Lawford sat on in the darkness, and now one sentence and now another of
their talk would repeat itself in his memory, in much the same way as
one listlessly turns over an antiquated diary, to read here and there a
flattened and almost meaningless sentiment. Sometimes a footstep passed
echoing along the path under the trees, then his thoughts would leave
him, and he would listen and listen till it had died quite out. It was
all so very far away. And they too—these talkers—so very far away; as
remote and yet as clear as the characters in a play when they have made
their final bow, and have left the curtained stage, and one is standing
uncompanioned and nearly the last of the spectators, and the lights
that have summoned back reality again are being extinguished. It was
only by painful effort of mind that he kept recalling himself to
himself—why he was here; what it all meant; that this was indeed
actuality.
Yet, after all, this by now was his customary loneliness: there was
little else he desired for the present than the hospitality of the
dark. He glanced around him in the clear, black, stirless air. Here and
there, it seemed, a humped or spindled form held against all comers its
passive place. Here and there a tiny faintness of light played. Night
after night these chairs and tables kept their blank vigil. Why, he
thought, pleased as an overtired child with the fancy, in a sense they
were always alone, shut up in a kind of senselessness—just like us all.
But what—what, he had suddenly risen from his chair to ask himself—what
on earth are they alone with? No precise answer had been forthcoming to
that question. But as in turning in the doorway, he looked out into the
night, flashing here and there in dark spaces of the sky above the
withering apple leaves—the long dark wall and quiet untrodden road—with
the tumultuous beating of the stars—one thing at least he was conscious
of having learned in these last few days: he knew what kind of a place
he was alone _in_.
It seemed to weave a spell over him, to call up a nostalgia he had lost
all remembrance of since childhood. And that queer homesickness, at any
rate, was all Sabathier’s doing, he thought, smiling in his rather
careworn fashion. Sabathier! It was this mystery, bereft now of all
fear, and this beauty together, that made life the endless, changing
and yet changeless, thing it was. And yet mystery and loveliness alike
were only really appreciable with one’s legs, as it were, dangling down
over into the grave.
Just with one’s lantern lit, on the edge of the whispering unknown, and
a reiterated going back out of the solitude into the light and warmth,
to the voices and glancing of eyes, to say good-bye:—that after all was
this life on earth for those who watched as well as acted. What if
one’s earthly home were empty?—still the restless fretted traveller
must tarry; ‘for the horrible worst of it is, my friend,’ he said, as
if to some silent companion listening behind him, ‘the worst of it is,
_your_ way was just simply, solely suicide.’ What was it Herbert had
called it? Yes, a cul-de-sac—black, lofty, immensely still and old and
picturesque, but none the less merely a contemptible cul-de-sac; no
abiding place, scarcely even sufficing with its flagstones for a groan
from the fugitive and deluded refugee. There was no peace for the
wicked. The question of course then came in—Was there any peace
anywhere, for anybody?
He smiled at a sudden odd remembrance of a quiet, sardonic old aunt
whom he used to stay with as a child. ‘Children should be seen and not
heard,’ she would say, peering at him over his favourite pudding.
His eyes rested vacantly on the darkling street. He fell again into
reverie, gigantically brooded over by shapes only imagination dimly
conceived of: the remote alleys of his mind astir with a shadowy and
ceaseless traffic which it wasn’t at least _this_ life’s business to
hearken after, or regard. And as he stood there in a mysteriously
thronging peaceful solitude such as he had never known before, faintly
out of the silence broke the sound of approaching hoofs. His heart
seemed to gather itself close; a momentary blindness veiled his eyes,
so wildly had his blood surged up into cheek and brain. He remained,
caught up, with head slightly inclined, listening, as, with an
interminable tardiness, measureless anguished hope died down into
nothing in his mind.
Cold and heavy, his heart began to beat again, as if to catch up those
laggard moments. He turned with an infinite revulsion of feeling to
look out on the lamps of the old fly that had drawn up at his gate.
