' inquired Mrs Lovat.

'It's in the Bible, Bettie, over and over again. It was quite a common thing in the Middle Ages; I think I'm right in saying that, am I not, Mr Craik?' Mr Craik must have solemnly nodded or abundantly looked his unwilling affirmation. 'And what HAS been,' continued Sheila temperately, 'I suppose may be again.'

'When the fellow began raving at me the other night,' began Danton huskily, as if out of an unfathomable pit of reflection, 'among other things he said that I haven't any wish to remember was that I was a sceptic. And Bethany said DITTO to it. I don't mind being called a sceptic: why, I said myself Mrs Lovat was a sceptic just now! But when it comes to "devils," Mrs Lawford--I may be convinced about the other, but "devils"! Well, I've been in the City nearly twenty-five years, and it's my impression human nature can raise all the devils WE shall ever need. And another thing,' he added, as if inspired, and with an immensely intelligent blink, 'is it just precisely that word in the Revised Version--eh, Craik?'

'I'll certainly look it up, Danton. But I take it that Mrs Lawford is not so much insisting on the word, as on the--the manifestation. And I'm bound to confess that the Society for Psychical Research, which has among its members quite eminent and entirely trustworthy men of science--I am bound to admit they have some very curious stories to tell. The old idea was, you know, that there are seventy-two princely devils, and as many as seven million--er--commoners. It may very well sound quaint to our ears, Mrs Lovat; but there it is. But whether that has any bearing on--on what you were saying, Danton, I can't say.

Perhaps Mrs Lawford will throw a little more light on the subject when she tells us on what precise facts her--her distressing theory is based.'

Lawford had soundlessly stolen a pace or two nearer, and by stooping forward a little he could, each in turn, scrutinise the little intent company sitting over his story around the lamp at the further end of the table; squatting like little children with their twigs and pins, fishing for wonders on the brink of the unknown.

'Yes,' Mrs Lovat was saying, 'I quite agree, Mr Craik. Seventy-two princes, and no princesses. Oh, these masculine prejudices! But do throw a little more modern light on the subject, Sheila.'

'I mean this,' said Sheila firmly. 'When I went in for the last time to say good-bye--and of course it was at his own wish that I did leave him; and precisely WHY he wished it is now unhappily only too apparent--I had brought him some money from the bank--fifty pounds, I think; yes, fifty pounds. And quite by the merest chance I glanced down, in pa.s.sing, at a book he had apparently been reading, a book which he seemed very anxious to conceal with his hand. Arthur is not a great reader, though I believe he studied a little before we were married, and--well, I detest anything like subterfuge, and I said it out without thinking, "Why, you're reading French, Arthur!" He turned deathly white but made no answer.'

'And can't you even confide to us the t.i.tle, Sheila?' sighed Mrs Lovat reproachfully.

'Wait a minute,' said Sheila; 'you shall make as much fun of the thing as you like, Bettie, when I've finished. I don't know why, but that peculiar, stealthy look haunted me. "Why French?" I kept asking myself.

"Why French?" Arthur hasn't opened a French book for years. He doesn't even approve of the entente. His argument was that we ought to be friends with the Germans because they are more hostile. Never mind. When Ada came back the next evening and said he was out, I came the following morning--by myself--and knocked. No one answered, and I let myself in.

His bed had not been slept in. There were candles and matches all over the house--one even burnt nearly to the stick on the floor in the corner of the drawing-room. I suppose it was foolish, but I was alone, and just that, somehow, horrified me. It seemed to point to such a peculiar state of mind. I hesitated; what was the use of looking further? Yet something seemed to say to me--and it was surely providential--"Go downstairs!"

And there in the breakfast-room the first thing I saw on the table was this book--a dingy, ragged, bleared, patched-up, oh, a horrible, a loathsome little book (and I have read bits too here and there); and beside it was my own little school dictionary, my own child's 'She looked up sharply. 'What was that? Did anybody call?'

'n.o.body I heard,' said Danton, staring stonily round.

'It may have been the pa.s.sing of the wind,' suggested Mr Craik, after a pause.

'Peep between the blinds, Mr Craik; it may be poor Mr Bethany confronting Pneumonia in the porch.'

'There's no one there, Mrs Lovat,' said the curate, returning softly from his errand. 'Please continue your--your narrative, Mrs Lawford.'

'We are panting for the "devil," my dear.'

'Well, I sat down and, very much against my inclination, turned over the pages. It was full of the most revolting confessions and trials, so far as I could see. In fact, I think the book was merely an amateur collection of--of horrors. And the faces, the portraits! Well, then, can you imagine my feelings when towards the end of the book about thirty pages from the end, I came upon this--gloating up at me from the table in my house before my very eyes?'

She cast a rapid glance over her shoulder, and gathering up her silk skirt, drew out, from the pocket beneath, the few crumpled pages, and pa.s.sed them without a word to Danton. Lawford kept him plainly in view, as, lowering his great face, he slowly stooped, and holding the loose leaves with both fat hands between his knees, stared into the portrait.

Then he truculently lifted his cropped head.

'What did I say?' he said. 'What did I SAY? What did I tell old Bethany in this very room? What d'ye think of that, Mrs Lovat, for a portrait of Arthur Lawford? What d'ye make of that, Craik--eh? Devil--eh?'

Mrs Lovat glanced with arched eyebrows, and with her finger-tips handed the sheets on to her neighbour, who gazed with a settled and mournful frown and returned them to Sheila.

She took the pages, folded them and replaced them carefully in her pocket. She swept her hands over her skirts, and turned to Danton.

