And there she was sitting
with me at the other end of just such another little seat as’—he
turned—to Herbert ‘as ours, at Widderstone. It was on Bewley Common: I
can see it all now; it was sunset. And I simply turned and asked her in
a kind of a whining affected manner if she remembered me; and when
after a long time she came round to owning that to all intents and
purposes she did not—I professed to have made a mistake in recognising
_her_. I think,’ he added, glancing up from one to the other of his two
strange friends, ‘I think it was the meanest trick I can remember.’

‘H’m,’ said Herbert solemnly: ‘I wish I had as sensitive a conscience. But as your old friend didn’t recognise you, who’s the worse? As for
her not doing so, just think of the difference a few years makes to a
man, and _any_ severe shock. Life wears so infernally badly. Who, for
that matter, does not change, even in character and yet who professes
to see it? Mind, I don’t say in essence! But then how many of the human
ghosts one meets does one know in essence? One doesn’t want to. It
would be positively cataclysmic. And that’s what brings me around to
feel, Lawford, if I may venture to say so, that you may have brooded a
little too keenly on—on your own case. Tell any one you feel ill; he
will commiserate with you to positive nausea. Tell any priest your soul
is in danger; will he wait for proof? It’s misereres and penances world
without end. Tell any woman you love her; will she, can she, should
she, gainsay you? There you are. The cat’s out of the bag, you see. My
sister and I sat up half the night talking the thing over. I said I’d
take the plunge. I said I’d risk appearing the crassest,
contradictoriest wretch that ever drew breath. I don’t deny that what I
hinted at the other night must seem in part directly contrary to what
I’m going to say now.’

He wheeled his black eyes as if for inspiration, and helped himself to
salad. ‘It’s this,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it possible, isn’t it even probable
that being ill, and overstrung, moping a little over things more or
less out of the common ruck, and sitting there in a kind of
trance—isn’t it possible that you may have very largely _imagined_ the
change? Hypnotised yourself into believing it much worse—more profound,
radical, acute—and simply absolutely hypnotizing others into thinking
so, too. Christendom is just beginning to rediscover that there is such
a thing as faith, that it is just possible that, say, megrims or
melancholia may be removed at least as easily as mountains. The
converse, of course, is obvious on the face of it. A man fails because
he thinks himself a failure. It’s the men that run away that lose the
battle. Suppose then, Lawford’—he leaned forward, keen and
suave—‘suppose you have been and “Sabathiered” yourself!’

Lawford had grown accustomed during the last few days to finding
himself gazing out like a child into reality, as if from the windows of
a dream. He had in a sense followed this long, loosely stitched,
preliminary argument; he had at least in part realised that he sat
there between two clear friendly minds acting in the friendliest and
most obvious collusion. But he was incapable of fixing his attention
very closely on any single fragment of Herbert’s apology, or of rousing
himself into being much more than a dispassionate and not very
interested spectator of the little melodrama that Fate, it appeared,
had at the last moment decided rather capriciously to twist into a
farce. He turned with a smile to the face so keenly fixed and
enthusiastic with the question it had so laboriously led up to: ‘But
surely, I don’t quite see...’

Herbert lifted his glass as if to his visitor’s acumen and set it down
again without tasting it. ‘Why, my dear fellow,’ he said triumphantly,
‘even a dream must have a peg. Yours was this unforgettable old
suicide. Candidly now, how much of Sabathier was actually yours? In
spite of all that that fantastical fellow, Herbert, said last night,
dead men _don’t_ tell tales. The last place in the world to look for a
ghost is where his traitorous bones lie crumbling. Good heavens, think
what irrefutable masses of evidence there would be at our finger-tips
if every tombstone hid its ghost! No; the fellow just arrested you with
his creepy epitaph: an epitaph, mind you, that is in a literary sense
distinctly fertilizing. It catches one’s fancy in its own crude way, as
pages and pages of infinitely more complicated stuff take possession
of, germinate, and sprout in one’s imagination in another way. We are
all psychical parasites. Why, given his epitaph, given the
surroundings, I wager any sensitive consciousness could have guessed at
his face; and guessing, as it were, would have feigned it. What do you
think, Grisel?’

‘I think, dear, you are talking absolute nonsense; what do they call
it—“darkening counsel”? It’s “the hair of the dog,” Mr Lawford.’

‘Well, then, you see,’ said Herbert over a hasty mouthful, and turning
again to his victim—‘then you see, when you were just in the pink of
condition to credit any idle tale you heard, then I came in. What, with
the least impetus, can one _not_ see by moonlight? The howl of a dog
turns the midnight into a Brocken; the branch of a tree stoops out at
you like a Beelzebub crusted with gadflies. I’d, mind you, sipped of
the deadly old Huguenot too. I’d listened to your innocent prattle
about the child kicking his toes out on death’s cupboard door; what
more likely thing in the world, then, than that with that moon, in that
packed air, I should have swallowed the bait whole, and seen Sabathier
in every crevice of your skin? I don’t say there wasn’t any
resemblance; it was for the moment extraordinary; it was even when you
were here the other night distinctly arresting. But now (poor old
Grisel, I’m nearly done) all I want to say is this: that if we had the
“foxy old roué” here now, and Grisel played Paris between the three of
us, she’d hand over the apple not to you but to me.’

‘I don’t quite see where poor Paris comes in,’ suggested Grisel meekly. ‘No, nor do I,’ said Herbert. ‘All that I mean, sagacious child, is,
that Mr Lawford no more resembles the poor wretch now than I resemble
the Apollo Belvedere. If you had only heard my sister scolding me,
railing at me for putting such ideas into your jangled head! They don’t
affect _me_ one iota. I have, I suppose, what is usually called
imagination; which merely means that I can sup with the devil, spoon
for spoon, and could sleep in Bluebeard’s linen-closet without turning
a hair. You, if I am not very much mistaken, are not much troubled with
that very unprofitable quality, and so, I suppose, when a crooked and
bizarre fancy does edge into your mind it roots there.’

And that said, not without some little confusion, and covert glance of
inquiry at his sister, Herbert made all the haste he could to catch up
the course that his companions had already finished.