And that said, not without some little confusion, and covert glance of inquiry at his sister, Herbert made all the haste he could to catch up the course that his companions had already finished.
If only, Lawford thought, this insufferable weariness would lift awhile he could enjoy the quiet, absurd, heedless talk, and this very friendly topsy-turvy effort to ease his mind and soothe his nerves. He might even take an interest again in his “case.”
“You see,” he said, turning to Grisel, “I don’t think it really very much matters how it all came about. I never could believe it would last. It may perhaps—some of it at least may be fancy. But then, what isn’t? What is trustworthy? And now your brother tells me my hair’s turning grey. I suppose I have been living too slowly, too sluggishly, and they thought it was high time to stir me up.”
He saw with extraordinary vividness the low panelled room; the still listening face; the white muslin shoulders and dark hair; and the eyes that seemed to recall some far-off desolate longing for home and childhood. It was all a dream. That was the end of the matter. Even now, perhaps, his tired old stupid body was lying hunched up, drenched with dew upon the little old seat under the mist-wreathed branches. Soon it would bestir itself and wake up and go off home—home to Sheila, to the old deadly round that once had seemed so natural and inevitable, to the old dull Lawford—eyes and brain and heart.
They returned up the dark shallow staircase to Herbert’s book-room, and he talked on to very quiet and passive listeners in his own fantastic endless fashion. And ever and again Lawford would find himself intercepting fleeting and anxious glances at his face, glances almost of remorse and pity; and thought he detected beneath this irresponsible contradictory babble an unceasing effort to clear the sky, to lure away too pressing memories, to put his doubts and fears completely to rest.
Herbert even went so far as to plead guilty, when Grisel gave him the cue, of having a little heightened and overcoloured his story of the restless phantasmal old creature that haunted their queer wooden hauntable old house. And when they rose, laughing and yawning to take up their candles, it was, after all, after a rather animated discussion, with many a hair-raising ghost story brought in for proof between brother and sister, as to exactly how many times that snuff-coloured spectre had made his appearance; and, with less unanimity still, as to the precise manner in which he was in the habit of making his precipitant exit.
“You do at any rate acknowledge, Grisel, that the old creature does appear, and that you saw him yourself step out into space when you were sitting down there under the willow shelling peas. I’ve seen him twice for certain, once rather hazily; Sallie saw him so plainly she asked his business: that’s five. I resign.”
“Acknowledge!” said Grisel; “of course I do. I’d acknowledge anything in the world to save argument. Why, I don’t know what I should do without him. If only, now Mr. Lawford would give him a fair chance to show himself; reading quietly here about ten minutes to one, or shelling peas even, if he prefers it. If only he’d stay long enough for that. Wouldn’t it be the very thing for them both!”
“Of course,” said Herbert cordially, “the very thing.”
Lawford looked up at neither of them. He shook his head.
But he needed little persuasion to stay at least one night. The prospect of that long solitary walk, of that tired stupid stooping figure dragging itself along the interminable country roads seemed a sheer impossibility. “It is not—it isn’t, I swear it—the other that keeps me back,” he had solemnly assured the friend that half smiled her relief at his acceptance, “but—if you only knew how empty it’s all got now; all reason gone even to go on at all.”
“But doesn’t it follow? Of course it’s empty. And now life is going to begin again. I assure you it is, I do indeed. Only, only have courage—just the will to win on.”
He said good night; shut-to the latched door of his long low room, ceilinged with rafters close under the steep roof, its brown walls hung with quiet, dark, pondering and beautiful faces looking gravely across at him. And with his candle in his hand he sat down on the bedside. All speculation was gone. The noisy clock of his brain had run down again. He turned towards the old oval looking-glass on the dressing-table without the faintest stirring of interest, suspense, or anxiety. What did it matter what a man looked like?—a now familiar but enfeebled and deprecating voice seemed to say. He knew that a change had come. Even Sheila had noticed it. And since then what had he not gone through? What now was here seemed of little moment, so far at least as this world was concerned.
At last with an effort he rose, crossed the uneven floor, and looked in unmovedly on what was his own poor face come back to him: changed indeed almost beyond belief from the sleek self-satisfied genial yet languid Arthur Lawford of the past years, and still haunted with some faint trace of the set and icy sharpness, and challenge, and affront of the dark Adventurer, but that—how immeasurably dimmed and blunted and faded. He had expected to find it so. Would it (the thought vanished across his mind) would it have been as unmistakably there had he come hotfoot, fearing, expecting to find the other? But—was he disappointed!
He hardly knew how long he stood
