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 passing 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 passed 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 amusement. ‘You are
insistent in your fancy. Well, let me think again. The last to leave me
was Fanny Urquhart, that was—let me see—last October. Now you are
certainly not Fanny 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 assure you it is
a matter of life or death to me. Is there no one my face recalls? My
voice?’
Miss Sinnet drew her long lips together, her eyebrows lifted with the
faintest perturbation. ‘But he certainly knows my name,’ she said to
herself. She turned once more, and in the still autumnal beauty,
beneath that pale blue arch of evening, these two human beings
confronted one another again. She eyed him blandly, yet with a certain
grave directness.
‘I don’t really think,’ she said, ‘you _can_ be Mary Lawford’s son. I
could scarcely have mistaken _him_.’
Lawford gulped and turned away. He hardly knew what this surge of
feeling meant. Was it hope, despair, resentment; had he caught even the
echo of an unholy joy? His mind for a moment became confused as if in
the tumult of a struggle. He heard himself expostulate, ‘Ah, Miss
Bennett, I fear I set you too difficult a task.’
The old lady drew abruptly in, like a trustful and gentle snail into
its shocked house. ‘Bennett, sir; but my name is not Bennett.’
And again Lawford accepted the miserable prompting. ‘Not Bennett!...
How can I ever then apologise for so frantic a mistake?’
The little old lady took firm hold of her umbrella. She did not answer
him. ‘The likeness, the likeness!’ he began unctuously, and stopped,
for the glance that dwelt fleetingly on him was cold with the
formidable dignity and displeasure of age. He raised his hat and turned
miserably home. He strode on out of the last gold into the blue
twilight. What fantastic foolery of mind was mastering him? He cast a
hurried look over his shoulder at the kindly and offended old figure
sitting there, solitary, on the little seat, in her great bonnet, with
back turned resolutely upon him—the friend of his dead mother who might
have proved in his need a friend indeed to him. And he had by this
insane caprice hopelessly estranged her.
She would remember this face well enough now, he thought bitterly, and
would take her place among his quiet enemies, if ever the day of
reckoning should come. It was scandalous, it was banal to have abused
her trust and courtesy. Oh, it was hopeless to struggle any more! The
fates were against him. They had played him a trick. He was to be their
transitory sport, as many a better man he could himself recollect had
been before him. He would go home and give in; let Sheila do with him
what she pleased. No one but a lunatic could have acted as he had, with
just that frantic hint of method so remarkable in the insane.
He left the common. A lamplighter was lighting the lamps. A thin
evening haze was on the air. If only he had stayed at home that fateful
afternoon! Who, what had induced him, enticed him to venture out? And
even with the thought welled up into his mind an intense desire to go
to the old green time-worn churchyard again; to sit there contentedly
alone, where none heeded the completest metamorphosis, down beside the
yew-trees. What a fool he had been. There alone, of course, lay his
only possible chance of recovery. He would go to-morrow. Perhaps Sheila
had not yet discovered his absence; and there would be no difficulty in
repeating so successful a stratagem.
Remembrance of his miserable mistake, of Miss Sinnet, faintly returned
to him as he swiftly mounted the steps to his porch. Poor old lady. He
would make amends for his discourtesy when he was quite himself again.
She should some day hear, perhaps, his infinitely tragic, infinitely
comic experience from his own lips. He would take her some flowers,
some old keepsake of his mother’s. What would he not do when the old
moods and brains of the stupid Arthur Lawford, whom he had appreciated
so little and so superficially, came back to him.
He ran up the steps and stopped dead, his hand in his pocket, chilled
and aghast. Sheila had taken his keys. He stood there, dazed and still,
beneath the dim yellow of his own fanlight; and once again that inward
spring flew back. ‘Brazen it out; brazen it out! Knock and ring!’
He knocked flamboyantly, and rang.
There came a quiet step and the door opened. ‘Dr Simon, of course, has
called?’ he inquired suavely.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Ah, and gone’—as I feared. And Mrs Lawford?’
‘I think Mrs Lawford is in, sir.’
Lawford put out a detaining hand. ‘We will not disturb her; we will not
disturb her. I can find my way up; oh yes, thank you!’
But Ada still palely barred the way. ‘I think, sir,’ she said, ‘Mrs
Lawford would prefer to see you herself; she told me most particularly
“all callers.” And Mr Lawford was not to be disturbed on any account.’
‘Disturbed? God forbid!’ said Lawford, but his dark eyes failed to move
these lightest hazel. ‘Well,’ he continued nonchalantly,
‘perhaps—perhaps it—_would_ be as well if Mrs Lawford should know that
I am here. No, thank you, I won’t come in. Please go and tell—’ But
even as the maid turned to obey, Sheila herself appeared at the
dining-room door in hat and veil.
Lawford hesitated an immeasurable moment. In one swift glance he
perceived the lamplit mystery of evening, beckoning, calling,
pleading—Fly, fly! Home’s here for you. Begin again, begin again. And
there before him in quiet and hostile decorum stood maid and mistress.
