Mr. Bethany clasped his knuckled fingers on the tablecloth. “It’s no good,” he concluded after a long pause; “the fellow’s got up into my head. I can’t think him out. We must thrash it out quietly in the morning with the blessed sun at the window; not this farthing dip. To me the whole idea is as revolting as it is incredible. Why, above a century—no, no! And on the other hand, how easily one’s fancy builds! A few straws and there’s a nest and squawking fledglings, all complete. Is that why—is that why that good, practical wife of yours and all your faithful household have absconded? Does it”—he threw up his head as if towards the house above them—“does it reek with him?”
Lawford shook his head. “She hasn’t seen him: not—not apart. I haven’t told her.”
Mr. Bethany tossed the hugger-mugger of pamphlets across the table. “Then, for simple sanity’s sake, don’t. Hide it; burn it; put the thing completely out of your mind. A friend! Who, where is this wonderful friend?”
“Not very far from Widderstone. He lives—practically alone.”
“And all that stumbling and muttering on the stairs?” he leant forward almost threateningly. “There isn’t anybody here, Lawford?”
“Oh, no,” said Lawford. “We are practically alone—with this, you know,” he pointed to the book, and smiled frankly, however faintly.
Again Mr. Bethany sank into a fixed yet uneasy reverie, and again shook himself and raised his eyes.
“Well then,” he said, in a voice all but morose in its fretfullness, “what I suggest is that first you keep quiet here; and next, that you write and get your wife back. You say you are better. I think you said she herself noticed a slight improvement. Isn’t it just exactly as I foresaw? And yet she’s gone! But that’s not our business. Get her back. And don’t for a single instant waste a thought on the other; not for a single instant, I implore you, Lawford. And in a week the whole thing will be no more than a dreary, preposterous dream. … You don’t answer me!” he cried impulsively.
“But can one so easily forget a dream like this?”
“You don’t speak out, Lawford; you mean she won’t.”
“It must at least seem to have been in part of my own seeking, or contriving; or at any rate—she said it—of my own hereditary or unconscious deserving.”
“She said that!” Mr. Bethany sat back. “I see, I see,” he said. “I’m nothing but a fumbling old meddler. And there was I, not ten minutes ago, preaching for all I was worth on a text I knew nothing about. God bless me, Lawford, how long we take a-learning. I’ll say no more. But what an illusion. To think this—this”—he laid a long lean hand at arm’s length flat upon the table towards his friend—“to think this is our old jog-trot Arthur Lawford! From henceforth I throw you over, you old wolf in sheep’s wool. I wash my hands of you. And now where am I going to sleep?”
He covered up his age and weariness for an instant with a small crooked hand.
Lawford took a deep breath. “You’re going, old friend, to sleep at home. And I—I’m going to give you my arm to the Vicarage gate. Here I am, immeasurably relieved, fitter than I’ve been since I was a dolt of a schoolboy. On my word of honour: I can’t say why, but I am. I don’t care that, vicar, honestly—puffed up with spiritual pride. If a man can’t sleep with pride for a bedfellow, well, he’d better try elsewhere. It’s no good; I’m as stubborn as a mule; that’s at least a relic of the old Adam. I care no more,” he raised his voice firmly and gravely—“I don’t care a jot for solitude, not a jot for all the ghosts of all the catacombs!”
Mr. Bethany listened, grimly pursed up his lips. “Not a jot for all the ghosts of all the catechisms!” he muttered. “Nor the devil himself, I suppose?” He turned once more to glance sharply in the direction of the face he could so dimly—and of set purpose—discern; and without a word trotted off into the hall. Lawford followed with the candle.
“ ’Pon my word, you haven’t had a mouthful of supper. Let me forage; just a quarter of an hour, eh?”
“Not me,” said Mr. Bethany; “if you won’t have me, home I go. I refuse to encourage this miserable grass-widowering. What would they say? What would the busybodies say? Ghouls and graves and shocking mysteries—Selina! Sister Anne! Come on.”
He shuffled on his hat and caught firm hold of his knobbed umbrella. “Better not leave a candle,” he said.
Lawford blew out the candle.
“What? What?” called the old man suddenly. But no voice had spoken.
A thin trickle of light from the lamp in the street stuck up through the fanlight as, with a smile that could be described neither as mischievous, saturnine, nor vindictive, and was yet faintly suggestive of all three, Lawford quietly opened the drawing-room door and put down the candlestick on the floor within.
“What on earth, my good man, are you fumbling after now?” came the almost fretful question from under the echoing porch.
“Coming, coming,” said Lawford, and slammed the door behind them.
XVI
The first faint streaks of dawn were silvering across the stars when Lawford again let himself into his deserted house. He stumbled down to the pantry and cut himself a crust of bread and cheese, and ate it, sitting on the table, watching the leafy eastern sky through the painted bars of the area window. He munched on, hungry and tired. His night walk had cooled head and heart. Having obstinately refused Mr. Bethany’s invitation to sleep at the Vicarage, he had sat down on an old low wall, and watched until his light had shone out at his bedroom window. Then he had
