The Return Part 9

'You haven't told Alice?' he asked.

'My dear good man,' said Mr Bethany, 'of course we haven't. You shall tell her yourself on Monday. What an incredible tradition it will be!

But you mustn't worry; you mustn't even think. And no more of these jaunts, eh? That Ferguson business--that was too bad. What are we going to do with the fellow now we have created him? He will come home to roost--mark my words. And as likely as not down the Vicarage chimney.

I wouldn't have believed it of you, my dear fellow.' He beamed, but looked, none the less, very lean and f.a.gged and depressed.

'How did the wedding go off?' Lawford managed to think of inquiring.

'Oh, A1,' said Mr Bethany. 'I've just been describing it to Alice--the bride, her bridegroom, mother, aunts, cake, presents, finery, blushes, tears, and everything that was hers. We've been in fits, haven't we, Mrs Lawford? And Alice says I'm a Worth in a clerical collar--didn't she?

And that it's only Art that has kept me out of an ap.r.o.n. Now look here; quiet, quiet, quiet; no excitement, no pranks. What is there to worry about, pray? And now Little Dorrit's down with influenza too. And Craik and I will have double work to do. Well, well; good-bye, my dear. G.o.d bless you, Lawford. I can't tell you how relieved, how unspeakably relieved I am to find you so much--so much better. Feed him up, my other dear; body and mind and soul and spirit. And there goes the bell. I must have a biscuit. I've swallowed nothing but a Cupid in plaster of Paris since breakfast. Goodnight; we shall miss you both--both.'

But when Sheila returned, her husband was sunk again into a quiet sleep, from which not even the many questions she fretted to put to him seemed weighty enough to warrant his disturbance.

So when Lawford again opened his eyes he found himself lying wide awake, clear and refreshed, and eager to get up. But upon the air lay the still hush of early morning. He tried in vain to catch back sleep again.

A distant shred of dream still floated in his mind, like a cloud at evening. He rarely dreamed, but certainly something immensely interesting had but a moment ago eluded him. He sat up and looked at the clear red cinders and their maze of grottoes. He got out of bed and peeped through the blinds. To the east and opposite to him gardens and an apple-orchard lay, and there in strange liquid tranquillity hung the morning star, and rose, rifling into the dusk of night, the first grey of dawn. The street beneath its autumn leaves was vacant, charmed, deserted.

Hardly since childhood had Lawford seen the dawn unless over his winter breakfast-table. Very much like a child now he stood gazing out of his bow-window--the child whom Time's busy robins had long ago covered over with the leaves of numberless hours. A vague exultation fumed up into his brain. Still on the borders of sleep, he unlocked the great wardrobe and took out an old faded purple and crimson dressing-gown that had belonged to his grandfather, the chief glory of every Christmas charade.

He pulled the cowl-like hood over his head and strode majestically over to the looking-gla.s.s.

He looked in there a moment on the strange face, like a child dismayed at its own excitement, and a fit of sobbing that was half uncontrollable laughter swept over him. He threw off the hood and turned once more to the window. Consciousness had flooded back indeed. What would Sheila have said to see him there? The unearthly beauty and stillness, and man's small labours, garden and wall and roof-tree idle and smokeless in the light of daybreak--there seemed to be some half-told secret between them. What had life done with him to leave a reality so clouded? He put on his slippers, and, gently opening the door, crept with extreme caution up the stairs. At a long, narrow landing window he confronted a panorama of starry night-gardens, sloping orchards; and beyond them fields, hills, Orion, the Dogs, in the clear and cloudless darkness.

'My G.o.d, how beautiful!' a voice whispered. And a c.o.c.k crowed mistily afar. He stood staring like a child into the wintry brightness of a pastry-cook's. Then once more he crept stealthily on. He stooped and listened at a closed door, until he fancied that above the beating of his own heart he could hear the breathing of the sleeper within. Then, taking firm hold of the handle with both hands, he slowly noiselessly turned it, and peeped in on Alice.

The moon was long past her faint shining here. The blind was down. And yet it was not pitch dark. He stood with eyes fixed, waiting. Then he edged softly forward and knelt down beside the bed. He could hear her breathing now: long, low, quiet, unhastening--the miracle of life. He could just dimly discern the darkness of her hair against the pillow.