He watched incuriously a little old lady rather arduously alight,
pause, and look up at his darkened windows, and after a momentary
hesitation, and a word over her shoulder to the cabman, stoop and
fumble at the iron latch. He watched her with a kind of wondering
aversion, still scarcely tinged with curiosity. She had succeeded in
lifting the latch and in pushing her way through, and was even now
steadily advancing towards him along the tiled path. And a minute after
he recognised with the strangest reactions the quiet old figure that
had shared a sunset with him ages and ages ago—his mother’s old
schoolfellow, Miss Sinnet.
He was already ransacking the still faintly-perfumed dining-room for
matches, and had just succeeded in relighting the still-warm lamp, when
he heard her quiet step in the porch, even felt her peering in, in the
gloom, with all her years’ trickling customariness behind her, a little
dubious of knocking on a wide-open door.
But the lamp lit Lawford went out again and welcomed his visitor. ‘I am
alone,’ he was explaining gravely, ‘my wife’s away and the whole house
topsy-turvy. How very, very kind of you!’
The old lady was breathing a little heavily after her ascent of the
steep steps, and seemed not to have noticed his outstretched hand. None
the less she followed him in, and when she was well advanced into the
lighted room, she sighed deeply, raised her veil over the front of her
bonnet, and leisurely took out her spectacles.
‘I suppose,’ she was explaining in a little quiet voice, ‘you _are_ Mr
Arthur Lawford, but as I did not catch sight of a light in any of the
windows I began to fear that the cabman might have set me down at the
wrong house.’
She raised her head, and first through, and then over her spectacles
she deliberately and steadfastly regarded him.
‘Yes,’ she said to herself, and turned, not as it seemed entirely with
satisfaction, to look for a chair. He wheeled the most comfortable up
to the table.
‘I have been visiting my old friend Miss Tucker—Rev W. Tucker’s
daughter—she, I knew, could give me your address; and sure enough she
did. Your road, d’ye see, was on my way home. And I determined, in
spite of the hour, just to inquire. You must understand, Mr Lawford,
there was something that I rather particularly wanted to say to you.
But there!—you’re looking sadly, sadly ill; and,’ she glanced round a
little inquisitively, ‘I think my story had better wait for a more
convenient occasion.’
‘Not at all, Miss Sinnet; please not,’ Lawford assured her, ‘really. I
have been ill, but I’m now practically quite myself again. My wife and
daughter have gone away for a few days; and I follow to-morrow, so if
you’ll forgive such a very poor welcome, it may be my—my only chance.
Do please let me hear.’
The old lady leant back in her chair, placed her hands on its arms and
softly panted, while out of the rather broad serenity of her face she
sat blinking up at her companion as if after a long talk, instead of at
the beginning of one. ‘No,’ she repeated reflectively, ‘I don’t like
your looks at all; yet here we are, enjoying beautiful autumn weather,
Mr Lawford, why not make use of it?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Lawford, ‘I do. I have been making tremendous use of
it.’
Her eyelid flickered at his candid glance. ‘And does your business
permit of much walking?’
‘Well, I’ve been malingering these last few days idling at home; but I
am usually more or less my own man, Miss Sinnet. I walk a little.’
‘H’m, but not much in my direction, Mr Lawford?’ she quizzed him.
‘All horrible indolence, Miss Sinnet. But I often—often think of you;
and especially just lately.’
‘Well, now,’ she wriggled round her head to get a better view of him
rather stiffly seated on his chair, ‘that’s very peculiar; because I
too have been thinking lately a great deal of you. And yet—I fancy I
shall succeed in mystifying you presently—not precisely of you, but of
somebody else!’
‘You do mystify me—“somebody else”!’ he replied gallantly. ‘And that is
the story, I suppose?’
‘That’s the story,’ repeated Miss Sinnet with some little triumph.
‘Now, let me see; it was on Saturday last—yes, Saturday evening; a
wonderful sunset; Bewley Heath.’
‘Oh yes; my daughter’s favourite walk.’
‘And your daughter’s age now?’
‘She’s nearly sixteen; Alice, you know.’
