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.
IX
The last light of sunset lay in the west; and a sullen wrack of cloud was mounting into the windless sky when Lawford entered the country graveyard again by its dark weatherworn lychgate. The old stone church with its square tower stood amid trees, its eastern window faintly aglow with crimson and purple. He could hear a steady, rather nasal voice through its open lattices. But the stooping stones and the cypresses were out of sight of its porch. He would not be seen down there. He paused a moment, however; his hat was drawn down over his eyes; he was shivering. Far over the harvest fields showed a growing pallor in the sky. He would have the moon to go home by.
“Home!”—these trees, this tongueless companionship, this heavy winelike air, this soundless turf—these in some obscure desolate fashion seemed far rather really home. His eyes wandered towards the fading crimson. And with that on his right hand he began softly, almost on tiptoe, descending the hill. It seemed to him that the steady eyes of the dead were watching him in his slow progress. The air was echoing with little faint, clear calls. He turned and snapped his fingers at a robin that was stalking him with its stony twittering from bush to bush.
But when after some little time he actually came out of the narrow avenue and looked down, his heart misgave him, for some one was already sitting there on his low and solitary seat beneath the cypresses. He stood hesitating, gazing steadily and yet half vacantly at the motionless figure, and in a while a face was lifted in his direction, and undisconcerted eyes calmly surveyed him.
“I am afraid,” called Lawford rather nervously—“I hope I am not intruding?”
“Not at all, not at all,” said the stranger. “I have no privileges here; at least as yet.”
Lawford again hesitated, then slowly advanced. “It’s astonishingly quiet and beautiful,” he said.
The stranger turned his head to glance over the fields. “Yes, it is, very,” he replied. There was the faintest accent, a little drawl of unfriendliness in the remark.
“You often sit here?” Lawford persisted.
The stranger raised his eyebrows. “Oh yes, often.” He smiled. “It is my own modest fashion of attending divine service. The congregation is rapt.”
“My visits,” said
