Chapter 8

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_ CHAPTER EIGHT

The Sabbath, pale with September sunshine, and monotonous with chiming bells, had passed languidly away. Dr Simon had come and gone, optimistic and urbane, yet with a faint inward dissatisfaction over a patient behind whose taciturnity a hint of mockery and subterfuge seemed to lurk. Even Mrs Lawford had appeared to share her husband's reticence. But Dr Simon had happened on other cases in his experience where tact was required rather than skill, and time than medicine.

The voices and footsteps, even the frou-frou of worshippers going to church, the voices and footsteps of worshippers returning from church, had floated up to the patient's open window. Sunlight had drawn across his room in one pale beam, and vanished. A few callers had called. Hothouse flowers, waxen and pale, had been left with messages of sympathy. Even Dr Critchett had respectfully and discreetly made inquiries on his way home from chapel.

Lawford had spent most of his time in pacing to and fro in his soft slippers. The very monotony had eased his mind. Now and again he had lain motionless, with his face to the ceiling. He had dozed and had awakened, cold and torpid with dream. He had hardly been aware of the process, but every hour had done something, it seemed, towards clarifying his point of view. A consciousness had begun to stir in him that was neither that of the old, easy Lawford, whom he had never been fully aware of before, nor of this strange ghostly intelligence that haunted the hawklike, restless face, and plucked so insistently at his distracted nerves. He had begun in a vague fashion to be aware of them both, could in a fashion discriminate between them, almost as if there really were two spirits in stubborn conflict within him. It would, of course, wear him down in time. There could be only one end to such a struggle--THE end.

All day he had longed for freedom, on and on, with craving for the open sky, for solitude, for green silence, beyond these maddening walls. This heedful silken coming and going, these Sunday voices, this reiterant yelp of a single peevish bell--would they never cease? And above all, betwixt dread and an almost physical greed, he hungered for night. He sat down with elbows on knees and head on his hands, thinking of night, its secrecy, its immeasurable solitude.

His eyelids twitched; the fire before him had for an instant gone black out. He seemed to see slow-gesturing branches, grass stooping beneath a grey and wind-swept sky. He started up; and the remembrance of the morning returned to him--the glassy light, the changing rays, the beaming gilt upon the useless books. Now, at last, at the windows; afternoon had begun to wane. And when Sheila brought up his tea, as if Chance had heard his cry, she entered in hat and stole. She put down the tray, and paused at the glass, looking across it out of the window.

'Alice says you are to eat every one of those delicious sandwiches, and especially the tiny omelette. You have scarcely touched anything to-day, Arthur. I am a poor one to preach, I am afraid; but you know what that will mean--a worse breakdown still. You really must try to think of--of us all.'

'Are you going to church?' he asked in a low voice.

'Not, of course, if you would prefer not. But Dr Simon advised me most particularly to go out at least once a day. We must remember, this is not the beginning of your illness. Long-continued anxiety, I suppose, does tell on one in time. Anyhow, he said that I looked worried and run-down. I AM worried. Let us both try for each other's sakes, or even if only for Alice's, to--to do all we can. I must not harass you; but is there any--do you see the slightest change of any kind?'

'You always look pretty, Sheila; to-night you look prettier: THAT is the only change, I think.'

Mrs Lawford's attitude intensified in its stillness. 'Now, speaking quite frankly, what is it in you suggests these remarks at such a time? That's what baffles me. It seems so childish, so needlessly blind.'

'I am very sorry, Sheila, to be so childish. But I'm not, say what you like, blind. You ARE pretty: I'd repeat it if I was burning at the stake.'

Sheila lowered her eyes softly on to the rich-toned picture in the glass. 'Supposing,' she said, watching her lips move, 'supposing--of course, I know you are getting better and all that--but supposing you don't change back as Mr Bethany thinks, what will you do? Honestly, Arthur, when I think over it calmly, the whole tragedy comes back on me with such a force it sweeps me off my feet; I am for the moment scarcely my own mistress. What would you do?'

'I think, Sheila,' replied a low, infinitely weary voice, 'I think I should marry again.' It was the same wavering, faintly ironical voice that had slightly discomposed Dr Simon that same morning.

'"Marry again"!' exclaimed incredulously the full lips in the looking-glass. 'Who?'

'YOU, dear!'

Sheila turned softly round, conscious in a most humiliating manner that she had ever so little flushed.

Her husband was pouring out his tea, unaware, apparently, of her change of position. She watched him curiously. In spite of all her reason, of her absolute certainty, she wondered even again for a moment if this really could be Arthur. And for the first time she realised the power and mastery of that eager and far too hungry face. Her mind seemed to pause, fluttering in air, like a bird in the wind. She hastened rather unsteadily to the door.

'Will you want anything more, do you think, for an hour?' she asked.

Her husband looked up over his little table. 'Is Alice going with you?'

'Oh yes; poor child, she looks so pale and miserable. We are going to Mrs Sherwin's, and then on to Church. You will lock your door?'

'Yes, I will lock my door.'

'And I do hope Arthur--nothing rash!'

A change, that seemed almost the effect of actual shadow, came over his face. 'I wish you could stay with me,' he said slowly. 'I don't think you have any idea what--what I go through.'

It was as if a child had asked on the verge of terror for a candle in the dark. But an hour's terror is better than a lifetime of timidity. Sheila sighed.

'I think,' she said, 'I too might say that. But there; giving way will do nothing for either of us. I shall be gone only for an hour, or two at the most. And I told Mr Bethany I should have to come out before the sermon: it's only Mr Craik.'

'But why Mrs Sherwin? She'd worm a secret out of one's grave.'

'It's useless to discuss that, Arthur; you have always consistently disliked my friends. It's scarcely likely that you would find any improvement in them now.'

'Oh, well--' he began. But the door was already closed.

'Sheila!' he called in a burst of anger.

'Well, Arthur?'

'You have taken my latchkey.'

Sheila came hastily in again. 'Your latchkey?'

'I am going out.'

'"Going out!"--you will not be so mad, so criminal; and after your promise!'

He stood up. 'It is useless to argue. If I do not go out, I shall certainly go mad. As for criminal--why, that's a woman's word. Who on earth is to know me?'

'It is of no consequence, then, that the servants are already gossiping about this impossible Dr Ferguson; that you are certain to be seen either going or returning; that Alice is bound to discover that you are well enough to go out, and yet not even enough to say good-night to your own daughter--oh, it's monstrous, it's a frantic, a heartless thing to do!' Her voice vaguely suggested tears.

Lawford eyed her coldly and stubbornly--thinking of the empty room he would leave awaiting his return, its lamp burning, its fire-flames shining. It was almost a physical discomfort, this longing unspeakable for the twilight, the green secrecy and the silence of the graves. 'Keep them out of the way,' he said in a low voice; 'it will be dark when I come in.' His hardened face lit up. 'It's useless to attempt to dissuade me.'

'Why must you always be hurting me? why do you seem to delight in trying to estrange me?' Husband and wife faced each other across the clear-lit room. He did not answer.

'For the last time,' she said in a quiet, hard voice, 'I ask you not to go.'

He shrugged his shoulders. 'Ask me not to come back,' he said; 'that's nearer your hope.' He turned his face to the fire. Without moving he heard her go out, return, pause, and go out again. And when he deliberately wheeled round in his chair the little key lay conspicuous there on the counterpane. _

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