Shut lids of sightless indifference seemed to greet the wanderer from
the curtained windows. He opened the door and went in. For a moment he stood in the vacant
hall; then he peeped first into the blind-drawn dining-room, faintly,
dingily sweet, like an empty wine-bottle. He went softly on a few paces
and just opening the door looked in on the faintly glittering twilight
of the drawing-room. But the congealed stump of candle that he had set
in the corner as a final rancorous challenge to the beaten Shade was
gone. He slowly and deliberately ascended the stairs, conscious of a
peculiar sense of ownership of what in even so brief an absence had
taken on so queer a look of strangeness. It was almost as if he might
be some lone heir come in the rather mournful dusk to view what
melancholy fate had unexpectedly bestowed on him. ‘Work in’—what on earth else could this chill sense of strangeness
mean? Would he ever free his memory from that one haphazard, haunting
hint? And as he stood in the doorway of the big, calm room, which
seemed even now to be stirring with the restless shadow of these last
few far-away days; now pacing sullenly to and fro; now sitting
hunched-up to think; and now lying impotent in a vain, hopeless
endeavour only for the breath of a moment to forget—he awoke out of
reverie to find himself smiling at the thought that a changed face was
practically at the mercy of an incredulous world, whereas a changed
heart was no one’s deadly dull affair but its owner’s. The merest
breath of pity even stole over him for the Sabathier who after all had
dared and had needed, perhaps, nothing like so arrogant and merciless a
coup de grâce_ to realise that he had so ignominiously failed. ‘But there, that’s done!’ he exclaimed out loud, not without a tinge of
regret that theories, however brilliant and bizarre, could never now be
anything else—that now indeed that the symptoms had gone, the ‘malady,’
for all who had not been actually admitted into the shocked circle, was
become nothing more than an inanely ‘tall’ story; stuffing not even
savoury enough for a goose. How wide exactly, he wondered, would
Sheila’s discreet, shocked circle prove? He stood once more before the
looking-glass, hearing again Grisel’s words in the still green shadow
of the beech-tree, ‘Except of course, horribly, horribly ill.’ ‘What a
fool, what a coward she thinks I am!’

There was still nearly an hour to be spent in this great barn of faded
interests. He lit a candle and descended into the kitchen. A mouse went
scampering to its hole as he pushed open the door. The memory of that
ravenous morning meal nauseated him. It was sour and very still here;
he stood erect; the air smelt faint of earth. In the breakfast-room the
bookcase still swung open. Late evening mantled the garden; and in
sheer ennui again he sat down to the table, and turned for a last not
unfriendly hob-a-nob with his poor old friend Sabathier. He would take
the thing back. Herbert, of course, was going to translate it for him. Now if the patient old Frenchman had stormed Herbert instead—that
surely would have been something like a coup! Those frenzied books. The
absurd talk of the man. Herbert was perfectly right—he could have
entertained fifty old Huguenots without turning a hair. ‘I’m such an
awful stodge.’

He turned the woolly leaves over very slowly. He frowned impatiently,
and from the end backwards turned them over again. Then he laid the
book softly down on the table and sat back. He stared with narrowed
lids into the flame of his quiet friendly candle. Every trace, every
shred of portrait and memoir were gone. Once more, deliberately,
punctiliously, he examined page by page the blurred and unfamiliar
French—the sooty heads, the long, lean noses, the baggy eyes passing
like figures in a peepshow one by one under his hand—to the last
fragmentary and dexterously mended leaf. Yes, Sabathier was gone. Quite
the old slow Lawford smile crept over his face at the discovery. It was
a smile a little sheepish too, as he thought of Sheila’s quiet
vigilance. And the next instant he had looked up sharply, with a sudden peculiar
shrug, and a kind of cry, like the first thin cry of an awakened child,
in his mind. Without a moment’s hesitation he climbed swiftly upstairs
again to the big sepulchral bedroom. He pressed with his fingernail the
tiny spring in the looking-glass. The empty drawer flew open. There
were finger-marks still in the dust. Yet, strangely enough, beneath all the clashing thoughts that came
flocking into his mind as he stood with the empty drawer in his hand,
was a wounding yet still a little amused pity for his old friend Mr
Bethany. So far as he himself was concerned the discovery—well, he
would have plenty of time to consider everything that could possibly
now concern himself. Anyhow, it could only simplify matters. He remembered waking to that old wave of sickening horror on the first
unhappy morning; he remembered the keen yet owlish old face blinking
its deathless friendliness at him, and the steady pressure of the cold,
skinny hand. As for Sheila, she had never done anything by halves;
certainly not when it came to throwing over a friend no longer
necessary to one’s social satisfaction. But she would edge out
cleverly, magnanimously, triumphantly enough, no doubt, when the day of
reckoning should come, the day when, her nets wide spread, her bait
prepared, he must stand up before her outraged circle and positively
prove himself her lawful husband, perhaps even to the very imprint of
his thumb. ‘Poor old thing!’ he said again; and this time his pity was shared
almost equally between both witnesses to Mr Bethany’s ingenuous little
document, the loss of which had fallen so softly and pathetically that
he felt only ashamed of having discovered it so soon. He shut back the tell-tale drawer, and after trying to collect his
thoughts in case anything should have been forgotten, he turned with a
deep trembling sigh to descend the stairs. But on the landing he drew
back at the sound of voices, and then a footstep. Soon came the sound
of a key in the lock. He blew out his candle and leant listening over
the balusters. ‘Who’s there?’ he called quietly. ‘Me, sir,’ came the feeble reply out of the darkness. ‘What is it, Ada? What have you come for?’

‘Only, sir, to see that all was safe, and you were in, sir.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘All’s safe; and I am in. What if I had been out?’ It
was like dropping tiny pebbles into a deep well—so long after came the
answering feeble splash. ‘Then I was to go back, sir.’ And a moment after the discreet voice
floated up with the faintest tinge of effrontery out of the hush. ‘Is
that Dr Ferguson, too sir?’

‘No, Ada; and please tell your mistress from me that Dr Ferguson is
unlikely to call again.’ A keen but rather forlorn smile passed over
his face. ‘He’s dining with friends no doubt at Holloway. But of course
if she should want to see him he will see her to-morrow at any hour at
Mrs Lovat’s.