“I can’t, I can’t make head or tail of what you say. And as for having broken faith, as you call it, would any wife, would any sane woman face what you have brought on us, a situation like this, without seeking advice and help? Mr. Bethany will be perfectly discreet—if he thinks discretion desirable. He is the only available friend we have close enough to ask at once. And things of this kind are, I suppose, if anybody’s concern, his. It’s certain to leak out. Everybody will hear of it. Don’t flatter yourself you are going to hush up a thing like this for long. You can’t keep living skeletons in a cupboard. You think only of yourself, only of your own misfortune. But who’s to know, pray, that you really are my husband—if you are? The sooner I get the vicar on my side the better for us both. Who in the whole of the parish—I ask you—and you must have the sense left to see that—who will believe that a respectable man, a gentleman, a Churchman, would deliberately go out to seek an afternoon’s amusement in a poky little country churchyard? Why, apart from everything else, that was absolutely mad to start with. Can you really wonder at the result?”
Probably because she still steadfastly refused to look at him, her memory kept losing its hold on the appalling fact facing them. She realised fully only that she was in a great, unwarrantable, and insurmountable difficulty, but until she actually lifted her eyes for a moment she had not fully realised what that difficulty was. She got up with a sudden and horrible nausea. “One moment,” she said, “I will see if the servants have gone to bed.”
That long saturnine face, behind which Lawford lay in a dull and desperate ambush, smiled. Something partaking of its clay, some reflex ghost of its rather remarkable features, was even a little amused at Sheila.
She returned in a moment, and stood in profile in the doorway. “Will you come down?” she remarked distantly.
“One moment, Sheila,” Lawford began miserably. “Before we take this irrevocable step, a step I implore you to postpone awhile—for what comes, I suppose, may go—what precisely have you told the vicar? I must in fairness know that.”
“In fairness,” she began ironically, and suddenly broke off. Her husband had turned the flame of the lamp low down in the vacant room behind them; the corridor was lit obscurely by the chandelier far down in the hall below. A faint, inexplicable dread fell softly and coldly on her heart. “Have you no trust in me?” she murmured a little bitterly. “I have simply told him the truth.”
They softly descended the stairs; she first, the dark figure following close behind her.
III
Mr. Bethany sat awaiting them in the dining-room, a large, heavily-furnished room with a great benign looking-glass on the mantelpiece, a marble clock, and with rich old damask curtains. Fleecy silver hair was all that was visible of their visitor when they entered. But Mr. Bethany rose out of his chair when he heard them, and with a little jerk, turned sharply round. Thus it was that the gold-spectacled vicar and Lawford first confronted each other, the one brightly illuminated, the other framed in the gloom of the doorway. Mr. Bethany’s first scrutiny was timid and courteous, but beneath it he tried to be keen, and himself hastened round the table almost at a trot, to obtain, as delicately as possible, a closer view. But Lawford, having shut the door behind him, had gone straight to the fire and seated himself, leaning his face in his hands. Mr. Bethany smiled faintly, waved his hand almost as if in blessing, but certainly in peace, and tapped Mrs. Lawford into the chair upon the other side. But he himself remained standing.
“Mrs. Lawford has, I declare, been telling family secrets,” he began, and paused, peering. “But there, you will forgive an old friend’s intrusion—this little confidence about a change, my dear fellow—about a ramble and a change?” He sat down, put up his kind little puckered face and peered again at Lawford, and then very hastily at his wife. But all her attention was centred on the bowed figure opposite to her. Lawford responded to this cautious advance without raising his head.
“You do not wish me to repeat all that my wife tells me she has told you?”
“Dear me, no,” said Mr. Bethany cheerfully, “I wish nothing, nothing, old friend. You must not burden yourself with me. If I may be of any help, here I am. … Oh, no, no. …” he paused, with blinking eyes, but wits still shrewd and alert. Why doesn’t the man raise his head? he thought. A mere domestic dispute!
“I thought,” he went on ruminatingly, “I thought on Tuesday, yes, on Tuesday, that you weren’t looking quite the thing. Indeed, I remarked on it. But now, I understand from Mrs. Lawford that the malady has taken a graver turn—eh, Lawford, an heretical turn? I hear you have been wandering from the true fold.” Mr. Bethany leaned forward with what might be described as a very large smile in a very small compass. “And that, of course, entailed instant retribution.” He broke off solemnly. “I know Widderstone churchyard well; a most verdant and beautiful spot. The late rector, a Mr. Strickland, was a very old friend of mine. And his wife, dear good Alicia, used to set out her babies, in the morning, to sleep and to play there, twenty, dear me, perhaps twenty-five years ago. But I did not know, my dear Lawford, that you—” and suddenly, without an instant’s warning, something seemed to shout at him, “Look, look! He is looking at you!” He stopped, faltered, and a
