The Return Read online

  Produced by Eve Sobol

  THE RETURN

  Walter de la Mare

  Transcriber's Note:

  This edition has single quotation marks for direct quotes, and double for indirect quotes.

  There are no periods in the original text after Mr Mrs Dr

  "Look not for roses in Attalus his garden, or wholesome flowers in a venomous plantation. And since there is scarce any one bad, but some others are the worse for him; tempt not contagion by proximity and hazard not thyself in the shadow of corruption."

  SIR THOMAS BROWNE.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The churchyard in which Arthur Lawford found himself wandering that mildand golden September afternoon was old, green, and refreshingly still.The silence in which it lay seemed as keen and mellow as the light--thepale, almost heatless, sunlight that filled the air. Here and thererobins sang across the stones, elvishly shrill in the quiet of harvest.The only other living creature there seemed to Lawford to be his ownrather fair, not insubstantial, rather languid self, who at the noiseof the birds had raised his head and glanced as if between content andincredulity across his still and solitary surroundings. An increasinginclination for such lonely ramblings, together with the feeling thathis continued ill-health had grown a little irksome to his wife, andthat now that he was really better she would be relieved at his absence,had induced him to wander on from home without much considering wherethe quiet lanes were leading him. And in spite of a peculiar melancholythat had welled up into his mind during these last few days, he hadcertainly smiled with a faint sense of the irony of things on liftinghis eyes in an unusually depressed moodiness to find himself lookingdown on the shadows and peace of Widderstone.

  With that anxious irresolution which illness so often brings in itstrain he had hesitated for a few minutes before actually entering thegraveyard. But once safely within he had begun to feel extremely loth tothink of turning back again, and this not the less at remembering witha real foreboding that it was now drawing towards evening, that anotherday was nearly done. He trailed his umbrella behind him over thegrass-grown paths; staying here and there to read some time-worninscription; stooping a little broodingly over the dark green graves.Not for the first time during the long laborious convalescence that hadfollowed apparently so slight an indisposition, a fleeting sense almostas if of an unintelligible remorse had overtaken him, a vague thoughtthat behind all these past years, hidden as it were from his daily life,lay something not yet quite reckoned with. How often as a boy had hebeen rapped into a galvanic activity out of the deep reveries he usedto fall into--those fits of a kind of fishlike day-dream. How often,and even far beyond boyhood, had he found himself bent on some distantthought or fleeting vision that the sudden clash of self-possession hadmade to seem quite illusory, and yet had left so strangely haunting. Andnow the old habit had stirred out of its long sleep, and, through thegate that Influenza in departing had left ajar, had returned upon him.

  'But I suppose we are all pretty much the same, if we only knew it,' hehad consoled himself. 'We keep our crazy side to ourselves; that's all.We just go on for years and years doing and saying whatever happens tocome up--and really keen about it too'--he had glanced up with a kind ofchallenge in his face at the squat little belfry--'and then, withoutthe slightest reason or warning, down you go, and it all begins to wearthin, and you get wondering what on earth it all means.' Memory slippedback for an instant to the life that in so unusual a fashion seemedto have floated a little aloof. Fortunately he had not discussed theseinward symptoms with his wife. How surprised Sheila would be to see himloafing in this old, crooked churchyard. How she would lift her darkeyebrows, with that handsome, indifferent tolerance. He smiled, but alittle confusedly; yet the thought gave even a spice of adventure to theevening's ramble.

  He loitered on, scarcely thinking at all now, stooping here and there.These faint listless ideas made no more stir than the sunlight gildingthe fading leaves, the crisp turf underfoot. With a slight effort hestooped even once again;--

  'Stranger, a moment pause, and stay; In this dim chamber hidden away Lies one who once found life as dear As now he finds his slumbers here: Pray, then, the Judgement but increase His deep, everlasting peace!'

  'But then, do you know you lie at peace?' Lawford audibly questioned,gazing at the doggerel. And yet, as his eyes wandered over the bluntgreen stone and the rambling crimson-berried brier that had almostencircled it with its thorns, the echo of that whisper rather jarred.He was, he supposed, rather a dull creature--at least people seemedto think so--and he seldom felt at ease even with his own smallfacetiousness. Besides, just that kind of question was gettingvery common. Now that cleverness was the fashion most people wereclever--even perfect fools; and cleverness after all was often onlya bore: all head and no body. He turned languidly to the smallcross-shaped stone on the other side:

  'Here lies the body of Ann Hard, who died in child-bed. Also of James, her infant son.'

