The Return Read online

  CHAPTER NINE

  The last light of sunset lay in the west; and a sullen wrack of cloudwas mounting into the windless sky when Lawford entered the countrygraveyard again by its dark weather-worn lych-gate. The old stone churchwith its square tower stood amid trees, its eastern window faintly aglowwith crimson and purple. He could hear a steady, rather nasal voicethrough its open lattices. But the stooping stones and the cypresseswere out of sight of its porch. He would not be seen down there. Hepaused a moment, however; his hat was drawn down over his eyes; he wasshivering. Far over the harvest fields showed a growing pallor inthe solitary seat beneath the cypresses. He stood hesitating, gazingsteadily and yet half vacantly at the motionless figure, and in a whilea face was lifted in his direction, and undisconcerted eyes calmlysurveyed him.

  'I am afraid,' called Lawford rather nervously--'I hope I am notintruding?'

  'Not at all, not at all,' said the stranger. 'I have no privileges here;at least as yet.'

  Lawford again hesitated, then slowly advanced. 'It's astonishingly quietand beautiful,' he said.

  The stranger turned his head to glance over the fields. 'