He heard a voice above the monstrous rustling of the wheel,
clamouring, calling him back. He was hastening headlong, muttering to
himself his own flat meaningless name, like a child repeating as he
runs his errand. And then as if in a charmed cold pool he awoke and
opened his eyes again on the gathering darkness of the great bedroom,
and heard a quick, importunate, long-continued knocking on the door
below, as of some one who had already knocked in vain. Cramped and heavy-limbed, he felt his way across the room and lit a
candle. He stood listening awhile: his eyes fixed on the door that hung
a little open. All in the room seemed acutely fantastically still. The
flame burned dim, enisled in the sluggish air. He stole slowly to the
door, looked out, and again listened. Again the knocking broke out,
more impetuously and yet with a certain restraint and caution. Shielding the flame of his candle in the shell of his left hand,
Lawford moved slowly, with chin uplifted, to the stairs. He bent
forward a little, and stood motionless and drawn up, the pupils of his
eyes slowly contracting and expanding as he gazed down into the
carpeted vacant gloom; past the dim louring presence that had fallen
back before him. His mouth opened. ‘Who’s there?’ at last he called. ‘Thank God, thank God!’ he heard Mr Bethany mutter. ‘I mustn’t call,
Lawford,’ came a hurried whisper as if the old gentleman were pressing
his lips to speak through the letter-box. ‘Come down and open the door;
there’s a good fellow! I’ve been knocking no end of a time.’

‘Yes, I am coming,’ said Lawford. He shut his mouth and held his
breath, and stair by stair he descended, driving steadily before him
the crouching, gloating menacing shape, darkly lifted up before him
against the darkness, contending the way with him. ‘Are you ill? Are you hurt? Has anything happened, Lawford?’ came the
anxious old voice again, striving in vain to be restrained. ‘No, no,’ muttered Lawford. ‘I am coming; coming slowly.’ He paused to
breathe, his hands trembling, his hair lank with sweat, and still with
eyes wide open he descended against the phantom lurking in the
darkness—an adversary that, if he should but for one moment close his
lids, he felt would master sanity and imagination with its evil. ‘So
long as you don’t get in,’ he heard himself muttering, ‘so long as you
don’t get _in_, my friend!’

‘What’s that you’re saying?’ came up the muffled, querulous voice; ‘I
can’t for the life of me hear, my boy.’

‘Nothing, nothing,’ came softly the answer from the foot of the stairs. ‘I was only speaking to myself.’

Deliberately, with candle held rigidly on a level with his eyes,
Lawford pushed forward a pace or two into the airless, empty
drawing-room, and grasped the handle of the door. He gazed in awhile, a
black oblique shadow flung across his face, his eyes fixed like an
animal’s, then drew the door steadily towards him. And suddenly some
power that had held him tense seemed to fail. He thrust out his head,
and, his face quivering with fear and loathing, spat defiance as if in
a passion of triumph into the gloom. Still muttering, he shut the door and turned the key. In another moment
his light was gleaming out on the grey perturbed face and black narrow
shoulders of his visitor. ‘You gave me quite a fright,’ said the old man almost angrily; ‘have
you hurt your foot, or something?’

‘It was very dark,’ said Lawford, ‘down the stairs.’

‘What!’ said Mr Bethany still more angrily, blinking out of his
unspectacled eyes; ‘has she cut off the gas, then?’

‘You got the note?’ said Lawford, unmoved. ‘Yes, yes; I got the note.... Gone?’

‘Oh, yes; all gone. It was my choice. I preferred it so.’

Mr Bethany sat down on one of the hard old wooden chairs that stood on
either side of the lofty hall, and breathing rather thickly, rested his
hands on his knees. ‘What’s happened?’ he inquired, looking up into the
candle. ‘I forgot my glasses, old fool that I am, and can’t, my dear
fellow, see you very plainly. But your voice—’

‘I think,’ said Lawford, ‘I think it’s beginning to come back.’

‘What, the whole thing! Oh no, my dear, dear man; be frank with me; not
the whole thing?’

‘Yes,’ said Lawford, ‘the whole thing—very, very gradually,
imperceptibly. I think even Sheila noticed. But I rather feel it than
see it; that is all.... I’m cornering him.’

‘Him?’

Lawford jerked his candle as if towards some definite goal. ‘In time,’
he said. The two faces with the candle between them seemed as it were to gain
light each from the other. ‘Well, well,’ said Mr Bethany, ‘every man for himself, Lawford; it’s
the only way. But what’s going to be done? We must be cautious; must
think of—of the others?’

‘Oh, that,’ said Lawford; ‘she’s going to squeeze me out.’

‘You’ve—squabbled? Oh, but my dear, honest old, _honest_ old idiot,
there are scores of families here in this parish, within a stone’s
throw, that squabble, wrangle, all but politely tear each other’s eyes
out, every day of their earthly lives. It’s perfectly natural. Where
should we poor old busybodies be else. Peace on earth we bring, and
it’s mainly between husband and wife.’

‘Yes,’ said Lawford, ‘but you see, this was not our earthly life. It
was between _us_.’

‘Listen, listen to the dear mystic!’ exclaimed the old creature
scoffingly. ‘What depths we’re touching. Here’s the first serious break
of his lifetime, and he’s gone stark staring transcendental. Ah well.’
He paused and glanced quickly about him, with his curious bird-like
poise of head. ‘But you’re not alone here?’ he inquired suddenly; ‘not
absolutely alone?’

‘Yes,’ said Lawford. ‘But there’s plenty to think about—and read. I
haven’t thought or read for years.’

‘No, nor I; after thirty, my dear boy, one merely annotates, and the
book’s called Life. Bless me, his solemn old voice is grinding epigrams
out of even this poor old parochial barrel-organ. You don’t suppose,
you cannot be supposing you are the only serious person in the world? What’s more, it’s only skin deep.’

Lawford smiled. ‘Skin deep. But think quietly over it; you’ll see I’m
done.’

‘Come here,’ said Mr Bethany. ‘Where’s the whiskey, where’s the cigars? You shall smoke and drink, and I’ll watch. If it weren’t for a pitiful
old stomach, I’d join you. Come on!’ He led the way into the
dining-room. He looked sparer, more wizened and sinewy than ever as he stooped to
open the sideboard. ‘Where on earth do they keep everything?’ he was
muttering to himself. Lawford put the candlestick down on the table. ‘There’s only one
thing,’ he said, watching his visitor’s rummaging; ‘what precisely do
you think they will do with me?’

‘Look here, Lawford,’ snapped Mr Bethany; ‘I’ve come round here,
hooting through your letter-box, to talk sense, not sentiment. Why has
your wife deserted you? Without a servant, without a single—It’s
perfectly monstrous.’

‘On my word of honour, I prefer it so. I couldn’t have gone on. Alone I
all but forget this—this lupus.