  He muttered the words over with a kind of mournful bitterness. 'That'sjust it--just it; that's just how it goes!'... He yawned softly; thepathway had come to an end. Beyond him lay ranker grass, one andanother obscurer mounds, an old scarred oak seat, shadowed by a feweverlastingly green cypresses and coral-fruited yew-trees. And above andbeyond all hung a pale blue arch of sky with a few voyaging clouds likesilvered wool, and the calm wide curves of stubble field and pastureland. He stood with vacant eyes, not in the least aware how queer afigure he made with his gloves and his umbrella and his hat among thestained and tottering gravestones. Then, just to linger out his hour,and half sunken in reverie, he walked slowly over to the few solitarygraves beneath the cypresses.

  One only was commemorated with a tombstone, a rather unusual oval-headedstone, carved at each corner into what might be the heads of angels,or of pagan dryads, blindly facing each other with worn-out, sightlessfaces. A low curved granite canopy arched over the grave, with a creviceso wide between its stones that Lawford actually bent down and slid inhis gloved fingers between them. He straightened himself with asigh, and followed with extreme difficulty the well-nigh, illegibleinscription:

  'Here lie ye Bones of one, Nicholas Sabathier, a Stranger to this Parish, who fell by his own Hand on ye Eve of Ste. Michael and All Angels. MDCCXXXIX

  Of the date he was a little uncertain. The 'Hand' had lost its 'n' and'd'; and all the 'Angels' rain had erased. He was not quite sure evenof the 'Stranger.' There was a great rich 'S,' and the twisted tail ofa 'g'; and, whether or not, Lawford smilingly thought, he is no Strangernow. But how rare and how memorable a name! French evidently; probablyHuguenot. And the Huguenots, he remembered vaguely, were a ratherremarkable 'crowd.' He had, he thought, even played at 'Huguenots'once. What was the man's name? Coligny; yes, of course, Coligny. 'And Isuppose,' Lawford continued, muttering to himself, 'I suppose this poorbeggar was put here out of the way. They might, you know,' he addedconfidentially, raising the ferrule of his umbrella, 'they might havestuck a stake through you, and buried you at the crossroads.' Andagain, a feeling of ennui, a faint disgust at his poor little witticism,clouded over his mind. It was a pity thoughts always ran the easiestway, like water in old ditches.

  '"Here lie ye bones of one, Nicholas Sabathier,"' he began murmuringagain--'merely bones, mind you; brains and heart are quite anotherstory. And it's pretty certain the fellow had some kind of brains.Besides, poor devil! he killed himself. That seems to hint at brains...Oh, for goodness' sake!' he cried out; so loud that the sound of hisvoice alarmed even a robin that had perched on a twig almost withintouch, with glittering eye intent above its dim red breast on this otherand even rarer stranger.

  'I wonder if it is XXXIX.; i
t might be LXXIX.' Lawford cast a cautiousglance over his round grey shoulder, then laboriously knelt down besidethe stone, and peeped into the gaping cranny. There he encounteredmerely the tiny, pale-green, faintly conspicuous eyes of a large spider,confronting his own. It was for the moment an alarming, and yet afaintly fascinating experience. The little almost colourless firesremained so changeless. But still, even when at last they had actuallyvanished into the recesses of that quiet habitation, Lawford did notrise from his knees. An utterly unreasonable feeling of dismay, a suddenweakness and weariness had come over him.

  'What is the good of it all?' he asked himself inconsequently--thismonotonous, restless, stupid life to which he was soon to be returning,and for good. He began to realize how ludicrous a spectacle he must be,kneeling here amid the weeds and grass beneath the solemn cypresses.'Well, you can't have everything,' seemed loosely to express hisdisquiet.

  He stared vacantly at the green and fretted gravestone, dimly aware thathis heart was beating with an unusual effort. He felt ill and weak. Heleant his hand on the stone and lifted himself on to the low woodenseat nearby. He drew off his glove and thrust his bare hand under hiswaistcoat, with his mouth a little ajar, and his eyes fixed on the darksquare turret, its bell sharply defined against the evening sky.

  'Dead!' a bitter inward voice seemed to break into speech; 'Dead!'The viewless air seemed to be flocking with hidden listeners. The veryclearness and the crystal silence were their ambush. He alone seemed tobe the target of cold and hostile scrutiny. There was not a breath tobreathe in this crisp, pale sunshine. It was all too rare, too thin. Theshadows lay like wings everlastingly folded. The robin that had beenhis only living witness lifted its throat, and broke, as if from theuttermost outskirts of reality, into its shrill, passionless song.Lawford moved heavy eyes from one object to another--bird--sun-gildedstone--those two small earth-worn faces--his hands--a stirring in thegrass as of some creature labouring to climb up. It was useless to sithere any longer. He must go back now. Fancies were all very well fora change, but must be only occasional guests in a world devoted toreality. 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....

