The Return Part 31

It seemed to weave a spell over him, to call up a nostalgia he had lost all remembrance of since childhood. And that queer homesickness, at any rate, was all Sabathier's doing, he thought, smiling in his rather careworn fashion. Sabathier! It was this mystery, bereft now of all fear, and this beauty together, that made life the endless, changing and yet changeless, thing it was. And yet mystery and loveliness alike were only really appreciable with one's legs, as it were, dangling down over into the grave.

Just with one's lantern lit, on the edge of the whispering unknown, and a reiterated going back out of the solitude into the light and warmth, to the voices and glancing of eyes, to say good-bye:--that after all was this life on earth for those who watched as well as acted. What if one's earthly home were empty?--still the restless fretted traveller must tarry; 'for the horrible worst of it is, my friend,' he said, as if to some silent companion listening behind him, 'the worst of it is, YOUR way was just simply, solely suicide.' What was it Herbert had called it? Yes, a cul-de-sac--black, lofty, immensely still and old and picturesque, but none the less merely a contemptible cul-de-sac; no abiding place, scarcely even sufficing with its flagstones for a groan from the fugitive and deluded refugee. There was no peace for the wicked. The question of course then came in--Was there any peace anywhere, for anybody?

He smiled at a sudden odd remembrance of a quiet, sardonic old aunt whom he used to stay with as a child. 'Children should be seen and not heard,' she would say, peering at him over his favourite pudding.

His eyes rested vacantly on the darkling street. He fell again into reverie, gigantically brooded over by shapes only imagination dimly conceived of: the remote alleys of his mind astir with a shadowy and ceaseless traffic which it wasn't at least THIS life's business to hearken after, or regard. And as he stood there in a mysteriously thronging peaceful solitude such as he had never known before, faintly out of the silence broke the sound of approaching hoofs. His heart seemed to gather itself close; a momentary blindness veiled his eyes, so wildly had his blood surged up into cheek and brain. He remained, caught up, with head slightly inclined, listening, as, with an interminable tardiness, measureless anguished hope died down into nothing in his mind.

Cold and heavy, his heart began to beat again, as if to catch up those laggard moments. He turned with an infinite revulsion of feeling to look out on the lamps of the old fly that had drawn up at his gate.

He watched incuriously a little old lady rather arduously alight, pause, and look up at his darkened windows, and after a momentary hesitation, and a word over her shoulder to the cabman, stoop and fumble at the iron latch. He watched her with a kind of wondering aversion, still scarcely tinged with curiosity. She had succeeded in lifting the latch and in pushing her way through, and was even now steadily advancing towards him along the tiled path. And a minute after he recognised with the strangest reactions the quiet old figure that had shared a sunset with him ages and ages ago--his mother's old schoolfellow, Miss Sinnet.

He was already ransacking the still faintly-perfumed dining-room for matches, and had just succeeded in relighting the still-warm lamp, when he heard her quiet step in the porch, even felt her peering in, in the gloom, with all her years' trickling customariness behind her, a little dubious of knocking on a wide-open door.

But the lamp lit Lawford went out again and welcomed his visitor. 'I am alone,' he was explaining gravely, 'my wife's away and the whole house topsy-turvy. How very, very kind of you!'

The old lady was breathing a little heavily after her ascent of the steep steps, and seemed not to have noticed his outstretched hand. None the less she followed him in, and when she was well advanced into the lighted room, she sighed deeply, raised her veil over the front of her bonnet, and leisurely took out her spectacles.

'I suppose,' she was explaining in a little quiet voice, 'you ARE Mr Arthur Lawford, but as I did not catch sight of a light in any of the windows I began to fear that the cabman might have set me down at the wrong house.'

She raised her head, and first through, and then over her spectacles she deliberately and steadfastly regarded him.

'Yes,' she said to herself, and turned, not as it seemed entirely with satisfaction, to look for a chair. He wheeled the most comfortable up to the table.

'I have been visiting my old friend Miss Tucker--Rev W. Tucker's daughter--she, I knew, could give me your address; and sure enough she did. Your road, d'ye see, was on my way home. And I determined, in spite of the hour, just to inquire. You must understand, Mr Lawford, there was something that I rather particularly wanted to say to you. But there!--you're looking sadly, sadly ill; and,' she glanced round a little inquisitively, 'I think my story had better wait for a more convenient occasion.'

'Not at all, Miss Sinnet; please not,' Lawford a.s.sured her, 'really. I have been ill, but I'm now practically quite myself again. My wife and daughter have gone away for a few days; and I follow to-morrow, so if you'll forgive such a very poor welcome, it may be my--my only chance.

Do please let me hear.'

The old lady leant back in her chair, placed her hands on its arms and softly panted, while out of the rather broad serenity of her face she sat blinking up at her companion as if after a long talk, instead of at the beginning of one. 'No,' she repeated reflectively, 'I don't like your looks at all; yet here we are, enjoying beautiful autumn weather, Mr Lawford, why not make use of it?'

'Oh yes,' said Lawford, 'I do. I have been making tremendous use of it.'

Her eyelid flickered at his candid glance. 'And does your business permit of much walking?'

'Well, I've been malingering these last few days idling at home; but I am usually more or less my own man, Miss Sinnet. I walk a little.'

'H'm, but not much in my direction, Mr Lawford?' she quizzed him.

'All horrible indolence, Miss Sinnet. But I often--often think of you; and especially just lately.'

'Well, now,' she wriggled round her head to get a better view of him rather stiffly seated on his chair, 'that's very peculiar; because I too have been thinking lately a great deal of you. And yet--I fancy I shall succeed in mystifying you presently--not precisely of you, but of somebody else!'

