‘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. CHAPTER NINE


The last light of sunset lay in the west; and a sullen wrack of cloud
was mounting into the windless sky when Lawford entered the country
graveyard again by its dark weather-worn lych-gate. The old stone
church with its square tower stood amid trees, its eastern window
faintly aglow with crimson and purple. He could hear a steady, rather
nasal voice through its open lattices. But the stooping stones and the
cypresses were out of sight of its porch. He would not be seen down
there. He paused a moment, however; his hat was drawn down over his
eyes; he was shivering. Far over the harvest fields showed a growing
pallor in the sky. He would have the moon to go home by. ‘Home!’—these trees, this tongueless companionship, this heavy winelike
air, this soundless turf—these in some obscure desolate fashion seemed
far rather really home. His eyes wandered towards the fading crimson. And with that on his right hand he began softly, almost on tiptoe,
descending the hill. It seemed to him that the steady eyes of the dead
were watching him in his slow progress. The air was echoing with little
faint, clear calls. He turned and snapped his fingers at a robin that
was stalking him with its stony twittering from bush to bush. But when after some little time he actually came out of the narrow
avenue and looked down, his heart misgave him, for some one was already
sitting there on his low and solitary seat beneath the cypresses. He
stood hesitating, gazing steadily and yet half vacantly at the
motionless figure, and in a while a face was lifted in his direction,
and undisconcerted eyes calmly surveyed him. ‘I am afraid,’ called Lawford rather nervously—‘I hope I am not
intruding?’

‘Not at all, not at all,’ said the stranger. ‘I have no privileges
here; at least as yet.’

Lawford again hesitated, then slowly advanced. ‘It’s astonishingly
quiet and beautiful,’ he said. The stranger turned his head to glance over the fields. ‘Yes, it is,
very,’ he replied. There was the faintest accent, a little drawl of
unfriendliness in the remark. ‘You often sit here?’ Lawford persisted. The stranger raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh yes, often.’ He smiled. ‘It is my
own modest fashion of attending divine service. The congregation is
rapt.’

‘_My_ visits,’ said Lawford, ‘have been very few—in fact, so far as I
know, I have only once been here before.’

‘I envy you the novelty.’ There was again the same faint unmistakable
antagonism in voice and attitude; and yet so deep was the relief in
talking to a fellow creature who hadn’t the least suspicion of anything
unusual in his appearance that Lawford was extremely disinclined to
turn back. He made another effort—for conversation with strangers had
always been a difficulty to him—and advanced towards the seat. ‘You
mustn’t please let me intrude upon you,’ he said, ‘but really I am very
interested in this queer old place. Perhaps you would tell me something
of its history?’ He sat down. His companion moved slowly to the other
side of the broken gravestone. ‘To tell you the truth,’ he replied, picking his way as it were from
word to word, ‘it’s “history,” as people call it, does not interest me
in the least. After all, it’s not _when_ a thing is, but _what_ it is,
that much matters. What this is’—he glanced, with head bent, across the
shadowy stones, ‘is pretty evident. Of course, age has its charms.’

‘And is this very old?’

‘Oh yes, it’s old right enough, as things go; but even age, perhaps, is
mainly an affair of the imagination. There’s a tombstone near that
little old hawthorn, and there are two others side by side under the
wall, still even legibly late seventeenth century. That’s pretty good
weathering.’ He smiled faintly. ‘Of course, the church itself is
centuries older, drenched with age. But she’s still sleep-walking while
these old tombstones dream. Glow-worms and crickets are not such bad
bedfellows.’

‘What interested me most, I think,’ said Lawford haltingly, ‘was this.’
He pointed with his stick to the grave at his feet. ‘Ah, yes, Sabathier’s,’ said the stranger; ‘I know his peculiar history
almost by heart.’

Lawford found himself staring with unusual concentration into the
rather long and pale face. ‘Not, I suppose,’ he resumed faintly—‘not, I
suppose, beyond what’s there.’

His companion leant his hand on the old stooping tombstone. ‘Well, you
know, there’s a good deal there’—he stooped over—‘if you read between
the lines. Even if you don’t.’

‘A suicide,’ said Lawford, under his breath. ‘Yes, a suicide; that’s why our Christian countrymen have buried him
outside of the fold. Dead or alive, they try to keep the wolf out.’

‘Is this, then, unconsecrated ground?’ said Lawford. ‘Haven’t you noticed,’ drawled the other, ‘how green the grass grows
down here, and how very sharp are poor old Sabathier’s thorns? Besides,
he was a stranger, and they—kept him out.’

‘But, surely,’ said Lawford, ‘was it so entirely a matter of choice—the
laws of the Church? If he did kill himself, he did.’

The stranger turned with a little shrug. ‘I don’t suppose it’s a matter
of much consequence to _him_. I fancied I was his only friend.