The Return Part 5

'The medical Dictionary.'

'Oh, yes; bless me; of course.... A calm, complete sleep of utter prostration--utter nervous prostration. And can one wonder? Poor fellow, poor fellow!' He walked to the window and peered between the blinds.

'Sparrows, sunshine--yes, and here's the postman,' he said, as if to himself. Then he turned sharply round, with mind made up.

'Now, do you leave me here,' he said. 'Take half an hour's quiet rest.

He will be glad of a dull old fellow like me when he wakes. And as for my pretty bride, if I miss the train, she must wait till the next.

Good discipline, my dear. Oh, dear me! I don't change. What a precious experience now this would have been for a tottery, talkative, owlish old parochial creature like me. But there, there. Light words make heavy hearts, I see. I shall be quite comfortable. No, no, I breakfasted at home. There's hat and umbrella; at 9.3 I can fly.'

Mrs Lawford thanked him mutely. He smilingly but firmly bowed her out and closed the door.

But eyes and brain had been very busy. He had looked at the gutted candle; at the tinted bland portrait on the dressing-table; at the chair drawn-up; at the boots; and now again he turned almost with a groan towards the sleeper. Then he took out an envelope, on which he had jotted various memoranda, and waited awhile. Minutes pa.s.sed and at last the sleeper faintly stirred, muttering.

Mr Bethany stooped quickly. 'What is it, what is it?' he whispered.

Lawford sighed. 'I was only dreaming, Sheila,' he said, and softly, peacefully opened his eyes. 'I dreamed I was in the--, His lids narrowed, his dark eyes fixed themselves on the anxious spectacled face bending over him. 'Mr Bethany! Where? What's wrong?'

His friend put out his hand. 'There, there,' he said soothingly, 'do not be disturbed; do not disquiet yourself.'

Lawford struggled up. Slowly, painfully consciousness returned to him.

He glanced furtively round the room, at his clothes, slinkingly at the vicar; licked his lips; flushed with extraordinary rapidity; and suddenly burst into tears.

Mr Bethany sat without movement, waiting till he should have spent himself. 'Now, Lawford,' he said gently, compose yourself, old friend.

We must face the music--like men.' He went to the window, drew up the blind, peeped out, and took off his spectacles.

'The first thing to be done,' he said, returning briskly to his chair, 'is to send for Simon. Now, does Simon know you WELL?' Lawford shook his head. 'Would he recognise you?... I mean...'

'I have only met him once--in the evening.'

'Good; let him come immediately, then. Tell him just the facts. If I am not mistaken, he will pooh-pooh the whole thing; tell you to keep quiet, not to worry, and so on. My dear fellow, if we realised, say, typhoid, who'd dare to face it? That will give us time; to wait a while, to recover our breath, to see what happens next. And if--as I don't believe for a moment--Why, in that case I heard the other day of a most excellent man--Grosser, of Wimpole Street; nerves. He would be absorbed.

He'll bottle you in spirit, Lawford. We'll have him down quietly. You see? But there won't be any necessity. Oh no. By then light will have come. We shall remember. What I mean is this.' He crossed his legs and pushed out his lips. 'We are on quaky ground; and it's absolutely essential that you keep cool, and trust. I am yours, heart and soul--you know that. I own frankly, at first I was shaken. And I have, I confess, been very cunning. But first, faith, then evidence to bolster it up. The faith was absolute'--he placed one firm hand on Lawford's knee--'why, I cannot explain; but it was. The evidence is convincing. But there are others to think of. The shock, the incredibleness, the consequences; we must not scan too closely. Think WITH; never against: and bang go all the arguments. Your wife, poor dear, believes; but of course, of course, she is horribly--' he broke off; 'of course she is SHAKEN, you old simpleton! Time will heal all that. Time will wear out the mask. Time will tire out this detestable physical witchcraft. The mind, the self's the thing. Old fogey though I may seem for saying it--that must be kept unsmirched. We won't go wearily over the painful subject again. You told me last night, dear old friend, that you were absolutely alone at Widderstone. That is enough. But here we have visible facts, tangible effects, and there must have been a definite reason and a cause for them. I believe in the devil, in the Powers of Darkness, Lawford, as firmly as I believe he and they are powerless--in the long run.