Some long-sealed spring of tenderness seemed to rise in his heart with a grief and an ache he had never known before. Here at least he could find a little peace, a brief pause, however futile and stupid all his hopes of the night had been. He leant his head on his hands on the counterpane and refused to think. He felt a quick tremor, a startled movement, and knew that eyes wide open with fear were striving to pierce the gloom between them.

'There, there, dearest,' he said in a low whisper, 'it's only me, only me.' He stroked the narrow hand and gazed into the shadowiness. Her fingers lay quiet and pa.s.sive in his, with that strange sense of immateriality that sleep brings to the body.

'You, you!' she answered with a deep sigh. 'Oh, dearest, how you frightened me. What is wrong? why have you come? Are you worse, dearest, dearest?'

He kissed her hand. 'No, Alice, not worse. I couldn't sleep, that was all.'

'Oh, and I came so utterly miserable to bed because you would not see me. And Mother would tell me only so very little. I didn't even know you had been ill.' She pressed his hand between her own. 'But this, you know, is very, very naughty--you will catch cold, you bad thing. What would Mother say?'

'I think we mustn't tell her, dear. I couldn't help it; I felt much I wanted to see you. I have been rather miserable.'

'Why?' she said, stroking his hand from wrist to fingertips with one soft finger. 'You mustn't be miserable. You and me have never done such a thing before; have we? Was it that wretched old Flu?'

It was too dark in the little fragrant room even to see her face so close to his own. And yet he feared. 'Dr Simon,' she went on softly, 'said it was. But isn't your voice a little hoa.r.s.e, and it sounds so melancholy in the dark. And oh'--she squeezed his wrist--'you have grown so thin! You do frighten me. Whatever should I do if you were really ill? And it was so odd, dear. When first I woke I seemed to be still straining my eyes in a dream, at such a curious, haunting face--not very nice. I am glad, I am glad you were here.'

'What was the dream-face like?' came the muttered question.

'Dark and sharp, and rather dwelling eyes; you know those long faces one sees in dreams: like a hawk, like a conjuror's.'

Like a conjuror's!--it was the first unguarded and ungarbled criticism.

'Perhaps, dear, if you find my voice different, and my hand shrunk up, you will find my face changed, too--like a conjuror's.... What then?'

She laughed gaily and tenderly. 'You silly silly; I should love you more than ever. Your hands are icy cold. I can't warm them nohow.'

Lawford held tight his daughter's hand. 'You do love me, Alice? You would not turn against me, whatever happened? Ah, you shall see, you shall see.' A sudden burning hope sprang up in him. Surely when all was well again, these last few hours would not have been spent in vain.

Like the shadow of death they had been, against whose darkness the green familiar earth seems beautiful as the plains of paradise. Had he but realized before how much he loved her--what years of life had been wasted in leaving it all unsaid! He came back from his reverie to find his hand wet with her tears. He stroked her hair, and touched gently her eyelids without speaking.

'You will let me come in to-morrow?' she pleaded; 'you won't keep me out?'

'Ah, but, dear, you must remember your mother. She gets so anxious, and every word the doctor says is law. How would you like me to come again like this, perhaps?--like Santa Claus?'

'You know how I love having you,' she said, and stopped. 'But--but...'

He leaned closer. 'Yes, yes, come,' she said, clutching his hand and hiding her eyes; 'it is only my dream--that horrible, dwelling face in the dream; it frightened me so.'

Lawford rose very slowly from his knees. He could feel in the dark his brows drawn down; there came a low, sullen beating on his ear; he saw his face as it were in dim outline against the dark. Rage and rebellion surged up in him; even his love could be turned to bitterness. Well, two could play at any game! Alice sprang up in bed and caught his sleeve.

'Dearest, dearest, you must not be angry with me now!'

He flung himself down beside the bed. Anger, resentment died away. 'You are all I have left,' he said.

He stole back, as he had come, in the clear dawn to his bedroom.

It was not five yet. He put a few more coals on his fire and blew out the night-light, and lay down. But it was impossible to rest, to remain inactive. He would go down and search for that first volume of Quain.

Hallucination, Influenza, Insanity--why, Sheila must have purposely mislaid it. A rather formidable figure he looked, descending the stairs in the grey dusk of daybreak. The breakfast-room was at the back of the house. He tilted the blind, and a faint light flowed in from the changing colours of the sky. He opened the gla.s.s door of the little bookcase to the right of the window, and ran eye and finger over the few rows of books. But as he stood there with his back to the room, just as the shadow of a bird's wing floats across the moonlight of a pool, he became suddenly conscious that something, somebody had pa.s.sed across the doorway, and in pa.s.sing had looked in on him.

