At last the last haunting question came in a kind of
croak, as if only by a supreme effort could it be compelled to produce
itself for consideration. ‘And Alice, Sheila?’

‘Alice, dear, of course goes with _me_.’

‘You realise,’ he stirred uneasily, ‘you realise it may be final.’

‘My dear Arthur,’ cried Sheila, ‘it is surely, apart from mere
delicacy, a parental obligation to screen the poor child from the
shock. Could she be at such a time in any better keeping than her
mother’s? At present she only vaguely guesses. To know definitely that
her father, infinitely worse than death, had—had—Oh, is it possible to
realise anything in this awful cloud? It would kill her outright.’

Lawford made no stir. The quietest of raps came at the door. ‘The money
from the Bank, ma’am,’ said a faint voice. Sheila carefully opened the door a few inches. She laid the blue
envelope on the dressing-table at her husband’s elbow. ‘You had better
perhaps count it,’ she said in a low voice—‘forty in notes, the rest in
gold,’ and narrowed her eyes beneath her veil upon her husband’s very
peculiar method of forgetting his responsibilities. ‘French?’ she said with a nod. ‘How very quaint.’

Lawford’s eyes fell and rested gravely on the dingy page of Herbert’s
mean-looking bundle of print. A queer feeling of cold crept over him. ‘Yes,’ he said vaguely, ‘French,’ and hopelessly failed to fill in the
silence that seemed like some rather sleek nocturnal creature quietly
waiting to be fed. Sheila swept softly towards the door. ‘Well, Arthur, I think that is
all. The servants will have gone by this evening. I have ordered a
carriage for half-past twelve. Perhaps you would first write down
anything that occurs to you to be necessary? Perhaps, too, it would be
better if Dr Simon were told that we shall not need him any more, that
you are thinking of a complete change of scene, a voyage. He is
obviously useless. Besides, Mr Bethany, I think, is going to discuss a
specialist with you. I have written him a little note, just briefly
explaining. Shall I write to Dr Simon too?’

‘You remember everything,’ said Lawford, and it seemed to him it was a
remark he had heard ages and ages ago. ‘It’s only this money, Sheila;
will you please take that away?’

‘Take it away?’

‘I think, Sheila, if I do take a voyage I should almost prefer to work
my passage. As for a mere “change of scene,” that’s quite uncostly.’

‘It is only your face, Arthur,’ said Sheila solemnly, ‘that suggest
these wicked stabs. Some day you will perhaps repent of every one.’

‘It is possible, Sheila; we none of us stand still, you know. One rips
open a lid sometimes and the wax face rots before one’s eyes. Take back
your blue envelope; and thank you for thinking of me. It’s always the
woman of the house that has the head.’

‘I wish,’ said Sheila almost pathetically, and yet with a faint quaver
of resignation, ‘I wish it could be said that the man of the house
sometimes has the heart. Think it over, Arthur!’

Sheila, with her husband’s luncheon tray, brought also her farewells. Lawford surveyed, not without a faint, shy stirring of incredulity, the
superbly restrained presence. He stood before her dry-lipped,
inarticulate, a schoolboy caught redhanded in the shabbiest of
offences. ‘It is your wish then that I go, Arthur?’ she said pleadingly. He handed her her money without a word. ‘Very well, Arthur; if you won’t take it,’ she said. ‘I should scarcely
have thought this the occasion for mere pride.’

‘The tenth,’ she continued, as she squeezed the envelope into her
purse, with only the least hardening of voice, ‘although I daresay you
have not troubled to remember it—the tenth will be the eighteenth
anniversary of our wedding-day. It makes parting, however advisable,
and though only for the few days we should think nothing of in happier
circumstances, a little harder to bear. But there, all will come right. You will see things in a different light, perhaps. Words may wound, but
time will heal.’ But even as she now looked closely into his colourless
sunken face some distant memory seemed to well up irresistibly—the
memory of eyes just as ingenuous, and as unassuming that even in
claiming her love had expressed only their stolid unworthiness. ‘Did you know it? have you seen it?’ she said, stooping forward a
little. ‘I believe in spite of all....’ He gazed on solemnly, almost
owlishly, out of his fading mask. ‘Wait till Mr Bethany tells you; you will believe it perhaps from him.’
He saw the grey-gloved hand a little reluctantly lifted towards him. ‘Good-bye, Sheila,’ he said, and turned mechanically back to the
window. She hesitated, listening to a small far-away voice that kept urging her
with an almost frog-like pertinacity to do, to say something, and yet
as stubbornly would not say what; and she was gone. CHAPTER FIFTEEN


Raying and gleaming in the sunlight the hired landau drove up to the
gate. Lawford, peeping between the blinds, looked down on the coachman,
with reins hanging loosely from his red squat-thumbed hand, seated in
his tight livery and indescribable hat on the faded cushions. One thing
only was in his mind; and it was almost with an audible cry that he
turned towards the figure that edged, white and trembling, into the
chill room, to fling herself into his arms. ‘Don’t look at me,’ he
begged her, ‘only remember, dearest, I would rather have died down
there and been never seen again than have given you pain. Run—run, your
mother’s calling. Write to me, think of me; good-bye!’

He threw himself on the bed and lay there till evening—till the door
had shut gently behind the last rat to leave the sinking ship. All the
clearness, the calmness were gone again. Round and round in dizzy
sickening flare and clatter his thoughts whirled. Contempt, fear,
loathing, blasphemy, laughter, longing: there was no end. Death was no
end. There was no meaning, no refuge, no hope, no possible peace. To
give up was to go to perdition: to go forward was to go mad. And even
madness—he sat up with trembling lips in the twilight—madness itself
was only a state, only a state. You might be bereaved, and the pain and
hopelessness of that would pass. You might be cast out, betrayed,
deserted, and still be you, still find solitude lovely and in a brave
face a friend. But madness!—it surged in on him with all the clearness
and emptiness of a dream. And he sat quite still, his hand clutching
the bedclothes, his head askew, waiting for the sound of footsteps, for
the presences and the voices that have their thin-walled dwelling
beneath the shallow crust of consciousness. Inky blackness drifted up in wisps, in smoke before his eyes; he was
powerless to move, to cry out. There was no room to turn; no air to
breathe. And yet there was a low, continuous, never-varying stir as of
an enormous wheel whirling in the gloom. Countless infinitesimal faces
arched like glimmering pebbles the huge dim-coloured vault above his
head.