Walter De la Mare

“ There was, it seemed, a peculiar aura in Lawford’s presence, a shadow of a something in his demeanour that proved him alien.
None the less green Widderstone kept calling him, much as a bell in the imagination tolls on and on, the echo of reality. If the worst should come to the worst, why—there is pasture in the solitary by-ways for the beast that strays. He quickened his pace along lonelier streets, and soon strode freely through the little flagged and cobbled village of shops, past the same small jutting window whose clock had told him the hour on that first dark hurried night. ”

“ None the less, the leisurely descent became in their company something of a real experience even in such a brimming week.
‘I hope, some day, you will really tell me your dream?’ he said, pushing the old lady’s silk skirts in after her as she slowly climbed into the carriage.
‘Ah, my dear Lawford, when you are my age,’ she called back to him, groping her way into the rather musty gloom, ‘you’ll dream such dreams for yourself. Life’s not what’s just the fashion. And there are queerer things to be seen and heard just quietly in one’s solitude than this busy life gives us time to discover. ”

“ But here I am; and not nearly so ill as I look, Alice; and there’s nothing more to trouble ourselves about; not even if it should be necessary for me to go away for a time. And this is our secret, mind; ours only; just a dead secret between you and me.’
They sat for awhile without speaking or stirring. And faintly along the hushed road Lawford heard in the silence a leisurely indolent beat of little hoofs approaching, and the sound of wheels. A sudden wave of feeling swept over him. He took Alice’s quiet loving face in his hands and kissed her passionately. ”

“ She looked at him without a trace of emotion or constraint in her large, quiet face, and their eyes met for a moment in that brief, fixed, baffling fashion that seems to prove that mankind is after all but a dumb masked creature saddled with the vain illusion of speech.
‘And now that I’ve eased my conscience,’ said the old lady, pulling down her veil, ‘I must beg pardon for intruding at such an hour of the evening. And may I have your arm down those dreadful steps? Really, Mr Lawford, judging from the houses they erect for us, the builders must have a very peculiar notion of mankind. ”

“ Mr Bethany raised a small lean hand: ‘One moment, please. I have heard Lawford’s own account. Conscious or unconscious, he has been through some terrific strain, some such awful conflict with the unseen powers that we—thank God!—have only read about, and never perhaps, until death is upon us, shall witness for ourselves. What more likely, more inevitable than that such a thing should leave its scar, its cloud, its masking shadow?—call it what you will. A smile can turn a face we dread into a face we’d die for. ”

“ I don’t care that, vicar, honestly—puffed up with spiritual pride. If a man can’t sleep with pride for a bed-fellow, well, he’d better try elsewhere. It’s no good; I’m as stubborn as a mule; that’s at least a relic of the old Adam. I care no more,’ he raised his voice firmly and gravely—‘I don’t care a jot for solitude, not a jot for all the ghosts of all the catacombs!’
Mr. Bethany listened, grimly pursed up his lips. ‘Not a jot for all the ghosts of all the catechisms!’ he muttered. ”

“ Oh, believe me; no one is near; we go on; and see! it gradually, gradually lightens. How thankful I am I came.’
She had turned and they were steadily ascending as if pushing their way, battling on through some obstacle of the mind rather than of the senses beneath the star-powdered callous vault of night. And it seemed to Lawford as if, as they pressed on together, some obscure detestable presence as slowly, as doggedly had drawn worsted aside. He could see again the peaceful outspread branches of the trees, the lych-gate standing in clear-cut silhouette against the liquid dusk of the sky. ”

“ But you do, you will, understand, Mr Lawford, that he was, that we are both “doing our best”—to make amends?’
‘I understand—I do indeed—a tenth part of all your kindness.’
‘Yes, but that’s just it—that horrible word “kindness”! If ever there were two utterly self-absorbed people, without a trace, with an absolute horror of kindness, it is just my brother and I. It’s most of it false and most of it useless. We all surely must take what comes in this topsy-turvy world. I believe in saying out:—that the more one thinks about life the worse it becomes. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ But Lawford, quite unmindful of the shock, continued in a kind of heedless reverie to watch, as he combed, the still visionary thoughts that passed in tranced stillness before his eyes. He longed beyond measure for freedom that until yesterday he had not even dreamed existed outside the covers of some old impossible romance—the magic of the darkening sky, the invisible flocking presences of the dead, the shock of imaginations that had no words, of quixotic emotions which the stranger had stirred in that low, mocking, furtive talk beside the broken stones of the Huguenot. ”

“ Lawford moved heavy eyes from one object to another—bird—sun-gilded stone—those two small earth-worn faces—his hands—a stirring in the grass as of some creature labouring to climb up. It was useless to sit here any longer. He must go back now. Fancies were all very well for a change, but must be only occasional guests in a world devoted to reality. He leaned his hand on the dark grey wood, and closed his eyes. The lids presently unsealed a little, momentarily revealing astonished, aggrieved pupils, and softly, slowly they again descended.... ”

“ 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. ”

“ Why, really, Arthur, you must be mad!’
Lawford paused. Like a flock of sheep streaming helter-skelter before the onset of a wolf were the thoughts that a moment before had seemed so orderly and sober.
‘Not mad—possessed,’ he said softly.
‘And I add this,’ cried Sheila, as it were out of a tragic mask, ‘somewhere in the past, whether of your own life, or of the lives of those who brought you into the world—the world which you pretend so conveniently to despise—somewhere is hidden some miserable secret. God visits all sins. On you has fallen at last the payment. That I believe. ”