'You do mystify me--"somebody else"!' he replied gallantly. 'And that is the story, I suppose?'

'That's the story,' repeated Miss Sinnet with some little triumph. 'Now, let me see; it was on Sat.u.r.day last--yes, Sat.u.r.day evening; a wonderful sunset; Bewley Heath.'

'Oh yes; my daughter's favourite walk.'

'And your daughter's age now?'

'She's nearly sixteen; Alice, you know.'

'Ah, yes, Alice; to be sure. It is a beautiful walk, and if fine, I generally take mine there too. It's near; there's shade; it's very little frequented; and I can wander and muse undisturbed. And that I think is pretty well all that an old woman like me is fit for, Mr Lawford. "Nearly sixteen!" Is it possible? Dear, dear me? But let me get on. On my way home from the Heath, you may be aware, before one reaches the road again, there's a somewhat steep ascent. I haven't the strength I had, and whether I'm fatigued or not, I have always made it a rule to rest awhile on a most convenient little seat at the summit, admire the view--what I can see of it--and then make my way quietly, quietly home.

On Sat.u.r.day, however, and it most rarely occurs--once, I remember, when a very civil nursemaid was sitting with two charmingly behaved little children in the sunshine, and I heard they were my old friend Major Loder's son's children--on Sat.u.r.day, as I was saying, my own particular little haunt was already occupied.' She glanced back at him from out of her thoughts, as it were. 'By a gentleman. I say, gentleman; though I must confess that his conduct--perhaps, too, a little something even in his appearance, somewhat belied the term. Anyhow, gentleman let us call him.'

Lawford, all attention, nodded, and encouragingly smiled.

'I'm not one of those tiresome, suspicious people, Mr Lawford, who distrust strangers. I have never been molested, and I have enjoyed many and many a most interesting, and sometimes instructive, talk with an individual whom I've never seen in my life before, and this side of the grave perhaps, am never likely to see again.' She lifted her head with pursed lips, and gravely yet still flickeringly regarded him once more.

'Well, I made some trifling remark--the weather, the view, what-not,'

she explained with a little jerk of her shoulder--'and to my extreme astonishment he turned and addressed me by name--Miss Sinnet.

Unmistakably--Sinnet. Now, perhaps, and very rightly, you won't considered THAT a very peculiar thing to do? But you will recollect, Mr Lawford, that I had been sitting there a considerable time. Surely, now, if you had recognised my face you would have addressed me at once?'

'Was he, do you think, Miss Sinnet, a little uncertain, perhaps?'

'Never mind, never mind; let me get on with my story first. The next thing my gentleman does is more mysterious still. His whole manner was a little peculiar, perhaps--a certain restlessness, what, in fact, one might be almost tempted to call a certain furtiveness of behaviour.

Never mind. What he does next is to ask me a riddle! Perhaps you won't think that was peculiar either?'

'What was the riddle?' smiled Lawford.

'Why, to be sure, to guess his name! Simply guided, so I surmised, by some very faint resemblance in his face to his MOTHER, who was, he a.s.sured me, an old schoolfellow of mine at BRIGHTON. I thought and thought. I confess the adventure was beginning to be a little perplexing. But of course, very, very few of my old schoolfellows remain distinctly in my memory now; and I fear that grows more treacherous the longer I live. Their faces as girls are clear enough. But later in life most of them drifted out of sight--many, alas, are dead; and, well, at last I narrowed my man down to one. And who now, do you suppose that was?'

Lawford sustained an expression of abysmal mystification. 'Do tell me--who?'

'Your own poor dear mother, Mr Lawford.'

'HE said so?'

'No, no,' said the old lady, with some vexation, closing her eyes. 'I said so. He asked me to guess. And I guessed Mary Lawford; now do you see?'

'Yes, yes. But WAS he like her, Miss Sinnet? That was really very, very extraordinary. Did you see any likeness in his face?'

Miss Sinnet very deliberately took her spectacles out of their case again. 'Now, see here, sir; this is being practical, isn't it? I'm just going to take a leisurely glance at yours. But you mustn't let me forget the time. You must look after the time for me.'

'It's about a quarter to ten,' said Lawford, having glanced first at the stopped clock on the chimney-piece and then at his watch. He then sat quite still and endeavoured to sit at ease, while the old lady lifted her bonneted head and ever so gravely and benignly surveyed him.

'H'm,' she said at last. 'There's no mistaking YOU. It's Mary's chin, and Mary's brow--with just a little something, perhaps, of her dreamy eye. But you haven't all her looks, Mr Lawford, by any manner of means.

She was a very beautiful girl, and so vivacious, so fanciful--it was, I suppose the foreign strain showing itself. Even marriage did not quite succeed in spoiling her.'

'The foreign strain?' Lawford glanced with a kind of fleeting fixity at the quiet old figure. 'The foreign strain?'

Your mother's maiden name, my dear Mr Lawford, surely memory does not deceive me in that, was van der Gucht. THAT, I believe, is a foreign name.'

'Ah, yes,' said Lawford, his rising thoughts sinking quietly to rest again. 'Van der Gucht, of course. I--how stupid of me!'

'As a matter of fact, your mother was very proud of her Dutch blood. But there,' she flung out little fin-like sleeves, 'if you don't let me keep to my story I shall go back as uneasy as I came. And you didn't,' she added even more fretfully, 'you didn't tell me the time.'

Lawford stared at his watch again for some few moments without replying.

'It's a few minutes to ten,' he said at last.