The Return Part 6

'Yes, yes, I know,' said Sheila soothingly; 'but we must remember he is comparatively a stranger. He would not detect--'

'What did he tell you?' asked the voice.

Mrs Lawford deliberately considered. If only he would always thus keep his face concealed, how much easier it would be to discuss matters rationally. 'You see, dear,' she said softly, 'I know, of course, nothing about the nerves; but personally, I think his suggestion absurd.

No mere fancy, surely, can make a lasting alteration in one's face. And your hair--I don't want to say anything that may seem unkind--but isn't it really quite a distinct shade darker, Arthur?'

'Any great strain will change the colour of a man's hair,' said Lawford stolidly; 'at any rate, to white. Why, I read once of a fellow in India, a Hindoo, or something, who--'

'But have you HAD any intense strain, or anxiety?' broke in Sheila. 'You might, at least, have confided in me; that is, unless--But there, don't you think really, Arthur, it would be much more satisfactory in every way if we had further advice at once? Alice will be home next week.

To-morrow is the Harvest Festival, and next week, of course, the Dedication; and, in any case, the Bazaar is out of the question. They will have to find another stall-holder. We must do our utmost to avoid comment or scandal. Every minute must help to--to fix a thing like that.

I own even now I cannot realise what this awful calamity means. It's useless to brood on it. We must, as the poor dear old vicar said only last night, keep our heads clear. But I am sure Dr Simon was under a misapprehension. If, now, it was explained to him, a little more fully, Arthur--a photograph. Oh, anything on earth but this dreadful wearing uncertainty and suspense! Besides ...is Simon quite an English name?'

Lawford drew further into his pillow. 'Do as you think best, Sheila,'

he said. 'For my own part, I believe it may be as he suggests--partly an illusion, a touch of nervous breakdown. It simply can't be as bad as I think it is. If it were, you would not be here talking like this; and Bethany wouldn't have believed a word I said. Whatever it is, it's no good crying it on the housetops. Give me time, just time. Besides, how do we know what he really thought? Doctors don't tell their patients everything. Give the poor chap a chance, and more so if he is a foreigner. He's'--his voice sank almost to a whisper--'he's no darker than this. And do, please, Sheila, take this infernal stuff away, and let me have something solid. I'm not ill--in that way. All I want is peace and quiet, time to think. Let me fight it out alone. It's been sprung on me. The worst's not over. But I'll win through; wait! And if not--well, you shall not suffer, Sheila. Don't be afraid. There are other ways out.'

Sheila broke down. 'Any one would think to hear you talk, that I was perfectly heartless. I told Ada to be most careful about the cornflour.

And as for other ways out, it's a positively wicked thing to say to me when I'm nearly distracted with trouble and anxiety. What motive could you have had for loitering in an old cemetery? And in an east wind! It's useless for me to remain here, Arthur, to be accused of every horrible thing that comes into a morbid imagination. I will leave you, as you suggest, in peace.'

'One moment, Sheila,' answered the m.u.f.fled voice. 'I have accused you of nothing. If you knew all; if you could read my thoughts, you would be surprised, perhaps, at my--But never mind that. On the other hand, I really do think it would be better for the present to discuss the thing no more. To-day is Friday. Give this miserable face a week. Talk it over with Bethany if you like. But I forbid'--he struggled up in bed, sallow and sinister--'I flatly forbid, please understand, any other interference till then. Afterwards you must do exactly as you please.

Send round the Town Crier! But till then, silence!'

Sheila with raised head confronted him. 'This, then, is your grat.i.tude.

So be it. Silence, no doubt! Until it's too late to take action. Until you have wormed your way in, and think you are safe. To have believed!

Where is my husband? that is what I am asking you now. When and how you have learned his secrets G.o.d only knows, and your conscience! But he always was a simpleton at heart. I warn you, then. Until next Thursday I consent to say nothing provided you remain quiet; make no disturbance, no scandal here. The servants and all who inquire shall simply be told that my husband is confined to his room with--with a nervous breakdown, as you have yourself so glibly suggested. I am at your mercy, I own it.

The vicar believes your preposterous story--with his spectacles off.

You would convince anybody with the wicked cunning with which you have cajoled and wheedled him, with which you have deceived and fooled a foreign doctor. But you will not convince me. You will not convince Alice. I have friends in the world, though you may not be aware of it, who will not be quite so apt to believe any c.o.c.k-and-bull story you may see fit to invent. That is all I have to say. To-night I tell the vicar all that I have just told you. And from this moment, please, we are strangers. I shall come into the room no more than necessity dictates.