‘Ah, yes, Alice; to be sure. It _is_ a beautiful walk, and if fine, I
generally take mine there too. It’s near; there’s shade; it’s very
little frequented; and I can wander and muse undisturbed. And that I
think is pretty well all that an old woman like me is fit for, Mr
Lawford. “Nearly sixteen!” Is it possible? Dear, dear me? But let me
get on. On my way home from the Heath, you may be aware, before one
reaches the road again, there’s a somewhat steep ascent. I haven’t the
strength I had, and whether I’m fatigued or not, I have always made it
a rule to rest awhile on a most convenient little seat at the summit,
admire the view—what I can see of it—and then make my way quietly,
quietly home. On Saturday, however, and it most rarely occurs—once, I
remember, when a very civil nursemaid was sitting with two charmingly
behaved little children in the sunshine, and I heard they were my old
friend Major Loder’s _son’s_ children—on Saturday, as I was saying, my
own particular little haunt was already occupied.’ She glanced back at
him from out of her thoughts, as it were. ‘By a gentleman. I say,
gentleman; though I must confess that his conduct—perhaps, too, a
little something even in his appearance, somewhat belied the term.
Anyhow, gentleman let us call him.’
Lawford, all attention, nodded, and encouragingly smiled.
‘I’m not one of those tiresome, suspicious people, Mr Lawford, who
distrust strangers. I have never been molested, and I have enjoyed many
and many a most interesting, and sometimes instructive, talk with an
individual whom I’ve never seen in my life before, and this side of the
grave perhaps, am never likely to see again.’ She lifted her head with
pursed lips, and gravely yet still flickeringly regarded him once more.
‘Well, I made some trifling remark—the weather, the view, what-not,’
she explained with a little jerk of her shoulder—‘and to my extreme
astonishment he turned and addressed me by name—Miss Sinnet.
Unmistakably—Sinnet. Now, perhaps, and very rightly, you won’t
considered _that_ a very peculiar thing to do? But you will recollect,
Mr Lawford, that I had been sitting there a considerable time. Surely,
now, if you had recognised my face you would have addressed me at
once?’
‘Was he, do you think, Miss Sinnet, a little uncertain, perhaps?’
‘Never mind, never mind; let me get on with my story first. The next
thing my gentleman does is more mysterious still. His whole manner was
a little peculiar, perhaps—a certain restlessness, what, in fact, one
might be almost tempted to call a certain furtiveness of behaviour.
Never mind. What he does next is to ask me a riddle! Perhaps you won’t
think _that_ was peculiar either?’
‘What was the riddle?’ smiled Lawford.
‘Why, to be sure, to guess his name! Simply guided, so I surmised, by
some very faint resemblance in his face to his _mother_, who was, he
assured me, an old schoolfellow of mine at _Brighton_. I thought and
thought. I confess the adventure was beginning to be a little
perplexing. But of course, very, very few of my old schoolfellows
remain distinctly in my memory now; and I fear _that_ grows more
treacherous the longer I live. Their faces as girls are clear enough.
But later in life most of them drifted out of sight—many, alas, are
dead; and, well, at last I narrowed my man down to one. And who now, do
you suppose _that_ was?’
Lawford sustained an expression of abysmal mystification. ‘Do tell
me—who?’
‘Your own poor dear mother, Mr Lawford.’
‘_He_ said so?’
‘No, no,’ said the old lady, with some vexation, closing her eyes. ‘_I_
said so. He asked me to guess. And I guessed Mary Lawford; now do you
see?’
‘Yes, yes. But _was_ he like her, Miss Sinnet? That was really very,
very extraordinary. Did you see _any_ likeness in his face?’
Miss Sinnet very deliberately took her spectacles out of their case
again. ‘Now, see here, sir; this is being practical, isn’t it? I’m just
going to take a leisurely glance at yours. But you mustn’t let me
forget the time. You must look after the time for me.’
‘It’s about a quarter to ten,’ said Lawford, having glanced first at
the stopped clock on the chimney-piece and then at his watch. He then
sat quite still and endeavoured to sit at ease, while the old lady
lifted her bonneted head and ever so gravely and benignly surveyed him.
‘H’m,’ she said at last. ‘There’s no mistaking _you_. It’s Mary’s chin,
and Mary’s brow—with just a little something, perhaps, of her dreamy
eye. But you haven’t all her looks, Mr Lawford, by any manner of means.
