Herbert surveyed him critically. “What exactly is your interest now, Lawford? You don’t mean that my old ‘theory’ has left any sting now?”
“No sting; oh no. I was only curious. But you yourself still think it really, don’t you?”
Herbert turned for a moment to the open window.
“I was simply trying then to find something to fit the facts as you experienced them. But now that the facts have gone—and they have, haven’t they?—exit, of course, my theory!”
“I see,” was the cryptic answer. “And yet, Herbert,” Lawford solemnly began again, “it has changed me; even in my way of thinking. When I shut my eyes now—I only discovered it by chance—I see immediately faces quite strange to me; or places, sometimes thronged with people; and once an old well with someone sitting in the shadow. I can’t tell you how clearly, and yet it is all altogether different from a dream. Even when I sit with my eyes open, I am conscious, as it were, of a kind of faint, colourless mirage. In the old days—I mean before Widderstone, what I saw was only what I’d seen already. Nothing came uncalled for, unexplained. This makes the old life seem so blank; I did not know what extraordinarily real things I was doing without. And whether for that reason or another, I can’t quite make out what in fact I did want then, and was always fretting and striving for. I can see no wisdom or purpose in anything now but to get to one’s journey’s end as quickly and bravely as one can. And even then, even if we do call life a journey, and death the inn we shall reach at last in the evening when it’s over; that, too, I feel will be only as brief a stopping-place as any other inn would be. Our experience here is so scanty and shallow—nothing more than the moment of the continual present. Surely that must go on, even if one does call it eternity. And so we shall all have to begin again. Probably Sabathier himself. … But there, what on earth are we, Herbert, when all is said? Who is it has—has done all this for us—what kind of self? And to what possible end? Is it that the clockwork has been wound up and must still jolt on a while with jarring wheels? Will it never run down, do you think?”
Herbert smiled faintly, but made no answer.
“You see,” continued Lawford, in the same quiet, dispassionate undertone, “I wouldn’t mind if it was only myself. But there are so many of us, so many selves, I mean; and they all seem to have a voice in the matter. What is the reality to this infernal dream?”
“The reality is, Lawford, that you are fretting your life out over this rotten illusion. Be guided by me just this once. We’ll go, all three of us, a good ten-mile walk today, and thoroughly tire you out. And tonight you shall sleep here—a really sound, refreshing sleep. Then tomorrow, whole and hale, back you shall go; honestly. It’s only professional strong men should ask questions. Babes like you and me must keep to slops.”
So, though Lawford made no answer, it was agreed. Before noon the three of them had set out on their walk across the fields. And after rambling on just as caprice took them, past reddening blackberry bushes and copses of hazel, and flaming beech, they sat down to spread out their meal on the slope of a hill, overlooking quiet ploughed fields and grazing cattle. Herbert stretched himself with his back to the earth, and his placid face to the pale vacant sky, while Lawford, even more dispirited after his walk, wandered up to the crest of the hill.
At the foot of the hill, upon the other side, lay a farm and its outbuildings, and a pool of water beneath a group of elms. It was vacant in the sunlight, and the water vividly green with a scum of weed. And about half a mile beyond stood a cluster of cottages and an old towered church. He gazed idly down, listening vaguely to the wailing of a curlew flitting anxiously to and fro above the broken solitude of its green hill. And it seemed as if a thin and dark cloud began to be quietly withdrawn from over his eyes. Hill and wailing cry and barn and water faded out. And he was staring as if in an endless stillness at an open window against which the sun was beating in a bristling torrent of gold, while out of the garden beyond came the voice of some evening bird singing with such an unspeakable ecstasy of grief it seemed it must be perched upon the confines of another world. The light gathered to a radiance almost intolerable, driving back with its raining beams some memory, forlorn, remorseless, remote. His body stood dark and senseless, rocking in the air on the hillside as if bereft of its spirit. Then his hands were drawn over his eyes. He turned unsteadily and made his way, as if through a thick, drizzling haze, slowly back.
“What is that—there?” he said almost menacingly, standing with bloodshot eyes looking down upon Herbert.
“ ‘That!’—what?” said Herbert, glancing up startled from his book. “Why, what’s wrong, Lawford?”
“That,” said Lawford sullenly, yet with a faintly mournful cadence in his voice; “those fields and that old empty farm—that village over there? Why did you bring me here?”
Grisel had not stirred. “The village …”
“Ssh!” she said, catching her brother’s sleeve; “that’s Detcham, yes, Detcham.”
Lawford turned wide vacant eyes on her. He shook his head and shuddered. “No, no; not Detcham. I know it; I know it; but it has gone out of my mind. Not Detcham; I’ve been there before; don’t look at me. Horrible, horrible. It takes me back—I can’t think. I stood there, trying, trying; it’s all in a blur. Don’t ask me—a dream.”
Grisel leaned
