Read Ebook: The Return by De La Mare Walter

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Ebook has 1217 lines and 81105 words, and 25 pages

'Will you please open the door?'

'No one?'

'I suppose not--no one.'

'Then come in.' He unlocked the door and opened it. A dark, rather handsome woman, with sleek hair, in a silk dress of a dark rich colour entered. Lawford closed the door. But his face was in shadow. He had still a moment's respite.

'I need not ask you to be patient,' he began quickly; 'if I could possibly have spared you--if there had been anybody in the world to go to... I am in horrible, horrible trouble, Sheila. It is inconceivable. I said I was sane: so I am, but the fact is--I went out for a walk; it was rather stupid, perhaps, so soon: and I think I was taken ill, or something--my heart. A kind of fit, a nervous fit. Possibly I am a little unstrung, and it's all, it's mainly fancy: but I think, I can't help thinking it has a little distorted--changed my face; everything, Sheila; except, of course, myself. Would you mind looking?' He walked slowly and with face averted towards the dressing-table.

'Simply a nervous--to make such a fuss, to scare!...' began his wife, following him.

Without a word he took up the two old china candlesticks, and held them, one in each lank-fingered hand, before his face, and turned.

Lawford could see his wife--every tint and curve and line as distinctly as she could see him. Her cheeks never had much colour; now her whole face visibly darkened, from pallor to a dusky leaden grey, as she gazed. It was not an illusion then; not a miserable hallucination. The unbelievable, the inconceivable, had happened. He replaced the candles with trembling fingers and sat down.

'Well,' he said, 'what is it really; what is it really, Sheila? What on earth are we to do?'

'Is the door locked?' she whispered. He nodded. With eyes fixed stirlessly on his face, Sheila unsteadily seated herself, a little out of the candlelight, in the shadow. Lawford rose and put the key of the door on his wife's little rose-wood prayer-desk at her elbow, and deliberately sat down again.

'You said "a fit"--where?'

'I suppose--is--is it very different--hopeless? You will understand my being... O Sheila, what am I to do?' His wife sat perfectly still, watching him with unflinching attention.

'You gave me to understand--"a nervous fit"; where?'

Lawford took a deep breath, and quietly faced her again. 'In the old churchyard, Widderstone; I was looking at--at the gravestones.'

'A fit; in the old churchyard, Widderstone--you were "looking at the gravestones"?'

Lawford shut his mouth. 'I suppose so--a fit,' he said presently. 'My heart went a little queer, and I sat down and fell into a kind of doze--a stupor, I suppose. I don't remember anything more. And then I woke; like this.'

'How do you know?'

'How do I know what?'

'"Like that"?'

He turned slowly towards the looking-glass. 'Why, here I am!'

She gazed at him steadily; and a hard, incredulous, almost cunning glint came into her wide blue eyes. She took up the key carelessly, glanced at it; glanced at him. 'It has made me--I mean the first shock, you know--it has made me a little faint.' She walked slowly, deliberately to the door, and unlocked it. 'I'll get a little sal volatile.' She softly drew out the key, and without once removing her eyes from his face, opened the door and pushed the key noiselessly in on the other side. 'Please stay there; I won't be a minute.'

Lawford's face smiled--a rather desperate, yet for all that a patient, resolute smile. 'Oh yes, of course,' he said, almost to himself, 'I had not foreseen--at least--you must do precisely what you please, Sheila. You were going to lock me in. You will, however, before taking any final step, please think over what it will entail. I did not think you would, after such proof, in this awful trouble--I did not think you would simply disbelieve me, Sheila. Who else is there to help me? You have the letter in your hand. Isn't that sufficient proof? It was overwhelming proof to me. And even I doubted too; doubted myself. But never mind; why I should have dreamed you would believe me; or taken this awful thing differently, I don't know. It's rather awful to have to go on alone. But there, think it over. I shall not stir until I hear the voices. And then: honestly, Sheila, I couldn't face quite that. I'd sooner give up altogether. Any proof you can think of--I will... O God, I cannot bear it!' He covered his face with his hands; but in a moment looked up, unmoved once more. 'Why, for that matter,' he added slowly, and, as it were, with infinite pains, a faint thin smile again stealing into his face, 'I think,' he turned wearily to the glass, 'I think, it's almost an improvement!'

Something deep in those dark clear pupils, out of that lean adventurous face, gleamed back at him, the distant flash of a heliograph, as it were, height to height, flashing 'Courage!' He shuddered, and shut his eyes. 'But I would really rather,' he added in a quiet childlike way, 'I would really rather, Sheila, you left me alone now.'

His wife stood irresolute. 'I understand you to explain,' she said, 'that you went out of this house, just your usual self, this afternoon, for a walk; that for some reason you went to Widderstone--"to read the tombstones," that you had a heart attack, or, as you said at first, a fit, that you fell into a stupor, and came home like--like this. Am I likely to believe all that? Am I likely to believe such a story as that? Whoever you are, whoever you may be, is it likely? I am not in the least afraid. I thought at first it was some silly practical joke. I thought that at first.' She paused, but no answer came. 'Well, I suppose in a civilised country there is a remedy even for a joke as wicked as that.'

'I shall leave the door open,' Sheila continued. 'I am not, as you no doubt very naturally assumed--I am not going to do anything either senseless or heedless. I am merely going to ask your brother Cecil to come in, if he is at home, and if not, no doubt our old friend Mr. Montgomery would--would help us.' Her scrutiny was still and concentrated, like that of a cat above a mouse's hole.