She was a very beautiful girl, and so vivacious, so fanciful—it was, I
suppose the foreign strain showing itself. Even marriage did not quite
succeed in spoiling her.’
‘The foreign strain?’ Lawford glanced with a kind of fleeting fixity at
the quiet old figure. ‘The foreign strain?’
Your mother’s maiden name, my dear Mr Lawford, surely memory does not
deceive me in that, was van der Gucht. _That_, I believe, is a foreign
name.’
‘Ah, yes,’ said Lawford, his rising thoughts sinking quietly to rest
again. ‘Van der Gucht, of course. I—how stupid of me!’
‘As a matter of fact, your mother was very proud of her Dutch blood.
But there,’ she flung out little fin-like sleeves, ‘if you don’t let me
keep to my story I shall go back as uneasy as I came. And you didn’t,’
she added even more fretfully, ‘you didn’t tell me the time.’
Lawford stared at his watch again for some few moments without
replying. ‘It’s a few minutes to ten,’ he said at last.
‘Dear me! And I’m keeping the cabman! I must hurry on. Well, now, I put
it to you; you shall be my father confessor—though I detest the idea in
real life—was I wrong? Was I justified in professing to the poor fellow
that I detected a likeness when there was extremely little likeness
there?’
‘What! None at all!’ cried Lawford; ‘not the faintest trace?’
‘My dear good Mr Lawford,’ she expostulated, patting her lap, ‘there’s
very little more than a trace of my dear beautiful Mary in _you_, her
own son. How could there be—how could you expect it in him, a complete
stranger? No, it was nothing but my own foolish kindliness. It might
have been Mary’s son for all that I could recollect. I haven’t for
years, please remember, had the pleasure of receiving a visit from
_you_. I am firmly of opinion that I was justified. My motive was
entirely benevolent. And then—to my positive amazement—well, I won’t
say hard things of the absent; but he suddenly turns round on me with a
“Thank you, Miss Bennett.” Bennett, hark ye! Perhaps you won’t agree
that I had any justification in being vexed and—and affronted at
_that_.’
‘I think, Miss Sinnet,’ said Lawford solemnly, ‘that you were perfectly
justified. Oh, perfectly. I wonder even you had the patience to give
the real Arthur Lawford a chance to ask your forgiveness for—for the
stranger.’
‘Well, candidly,’ said Miss Sinnett severely. ‘I was very much
scandalised; and I shouldn’t be here now telling you my story if it
hadn’t been for your mother.’
‘My mother!’
The old lady rather grimly enjoyed his confusion. ‘Yes, Mr Lawford,
your mother. I don’t know why—something in his manner, something in his
face—so dejected, so unhappy, so—if it is not uncharitablnesse to say
it—so wild: it has haunted me: I haven’t been able to put the matter
out of my mind. I have lain awake in my bed thinking of him. Why did he
speak to me, I keep asking myself. Why did he play me so very aimless a
trick? How had he learned my name? Why was he sitting there so solitary
and so dejected? And worse even than that, what has become of him? A
little more patience, a little more charity, perhaps—what might I not
have done for him? The whole thing has harassed and distressed me more
than I can say. Would you believe it, I have actually twice, and on one
occasion, three times in a day made my way to the seat—hoping to see
him there. And I am not so young as I was. And then, as I say, to crown
all, I had a most remarkable dream about your mother. But that’s my own
affair. Elderly people like me are used—well, perhaps I won’t say
used—we’re not surprised or disturbed by visits from those who have
gone before. We live, in a sense, among the tombs; though I would not
have you fancy it’s in any way a morbid or unhappy life to lead. We
don’t talk about it—certainly not to young people. Let them enjoy their
Eden while they can; though there’s plenty of apples, I fear, on the
Tree yet, Mr Lawford.’
She leant forward and whispered it with a big, simple smile:—‘We don’t
even discuss it much among ourselves. But as one gets nearer and nearer
to the wicket-gate there’s other company around one than you’ll find
in—in the directory. And that is why I have just come on here tonight.
