It was a little side staircase window; I was horribly
homesick. And she came quite unexpectedly. I shall never forget it—the
misery, and then, her coming.’ He lifted his eyes, cowed with the
incessant struggle, and watched her face for some time in silence. ‘Ought I to stay?’

‘I see no “ought,”’ she said. ‘No one is there?’

‘Only a miserable broken voice out of a broken cage—called Conscience.’

‘Don’t you think, perhaps, that even _that_ has a good many
disguises—convention, cowardice, weakness, ennui; they all take their
turn at hooting in its feathers? You must, you really must have rest. You don’t know; you don’t see; I do. Just a little snap, some one last
exquisite thread gives way, and then it is all over. You see I have
even to try to frighten you, for I can’t tell you how you distress me.’

‘Why do I distress you?—my face, my story you mean?’

‘No; I mean you: your trouble, that horrible empty house, and—oh, dear
me, yes, your courage too.’

‘Listen,’ said Lawford, stooping forward. He could scarcely see the
pale, veiled face through this mist that had risen up over his eyes. ‘I
have no courage apart from you; no courage and no hope. Ask me to
come!—a stranger with no history, no mockery, no miserable rant of a
grave and darkness and fear behind me. Are we not all haunted—every
one? That forgotten, and the fool I was, and the vacillating, and the
pretence—oh, how it all sweeps clear before me; without a will, without
a hope or glimpse or whisper of courage. Be just the memory of my
mother, the face, the friend I’ve never seen; the voice that every
dream leaves echoing. Ask me to come.’

She sat unstirring; and then as if by some uncontrollable impulse
stooped a little closer to him and laid her gloved hand on his. ‘I hear, you know; I hear too,’ she whispered. ‘But we mustn’t listen. Come now. It’s growing late.’

The little village echoed back from its stone walls the clatter of the
pony’s hoofs. Night had darkened to its deepest when their lamp shone
white on the wicket in the hedge. They had scarcely spoken. Lawford had
simply watched pass by, almost without a thought, the arching trees,
the darkening fields; had watched rise up in a mist of primrose light
the harvest moon to shine in saffron on the faces and shoulders of the
few wayfarers they met, or who passed them by. The still grave face
beneath the shadow of its veil had never turned, though the moon poured
all her flood of brilliance upon the dark profile. And once when as if
in sudden alarm he had lifted his head and looked at her, a sudden
doubt had assailed him so instantly that he had half put out his hand
to touch her, and had as quickly withdrawn it, lest her beauty and
stillness should be, even as the moment’s fancy had suggested, only a
far-gone memory returned in dream. Herbert hailed them from the darkness of an open window. He came down,
and they talked a little in the cold air of the garden. He lit a
cigarette, and climbed languidly into the cart, and drove the drowsy
little pony off into the moonlight. CHAPTER TWENTY


It was a quiet supper the three friends sat down to. Herbert sat
narrowing his eyes over his thoughts, which, when the fancy took him,
he scattered out upon the others’ silence. Lawford apparently had not
yet shaken himself free from the sorcery of the moonlight. His eyes
shone dark and full like those of a child who has trespassed beyond its
hour for bed, and sits marvelling at reality in a waking dream. Long after they had bidden each other good-night, long after Herbert
had trodden on tiptoe with his candle past his closed door, Lawford sat
leaning on his arms at the open window, staring out across the
motionless moonlit trees that seemed to stand like draped and dreaming
pilgrims, come to the peace of their Nirvana at last beside the
crashing music of the waters. And he himself, the self that never
sleeps beneath the tides and waves of consciousness, was listening,
too, almost as unmovedly and unheedingly to the thoughts that clashed
in conflict through his brain. Why, in a strange transitory life was one the slave of these small
cares? What if even in that dark pit beneath, which seemed to whisper
Lethe to the tumultuous, swirling waters—what if there, too, were
merely a beginning again, and to seek a slumbering refuge there merely
a blind and reiterated plunge into the heat and tumult of another day? Who was that poor, dark, homeless ghoul, Sabathier? Who was this Helen
of an impossible dream? Her face with its strange smile, her eyes with
their still pity and rapt courage had taken hope away. ‘Here’s not your
rest,’ cried one insistent voice; ‘she is the mystery that haunts day
and night, past all the changing of the restless hours. Chance has
given you back eyes to see, a heart that can be broken. Chance and the
stirrings of a long-gone life have torn down the veil age spins so
thick and fast. Pride and ambition; what dull fools men are! Effort and
duty, what dull fools men are!’ He listened on and on to these phantom
pleadings and to the rather coarse old Lawford conscience grunting them
mercilessly down, too weary even to try to rest. Rooks at dawn came sweeping beneath the turquoise of the sky. He saw
their sharp-beaked heads turn this way, that way, as they floated on
outspread wings across the misty world. Except for the hoarse roar of
the water under the huge thin-leafed trees, not a sound was stirring. ‘One thing,’ he seemed to hear himself mutter as he turned with a
shiver from the morning air, ‘it won’t be for long. You can, at least,
poor devil, wait the last act out.’ If in this foolish hustling mob of
the world, hired anywhere and anywhen for the one poor dubious wage of
a penny—if it was only his own small dull part to carry a mock spear,
and shout huzza with the rest—there was nothing for it, he grunted
obstinately to himself, shout he would with the loudest. He threw himself on to the bed with eyes so wearied with want of sleep
it seemed they had lost their livelong skill in finding it. Not the
echo of triumph nor even a sigh of relief stirred the torpor of his
mind. He knew vaguely that what had been the misery and madness of the
last few days was gone. But the thought had no power to move him now. Sheila’s good sense, and Mr Bethany’s stubborn loyalty were alike old
stories that had lost their savour and meaning. Gone, too, was the need
for that portentous family gathering that had sat so often in his fancy
during these last few days around his dining-room table, discussing
with futile decorum the problem of how to hush him up, to muffle him
down. Half dreaming, half awake, he saw the familiar door slowly open
and, like the timely hero in a melodrama, his own figure appear before
the stricken and astonished company. His eyes opened half-fearfully,
and glanced up in the morning twilight. Their perplexity gave place to
a quiet, almost vacant smile; the lids slowly closed again, and at last
the lean hands twitched awhile in sleep.