Next morning he spent rummaging among the old books, dipping listlessly
here and there as the tasteless fancy took him, while Herbert sat
writing with serene face and lifted eyebrows at his open window. But
the unfamiliar long S’s, the close type, and the spelling of the musty
old books wearied eye and mind. What he read, too, however far-fetched,
or lively, or sententious, or gross, seemed either to be of the same
texture as what had become his everyday experience, and so baffled him
with its nearness, or else was only the meaningless ramblings of an
idle pen. And this, he thought to himself, looking covertly up at the
spruce clear-cut profile at the window, this is what Herbert had called
Life. ‘Am I interrupting you, Herbert; are you very busy?’ he asked at last,
taking refuge on a chair in a far corner of the room. ‘Bless me, no; not a bit—not a bit,’ said Herbert amiably, laying down
his pen. ‘I’m afraid the old leatherjackets have been boring you. It’s
a habit this beastly reading; this gorge and glint and fever all at
second-hand—purely a bad habit, like morphia, like laudanum. But once
in, you know there’s no recovery. Anyhow, I’m neck-deep, and to
struggle would be simply to drown.’

‘I was only going to say how sorry I am for having left Sabathier at
home.’

‘My dear fellow—’ began Herbert reassuringly. ‘It was only because I wanted so very much to have your translation. I
get muddled up with other things groping through the dictionary.’

Herbert surveyed him critically. ‘What exactly is your interest now,
Lawford? You don’t mean that my old “theory” has left any sting now?’

‘No sting; oh no. I was only curious. But you yourself still think it
really, don’t you?’

Herbert turned for a moment to the open window. ‘I was simply trying then to find something to fit the facts as you
experienced them. But now that the facts have gone—and they have,
haven’t they?—exit, of course, my theory!’

‘I see,’ was the cryptic answer. ‘And yet, Herbert,’ Lawford solemnly
began again, ‘it has changed me; even in my way of thinking. When I
shut my eyes now—I only discovered it by chance—I see immediately faces
quite strange to me; or places, sometimes thronged with people; and
once an old well with some one sitting in the shadow. I can’t tell you
how clearly, and yet it is all altogether different from a dream. Even
when I sit with my eyes open, I am conscious, as it were, of a kind of
faint, colourless mirage. In the old days—I mean before Widderstone,
what I saw was only what I’d seen already. Nothing came uncalled for,
unexplained. This makes the old life seem so blank; I did not know what
extraordinarily _real_ things I was doing without. And whether for that
reason or another, I can’t quite make out what in fact I did want then,
and was always fretting and striving for. I can see no wisdom or
purpose in anything now but to get to one’s journey’s end as quickly
and bravely as one can. And even then, even if we do call life a
journey, and death the inn we shall reach at last in the evening when
it’s over; that, too, I feel will be only as brief a stopping-place as
any other inn would be. Our experience here is so scanty and
shallow—nothing more than the moment of the continual present. Surely
that must go on, even if one does call it eternity. And so we shall all
have to begin again. Probably Sabathier himself.... But there, what on
earth _are_ we, Herbert, when all is said? Who is it has—has done all
this for us—what kind of self? And to what possible end? Is it that the
clockwork has been wound up and must still jolt on a while with jarring
wheels? Will it never run down, do you think?’

Herbert smiled faintly, but made no answer. ‘You see,’ continued Lawford, in the same quiet, dispassionate
undertone, ‘I wouldn’t mind if it was only myself. But there are so
many of us, so many selves, I mean; and they all seem to have a voice
in the matter. What is the reality to this infernal dream?’

‘The reality is, Lawford, that you are fretting your life out over this
rotten illusion. Be guided by me just this once. We’ll go, all three of
us, a good ten-mile walk to-day, and thoroughly tire you out. And
to-night you shall sleep here—a really sound, refreshing sleep. Then
to-morrow, whole and hale, back you shall go; honestly. It’s only
professional strong men should ask questions. Babes like you and me
must keep to slops.’

So, though Lawford made no answer, it was agreed. Before noon the three
of them had set out on their walk across the fields. And after rambling
on just as caprice took them, past reddening blackberry bushes and
copses of hazel, and flaming beech, they sat down to spread out their
meal on the slope of a hill, overlooking quiet ploughed fields and
grazing cattle. Herbert stretched himself with his back to the earth,
and his placid face to the pale vacant sky, while Lawford, even more
dispirited after his walk, wandered up to the crest of the hill. At the foot of the hill, upon the other side, lay a farm and its
out-buildings, and a pool of water beneath a group of elms. It was
vacant in the sunlight, and the water vividly green with a scum of
weed. And about half a mile beyond stood a cluster of cottages and an
old towered church. He gazed idly down, listening vaguely to the
wailing of a curlew flitting anxiously to and fro above the broken
solitude of its green hill. And it seemed as if a thin and dark cloud
began to be quietly withdrawn from over his eyes. Hill and wailing cry
and barn and water faded out. And he was staring as if in an endless
stillness at an open window against which the sun was beating in a
bristling torrent of gold, while out of the garden beyond came the
voice of some evening bird singing with such an unspeakable ecstasy of
grief it seemed it must be perched upon the confines of another world. The light gathered to a radiance almost intolerable, driving back with
its raining beams some memory, forlorn, remorseless, remote. His body
stood dark and senseless, rocking in the air on the hillside as if
bereft of its spirit. Then his hands were drawn over his eyes. He
turned unsteadily and made his way, as if through a thick, drizzling
haze, slowly back. ‘What is that—there?’ he said almost menacingly, standing with
bloodshot eyes looking down upon Herbert. ‘“That!”—what?’ said Herbert, glancing up startled from his book. ‘Why,
what’s wrong, Lawford?’

‘That,’ said Lawford sullenly, yet with a faintly mournful cadence in
his voice; ‘those fields and that old empty farm—that village over
there? Why did you bring me here?’

Grisel had not stirred. ‘The village...’

‘Ssh!’ she said, catching her brother’s sleeve; ‘that’s Detcham, yes,
Detcham.’

Lawford turned wide vacant eyes on her. He shook his head and
shuddered. ‘No, no; not Detcham. I know it; I know it; but it has gone
out of my mind. Not Detcham; I’ve been there before; don’t look at me. Horrible, horrible. It takes me back—I can’t think. I stood there,
trying, trying; it’s all in a blur.