Very probably my errand may seem to have no meaning for you. You look
ill, but you don’t appear to be in any great trouble or adversity, as I
feared in my—well, there—as I feared you might be. I must say, though,
it seems a terribly empty house. And no lights, too!’
She slowly, with a little trembling nodding of her bonnet, turned her
head and glanced quietly, fixedly, and unflinchingly, out of the
half-open door. ‘But that’s not my affair.’ And again she looked at him
for a little while.
Then she stooped forward and touched him kindly and trustingly on the
knee. ‘Trouble or no trouble,’ she said, ‘it’s never too late to remind
a man of his mother. And I’m sure, Mr Lawford, I’m very glad to hear
you are struggling up out of your illness again. We must keep a brave
heart, forty or seventy, whichever we may be: “While the evil days come
not nor the years draw nigh when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in
them,” though they have not come to me even yet; and I trust from the
bottom of my heart, not to _you_.’
She looked at him without a trace of emotion or constraint in her
large, quiet face, and their eyes met for a moment in that brief,
fixed, baffling fashion that seems to prove that mankind is after all
but a dumb masked creature saddled with the vain illusion of speech.
‘And now that I’ve eased my conscience,’ said the old lady, pulling
down her veil, ‘I must beg pardon for intruding at such an hour of the
evening. And may I have your arm down those dreadful steps? Really, Mr
Lawford, judging from the houses they erect for us, the builders must
have a very peculiar notion of mankind. Is the fly still there? I
expressly told the man to wait, and what I am going to do if—!’
‘He’s there,’ Lawford reassured her, craning his neck in their slow
progress to catch a peep into the quiet road. And like a flock of birds
scared by a chance comer at their feeding in some deserted field, a
whirring cloud of memories swept softly up in his mind—memories whose
import he made no effort to discover. None the less, the leisurely
descent became in their company something of a real experience even in
such a brimming week.
‘I hope, some day, you will really tell me your dream?’ he said,
pushing the old lady’s silk skirts in after her as she slowly climbed
into the carriage.
‘Ah, my dear Lawford, when you are my age,’ she called back to him,
groping her way into the rather musty gloom, ‘you’ll dream such dreams
for yourself. Life’s not what’s just the fashion. And there are queerer
things to be seen and heard just quietly in one’s solitude than this
busy life gives us time to discover. But as for my mystifying Bewley
acquaintance—I confess I cannot make head or tail of him.’
‘Was he,’ said Lawford rather vaguely, looking up into the dim white
face that with its plumes filled nearly the whole carriage window, ‘was
his face very unpleasing?’
She raised a gloved hand. ‘It has haunted me, haunted me, Mr Lawford;
its—its conflict! Poor fellow; I hope, I do hope, he faced his trouble
out. But I shall never see him again.’
He squeezed the trembling, kindly old hand. ‘I bet, Miss Sinnet,’ he
said earnestly, ‘even your having _thought_ kindly of the poor beggar
eased his mind—whoever he may have been. I assure you, assure you of
that.’
‘Ay, but I did more than _think_,’ replied the old lady with a chuckle
that might have seemed even a little derisive if it had not been so
profoundly magnanimous.
He watched the old black fly roll slowly off, and still smiling at Miss
Sinnet’s inscrutable finesse went back into the house. ‘And now, my
friend,’ he said, addressing peacefully the thronging darkness, ‘the
time’s nearly up for me to go too.’
He had made up his mind. Or, rather, it seemed as if in the unregarded
silences of this last long talk his mind had made up itself. Only among
impossibilities had he the shadow of a choice. In this old haunted
house, amid this shallow turmoil no practicable clue could show itself
of a way out. He would go away for a while.
He left the door ajar behind him for the moments still left, and stood
for a while thinking. Then, lamp in hand, he descended into the
breakfast-room for pen, ink, and paper. He sat for some time in that
underground calm, nibbling his pen like a harassed and self-conscious
schoolboy. At last he began:
‘MY DEAR SHEILA,—I must tell you, to begin with, that the _change_ has
now all passed away. I am—as near as man can be—completely myself
again. And next: that I overheard all that was said to-night in the
dining-room.
