“I fell asleep—or something of that sort,” came the stubborn reply.
“Yes,” said Mr. Bethany, brightly, “so your wife was saying. ‘Fell asleep,’ so have I too—scores of times’; he beamed, with beads of sweat glistening on his forehead. “And then? I’m not, I’m not persisting?”
“Then I woke; refreshed, I think, as it seemed—I felt much better and came home.”
“Ah, yes,” said his visitor. And after that there was a long, brightly lit, intense pause; at the end of which Lawford raised his face and again looked firmly at his friend.
Mr. Bethany was now a shrunken old man; he sat perfectly still, his head craned a little forward, and his veined hands clutching his bent, spare knees.
There wasn’t the least sign of devilry, or out-facingness, or insolence in that lean shadowy steady head; and yet he himself was compelled to sidle his glance away, so much the face shook him. He closed his eyes, too, as a cat does after exchanging too direct a scrutiny with human eyes. He put out towards, and withdrew, a groping hand from Mrs. Lawford.
“Is it,” came a voice from somewhere, “is it a great change, sir? I thought perhaps I may have exaggerated—candlelight, you know.”
Mr. Bethany remained still and silent, striving to entertain one thought at a time. His lips moved as if he were talking to himself. And again it was Lawford’s faltering voice that broke the silence. “You see,” he said, “I have never … no fit, or anything of that kind before. I remember on Tuesday … oh yes, quite well. I did feel seedy, very. And we talked, didn’t we?—Harvest Festival, Mrs. Wine’s flowers, the new offertory-bags, and all that. For God’s sake, Vicar, it is not as bad as—as they make out?”
Mr. Bethany woke with a start. He leaned forward, and stretched out a long black wrinkled sleeve, just managing to reach far enough to tap Lawford’s knee. “Don’t worry, don’t worry,” he said soothingly. “We believe, we believe.”
It was, none the less, a sheer act of faith. He took off his spectacles and took out his handkerchief. “What we must do, eh, my dear,” he half turned to Mrs. Lawford, “what we must do is to consult, yes, consult together. And later—we must have advice—medical advice; unless, as I very much suspect, it is merely a little quite temporary physical aberration. Science, I am told, is making great strides, experimenting, groping after things which no sane man has ever dreamed of before—without being burned alive for it. What’s in a name? Nerves, especially, Lawford.”
Mrs. Lawford sat perfectly still, absorbedly listening, turning her face first this way, then that, to each speaker in turn. “That is what I thought,” she said, and cast one fleeting glance across at the fireplace, “but—”
The little old gentleman turned sharply with half-blind eyes, and lips tight shut. “I think,” he said, with a kind of austere humour, “I think, do you know, I see no ‘but.’ ” He paused as if to catch the echo and added, “It’s our only course.” He continued to polish round and round his glasses. Mrs. Lawford rather magnificently rose.
“Perhaps if I were to leave you together awhile? I shall not be far off. It is,” she explained, as if into a huge vacuum, “it is a terrible visitation.” She moved gravely round the table and very softly and firmly closed the door after her.
Lawford took a deep breath. “Of course,” he said, “you realise my wife does not believe me. She thinks,” he explained naively, as if to himself, “she thinks I am an imposter. Goodness knows what she does think. I can’t think much myself—for long!”
The vicar rubbed busily on. “I have found, Lawford,” he said smoothly, “that in all real difficulties the only feasible plan is—is to face the main issue. The others right themselves. Now, to take a plunge into your generosity. You have let me in far enough to make it impossible for me to get out—may I hear then exactly the whole story? All that I know now, so far as I could gather from your wife, poor soul, is of course inconceivable: that you went out one man and came home another. You will understand, my dear man, I am speaking, as it were, by rote. God has mercifully ordered that the human brain works slowly; first the blow, hours afterwards the bruise. Oh, dear me, that man Hume—‘on miracles’—positively amazing! So that too, please, you will be quite clear about. Credo—not quia impossible est, but because you, Lawford, have told me. Now then, if it won’t be too wearisome to you, the whole story.’ He sat, lean and erect in his big chair, a hand resting loosely on each knee, in one spectacles, in the other a dangling pocket handkerchief. And the dark, sallow, aquiline, formidable figure, with its oddly changing voice, retold the whole story from the beginning.
“You were aware then of nothing different, I understand, until you actually looked into the glass?”
“Only vaguely. I mean that after waking I felt much better, more alert. And my thoughts—”
“Ah, yes, your thoughts?”
“I hardly know—oh, clear as if I had had a real long rest. It was just like being a boy again. Influenza dispirits one so.”
Mr. Bethany gazed without stirring. “And yet, you know,” he said, “I can hardly believe, I mean conceive, how—You have been taking no drugs, no quackery, Lawford?”
“I never dose myself,” said Lawford, with sombre pride.
“God bless me, that’s Lawford to the echo,” thought his visitor. “And before—?” he went on gently; “I really cannot conceive, you see, how a mere fit could … Before you sat down you were quite alone?” He stuck out his head. “There was nobody with you?”
“With me? Oh no,” came the soft answer.
“What had you been thinking of? In these days of faith-cures, and hypnotism, and telepathy, and subliminalities—why, the simple old world
