Читать книгу The Return - Walter de la Mare - Страница 9

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It was but little after daybreak when Mrs. Lawford, after listening at his door a while, turned the key and looked in on her husband. Blue-grey light from between the venetian blinds just dusked the room. She stood in a bluish dressing-gown, her hand on her bosom, looking down on the lean impassive face. For the briefest instant her heart had leapt with an indescribable surmise; to fall dull as lead once more. Breathing equably and quietly, the strange figure lay stretched upon the bed. ‘How can he sleep? How can he sleep?’ she whispered with a black and hopeless indignation. What a night she had had! And he!

She turned noiselessly away. The candle had guttered to extinction. The big glass reflected her, voluminous and wan, her dark-ringed eyes, full lips, rich, glossy hair, and rounded chin. ‘Yes, yes,’ it seemed to murmur mournfully. She turned away, and drawing stealthily near stooped once more quite low, and examined the face on the pillow with lynx-like concentration. And though every nerve revolted at the thought, she was finally convinced, unwillingly, but assuredly, that her husband was here. Indeed, if it were not so, how could she for a single moment have accepted the possibility that he was a stranger? He seemed to haunt, like a ghostly emanation, this strange, detestable face—as memory supplies the features concealed beneath a mask. The face was still and stony, like one dead or imaged in wax, yet beneath it dreams were passing—silly, ordinary Lawford dreams. She was almost alarmed at the terribly rancorous hatred she felt for the face … ‘It was just like Arthur to be so taken in!’

Then she too remembered Quain, and remembered also in the slowly paling dusk that the house would soon be stirring. She went out and noiselessly locked the door again. But it was useless to begin looking for Quain now—her husband had a good many dull books, most of them his ‘eccentric’ father’s. What must the servants be thinking? and what was all that talk about a mysterious visitor? She would have to question Ada—diplomatically. She returned to her room and sat down in an arm-chair, and waited. In sheer weariness she fell into a doze, and woke at the sound of dustpan and broom. She rang the bell, and asked for hot water, tea, and a basin of cornflour.

‘And please, Ada, be as quiet as possible over your work; your master is in a nice sleep, and must not be disturbed on any account. In the front bedroom.’ She looked up suddenly. ‘By the way, who let Dr. Ferguson in last night?’ It was dangerous, but successful.

‘Dr. Ferguson, ma’am? Oh, you mean … He WAS in.’

Sheila smiled resignedly. ‘Was in? What do you mean, “was in”? And where were you, then?’

‘I had been sent out to Critchett’s, the chemist’s.’

‘Of course, of course. So cook let Dr. Ferguson in, then? Why didn’t you say so before, Ada? And did you bring the medicine with you?’

‘It was a packet in an envelope, ma’am. But Cook is sure she heard no knock—not while I was out. So Dr. Ferguson must have come in quite unbeknown.’

‘Well, really,’ said Sheila, ‘it seems very difficult to get at the truth sometimes. And when illness is in the house I cannot understand why there should be no one available to answer the door. You must have left it ajar, unsecured, when you went out. And pray, what if Dr. Ferguson had been some common tramp? That would have been a nice thing.’

‘I am quite certain,’ said Ada a little flatly, ‘that I did shut the door. And cook says she never so much as stirred from the kitchen till I came down the area steps with the packet. And that’s all I know about it, ma’am; except that he was here when I came back. I did not know even there was a Dr. Ferguson; and my mother has lived here nineteen years.’

‘We must be thankful your mother enjoys such good health,’ replied Mrs. Lawford suavely. ‘Please tell cook to be very careful with the cornflour—to be sure it’s well mixed and thoroughly done.’

Mrs. Lawford’s eyes followed with a certain discomfort those narrow print shoulders descending the stairs. And this abominable ruse was—Arthur’s! She ran up lightly and listened with her ear to the panel of his door. And just as she was about to turn away again, there came a little light knock at the front door.

Mrs. Lawford paused at the loop of the staircase; and not altogether with gratitude or relief she heard the voice of Mr. Bethany, inquiring in cautious but quite audible tones after her husband.

She dressed quickly and went down. The little white old man looked very solitary in the long, fireless, drawing-room.