‘I’m sorry for listening; but it’s no good going over all that now.
Here I am, and, as you said, for Alice’s sake we must make the best of
it. I am going away for a while, to get, if I can, a chance to quiet
down. I suppose every one comes sooner or later to a time in life when
there is nothing else to be done but just shut one’s eyes and blunder
on. And that’s all I can do now—blunder on....’
He paused, and suddenly, at the echo of the words in his mind, a
revulsion of feeling—shame and hatred of himself surged up, and he tore
his letter into tiny pieces. Once more he began, ‘my dear Sheila,’
dropped his pen, sat on for a long time, cold and inert, harbouring
almost unendurably a pitiful, hopeless longing.... He would write to
Grisel another day.
He leant back in his chair, his fingers pressed against his eyelids.
And clearer than those which myriad-hued reality can ever present,
pictures of the imagination swam up before his eyes. It seemed, indeed,
that even now some ghost, some revenant of himself was sitting there,
in the old green churchyard, roofed only with a thousand thousand
stars. The breath of darkness stirred softly on his cheek. Some little
scampering shape slipped by. A bird on high cried weirdly, solemnly,
over the globe. He shuddered faintly, and looked out again into the
small lamplit room.
Here, too, was quite as inexplicable a coming and going. A fly was
walking on the table beneath his eyes, with the uneasy gait of one that
has outlived his hour and most of his companions. Mice were scampering
and shrieking in the empty kitchen. And all about him, in the viewless
air, the phantoms of another life passed by, unmindful of his
motionless body. He fell into a lethargy of the senses, and only
gradually became aware after a while of the strange long-drawn sigh of
rain at the window. He rose and opened it. The night air flowed in,
chilled with its waters and faintly fragrant of the dust. It soothed
away all thought for a while. He turned back to his chair. He would
wait until the rain had lulled before starting....
A little before midnight the door was softly, and with extreme care,
pushed open, and Mr Bethany’s old face, with an intense and sharpened
scrutiny, looked in on the lamplit room. And as if still intent on the
least sound within the empty walls around him, he came near, and
stooping across the table, stared through his spectacles at the
sidelong face of his friend, so still, with hands so lightly laid on
the arms of his chair that the old man had need to watch closely to
detect in his heavy slumber the slow measured rise and fall of his
breast.
He turned wearily away muttering a little, between an immeasurable
relief and a now almost intolerable medley of vexations. What _was_
this monstrous web of Craik’s? What _had_ the creature been nodding and
ducketing about?—those whisperings, that tattling? And what in the end,
when you were old and sour and out-strategied, what was the end to be
of this urgent dream called Life? He sat quietly down and drew his
hands over his face, pushed his lean knotted fingers up under his
spectacles, then sat blinking—and softly slowly deciphered the solitary
‘My dear Sheila’ on Lawford’s note-paper. ‘H’m,’ he muttered, and
looked up again at the dark still eyelids that in the strange torpor of
sleep might yet be dimly conveying to the dreaming brain behind them
some hint of his presence. ‘I wish to goodness, you wonderful old
creature,’ he muttered, wagging his head, ‘I wish to goodness you’d
wake up.’
For some time he sat on, listening to the still soft downpour on the
fading leaves. ‘They don’t come to _me_,’ he said softly again; with a
tiny smile on his old face. ‘It’s that old medieval Craik: with a face
like a last year’s rookery!’ And again he sat, with head a little
sidelong, listening now to the infinitesimal sounds of life without,
now to the thoughts within, and ever and again he gazed steadfastly on
Lawford.
At last it seemed in the haunted quietness other thoughts came to him.
A cloud, as it were of youth, drew over the wrinkled skin, composed the
birdlike keenness; his head nodded. Once, like Lawford in the darkness
at Widderstone, he glanced up sharply across the lamplight at his
phantasmagorical shadowy companion, heard the steady surge of
multitudinous rain-drops, like the roar of Time’s winged chariot
hurrying near; then he too, with spectacles awry, bobbed on in his
chair, a weary old sentinel on the outskirts of his friend’s denuded
battlefield.