On Friday we resume our real parts. My husband--Arthur--to--to connive at... Phh!'

Rage had transfigured her. She scarcely heard her own words. They poured out senselessly, monotonously, one calling up another, as if from the lips of a Ca.s.sandra. Lawford sank back into bed, clutching the sheets with both lean hands. He took a deep breath and shut his mouth.

'It reminds me, Sheila,' he began arduously, 'of our first quarrel before we were married, the evening after your aunt Rose died at Llandudno--do you remember? You threw open the window, and I think--I saved your life.' A pause followed. Then a queer, almost inarticulate voice added, 'At least, I am afraid so.'

A cold and awful quietness fell on Sheila's heart. She stared fixedly at the tuft of dark hair, the only visible sign of her husband, on the pillow. Then, taking up the basin of cold cornflour, she left the room.

In a quarter of an hour she reappeared carrying a tray, with ham and eggs and coffee and honey invitingly displayed. She laid it down.

'There is only one other question,' she said, with perfect composure--'that of money. Your signature as it appears on the--the doc.u.ment drawn up this morning, would, of course, be quite useless on a cheque. I have taken all the money I could find; it is in safety.

You may, however, conceivably be in need of some yourself; here is five pounds. I have my own cheque-book, and shall therefore have no need to consider the question again for--for the present. So far as you are concerned, I shall be guided solely by Mr Bethany. He will, I do not doubt, take full responsibility.'

'And may the Lord have mercy on my soul!' uttered a stifled, unfamiliar voice from the bed. Mrs Lawford stooped. 'Arthur!' she cried faintly, 'Arthur!'

Lawford raised himself on his elbow with a sigh that was very near to being a sob. 'Oh, Sheila, if you'd only be your real self! What is the use of all this pretence? Just consider MY position a little. The fear and horror are not all on your side. You called me Arthur even then. I'd willingly do anything you wish to save you pain; you know that. Can't we be friends even in this--this ghastly--Won't you, Sheila?'

Mrs Lawford drew back, struggling with a doubtful heart.

'I think,' she said, 'it would be better not to discuss that now.'

The rest of the morning Lawford remained in solitude.

CHAPTER SIX

There were three books in the room--Jeremy Taylor's 'Holy Living and Dying,' a volume of the Quiver, and a little gilded book on wildflowers.

He read in vain. He lay and listened to the uproar of his thoughts on which an occasional sound--the droning of a fly, the cry of a milkman, the noise of a pa.s.sing van--obtruded from the workaday world. The pale gold sunlight edged softly over the bed. He ate up everything on his tray. He even, on the shoals of nightmare, dreamed awhile. But by and by as the hours wheeled slowly on he grew less calm, less strenuously resolved on lying there inactive. Every sparrow that twittered cried reveille through his brain. He longed with an ardour strange to his temperament to be up and doing.

What if his misfortune was, as he had in the excitement of the moment suggested to Sheila, only a morbid delusion of mind; shared too in part by sheer force of his absurd confession? Even if he was going mad, who knows how peaceful a release that might not be? Could his shrewd old vicar have implicitly believed in him if the change were as complete as he supposed it? He flung off the bedclothes and locked the door.

He dressed himself, noticing, he fancied, with a deadly revulsion of feeling, that his coat was a little too short in the sleeves, his waistcoat too loose. In the midst of his dressing came Sheila bringing his luncheon. 'I'm sorry,' he called out, stooping quickly beside the bed, 'I can't talk now. Please put the tray down.'

About half an hour afterwards he heard the outer door close, and peeping from behind the curtains saw his wife go out. All was drowsily quiet in the house. He devoured his lunch like a schoolboy. That finished to the last crumb, without a moment's delay he covered his face with a towel, locked the door behind him, put the key in his pocket, and ran lightly downstairs. He stuffed the towel into an ulster pocket, put on a soft, wide-brimmed hat, and noiselessly let himself out. Then he turned with an almost hysterical delight and ran--ran like the wind, without pausing, without thinking, straight on, up one turning, down another, until he reached a broad open common, thickly wooded, sprinkled with gorse and hazel and may, and faintly purple with fading heather. There he flung himself down in the beautiful sunlight, among the yellowing bracken, to recover his breath.

He lay there for many minutes, thinking almost with composure. Flight, it seemed, had for the moment quietened the demands of that other feebly struggling personality which was beginning to insinuate itself into his consciousness, which had so miraculously broken in and taken possession of his body. He would not think now. All he needed was a little quiet and patience before he threw off for good and all his right to be free, to be his own master, to call himself sane.