He took off his hat and stepped quickly in.
‘So late, so very late, I fear,’ he began glibly. ‘A sudden call, a
perfectly impossible distance. Shall we disturb him, do you think?’
‘Wouldn’t it,’ began Sheila softly, ‘be rather a pity perhaps? Dr Simon
seemed to think.... But, of course, you must decide that.’
Ada turned quiet small eyes.
‘No, no, by no means,’ he almost mumbled.
And a hard, slow smile passed over Sheila’s face. ‘Excuse me one
moment,’ she said; ‘I will see if he is awake.’ She swept swiftly
forward, superb and triumphant, beneath the gaze of those dark,
restless eyes. But so still was home and street that quite distinctly a
clear and youthful laughter was heard, and light footsteps approaching.
Sheila paused. Ada, in the act of closing the door, peered out. ‘Miss
Alice, ma’am,’ she said.
And in this infinitesimal advantage of time Dr Ferguson had seized his
vanishing opportunity, and was already swiftly mounting the stairs. Mrs
Lawford stood with veil half raised and coldly smiling lips and, as if
it were by pre-arrangement, her daughter’s laughing greeting from the
garden, and from the landing above her, a faint ‘Ah, and how are we
now?’ broke out simultaneously. And Ada, silent and discreet, had
thrown open the door again to the twilight and to the young people
ascending the steps.
Lawford was still sitting on his bed before a cold and ashy hearth when
Sheila knocked at the door.
‘Yes?’ he said; ‘who’s there?’ No answer followed. He rose with a
shuddering sigh and turned the key. His wife entered.
‘That little exhibition of finesse was part of our agreement, I
suppose?’
‘I say—’ began Lawford.
‘To creep out in my absence like a thief, and to return like a
mountebank; that was part of our compact?’
‘I say,’ he stubbornly began again, ‘did you _wire_ for Alice?’
‘Will you please answer my question? Am I to be a mere catspaw in your
intrigues, in this miserable masquerade before the servants? To set the
whole place ringing with the name of a doctor that doesn’t exist, and a
bedridden patient that slips out of the house with his bedroom key in
his pocket! Are you aware that Ada has been hammering at your door
every half-hour of your absence? Are you aware of that? How much,’ she
continued in a low, bitter voice, ‘how much should I offer for her
discretion?’
‘Who was that with Alice?’ inquired the same toneless voice.
‘I refuse to be ignored. I refuse to be made a child of. Will you
please answer me?’
Lawford turned. ‘Look here, Sheila,’ he began heavily, ‘what about
Alice? If you wired: well, it’s useless to say anything more. But if
you didn’t, I ask you just this one thing. Don’t tell her!’
‘Oh, I perfectly appreciate a father’s natural anxiety.’
Her husband drew up his shoulders as if to receive a blow. ‘Yes, yes,’
he said, ‘but you won’t?’
The sound of a young laughing voice came faintly up from below. ‘How
did Jimmie Fortescue know she was coming home to-day?’
‘Will you not inquire of Jimmie Fortescue for yourself?’
‘Oh, what is the use of sneering?’ began the dull voice again. ‘I am
horribly tired, Sheila. And try how you will, you can’t convince me
that you believe for a moment that I am not myself, that you are as
hard as you pretend. An acquaintance, even a friend might be deceived;
but husband and wife—oh no! It isn’t only a man’s face that’s
himself—or even his hands.’ He looked at them, straightened them slowly
out, and buried them in his pockets. ‘All I care about now is Alice. Is
she, or is she not going to be told? I am simply asking you to give her
just a chance.’
‘“Simply asking me to give Alice a chance”; now isn’t that really just
a little...?’
Lawford slowly shook his head. ‘You know in your heart it isn’t,
Sheila; you understand me quite well, although you persistently pretend
not to. I can’t argue now. I can’t speak up for myself. I am just about
as far down as I can go. It’s only Alice.’
‘I see; a lucid interval?’ suggested his wife in a low, trembling
voice.
‘Yes, yes, if you like,’ said her husband patiently, ‘“a lucid
interval.” Don’t please look at my face like that, Sheila. Think—think
that it’s just lupus, just some horrible disfigurement.’
Not much light was in the large room, and there was something so
extraordinarily characteristic of her husband in those stooping
shoulders, in the head hung a little forward, and in the
preternaturally solemn voice, that Sheila had to bend a little over the
bed to catch a glimpse of the sallow and keener face again. She sighed;
and even on her own strained ear her sigh sounded almost like one of
relief.
‘It’s useless, I know, to ask you anything while you are in this mood,’
continued Lawford dully; ‘I know that of old.’
The white, ringed hands clenched, ‘“Of old!”’
‘I didn’t mean anything. Don’t listen to what I say. It’s only—it’s
just Alice knowing, that was all; I mean at once.’
‘Don’t for a moment suppose I am not perfectly aware that it is only
Alice you think of. You were particularly anxious about my feelings,
weren’t you? You broke the news to me with the tenderest solicitude. I
am glad our—our daughter shares my husband’s love.’
