Lawford, still gazing fixedly, turned again a darkened face towards the steep of the hill. “I think, you know,” he said, stooping and whispering, “he would know—the window and the sun and the singing. And oh, of course it was too late. You understand—too late. And once … you can’t go back; oh no. You won’t leave me? You see, if you go, it would only be all … I could not be quite so alone. But Detcham—Detcham? perhaps you will not trust me—tell me? That was not the name.” He shuddered violently and turned doglike beseeching eyes. “Tomorrow—yes, tomorrow,” he said, “I will promise anything if you will not leave me now. Once—” But again the thread running so faintly through that inextricable maze of memory eluded him. “So long as you won’t leave me now!” he implored her.
She was vainly trying to win back her composure, and could not answer him at once. …
In the evening after supper Grisel sat her guest down in front of a big wood fire in the old book-room, where, staring into the playing flames, he could fall at peace into the almost motionless reverie which he seemed merely to harass and weary himself by trying to disperse. She opened the little piano at the far end of the room and played on and on as fancy led—Chopin and Beethoven, a fugue from Bach, and lovely forlorn old English airs, till the music seemed not only a voice persuading, pondering, and lamenting, but gathered about itself the hollow surge of the water and the darkness; wistful and clear, as the thoughts of a solitary child. Ever and again a log burnt through its strength, and falling amid sparks, stirred, like a restless animal, the stillness; or Herbert in his corner lifted his head to glance towards his visitor, and to turn another page. At last the music, too, fell silent, and Lawford stood up with his candle in his hand and eyed with a strange fixity brother and sister. His glance wandered slowly round the quiet flame-lit room.
“You won’t,” he said, stooping towards them as if in extreme confidence, “you won’t much notice? They come and go. I try not to—to speak. It’s the only way through. It is not that I don’t know they’re only dreams. But if once the—the others thought there had been any tampering”—he tapped his forehead meaningly—“here: if once they thought that, it would, you know, be quite over then. How could I prove … ?” He turned cautiously towards the door, and with laborious significance nodded his head at them.
Herbert bent down and held out his long hands to the fire. “Tampering, my dear chap: That’s what the lump said to the leaven.”
“Yes, yes,” said Lawford, putting out his hand, “but you know what I mean, Herbert. Anything I tried to do then would be quite, quite hopeless. That would be poisoning the wells.”
They watched him out of the room, and listened till quite distinctly in the still night-shaded house they heard his door gently close. Then, as if by consent, they turned and looked long and questioningly into each other’s faces.
“Then you are not—afraid?” Herbert said quietly.
Grisel gazed steadily on, and almost imperceptibly shook her head.
“You mean?” he questioned her; but still he had again to read her answer in her eyes.
“Oh, very well, Grisel,” he said quietly, “you know best,” and returned once more to his writing.
For an hour or two Lawford slept heavily, so heavily that when a little after midnight he awoke, with his face towards the uncurtained window, though for many minutes he lay brightly confronting all Orion, that from blazing helm to flaming dog at heel filled high the glimmering square, he could not lift or stir his cold and leaden limbs. He rose at last and threw off the burden of his bedclothes, and rested awhile, as if freed from the heaviness of an unrememberable nightmare. But so clear was his mind and so extraordinarily refreshed he seemed in body that sleep for many hours would not return again. And he spent almost all the remainder of the lagging darkness pacing softly to and fro; one face only before his eyes, the one sure thing, the one thing unattainable in a world of phantoms.
Herbert waited on in vain for his guest next morning, and after wandering up and down the mossy lawn at the back of the house, went off cheerfully at last alone for his dip. When he returned Lawford was in his place at the breakfast-table. He sat on, moody and constrained, until even Herbert’s haphazard talk trickled low.
“I fancy my sister is nursing a headache,” he said at last, “but she’ll be down soon. And I’m afraid from the looks of you, Lawford, your night was not particularly restful.” He felt his way very heedfully. “Perhaps we walked you a little too far yesterday. We are so used to tramping that—” Lawford kept thoughtful eyes fixed on the deprecating face.
“I see what it is, Herbert—you are humouring me again. I have been wracking my brains in vain to remember what exactly did happen yesterday. I feel as if it was all sunk oceans deep in sleep. I get so far—and then I’m done. It won’t give up a hint. But you really mustn’t think I’m an invalid, or—or in my second childhood. The truth is,” he added, “it’s only my first, come back again. But now that I’ve got so far, now that I’m really better, I—” He broke off rather vacantly, as if afraid of his own confidence. “I must be getting on,” he summed up with an effort, “and that’s the solemn fact. I keep on forgetting I’m—I’m a ratepayer!”
Herbert sat round in his chair. “You see, Lawford, the very term is little else than double Dutch to me. As a matter of fact Grisel sends all my hush-money to the horrible