‘I could not sleep,’ he said; ‘I don’t think I grasped in the least, I don’t indeed, until I was nearly home, the complexity of our problem. I came, in fact, to a lamppost. It was casting a peculiar shadow. And then—you know how such thoughts seize us, my dear—like a sudden inspiration, I realised how tenuous, how appallingly tenuous a hold we every one of us have on our mere personality. But that,’ he continued rapidly, ‘that’s only for ourselves—and after the event. Ours, just now, is to act. And first—?’

‘You really do, then—you really are convinced—’ began Mrs. Lawford.

But Mr. Bethany was too quick. ‘We must be most circumspect. My dear friend, we must be most circumspect, for all our sakes. And this, you’ll say,’ he added, smiling, stretching out his arms, his soft hat in one hand, his umbrella in the other—‘this is being circumspect—a seven o’clock in the morning call! But you see, my dear, I have come, as I took the precaution of explaining to the maid, because it’s now or never to-day. It does so happen that I have to take a wedding for an old friend’s niece at Witchett; so when in need, you see, Providence enables us to tell even the conventional truth. Now really, how is he? has he slept? has he recalled himself at all? is there any change?—and, dear me, how are YOU?’

Mrs. Lawford sighed. ‘A broken night is really very little to a mother,’ she said. ‘He is still asleep. He hasn’t, I think, stirred all night.’

‘Not stirred!’ Mr. Bethany repeated. ‘You baffle me. And you have watched?’

‘Oh no,’ was the cheerful answer; ‘I felt that quiet, solitude; space, was everything; he preferred it so. He—he changed alone, I suppose. Don’t you think it almost stands to reason that he will be alone … when he comes back? Was I right? But there, it’s useless, it’s worse than useless, to talk like this. My husband is gone. Some terrible thing has happened. Whatever the mystery may be, he will never come back alive. My only fear is that I am dragging you into a matter that should from the beginning have been entrusted to—Oh, it’s monstrous!’ It appeared for a moment as if she were blinking to keep back her tears, yet her scrutiny seemed merely to harden.

Only the merest flicker of the folded eyelids over the greenish eyes of her visitor answered the challenge. He stood small and black, peeping fixedly out of the window at the sunflecked laurels.

‘Last night,’ he said slowly, ‘when I said good-bye to your husband, on the tip of my tongue were the words I have used, in season and out of season, for nearly forty-five years—“God knows best.” Well, my dear lady, a sense of humour, a sense of reverence, or perhaps even a taint of scepticism—call it what you will—just intercepted them. Oh no, not any of these, my child; just pity, overwhelming pity. God does know best; but in a matter like this it is not even my place to say so. It would be good for none of us to endanger our souls even with verbal cant. Now, if, do you think, I had just five minutes’ talk—five minutes; would it disquiet him?’

Only by an almost undignified haste, for the vicar was remarkably agile, Sheila managed to unlock the bedroom door without apparently his perceiving it, and with a warning finger she preceded him into the great bedroom. ‘Oh, yes, yes,’ he was whispering to himself; ‘alone—well, well!’ He hung his hat on his umbrella and leaned it in a corner, and then he turned.

‘I don’t think, you know, an old friend does him any wrong; but last night I had no real oppor—’ He firmly adjusted his spectacles, and looked long into the dark, dispassioned face.

‘H’m!’ he said, and fidgeted, and peered again. Mrs. Lawford watched him keenly.

‘Do you still—’ she began.

But at the same moment he too broke silence, suddenly stepping back with the innocent remark, ‘Has he—has he asked for anything?’

‘Only for Quain.’

‘ “Quain”?’

‘The medical Dictionary.’

‘Oh, yes; bless me; of course. … A calm, complete sleep of utter prostration—utter nervous prostration. And can one wonder? Poor fellow, poor fellow!’ He walked to the window and peered between the blinds. ‘Sparrows, sunshine—yes, and here’s the postman,’ he said, as if to himself. Then he turned sharply round, with mind made up.