They--what shall we say?--have surrendered their intrinsicality. You can just go through evil, as you can go through a sewer, and come out on the other side too. A loathsome process too. But there--we are not speaking of any such monstrosities, and even if we were, you and I with G.o.d's help would just tire them out. And that ally gone, our poor dear old Mrs Grundy will at once capitulate. Eh? Eh?'

Through all this long and arduous harangue, consciousness, like the gradual light of dawn, had been flooding that other brain. And the face that now confronted Mr Bethany, though with his feeble unaided sight he could only very obscurely discern it, was vigilant and keen, in every sharp-cut hungry feature.

A rather prolonged silence followed, the visitor peering mutely. The black eyes nearly closed, the face turned slowly towards the window, saw burnt-out candle, comprehensive gla.s.s.

'Yes, yes.' he said; 'I'll send for Simon at once.'

'Good,' said Mr Bethany, and more doubtfully repeated 'good.' 'Now there's only one thing left,' he went on cheerfully. 'I have jotted down a few test questions here; they are questions no one on this earth could answer but you, Lawford. They are merely for external proofs. You won't, you can't, mistake my motive. We cannot foretell or foresee what need may arise for just such jog-trot primitive evidence. I propose that you now answer them here, in writing.'

Lawford stood up and walked to the looking-gla.s.s, and paused. He put his hand to his head, 'es,' he said, 'of course; it's a rattling good move.

I'm not quite awake; myself, I mean. I'll do it now.' He took out a pencil case and tore another leaf from his pocket-book. 'What are they?'

Mr Bethany rang the bell. Sheila herself answered it. She stood on the threshold and looked across through a shaft of autumnal sunshine at her husband, and her husband with a quiet strange smile looked across through the sunshine at his wife. Mr Bethany waited in vain.

'I am just going to put the arch-impostor through his credentials,' he said tartly. 'Now then, Lawford!' He read out the questions, one by one, from his crafty little list, pursing his lips between each; and one by one, Lawford, seated at the dressing-table, fluently scribbled his answers. Then question and answer were rigorously compared by Mr Bethany, with small white head bent close and spectacles poised upon the powerful nose, and signed and dated, and pa.s.sed to Mrs Lawford without a word.

Mrs Lawford read question and answer where she stood, in complete silence. She looked up. 'Many of these questions I don't know the answers to myself,' she said.

'It is immaterial,' said Mr Bethany.

'One answer is--is inaccurate. 'Yes, yes, quite so: due to a mistake in a letter from myself.'

Mrs Lawford read quietly on, folded the papers, and held them out between finger and thumb. 'The--handwriting...' she remarked very softly.

'Wonderful, isn't it?' said Mr Bethany warmly; 'all the general look and run of the thing different, but every real essential feature unchanged.

Now into the envelope. And now a little wax?'

Mrs Lawford stood waiting. 'There's a green piece of sealing-wax,'

almost drawled the quiet voice, 'in the top right drawer of the nest in the study, which old James gave me the Christmas before last.' He glanced with lowered eyelids at his wife's flushed cheek. Their eyes met.

'Thank you,' she said.

When she returned the vicar was sitting in a chair, leaning his chin on the k.n.o.bbed handle of his umbrella. He rose and lit a taper for her with a match from a little green pot on the table. And Mrs Lawford, with trembling fingers, sealed the letter, as he directed, with his own seal.

'There!' he said triumphantly, 'how many more such brilliant lawyers, I wonder, lie dormant in the Church? And who shall keep this?... Why, all three, of course.' He went on without pausing. 'Some little drawer now, secret and undetectable, with a lock.' Just such a little drawer that locked itself with a spring lay by chance in the looking-gla.s.s. There the letter was hidden. And Mr Bethany looked at his watch. 'Nineteen minutes,' he said. 'The next thing, my dear child--we're getting on swimmingly--and it's astonishing how things are simplified by mere use--the next thing is to send for Simon.'

Sheila took a deep breath, but did not look up. 'I am entirely in your hands,' she replied.

'So be it,' said he crisply. 'Get to bed, Lawford; it's better so. And I'll look in on my way back from Witchett. I came, my dear fellow, in gloomy disturbance of mind. It was getting up too early; it fogs old brains. Good-bye, good-bye.'

