Lawford had soundlessly stolen a pace or two nearer, and by stooping forward a little he could, each in turn, scrutinise the little intent company sitting over his story around the lamp at the further end of the table; squatting like little children with their twigs and pins, fishing for wonders on the brink of the unknown.
“Yes,” Mrs. Lovat was saying, “I quite agree, Mr. Craik. Seventy-two princes, and no princesses. Oh, these masculine prejudices! But do throw a little more modern light on the subject, Sheila.”
“I mean this,” said Sheila firmly. “When I went in for the last time to say goodbye—and of course it was at his own wish that I did leave him; and precisely why he wished it is now unhappily only too apparent—I had brought him some money from the bank—fifty pounds, I think; yes, fifty pounds. And quite by the merest chance I glanced down, in passing, at a book he had apparently been reading, a book which he seemed very anxious to conceal with his hand. Arthur is not a great reader, though I believe he studied a little before we were married, and—well, I detest anything like subterfuge, and I said it out without thinking, ‘Why, you’re reading French, Arthur!’ He turned deathly white but made no answer.”
“And can’t you even confide to us the title, Sheila?” sighed Mrs. Lovat reproachfully.
“Wait a minute,” said Sheila; “you shall make as much fun of the thing as you like, Bettie, when I’ve finished. I don’t know why, but that peculiar, stealthy look haunted me. ‘Why French?’ I kept asking myself. ‘Why French?’ Arthur hasn’t opened a French book for years. He doesn’t even approve of the entente. His argument was that we ought to be friends with the Germans because they are more hostile. Never mind. When Ada came back the next evening and said he was out, I came the following morning—by myself—and knocked. No one answered, and I let myself in. His bed had not been slept in. There were candles and matches all over the house—one even burnt nearly to the stick on the floor in the corner of the drawing-room. I suppose it was foolish, but I was alone, and just that, somehow, horrified me. It seemed to point to such a peculiar state of mind. I hesitated; what was the use of looking further? Yet something seemed to say to me—and it was surely providential—‘Go downstairs!’ And there in the breakfast-room the first thing I saw on the table was this book—a dingy, ragged, bleared, patched-up, oh, a horrible, a loathsome little book (and I have read bits too here and there); and beside it was my own little school dictionary, my own child’s—” She looked up sharply. “What was that? Did anybody call?”
“Nobody I heard,” said Danton, staring stonily round.
“It may have been the passing of the wind,” suggested Mr. Craik, after a pause.
“Peep between the blinds, Mr. Craik; it may be poor Mr. Bethany confronting Pneumonia in the porch.”
“There’s no one there, Mrs. Lovat,” said the curate, returning softly from his errand. “Please continue your—your narrative, Mrs. Lawford.”
“We are panting for the ‘devil,’ my dear.”
“Well, I sat down and, very much against my inclination, turned over the pages. It was full of the most revolting confessions and trials, so far as I could see. In fact, I think the book was merely an amateur collection of—of horrors. And the faces, the portraits! Well, then, can you imagine my feelings when towards the end of the book about thirty pages from the end, I came upon this—gloating up at me from the table in my house before my very eyes?”
She cast a rapid glance over her shoulder, and gathering up her silk skirt, drew out, from the pocket beneath, the few crumpled pages, and passed them without a word to Danton. Lawford kept him plainly in view, as, lowering his great face, he slowly stooped, and holding the loose leaves with both fat hands between his knees, stared into the portrait. Then he truculently lifted his cropped head.
“What did I say?” he said. “What did I say? What did I tell old Bethany in this very room? What d’ye think of that, Mrs. Lovat, for a portrait of Arthur Lawford? What d’ye make of that, Craik—eh? Devil—eh?”
Mrs. Lovat glanced with arched eyebrows, and with her fingertips handed the sheets on to her neighbour, who gazed with a settled and mournful frown and returned them to Sheila.
She took the pages, folded them and replaced them carefully in her pocket. She swept her hands over her skirts, and turned to Danton.
“You agree,” she inquired softly, “it’s like?”
“Like! It’s the livin’ livid image. The livin’ image,” he repeated, stretching out his arm, “as he stood there that very night.”
“What will you say, then,” said Sheila, quietly, “What will you say if I tell you that that man, Nicholas de Sabathier, has been in his grave for over a hundred years?”
Danton’s little eyes seemed, if anything, to draw back even further into his head. “I’d say, Mrs. Lawford, if you’ll excuse the word, that it might be a damn horrible coincidence—I’d go farther, an almost incredible coincidence. But if you want the sober truth, I’d say it was nothing more than a crafty, clever, abominable piece of trickery. That’s what I’d say. Oh, you don’t know, Mrs. Lovat. When a scamp’s a scamp, he’ll stop at nothing. I could tell you some tales.”
“Ah, but that’s not all,” said Sheila, eyeing them steadfastly one by one. “We all of us know that my husband’s story was that he had gone down to Widderstone—into the