  The flaming rose that had swiftly surged from the west into the zenith,dyeing all the churchyard grass a wild and vivid green, and the stoopingstones above it a pure faint purple, waned softly back like a fallingfountain into its basin. In a few minutes, only a faint orange burned inthe west, dimly illuminating with its band of light the huddled figureon his low wood seat, his right hand still pressed against a faintlybeating heart. Dusk gathered; the first white stars appeared; out of theshadowy fields a nightjar purred. But there was only the silence of thefalling dew among the graves. Down here, under the ink-black cypresses,the blades of the grass were stooping with cold drops; and darkness laylike the hem of an enormous cloak, whose jewels above the breast ofits wearer might be in the unfathomable clearness the glitteringconstellations....

  In his small cage of darkness Lawford shuddered and raised a furtivehead. He stood up and peered eagerly and strangely from side to side. Hestayed quite still, listening as raptly as some wandering night-beast tothe indiscriminate stir and echoings of the darkness. He cocked his headabove his shoulder and listened again, then turned upon the soundlessgrass towards the hill. He felt not the faintest astonishment orstrangeness in his solitude here; only a little chilled, and physicallyuneasy; and yet in this vast darkness a faint spiritual exaltationseemed to hover.

  He hastened up the narrow path, walking with knees a little bent, likean old labourer who has lived a life of stooping, and came out into thedry and dusty lane. One moment his instinct hesitated as to which turnto take--only a moment; he was soon walking swiftly, almost trotting,downhill with this vivid exaltation in the huge dark night in hisheart, and Sheila merely a little angry Titianesque cloud on a scarcelyperceptible horizon. He had no notion of the time; the golden hands ofhis watch were indiscernible in the gloom. But presently, as he passedby, he pressed his face close to the cold glass of a little shop-window,and pierced that out by an old Swiss cuckoo-clock. He would if hehurried just be home before dinner.

  He broke into a slow, steady trot, gaining speed as he ran on, vaguelyelated to find how well his breath was serving him. An odd smiledarkened his face at remembrance of the thoughts he had been thinking.There could be little amiss with the heart of a man who could shamblealong like this, taking even pleasure, an increasing pleasure in thislong, wolf-like stride. He turned round occasionally to look into theface of some fellow-wayfarer whom he had overtaken, for he felt not onlythis unusual animation, this peculiar zest, but that, like a boy on somesecret errand, he had slightly disguised his very presence, was goingmasked, as it were. Even his clothes seemed to have connived at thisqueer illusion. No tailor had for these ten years allowed him somuch latitude. He cautiously at last opened his garden gate and withsoundless agility mounted the six stone steps, his latch-key ready inhis gloveless hand, and softly let himself into the house.

  Sheila was out, it seemed, for the maid had forgotten to light thelamp. Without pausing to take off his greatcoat, he hung up his hat, rannimbly upstairs, and knocked with a light knuckle on his bedroom door.It was closed, but no answer came. He opened it, shut it, locked it, andsat down on the bedside for a moment, in the darkness, so that he couldscarcely hear any other sound, as he sat erect and still, like somenight animal, wary of danger, attentively alert. Then he rose from thebed, threw off his coat, which was clammy with dew, and lit a candle onthe dressing-table.

  Its narrow flame lengthened, drooped, brightened, gleamed clearly. Heglanced around him, unusually contented--at the ruddiness of the lowfire, the brass bedstead, the warm red curtains, the soft silverinesshere and there. It seemed as if a heavy and dull dream had withdrawn outof his mind. He would go again some day, and sit on the little hard seatbeside the crooked tombstone of the friendless old Huguenot. He openeda drawer, took out his razors, and, faintly whistling, returned to thetable and lit a second candle. And still with this strange heightenedsense of life stirring in his mind, he drew his hand gently over hischin and looked unto the glass.

  For an instant he stood head to foot icily still, without the leastfeeling, or thought, or stir--staring into the looking-glass. Then aninconceivable drumming beat on his ear. A warm surge, like the onset ofa wave, broke in him, flooding neck, face, forehead, even his hands withcolour. He caught himself up and wheeled deliberately and completelyround, his eyes darting to and fro, suddenly to fix themselves ina prolonged stare, while he took a deep breath, caught back hisself-possession and paused. Then he turned and once more confronted thechanged strange face in the glass.