He scrambled up and turned his face towards the westering sun. What was there in the stillness of its beautiful splendour that seemed to sharpen his horror and difficulty, and yet to stir him to such a daring and devilry as he had never known since he was a boy? There was little sound of life; somewhere an unknown bird was singing, and a few late bees were droning in the bracken. All these years he had, like an old blind horse, stolidly plodded round and round in a dull self-set routine. And now, just when the spirit had come for rebellion, the mood for a harmless truancy, there had fallen with them too this hideous enigma. He sat there with the dusky silhouette of the face that was now drenched with sunlight in his mind's eye. He set off again up the stony incline.

Why not walk on and on? In time real wholesome weariness would come; he could sleep at ease in some pleasant wayside inn, without once meeting the eyes that stood as it were like a window between himself and a shrewd incredulous scoffing world that would turn him into a monstrosity and his story into a fable. And in a little while, perhaps in three days, he would awaken out of this engrossing nightmare, and know he was free, this black dog gone from his back, and (as the old saying expressed it without any one dreaming what it really meant) his own man again. How astonished Sheila would be; how warmly she would welcome him!... Oh yes, of course she would.

He came again to a standstill. No voice answered him out of that illimitable gold and blue. Nothing seemed aware of him. But as he stood there, doubtful as Cain on the outskirts of the unknown, he caught the sound of a footfall on the lonely and stone-strewn path.

The ground sloped steeply away to the left, and slowly mounting the hillside came mildly on an old lady he knew, a Miss Sinnet, an old friend of his mother's. There was just such a little seat as that other he knew so well, on the brow of the hill. He made his way to it, intending to sit quietly there until the little old lady had pa.s.sed by.

Up and up she came. Her large bonnet appeared, and then her mild white face, inclined a little towards him as she ascended. Evidently this very seat was her goal; and evasion was impossible. Evasion!... Memory rushed back and set his pulses beating. He turned boldly to the sun, and the old lady, with a brief glance into his face, composed herself at the other end of the little seat. She gazed out of a gentle reverie into the golden valley. And so they sat a while. And almost as if she had felt the bond of acquaintance between them, she presently sighed, and addressed him: 'A very, very, beautiful view, sir.'

Lawford paused, then turned a gloomy, earnest face, gilded with sunshine. 'Beautiful, indeed,' he said, 'but not for me. No, Miss Sinnet, not for me.'

The old lady gravely turned and examined the aquiline profile. 'Well, I confess,' she remarked urbanely, 'you have the advantage of me.'

Lawford smiled uneasily. 'Believe me, it is little advantage.'

'My sight,' said Miss Sinnet precisely, 'is not so good as I might wish; though better perhaps than I might have hoped; I fear I am not much wiser; your face is still unfamiliar to me.'

'It is not unfamiliar to me,' said Lawford. Whose trickery was this? he thought, putting such affected stuff into his mouth.

A faint lightening of pity came into the silvery and scrupulous countenance. 'Ah, dear me, yes,' she said courteously.

Lawford rested a lean hand on the seat. 'And have you,' he asked, 'not the least recollection in the world of my face?'

'Now really,' she said, smiling blandly, 'is that quite fair? Think of all the scores and scores of faces in seventy long years; and how very treacherous memory is. You shall do me the service of REMINDING me of one whose name has for the moment escaped me.'

'I am the son of a very old friend of yours, Miss Sinnet,' said Lawford quietly 'a friend that was once your schoolfellow at Brighton.'

'Well, now,' said the old lady, grasping her umbrella, 'that is undoubtedly a clue; but then, you see, all but one of the friends of my girlhood are dead; and if I have never had the pleasure of meeting her son, unless there is a decided resemblance, how am I to recollect HER by looking at HIM?'

'There is, I believe, a likeness,' said Lawford.

She nodded her great bonnet at him with gentle amus.e.m.e.nt. 'You are insistent in your fancy. Well, let me think again. The last to leave me was f.a.n.n.y Urquhart, that was--let me see--last October. Now you are certainly not f.a.n.n.y Urquhart's son,' she stooped austerely, 'for she never had one. Last year, too, I heard that my dear, dear Mrs Jameson was dead. HER I hadn't met for many, many years. But, if I may venture to say so, yours is not a Scottish face; and she not only married a Scottish husband, but was herself a Dunbar. No, I am still at a loss.'

A miserable strife was in her chance companion's mind, a strife of anger and recrimination. He turned his eyes wearily to the fast declining sun.

'You will forgive my persistency, but I a.s.sure you it is a matter of life or death to me. Is there no one my face recalls? My voice?'