He stood motionless, listening; but no sound broke the morning slumbrousness, except the faraway warbling of a thrush in the first light. So sudden and transitory had been the experience that it seemed now to be illusory; yet it had so caught him up, it had with so furtive and sinister a quietness broken in on his solitude, that for a moment he dared not move. A cold, indefinite sensation stole over him that he was being watched; that some dim, evil presence was behind him biding its time, patient and stealthy, with eyes fixed unmovingly on him where he stood. But, watch and wait as silently as he might, only the day broadened at the window, and at last a narrow ray of sunlight stole trembling up into the dusky bowl of the sky.

At any rate Quain was found, with all the ills of life, from A to I; and Lawford turned back to his bondage with the book under his arm.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Sabbath, pale with September sunshine, and monotonous with chiming bells, had pa.s.sed languidly away. Dr Simon had come and gone, optimistic and urbane, yet with a faint inward dissatisfaction over a patient behind whose taciturnity a hint of mockery and subterfuge seemed to lurk. Even Mrs Lawford had appeared to share her husband's reticence.

But Dr Simon had happened on other cases in his experience where tact was required rather than skill, and time than medicine.

The voices and footsteps, even the frou-frou of worshippers going to church, the voices and footsteps of worshippers returning from church, had floated up to the patient's open window. Sunlight had drawn across his room in one pale beam, and vanished. A few callers had called.

Hothouse flowers, waxen and pale, had been left with messages of sympathy. Even Dr Critchett had respectfully and discreetly made inquiries on his way home from chapel.

Lawford had spent most of his time in pacing to and fro in his soft slippers. The very monotony had eased his mind. Now and again he had lain motionless, with his face to the ceiling. He had dozed and had awakened, cold and torpid with dream. He had hardly been aware of the process, but every hour had done something, it seemed, towards clarifying his point of view. A consciousness had begun to stir in him that was neither that of the old, easy Lawford, whom he had never been fully aware of before, nor of this strange ghostly intelligence that haunted the hawklike, restless face, and plucked so insistently at his distracted nerves. He had begun in a vague fashion to be aware of them both, could in a fashion discriminate between them, almost as if there really were two spirits in stubborn conflict within him. It would, of course, wear him down in time. There could be only one end to such a struggle--THE end.

All day he had longed for freedom, on and on, with craving for the open sky, for solitude, for green silence, beyond these maddening walls. This heedful silken coming and going, these Sunday voices, this reiterant yelp of a single peevish bell--would they never cease? And above all, betwixt dread and an almost physical greed, he hungered for night. He sat down with elbows on knees and head on his hands, thinking of night, its secrecy, its immeasurable solitude.

His eyelids twitched; the fire before him had for an instant gone black out. He seemed to see slow-gesturing branches, gra.s.s stooping beneath a grey and wind-swept sky. He started up; and the remembrance of the morning returned to him--the gla.s.sy light, the changing rays, the beaming gilt upon the useless books. Now, at last, at the windows; afternoon had begun to wane. And when Sheila brought up his tea, as if Chance had heard his cry, she entered in hat and stole. She put down the tray, and paused at the gla.s.s, looking across it out of the window.

'Alice says you are to eat every one of those delicious sandwiches, and especially the tiny omelette. You have scarcely touched anything to-day, Arthur. I am a poor one to preach, I am afraid; but you know what that will mean--a worse breakdown still. You really must try to think of--of us all.'

'Are you going to church?' he asked in a low voice.

'Not, of course, if you would prefer not. But Dr Simon advised me most particularly to go out at least once a day. We must remember, this is not the beginning of your illness. Long-continued anxiety, I suppose, does tell on one in time. Anyhow, he said that I looked worried and run-down. I AM worried. Let us both try for each other's sakes, or even if only for Alice's, to--to do all we can. I must not hara.s.s you; but is there any--do you see the slightest change of any kind?'

'You always look pretty, Sheila; to-night you look prettier: THAT is the only change, I think.'

Mrs Lawford's att.i.tude intensified in its stillness. 'Now, speaking quite frankly, what is it in you suggests these remarks at such a time?

That's what baffles me. It seems so childish, so needlessly blind.'