Sheila gently closed the door and sat down on the bed. He heard her softly crying, he heard the bed shaken with her sobs. But a slow glance towards the steady candle-flames restrained him. He let her cry on alone. When she had become a little more composed he stood up. 'You have had no dinner,' he managed to blurt out at last, 'you will be faint. It's useless to talk, even to think, any more to-night. Leave me to myself for a while. Don't look at me any more. Perhaps I can sleep: perhaps if I sleep it will come right again. When the servants are gone up, I will come down. Just let me have some--some medical book, or other; and some more candles. Don't think, Sheila; don't even think!'

From behind her that voice, so extraordinarily like--and yet in some vague fashion more arresting, more resonant than her husband's, broke incredibly out once more. 'You will please leave the key, Sheila. I am ill, but I am not yet in the padded room. And please understand, I take no further steps in "this awful business" until I hear a strange voice in the house.' Sheila paused, but the quiet voice rang in her ear, desperately yet convincingly. She took the key out of the lock, placed it on the bed, and with a sigh, that was not quite without a hint of relief in its misery, she furtively extinguished the gas-light on the landing and rustled downstairs.

She speedily returned. 'I have brought the book.' she said hastily. 'I could only find the one volume. I have said you have taken a fresh chill. No one will disturb you.'

Lawford took the book without a word. And once more, with eyes stonily averted, his wife left him to his own company and that of the face in the glass.

'No, sir, it's me,' came the answer.

'Oh, don't trouble; I only wanted to speak to your mistress. It's all right.'

'Mrs. Lawford has gone out, sir,' replied the voice.

'Gone out?'

'Yes, sir; she told me not to mention it; but I suppose as you asked--'

'Oh, that's all right; never mind; I didn't ring.' He stood with face uplifted, thinking.

'Can I do anything, sir?' came the faint, nervous question after a long pause.

'One moment, Ada,' he called in a loud voice. He took out his pocket-book, sat down, and scribbled a little note. He hardly noticed how changed his handwriting was--the clear round letters crabbed and irregular.

'Are you there, Ada?' he called. 'I am slipping a note beneath the door; just draw back the mat; that's it. Take it at once, please, to Mr. Critchett's, and be sure to wait for an answer. Then come back direct to me, up here. I don't think, Ada, your mistress believes much in Critchett; but I have fully explained what I want. He has made me up many prescriptions. Explain that to his assistant if he is not there. Go at once, and you will be back before she is. I should be so very much obliged, tell him. "Mr Arthur Lawford."'

The minutes slowly drifted by. He sat quite still in the clear untroubled light, waiting in the silence of the empty house. And for the first time he was confronted with the cold incredible horror of his ordeal. Who would believe, who could believe, that behind this strange and awful, yet how simple mask, lay himself? What test; what heaped-up evidence of identity would break it down? It was all a loathsome ignominy. It was utterly absurd. It was--

Suddenly, with a kind of ape-like cunning, he deliberately raised a long lean forefinger and pointed it at the shadowy crystal of the looking-glass. Perhaps he was dead, was really and indeed changed in body, was fated really and indeed to change in soul, into That. 'It's that beastly voice again,' Lawford cried out loud, looking vacantly at his upstretched finger. And then, hand and arm, not too willingly, as it were, obeyed; relaxed and fell to his side. 'You must keep a tight hold, old man,' he muttered to himself. 'Once, once you lose yourself--the least symptom of that--the least symptom, and it's all up!' And the fools, the heartless, preposterous fools had brought him one volume!

When on earth was Ada coming back? She was lagging on purpose. She was in the conspiracy too. Oh, it should be a lesson to Sheila! Oh, if only daylight would come! 'What are you going to do--to do--to DO?' He rose once more and paced his silent cage. To and fro, thinking no more; just using his eyes, compelling them to wander from picture to picture, bedpost to bedpost; now counting aloud his footsteps; now humming; only, only to keep himself from thinking. At last he took out a drawer and actually began arranging its medley of contents; ties, letters, studs, concert and theatre programmes--all higgledy-piggledy. And in the midst of this childish strategem he heard a faint sound, as of heavy water trickling from a height. He turned. A thief was in one of the candles. It was guttering out. He would be left in darkness. He turned hastily without a moment's heed, to call for light, flung the door open and full in the flare of a lamp, illuminating her pale forehead and astonished face beneath her black straw hat, stood face to face with Ada.

With one swift dexterous movement he drew the door to after him, looking straight into her almost colourless steady eyes. 'Ah,' he said instantly, in a high faint voice, 'the powder, thank you; yes, Mr Lawford's powder; thank you, thank you. He must be kept absolutely quiet--absolutely. Mrs Lawford is following. Please tell her that I am here, when she returns. Mr Critchett was in, then? Thank you. Extreme, extreme silence, please.' Again that knotted, melodramatic finger raised itself on high; and within that lean, cadaverous body the soul of its lodger quailed at this spectral boldness. But it was triumphant. The maid at once left him and went downstairs. He heard faint voices in muffled consultation. And in a moment Sheila's silks rustled once more on the staircase. Lawford put down the lamp, and watched her deliberately close the door.

'What does this mean?' she began swiftly, 'I understand that--Ada tells me a stranger is here; giving orders, directions. Who is he? where is he? You bound yourself on your solemn promise not to stir till I returned. You... How can I, how can we get decently through this horrible business if you are so wretchedly indiscreet? You sent Ada to the chemist's. What for? What for? I say.'

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.

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.

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