‘Now, do you leave me here,’ he said. ‘Take half an hour’s quiet rest. He will be glad of a dull old fellow like me when he wakes. And as for my pretty bride, if I miss the train, she must wait till the next. Good discipline, my dear. Oh, dear me! I don’t change. What a precious experience now this would have been for a tottery, talkative, owlish old parochial creature like me. But there, there. Light words make heavy hearts, I see. I shall be quite comfortable. No, no, I breakfasted at home. There’s hat and umbrella; at 9.3 I can fly.’

Mrs. Lawford thanked him mutely. He smilingly but firmly bowed her out and closed the door.

But eyes and brain had been very busy. He had looked at the gutted candle; at the tinted bland portrait on the dressing-table; at the chair drawn-up; at the boots; and now again he turned almost with a groan towards the sleeper. Then he took out an envelope, on which he had jotted various memoranda, and waited awhile. Minutes passed and at last the sleeper faintly stirred, muttering.

Mr. Bethany stooped quickly. ‘What is it, what is it?’ he whispered.

Lawford sighed. ‘I was only dreaming, Sheila,’ he said, and softly, peacefully opened his eyes. ‘I dreamed I was in the—, His lids narrowed, his dark eyes fixed themselves on the anxious spectacled face bending over him. ‘Mr. Bethany! Where? What’s wrong?’

His friend put out his hand. ‘There, there,’ he said soothingly, ‘do not be disturbed; do not disquiet yourself.’

Lawford struggled up. Slowly, painfully consciousness returned to him. He glanced furtively round the room, at his clothes, slinkingly at the vicar; licked his lips; flushed with extraordinary rapidity; and suddenly burst into tears.

Mr. Bethany sat without movement, waiting till he should have spent himself. ‘Now, Lawford,’ he said gently, compose yourself, old friend. We must face the music—like men.’ He went to the window, drew up the blind, peeped out, and took off his spectacles.

‘The first thing to be done,’ he said, returning briskly to his chair, ‘is to send for Simon. Now, does Simon know you WELL?’ Lawford shook his head. ‘Would he recognise you? … I mean …’

‘I have only met him once—in the evening.’

‘Good; let him come immediately, then. Tell him just the facts. If I am not mistaken, he will pooh-pooh the whole thing; tell you to keep quiet, not to worry, and so on. My dear fellow, if we realised, say, typhoid, who’d dare to face it? That will give us time; to wait a while, to recover our breath, to see what happens next. And if—as I don’t believe for a moment—Why, in that case I heard the other day of a most excellent man—Grosser, of Wimpole Street; nerves. He would be absorbed. He’ll bottle you in spirit, Lawford. We’ll have him down quietly. You see? But there won’t be any necessity. Oh no. By then light will have come. We shall remember. What I mean is this.’ He crossed his legs and pushed out his lips. ‘We are on quaky ground; and it’s absolutely essential that you keep cool, and trust. I am yours, heart and soul—you know that. I own frankly, at first I was shaken. And I have, I confess, been very cunning. But first, faith, then evidence to bolster it up. The faith was absolute’—he placed one firm hand on Lawford’s knee—‘why, I cannot explain; but it was. The evidence is convincing. But there are others to think of. The shock, the incredibleness, the consequences; we must not scan too closely. Think WITH; never against: and bang go all the arguments. Your wife, poor dear, believes; but of course, of course, she is horribly—’ he broke off; ‘of course she is SHAKEN, you old simpleton! Time will heal all that. Time will wear out the mask. Time will tire out this detestable physical witchcraft. The mind, the self’s the thing. Old fogey though I may seem for saying it—that must be kept unsmirched. We won’t go wearily over the painful subject again. You told me last night, dear old friend, that you were absolutely alone at Widderstone. That is enough. But here we have visible facts, tangible effects, and there must have been a definite reason and a cause for them. I believe in the devil, in the Powers of Darkness, Lawford, as firmly as I believe he and they are powerless—in the long run. They—what shall we say?—have surrendered their intrinsicality. You can just go through evil, as you can go through a sewer, and come out on the other side too. A loathsome process too. But there—we are not speaking of any such monstrosities, and even if we were, you and I with God’s help would just tire them out. And that ally gone, our poor dear old Mrs. Grundy will at once capitulate. Eh? Eh?’