‘Look here,’ said Lawford densely, ‘you know that I love you as much as
ever; but with this—as I am; what would be the good of my saying so?’
Mrs Lawford took a deep breath.
And a voice called softly at the door, ‘Mother, are you there? Is
father awake? May I come in?’
In a flash the memory returned to her; twenty-four hours ago she was
asking that very question of this unspeakable figure that sat
hunched-up before her.
‘One moment, dear,’ she called. And added in a very low voice, ‘Come
here!’
Lawford looked up. ‘What?’ he said.
‘Perhaps, perhaps,’ she whispered, ‘it isn’t quite so bad.’
‘For mercy’s sake, Sheila,’ he said, ‘don’t torture me; tell the poor
child to go away.’
She paused. ‘Are you there, Alice? Would you mind, father says, waiting
a little? He is so very tired.’
‘Too tired to.... Oh, very well, mother.’
Mrs Lawford opened the door, and called after her, ‘Is Jimmie gone?’
‘Oh, yes, hours.’
‘Where did you meet?’
‘I couldn’t get a carriage at the station. He carried my dressing-bag;
I begged him not to. The other’s coming on. You know what Jimmie is.
How very, very lucky I _did_ come home. I don’t know what made me; just
an impulse; they did laugh at me so. Father dear—do speak to me; how
are you now?’
Lawford opened his mouth, gulped, and shook his head.
‘Ssh, dear!’ whispered Sheila, ‘I think he has fallen asleep. I will be
down in a minute.’ Mrs Lawford was about to close the door when Ada
appeared.
‘If you please, ma’am,’ she said, ‘I have been waiting, as you told me,
to let Dr Ferguson out, but it’s nearly seven now; and the table’s not
laid yet.’
‘I really should have thought, Ada,’ Sheila began, then caught back the
angry words, and turned and looked over her shoulder into the room. ‘Do
you think you will need anything more, Dr Ferguson?’ she asked in a
sepulchral voice.
Again Lawford’s lips moved; again he shook his head.
‘One moment, Ada,’ she said closing the door. ‘Some more medicine—what
medicine? Quick! She mustn’t suspect.’
‘“What medicine?”’ repeated Lawford stolidly.
‘Oh, vexing, vexing; don’t you _see_ we must send her out? Don’t you
see? What was it you sent to Critchett’s for last night? Tell him
that’s gone: we want more of _that_.’
Lawford stared heavily. Oh, yes, yes,’ he said thickly, ‘more of
that....’
Sheila, with a shrug of extreme distaste and vexation, hastily opened
the door. ‘Dr Ferguson wants a further supply of the drug which Mr
Critchett made up for Mr Lawford yesterday evening. You had better go
at once, Ada, and please make as much haste as you possibly can.’
‘I say, I say,’ began Lawford; but it was too late, the door was shut.
‘How I detest this wretched falsehood and subterfuge. What could have
induced you....?’
‘Yes,’ said her husband, ‘what! I think I’ll be getting to bed again,
Sheila; I forgot I had been ill. And now I do really feel very tired.
But I should like to feel—in spite of this hideous—I should like to
feel we are friends, Sheila.’
Sheila almost imperceptibly shuddered, crossed the room, and faced the
still, almost lifeless mask. ‘I spoke,’ she said, in a low, cold,
difficult voice—‘I spoke in a temper this morning. You must try to
understand what a shock it has been to me. Now, I own it frankly, I
know you are—Arthur. But God only knows how it frightens me,
and—and—horrifies me.’ She shut her eyes beneath her veil. They waited
on in silence a while.
‘Poor boy!’ she said at last, lightly touching the loose sleeve; ‘be
brave; it will all come right, soon. Meanwhile, for Alice’s sake, if
not for mine, don’t give way to—to caprices, and all that. Keep quietly
here, Arthur. And—and forgive my impatience.’
He put out his hand as if to touch her. ‘Forgive you!’ he said humbly,
pushing it stubbornly back into his pocket again. ‘Oh, Sheila, the
forgiveness is all on your side. You know _I_ have nothing to forgive.’
A long silence fell between them.
‘Then, to-night,’ at last began Sheila wearily, drawing back, ‘we say
nothing to Alice, except that you are too tired—just nervous
prostration—to see her. What we should do without this influenza, I
cannot conceive. Mr Bethany will probably look in on his way home; and
then we can talk it over—we can talk it over again. So long as you are
like this, yourself, in mind, why I—What is it now?’ she broke off
querulously.
‘If you please, ma’am, Mr Critchett says he doesn’t know Dr Ferguson,
his name’s not in the Directory, and there must be something wrong with
the message, and he’s sorry, but he must have it in writing because
there was more even in the first packet than he ought by rights to
send. What shall I do, if you please?’
Still looking at her husband. Sheila listened quietly to the end, and
then, as if in inarticulate disdain, she deliberately shrugged her
shoulders, and went out to play her part unaided.