“ It’s no use at all blinking the fact; I am simply on the verge, if not over it, of insanity.’
‘As to that, Mr Lawford,’ came the still voice out of the darkness; ‘the very fact of your being able to say so seems to me all but proof positive that you’re not. Insanity is on another plane, isn’t it? in which one can’t compare one’s states. As for what you say being credible, take our precious noodle of a spook here! Ninety-nine hundredths of this amiable world of ours would have guffawed the poor creature into imperceptibility ages ago. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ It seemed to Lawford, as it swept up over his body, and as he plunged his night-distorted eyes beneath its blazing surface, that it was charged with some strange, powerful enchantment to wash away in its icy clearness even the memory of the dull and tarnished days behind him. If one could but tie up anyhow that stained bundle of inconsequent memories called life, and fling it into a cupboard remoter even than Bluebeard’s, and lock the door, and drop the quickly-rusting key into these living waters! ”

“ But when Grisel smiled and tried to coax her over, she burst out laughing and ran in again.
Lawford stooped forward on his chair with a groan. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘the whole world mocks me. You say “this evening”; need it be, must it be this evening? If you only knew how far they have driven me. If you only knew what we should only detest each other for saying and for listening to. The whole thing’s dulled and staled. Who wants a changeling? Who wants a painted bird? Who does not loathe the converted?—and I’m converted to Sabathier’s God. ”

“ It was as if a child had asked on the verge of terror for a candle in the dark. But an hour’s terror is better than a lifetime of timidity. Sheila sighed.
‘I think,’ she said, ‘I too might say that. But there; giving way will do nothing for either of us. I shall be gone only for an hour, or two at the most. And I told Mr Bethany I should have to come out before the sermon: it’s only Mr Craik.’
‘But why Mrs Sherwin? She’d worm a secret out of one’s grave.’
‘It’s useless to discuss that, Arthur; you have always consistently disliked my friends. ”

“ What was there in the stillness of its beautiful splendour that seemed to sharpen his horror and difficulty, and yet to stir him to such a daring and devilry as he had never known since he was a boy? There was little sound of life; somewhere an unknown bird was singing, and a few late bees were droning in the bracken. All these years he had, like an old blind horse, stolidly plodded round and round in a dull self-set routine. And now, just when the spirit had come for rebellion, the mood for a harmless truancy, there had fallen with them too this hideous enigma. ”

“ Just for a single instant imagine yourself Falstaff, and if there weren’t hundreds of Falstaffs in every generation, to be examples of his ungodly life, he’d be as dead as a doornail to-morrow—imagine yourself Falstaff, and being so, sitting down to write “Henry IV,” or “The Merry Wives.” It’s simply preposterous. You wouldn’t be such a fool as to waste the time. A mere Elizabethan scribbler comes along with a gift of expression and an observant eye, lifts the bloated old tippler clean out of life, and swims down the ages as the greatest genius the world has ever seen. ”

“ The only other living creature there seemed to Lawford to be his own rather fair, not insubstantial, rather languid self, who at the noise of the birds had raised his head and glanced as if between content and incredulity across his still and solitary surroundings. An increasing inclination for such lonely ramblings, together with the feeling that his continued ill-health had grown a little irksome to his wife, and that now that he was really better she would be relieved at his absence, had induced him to wander on from home without much considering where the quiet lanes were leading him. ”

“ Bless me, his solemn old voice is grinding epigrams out of even this poor old parochial barrel-organ. You don’t suppose, you cannot be supposing you are the only serious person in the world? What’s more, it’s only skin deep.’
Lawford smiled. ‘Skin deep. But think quietly over it; you’ll see I’m done.’
‘Come here,’ said Mr Bethany. ‘Where’s the whiskey, where’s the cigars? You shall smoke and drink, and I’ll watch. If it weren’t for a pitiful old stomach, I’d join you. ”

“ For some time he sat on, listening to the still soft downpour on the fading leaves. ‘They don’t come to me,’ he said softly again; with a tiny smile on his old face. ‘It’s that old medieval Craik: with a face like a last year’s rookery!’ And again he sat, with head a little sidelong, listening now to the infinitesimal sounds of life without, now to the thoughts within, and ever and again he gazed steadfastly on Lawford.
At last it seemed in the haunted quietness other thoughts came to him. A cloud, as it were of youth, drew over the wrinkled skin, composed the birdlike keenness ”

“ Time will wear out the mask. Time will tire out this detestable physical witchcraft. The mind, the self’s the thing. Old fogey though I may seem for saying it—that must be kept unsmirched. We won’t go wearily over the painful subject again. You told me last night, dear old friend, that you were absolutely alone at Widderstone. That is enough. But here we have visible facts, tangible effects, and there must have been a definite reason and a cause for them. I believe in the devil, in the Powers of Darkness, Lawford, as firmly as I believe he and they are powerless—in the long run. ”

“ So, it’s a bargain between us that you bring your daughter soon.’ She busied herself over the tea things. ‘And, of course,’ she added, as if it were an afterthought, looking across at him in the pale green sunlight as she knelt, ‘you simply won’t think of going back to-night.... Solitude, I really do think, solitude just now would be absolute madness. You’ll write to-day and go, perhaps, to-morrow!’
Lawford looked across in his mind at his square ungainly house, full-fronting the afternoon sun. He tried to repress a shudder. ”

“ I suppose every one comes sooner or later to a time in life when there is nothing else to be done but just shut one’s eyes and blunder on. And that’s all I can do now—blunder on....’
He paused, and suddenly, at the echo of the words in his mind, a revulsion of feeling—shame and hatred of himself surged up, and he tore his letter into tiny pieces. Once more he began, ‘my dear Sheila,’ dropped his pen, sat on for a long time, cold and inert, harbouring almost unendurably a pitiful, hopeless longing.... He would write to Grisel another day. ”