I knew there was no one else in the
house—’

‘No one else in the house? And you like this?’

‘Yes,’ said Lawford, stolidly, ‘they were all out as it happened. And,
of course,’ he went on quickly, ‘there was nothing for me to do but
simply to go down and open the door. And yet, do you know, at first I
simply couldn’t move. I lit a candle, and then—then somehow I got to
know that waiting for me was just—but there,’ he broke off
half-ashamed, ‘I mustn’t bother you with all this morbid stuff. Will
your brother be in now, do you think?’

‘My brother will be in, and, of course, expecting you. But as for
“bother,” believe me—well, did I quite deserve it?’ She stooped towards
him. ‘You lit a candle—and then?’

They turned and retraced their way slowly up the hill. ‘It came again.’

‘It?’

‘That—that presence, that shadow. I don’t mean, of course, it’s a real
shadow. It comes, doesn’t it, from—from within? As if from out of some
unheard-of hiding place, where it has been lurking for ages and ages
before one’s childhood; at least, so it seems to me now. And yet
although it does come from within, there it is, too, in front of you,
before your eyes, feeding even on your fear, just watching, waiting
for—What nonsense all this must seem to you!’

‘Yes, yes; and then?’

‘Then, and you must remember the poor old boy had been knocking all
this time—my old friend—Mr Bethany, I mean—knocking and calling through
the letter-box, thinking I was in extremis_, or something; then—how
shall I describe it?—well _you_ came, your eyes, your face, as clear as
when, you know, the night before last, we went up the hill together. And then...’

‘And then?’

‘And then, we—you and I, you know—simply drove him downstairs, and I
could hear myself grunting as if it was really a physical effort; we
drove him, step by step, downstairs. And—’ He laughed outright, and
boyishly continued his adventure. ‘What do you think I did then,
without the ghost of a smile, too, at the idiocy of the thing? I locked
the poor beggar in the drawing-room. I saw him there, as plainly as I
ever saw anything in my life, and the furniture glimmering, though it
was pitch dark: I can’t describe it. It all seemed so desperately real,
absolutely vital then. It all seems so meaningless and impossible now. And yet, although I am utterly played out and done for, and however
absurd it may _sound_, I wouldn’t have lost it; I wouldn’t go back for
any bribe there is. I feel just as if a great bundle had been rolled
off my back. Of course, the queerest, the most detestable part of the
whole business is that _it_—the thing on the stairs—was this’—he lifted
a grave and haggard face towards her again—‘or rather _that_,’ he
pointed with his stick towards the starry churchyard. ‘Sabathier,’ he
said. Again they had paused together before the white gate, and this time
Lawford pushed it open, and followed his companion up the narrow path. She stayed a moment, her hand on the bell. ‘Was it my brother who
actually put that horrible idea into your mind?—about Sabathier?’

‘Oh no, not really put it into my head,’ said Lawford hollowly. ‘He
only found it there; lit it up.’

She laid her hand lightly on his arm. ‘Whether he did or not,’ she said
with an earnestness that was almost an entreaty, ‘of course, you _must_
agree that we every one of us have some such experience—that kind of
visitor, once at least, in a lifetime.’ ‘Ah, but,’ began Lawford,
turning forlornly away, ‘you didn’t see, you can’t have realized—the
change.’

She pulled the bell almost as if in some inward triumph. ‘But don’t you
think,’ she suggested, ‘that that, like the other, might be, as it
were, partly imagination too? If now you thought _back._...’

But a little old woman had opened the door, and the sentence, for the
moment, was left unfinished. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN


There was no one in the room, and no light, when they entered. For a
moment Grisel stood by the open window, looking out. Then she turned
impulsively. ‘My brother, of course, will ask you too,’ she said; ‘we
had made up our minds to do so if you came again; but I want you to
promise me now that you won’t dream of going back to-night. That surely
would be tempting—well, not Providence. I couldn’t rest if I thought
you might be alone; like that again.’ Her voice died away into the
calling of the waters. A light moved across the dingy old rows of books
and as his sister turned to go out Herbert appeared in the doorway,
carrying a green-shaded lamp, with an old leather quarto under his arm. ‘Ah, here you are,’ he said. ‘I guessed you had probably met.’ He drew
up, burdened, before his visitor. But his clear black glance, instead
of wandering off at his first greeting, had intensified. And it was
almost with an air of absorption that he turned away. He dumped his
book on to a chair and it turned over with scattered leaves on to the
floor. He put the lamp down and stooped after it, so that his next
words came up muffled, and as if the remark had been forced out of him. ‘You don’t feel worse, I hope?’ He got up and faced his visitor for the
answer. And for the moment Lawford stood considering his symptoms. ‘No,’ he said almost gaily; ‘I feel enormously better.’ But Herbert’s
long, oval, questioning eyes beneath the sleek black hair were still
fixed on his face. ‘I am afraid, my dear fellow,’ he said, with
something more than his usual curiously indifferent courtesy, ‘the
struggle has frightfully pulled you to pieces.’

‘The question is,’ answered Lawford, with a kind of tired yet whimsical
melancholy in his voice, ‘though I am not sure that the answer very
much matters—what’s going to put me together again? It’s the old story
of Humpty Dumpty, Herbert. Besides, one thing you said has stuck out in
a quite curious way in my memory. I wonder if you will remember?’

‘What was that?’ said Herbert with unfeigned curiosity. ‘Why, you said even though Sabathier had failed, though I was still my
own old stodgy self, that you thought the face—the face, you know,
might work in. Somehow, sometimes I think it has. It does really rather
haunt me. In that case—well, what then?’ Lawford had himself listened
to this involved explanation much as one watches the accomplishment of
a difficult trick, marvelling more at its completion at all than at the
difficulty involved in the doing of it. ‘“Work in,”’ repeated Herbert, like a rather blasé child confronted
with a new mechanical toy; ‘did I really say that? well, honestly, it
wasn’t bad; it’s what one would expect on that hypothesis. You see, we
are only different, as it were, in our differences. Once the foot’s
over the threshold, it’s nine points of the law! But I don’t remember
saying it.’ He shamefacedly and naively confessed it: ‘I say such an
awful lot of things. And I’m always changing my mind. It’s a standing
joke against me with my sister.