The Sabbath, pale with September sunshine, and monotonous with chiming
bells, had passed 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, grass stooping beneath a
grey and wind-swept sky. He started up; and the remembrance of the
morning returned to him—the glassy 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 glass, 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 harass 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 attitude 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.’
‘I am very sorry, Sheila, to be so childish. But I’m not, say what you
like, blind. You _are_ pretty: I’d repeat it if I was burning at the
stake.’
Sheila lowered her eyes softly on to the rich-toned picture in the
glass. ‘Supposing,’ she said, watching her lips move, ‘supposing—of
course, I know you are getting better and all that—but supposing you
don’t change back as Mr Bethany thinks, what will you do? Honestly,
Arthur, when I think over it calmly, the whole tragedy comes back on me
with such a force it sweeps me off my feet; I am for the moment
scarcely my own mistress. What would you do?’
‘I think, Sheila,’ replied a low, infinitely weary voice, ‘I think I
should marry again.’ It was the same wavering, faintly ironical voice
that had slightly discomposed Dr Simon that same morning.
‘“Marry again”!’ exclaimed incredulously the full lips in the
looking-glass. ‘Who?’
‘_You_, dear!’
Sheila turned softly round, conscious in a most humiliating manner that
she had ever so little flushed.
Her husband was pouring out his tea, unaware, apparently, of her change
of position. She watched him curiously. In spite of all her reason, of
her absolute certainty, she wondered even again for a moment if this
really could be Arthur. And for the first time she realised the power
and mastery of that eager and far too hungry face. Her mind seemed to
pause, fluttering in air, like a bird in the wind. She hastened rather
unsteadily to the door.
‘Will you want anything more, do you think, for an hour?’ she asked.
Her husband looked up over his little table. ‘Is Alice going with you?’
‘Oh yes; poor child, she looks so pale and miserable. We are going to
Mrs Sherwin’s, and then on to Church. You will lock your door?’
‘Yes, I will lock my door.’
‘And I do hope Arthur—nothing rash!’
A change, that seemed almost the effect of actual shadow, came over his
face. ‘I wish you could stay with me,’ he said slowly. ‘I don’t think
you have any idea what—what I go through.’
It was as if a child had asked on the verge of terror for a candle in
the dark. But an hour’s terror is better than a lifetime of timidity.
Sheila sighed.
‘I think,’ she said, ‘I too might say that. But there; giving way will
do nothing for either of us. I shall be gone only for an hour, or two
at the most. And I told Mr Bethany I should have to come out before the
sermon: it’s only Mr Craik.’
‘But why Mrs Sherwin? She’d worm a secret out of one’s grave.’
‘It’s useless to discuss that, Arthur; you have always consistently
disliked my friends. It’s scarcely likely that you would find any
improvement in them now.’
‘Oh, well—’ he began. But the door was already closed.
‘Sheila!’ he called in a burst of anger.
‘Well, Arthur?’
‘You have taken my latchkey.’
Sheila came hastily in again. ‘Your latchkey?’
‘I am going out.’
‘“Going out!”—you will not be so mad, so criminal; and after your
promise!’
He stood up. ‘It is useless to argue. If I do not go out, I shall
certainly go mad. As for criminal—why, that’s a woman’s word. Who on
earth is to know me?’
‘It is of no consequence, then, that the servants are already gossiping
about this impossible Dr Ferguson; that you are certain to be seen
either going or returning; that Alice is bound to discover that you are
well enough to go out, and yet not even enough to say good-night to
your own daughter—oh, it’s monstrous, it’s a frantic, a heartless thing
to do!’ Her voice vaguely suggested tears.
Lawford eyed her coldly and stubbornly—thinking of the empty room he
would leave awaiting his return, its lamp burning, its fire-flames
shining. It was almost a physical discomfort, this longing unspeakable
for the twilight, the green secrecy and the silence of the graves.
‘Keep them out of the way,’ he said in a low voice; ‘it will be dark
when I come in.’ His hardened face lit up. ‘It’s useless to attempt to
dissuade me.’
‘Why must you always be hurting me? why do you seem to delight in
trying to estrange me?’ Husband and wife faced each other across the
clear-lit room. He did not answer.
‘For the last time,’ she said in a quiet, hard voice, ‘I ask you not to
go.’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Ask me not to come back,’ he said; ‘that’s
nearer your hope.’ He turned his face to the fire. Without moving he
heard her go out, return, pause, and go out again. And when he
deliberately wheeled round in his chair the little key lay conspicuous
there on the counterpane.