He squeezed Lawford's hand. Then, with umbrella under his arm, his hat on his head, his spectacles readjusted, he hurried out of the room. Mrs Lawford followed him. For a few minutes Lawford sat motionless, with head bent a little, and eyes restlessly scanning the door. Then he rose abruptly, and in a quarter of an hour was in bed, alone with his slow thoughts: while a basin of cornflour stood untasted on a little table at his bedside, and a cheerful fire burned in the best visitors' room's tiny grate.

At half-past eleven Dr Simon entered this soundless seclusion. He sat down beside Lawford, and took temperature and pulse. Then he half closed his lids, and scanned his patient out of an unusually dark, un-English face, with straight black hair, and listened attentively to his rather incoherent story. It was a story very much modified and rounded off.

Nor did Lawford draw Dr Simon's attention to the portrait now smiling conventionally above their heads from the wall over the fireplace.

'It was rather bleak--the wind; and, I think, perhaps, I had had a touch of influenza. It was a silly thing to do. But still, Dr Simon, one doesn't expect--well, there, I don't feel the same man--physically. I really cannot explain how great a change has taken place. And yet I feel perfectly fit in myself. And if it were not for--for being laughed at, go back to town, to-day. Why my wife scarcely recognised me.'

Dr Simon continued his scrutiny. Try as he would, Lawford could not raise his downcast eyes to meet direct the doctor's polite attention.

'And what,' said Dr Simon, 'what precisely is the nature of the change?

Have you any pain?'

'No, not the least pain,' said Lawford; 'I think, perhaps, or rather my face is a little shrunken--and yet lengthened; at least it feels so; and a faint twinge of rheumatism. But my hair--well, I don't know; it's difficult to say one's self.' He could get on so very much better, he thought, if only his mind would be at peace and these preposterous promptings and voices were still.

Dr Simon faced the window, and drew his hand softly over his head.

'We never can be too cautious at a certain age, and especially after influenza,' he said. 'It undermines the whole system, and in particular the nervous system; leaving the mind the prey of the most melancholy fancies. I should astound you, Mr Lawford, with the devil influenza plays.... A slight nervous shock and a chill; quite slight, I hope. A few days' rest and plenty of nourishment. There's nothing; temperature inconsiderable. All perfectly intelligible. Most certainly rea.s.sure yourself! And as for the change you speak of'--he looked steadily at the dark face on the pillow and smiled amiably--'I don't think we need worry much about that. It certainly was a bleak wind yesterday--and a cemetery, my dear sir! It was indiscreet--yes, very.' He held out his hand. 'You must not be alarmed,' he said, very distinctly with the merest trace of an accent; 'air, sunshine, quiet, nourishment; sleep--that is all. The little window might be a few inches open, and--and any light reading.'

He opened the door and joined Mrs Lawford on the staircase. He talked to her quietly over his shoulder all the way downstairs. 'It was, it was sporting with Providence--a wind, believe me, nearly due east, in spite of the warm sunshine.'

'But the change--the change!' Mrs Lawford managed to murmur tragically, as he strode to the door. Dr Simon smiled, and gracefully tapped his forehead with a red-gloved forefinger.

'Humour him, humour him,' he repeated indulgently. 'Rest and quiet will soon put that little trouble out of his head. Oh yes, I did notice it--the set drawn look, and the droop: quite so. Good morning.'

Mrs Lawford gently closed the door after him. A glimpse of Ada, crossing from room to room, suggested a precaution. She called out in her clearest notes. 'If Dr Ferguson should call while I am out, Ada, will you please tell him that Dr Simon regretted that he was unable to wait?

Thank you.' She paused with hand on the bal.u.s.ters, then slowly ascended the stairs. Her husband's face was turned to the ceiling, his hands clasped above his head. She took up her stand by the fireplace, resting one silk-slippered foot on the fender. 'Dr Simon is rea.s.suring,' she said, 'but I do hope, Arthur, you will follow his advice. He looks a fairly clever man.... But with a big practice.... Do you think, dear, he quite realised the extent of the--the change?'

'I told him what happened,' said her husband's voice out of the bed-clothes.