Through all this long and arduous harangue, consciousness, like the gradual light of dawn, had been flooding that other brain. And the face that now confronted Mr. Bethany, though with his feeble unaided sight he could only very obscurely discern it, was vigilant and keen, in every sharp-cut hungry feature.

A rather prolonged silence followed, the visitor peering mutely. The black eyes nearly closed, the face turned slowly towards the window, saw burnt-out candle, comprehensive glass.

‘Yes, yes.’ he said; ‘I’ll send for Simon at once.’

‘Good,’ said Mr. Bethany, and more doubtfully repeated ‘good.’ ‘Now there’s only one thing left,’ he went on cheerfully. ‘I have jotted down a few test questions here; they are questions no one on this earth could answer but you, Lawford. They are merely for external proofs. You won’t, you can’t, mistake my motive. We cannot foretell or foresee what need may arise for just such jog-trot primitive evidence. I propose that you now answer them here, in writing.’

Lawford stood up and walked to the looking-glass, and paused. He put his hand to his head, ‘es,’ he said, ‘of course; it’s a rattling good move. I’m not quite awake; myself, I mean. I’ll do it now.’ He took out a pencil case and tore another leaf from his pocket-book. ‘What are they?’

Mr. Bethany rang the bell. Sheila herself answered it. She stood on the threshold and looked across through a shaft of autumnal sunshine at her husband, and her husband with a quiet strange smile looked across through the sunshine at his wife. Mr. Bethany waited in vain.

‘I am just going to put the arch-impostor through his credentials,’ he said tartly. ‘Now then, Lawford!’ He read out the questions, one by one, from his crafty little list, pursing his lips between each; and one by one, Lawford, seated at the dressing-table, fluently scribbled his answers. Then question and answer were rigorously compared by Mr. Bethany, with small white head bent close and spectacles poised upon the powerful nose, and signed and dated, and passed to Mrs. Lawford without a word.

Mrs. Lawford read question and answer where she stood, in complete silence. She looked up. ‘Many of these questions I don’t know the answers to myself,’ she said.

‘It is immaterial,’ said Mr. Bethany.

‘One answer is—is inaccurate. ‘Yes, yes, quite so: due to a mistake in a letter from myself.’

Mrs. Lawford read quietly on, folded the papers, and held them out between finger and thumb. ‘The—handwriting …’ she remarked very softly.

‘Wonderful, isn’t it?’ said Mr. Bethany warmly; ‘all the general look and run of the thing different, but every real essential feature unchanged. Now into the envelope. And now a little wax?’

Mrs. Lawford stood waiting. ‘There’s a green piece of sealing-wax,’ almost drawled the quiet voice, ‘in the top right drawer of the nest in the study, which old James gave me the Christmas before last.’ He glanced with lowered eyelids at his wife’s flushed cheek. Their eyes met.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

When she returned the vicar was sitting in a chair, leaning his chin on the knobbed handle of his umbrella. He rose and lit a taper for her with a match from a little green pot on the table. And Mrs. Lawford, with trembling fingers, sealed the letter, as he directed, with his own seal.

‘There!’ he said triumphantly, ‘how many more such brilliant lawyers, I wonder, lie dormant in the Church? And who shall keep this? … Why, all three, of course.’ He went on without pausing. ‘Some little drawer now, secret and undetectable, with a lock.’ Just such a little drawer that locked itself with a spring lay by chance in the looking-glass. There the letter was hidden. And Mr. Bethany looked at his watch. ‘Nineteen minutes,’ he said. ‘The next thing, my dear child—we’re getting on swimmingly—and it’s astonishing how things are simplified by mere use—the next thing is to send for Simon.’

Sheila took a deep breath, but did not look up. ‘I am entirely in your hands,’ she replied.

‘So be it,’ said he crisply. ‘Get to bed, Lawford; it’s better so. And I’ll look in on my way back from Witchett. I came, my dear fellow, in gloomy disturbance of mind. It was getting up too early; it fogs old brains. Good-bye, good-bye.’

