“There’s only one more question,” said Lawford in a dull, slow voice, stooping and covering his face with his hands. “I know it’s impossible for you to realise—but to me time seems like that water there, to be heaping up about me. I wait, just as one waits when the conductor of an orchestra lifts his hand and in a moment the whole surge of brass and wood, cymbal and drum will crash out—and sweep me under. I can’t tell you Herbert, how it all is, with just these groping stirrings of that mole in my mind’s dark. You say it may be this face, working in! God knows. I find it easy to speak to you—this cold, clear sense, you know. The others feel too much, or are afraid, or—Let me think—yes, I was going to ask you a question. But no one can answer it.” He peered darkly, with white face suddenly revealed between his hands. “What remains now? Where do I come in? What is there left for me to do?”
And at that moment there sounded, even above the monotonous roar of the water beyond the window—there fell the sound of a light footfall approaching along the corridor.
“Listen,” said Herbert; “here’s my sister coming; we’ll ask her.”
XIII
The door opened. Lawford rose, and into the further rays of the candlelight entered a rather slim figure in a light summer gown.
“Just home?” said Herbert.
“We’ve been for a walk—”
“My sister always forgets everything,” said Herbert, turning to Lawford; “even teatime. This is Mr. Lawford, Grisel. We’ve been arguing no end. And we want you to give a decision. It’s just this: Supposing if by some impossible trick you had come in now, not the charming familiar sister you are, but shorter, fatter, fair and round-faced, quite different, physically, you know—what would you do?”
“What nonsense you talk, Herbert!”
“Yes, but supposing: a complete transmogrification—by some unimaginable ingression or enchantment, by nibbling a bunch of roses, or whatever you like to call it?”
“Only physically?”
“Well, yes, actually; but potentially, why—that’s another matter.”
The dark eyes passed slowly from her brother’s face and rested gravely on their visitor’s.
“Is he making fun of me?”
Lawford almost imperceptibly shook his head.
“But what a question! And I’ve had no tea.” She drew her gloves slowly through her hand. “The thing, of course, isn’t possible, I know. But shouldn’t I go mad, don’t you think?”
Lawford gazed quietly back into the clear, grave, deliberate eyes. “Suppose, suppose, just for the sake of argument—not,” he suggested.
She turned her head and reflected, glancing from one to the other of the pure, steady candle-flames.
“And what was your answer?” she said, looking over her shoulder at her brother.
“My dear child, you know what my answers are like!”
“And yours?”
Lawford took a deep breath, gazing mutely, forlornly, into the lovely untroubled peace of her eyes, and without the least warning tears swept up into his own. With an immense effort he turned, and choking back every sound, beating back every thought, groped his way towards the square black darkness of the open door.
“I must think, I must think,” he managed to whisper, lifting his hand and steadying himself. He caught over his shoulder the glimpse of a curiously distorted vision, a lifted candle, and a still face gazing after him with infinitely grieved eyes, then found himself groping and stumbling down the steep, uneven staircase into the darkness of the queer old wooden and hushed and lonely house. The night air cold on his face calmed his mind. He turned and held out his hand.
“You’ll come again?” Herbert was saying, with a hint of anxiety, even of apology in his voice.
Lawford nodded, with eyes fixed blankly on the candle, and turning once more, made his way slowly down the narrow green-bordered path upon which the stars rained a scattered light so feeble it seemed but as a haze that blurred the darkness. He pushed open the little white wicket and turned his face towards the soundless, leaf-crowned hill. He had advanced hardly a score of steps in the thick dust when almost as if its very silence had struck upon his ear he remembered the black broken grave with its sightless heads that lay beyond the leaves. And fear, vast and menacing, fear such as only children know, broke like a sea of darkness on his heart. He stopped dead—cold, helpless, trembling. And, in the silence he heard a faint cry behind him and light footsteps pursuing him. He turned again. In the thick close gloom beneath the enormous elm-boughs the grey eyes shone clearly visible in the face upturned to him. “My brother,” she began breathlessly—“the little French book. It was I who—who mislaid it.”
The set, stricken face listened unmoved.
“You are ill. Come back! I am afraid you are very ill.”
“It’s not that, not that,” Lawford muttered; “don’t leave me; I am alone. Don’t question me,” he said strangely, looking down into her face, clutching her hand; “only understand that I can’t, I can’t go on.” He swept a lean arm towards the unseen churchyard. “I am afraid.”
The cold hand clasped his closer. “Hush, don’t speak! Come back; come back. I am with you, a friend, you see; come back.”
Lawford clutched her hand as a blind man in sudden peril might clutch the hand of a child. He saw nothing clearly; spoke almost without understanding his words.
“Oh, but it’s must,” he said; “I must go on. You see—why, everything depends on struggling through: the future! But if you only knew—There!” Again his arm swept out, and the lean terrified face turned shuddering from the dark.
“I do know; believe me, believe me!