'You agree,' she inquired softly, 'it's like?'

'Like! It's the livin' livid image. The livin' image,' he repeated, stretching out his arm, 'as he stood there that very night.'

'What will you say, then,' said Sheila, quietly, 'What will you say if I tell you that that man, Nicholas de Sabathier, has been in his grave for over a hundred years?'

Danton's little eyes seemed, if anything, to draw back even further into his head. 'I'd say, Mrs Lawford, if you'll excuse the word, that it might be a d.a.m.n horrible coincidence--I'd go farther, an almost incredible coincidence. But if you want the sober truth, I'd say it was nothing more than a crafty, clever, abominable piece of trickery. That's what I'd say. Oh, you don't know, Mrs Lovat. When a scamp's a scamp, he'll stop at nothing. I could tell you some tales.'

'Ah, but that's not all,' said Sheila, eyeing them steadfastly one by one. 'We all of us know that my husband's story was that he had gone down to Widderstone--into the churchyard, for his convalescent ramble; that story's true. We all know that he said he had had a fit, a heart attack, and that a kind of--of stupor had come over him. I believe on my honour that's true too. But no one knows but he himself and Mr Bethany and I, that it was a wretched broken grave, quite at the bottom of the hill, that he chose for his resting place, nor--and I can't get the scene out of my head--nor that the name on that one solitary tombstone down there was--was...this!'

Danton rolled his eyes. 'I don't begin to follow,' he said stubbornly.

'You don't mean,' said Mr Craik, who had not removed his gaze from Sheila's face, 'I am not to take it that you mean, Mrs Lawford, the--the other?'

'Yes,' said Sheila, 'HIS'--she patted her skirts--'Sabathier's.'

'You mean,' said Mrs Lovat crisply, 'that the man in the grave is the man in the book, and that the man in the book is--is poor Arthur's changed face?'

Sheila nodded.

Danton rose c.u.mbrously from his chair, looking beadily down on his three friends.

'Oh, but you know, it isn't--it isn't right,' he began. 'Lord! I can see him now. Gla.s.sy--yes, that's the very word I said--gla.s.sy. It won't do, Mrs Lawford; on my solemn honour, it won't do. I don't deny it, call it what you like; yes, devils, if you like. But what I say as a practical man is that it's just rank--that's what it is! Bethany's had too much rope. The time's gone by for sentiment and all that foolery. Mercy's all very well, but after all it's justice that clinches the bargain. There's only one way: we must catch him; we must lay the poor wretch by the heels before it's too late. No publicity, G.o.d bless me, no. We'd have all the rags in London on us. They'd pillory us nine days on end. We'd never live it down. No, we must just hush it up--a home or something; an asylum. For my part,' he turned like a huge toad, his chin low in his collar--'and I'd say the same if it was my own brother, and, after all, he is your husband, Mrs Lawford--I'd sooner he was in his grave. It takes two to play at that game, that's what I say. To lay himself open!

I can't stand it--honestly, I can't stand it. And yet,' he jerked his chin over the peak of his collar towards the ladies, 'and yet you say he's being fetched; comes creeping home, and is fetched at dark by a--a lady in a pony-carriage. G.o.d bless me! It's rank. What,' he broke out violently again, 'what was he doing there in a cemetery after dark? Do you think that beastly Frenchman would have played such a trick on Craik here? Would he have tried his little game on me? Deviltry be it, if you prefer the word, and all deference to you, Mrs Lawford. But I know this--a couple of hundred years ago they would have burnt a man at the stake for less than a tenth of this. Ask Craik here. I don't know how, and I don't know when: his mother, I've always heard say, was a little eccentric; but the truth is he's managed by some unholy legerdemain to get the thing at his finger's ends; that's what it is. Think of that unspeakable book. Left open on the table! Look at his Ferguson game.

It's our solemn duty to keep him for good and all out of mischief. It reflects all round. There's no getting out of it; we're all in it. And tar sticks. And then there's poor little Alice to consider, and--and you yourself, Mrs. Lawford: I wouldn't give the fellow--friend though he was, in a way--it isn't safe to give him five minutes' freedom.

We've simply got to save you from yourself, Mrs Lawford; that's what it is--and from old-fashioned sentiment. And I only wish Bethany was here now to dispute it!'

He stirred himself down, as it were, into his clothes, and stood in the middle of the hearthrug, gently oscillating, with his hands behind his back. But at some faint rumour out of the silent house his posture suddenly stiffened, and he lifted a little, with heavy, steady lids, his head.

'What is the matter, Danton?' said Mr Craik in a small voice; 'why are you listening?'

'I wasn't listening,' said Danton stoutly, 'I was thinking.'

At the same moment, at the creak of a footstep on the kitchen stairs, Lawford also had drawn soundlessly back into the darkness of the empty drawing-room.

'While Mr Danton is "thinking," Sheila,' Mrs Lovat was softly interposing, 'do please listen a moment to me. Do you mean really that that Frenchman--the one you've pocketed--is the poor creature in the grave?'

'Yes, Mrs Lawford,' said Mr Craik, putting out his face a little, 'are we to take it that you mean that?'

'It's the same date, dear, the same name even to the spelling; what possibly else can I think?'

'And that the poor creature in the grave actually climbed up out of the darkness and--well, what?'

'I know no more than you do NOW, Bettie. But the two faces--you must remember you haven't seen my husband SINCE.' You must remember you haven't heard the peculiar--the most peculiar things he--Arthur himself--has said to me. Things such as a wife... And not in jest, Bettie; I a.s.sure you....'