  Without a sound he drew up a chair and sat down, just as he was, frigidand appalled, at the foot of the bed. To sit like this, with a kind ofincredibly swift torrent of consciousness, bearing echoes and imageslike straws and bubbles on its surface, could not be called thinking.Some stealthy hand had thrust open the sluice of memory. And words,voices, faces of mockery streamed through without connection, tendency,or sense. His hands hung between his knees, a deep and settled frowndarkened the features stooping out of the direct rays of the light, andhis eyes wandered like busy and inquisitive, but stupid, animals overthe floor.

  If, in that flood of unintelligible thoughts, anything clearly recurredat all, it was the memory of Sheila. He saw her face, lit, transfigured,distorted, stricken, appealing, horrified. His lids narrowed; a vagueterror and horror mastered him. He hid his eyes in his hands and criedwithout sound, without tears, without hope, like a desolate child. Heceased crying; and sat without stirring. And it seemed after an age ofvacancy and meaninglessness he heard a door shut downstairs, a distantvoice, and then the rustle of some one slowly ascending the stairs. Someone turned the handle; in vain; tapped. 'Is that you, Arthur?'

  For an instant Lawford paused, then like a child listening for an ech
o,answered, 'Yes, Sheila.' And a sigh broke from him; his voice, exceptfor a little huskiness, was singularly unchanged.

  'May I come in?' Lawford stood softly up and glanced once more into theglass. His lips set tight, and a slight frown settled between the long,narrow, intensely dark eyes.

  'Just one moment, Sheila,' he answered slowly, 'just one moment.'

  'How long will you be?'

  He stood erect and raised his voice, gazing the while impassively intothe glass.

  'It's no use,' he began, as if repeating a lesson, 'it's no use yourasking me, Sheila. Please give me a moment, a...I am not quite myself,dear,' he added quite gravely.

  The faintest hint of vexation was in the answer.

  'What is the matter? Can't I help? It's so very absurd--'

  'What is absurd?' he asked dully.

  'Why, standing like this outside my own bedroom door. Are you ill? Iwill send for Dr. Simon.'

  'Please, Sheila, do nothing of the kind. I am not ill. I merely wanta little time to think in.' There was again a brief pause, and then aslight rattling at the handle.

  'Arthur, I insist on knowing at once what's wrong; this does not sound abit like yourself. It is not even quite like your own voice.'

  'It is myself,' he replied stubbornly, staring fixedly into the glass.You must give me a few moments, Sheila. Something has happened. My face.Come back in an hour.'

  'Don't be absurd; it's simply wicked to talk like that. How do I knowwhat you are doing? As if I can leave you for an hour in uncertainty!Your face! If you don't open at once I shall believe there's somethingseriously wrong: I shall send Ada for assistance.'

  'If you do that, Sheila, it will be disastrous. I cannot answer for thecon--. Go quietly downstairs. Say I am unwell; don't wait dinner for me;come back in an hour; oh, half an hour!'

  The answer broke out angrily. 'You must be mad, beside yourself, to asksuch a thing. I shall wait in the next room until you call.'

  'Wait where you please,' Lawford replied, 'but tell them downstairs.'

  'Then if I tell them to wait until half-past eight, you will come down?You say you are not ill: the dinner will be ruined. It's absurd.'

  Lawford made no answer. He listened a while, then he deliberately satdown once more to try to think. Like a squirrel in a cage his mindseemed to be aimlessly, unceasingly astir. 'What is it really? Whatis it really?--really?' He sat there and it seemed to him his body wastransparent as glass. It seemed he had no body at all--only the memoryof an hallucinatory reflection in the glass, and this inward voicecrying, arguing, questioning, threatening out of the silence--'What isit really--really--REALLY?' And at last, cold, wearied out, he roseonce more and leaned between the two long candle-flames, and staredon--on--on, into the glass.

  He gave that long, dark face that had been foisted on him tricks todo--lift an eyebrow, frown. There was scarcely any perceptible pausebetween the wish and its performance. He found to his discomfiture thatthe face answered instantaneously to the slightest emotion, even to hisfainter secondary thoughts; as if these unfamiliar features were notentirely within control. He could not, in fact, without the glass beforehim, tell precisely what that face WAS expressing. He was still, itseemed, keenly sane. That he would discover for certain when Sheilareturned. Terror, rage, horror had fallen back. If only he felt ill, orwas in pain: he would have rejoiced at it. He was simply caught in someunheard-of snare--caught, how? when? where? by whom?