He squeezed Lawford’s hand. Then, with umbrella under his arm, his hat on his head, his spectacles readjusted, he hurried out of the room. Mrs. Lawford followed him. For a few minutes Lawford sat motionless, with head bent a little, and eyes restlessly scanning the door. Then he rose abruptly, and in a quarter of an hour was in bed, alone with his slow thoughts: while a basin of cornflour stood untasted on a little table at his bedside, and a cheerful fire burned in the best visitors’ room’s tiny grate.

At half-past eleven Dr. Simon entered this soundless seclusion. He sat down beside Lawford, and took temperature and pulse. Then he half closed his lids, and scanned his patient out of an unusually dark, un-English face, with straight black hair, and listened attentively to his rather incoherent story. It was a story very much modified and rounded off. Nor did Lawford draw Dr. Simon’s attention to the portrait now smiling conventionally above their heads from the wall over the fireplace.

‘It was rather bleak—the wind; and, I think, perhaps, I had had a touch of influenza. It was a silly thing to do. But still, Dr. Simon, one doesn’t expect—well, there, I don’t feel the same man—physically. I really cannot explain how great a change has taken place. And yet I feel perfectly fit in myself. And if it were not for—for being laughed at, go back to town, to-day. Why my wife scarcely recognised me.’

Dr. Simon continued his scrutiny. Try as he would, Lawford could not raise his downcast eyes to meet direct the doctor’s polite attention.

‘And what,’ said Dr. Simon, ‘what precisely is the nature of the change? Have you any pain?’

‘No, not the least pain,’ said Lawford; ‘I think, perhaps, or rather my face is a little shrunken—and yet lengthened; at least it feels so; and a faint twinge of rheumatism. But my hair—well, I don’t know; it’s difficult to say one’s self.’ He could get on so very much better, he thought, if only his mind would be at peace and these preposterous promptings and voices were still.

Dr. Simon faced the window, and drew his hand softly over his head. ‘We never can be too cautious at a certain age, and especially after influenza,’ he said. ‘It undermines the whole system, and in particular the nervous system; leaving the mind the prey of the most melancholy fancies. I should astound you, Mr. Lawford, with the devil influenza plays. … A slight nervous shock and a chill; quite slight, I hope. A few days’ rest and plenty of nourishment. There’s nothing; temperature inconsiderable. All perfectly intelligible. Most certainly reassure yourself! And as for the change you speak of’—he looked steadily at the dark face on the pillow and smiled amiably—‘I don’t think we need worry much about that. It certainly was a bleak wind yesterday—and a cemetery, my dear sir! It was indiscreet—yes, very.’ He held out his hand. ‘You must not be alarmed,’ he said, very distinctly with the merest trace of an accent; ‘air, sunshine, quiet, nourishment; sleep—that is all. The little window might be a few inches open, and—and any light reading.’

He opened the door and joined Mrs. Lawford on the staircase. He talked to her quietly over his shoulder all the way downstairs. ‘It was, it was sporting with Providence—a wind, believe me, nearly due east, in spite of the warm sunshine.’

‘But the change—the change!’ Mrs. Lawford managed to murmur tragically, as he strode to the door. Dr. Simon smiled, and gracefully tapped his forehead with a red-gloved forefinger.

‘Humour him, humour him,’ he repeated indulgently. ‘Rest and quiet will soon put that little trouble out of his head. Oh yes, I did notice it—the set drawn look, and the droop: quite so. Good morning.’

Mrs. Lawford gently closed the door after him. A glimpse of Ada, crossing from room to room, suggested a precaution. She called out in her clearest notes. ‘If Dr. Ferguson should call while I am out, Ada, will you please tell him that Dr. Simon regretted that he was unable to wait? Thank you.’ She paused with hand on the balusters, then slowly ascended the stairs. Her husband’s face was turned to the ceiling, his hands clasped above his head. She took up her stand by the fireplace, resting one silk-slippered foot on the fender. ‘Dr. Simon is reassuring,’ she said, ‘but I do hope, Arthur, you will follow his advice. He looks a fairly clever man. … But with a big practice. … Do you think, dear, he quite realised the extent of the—the change?’

‘I told him what happened,’ said her husband’s voice out of the bed-clothes.

‘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 muffled 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 gratitude. 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 God 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 cock-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 Cassandra. 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 document 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.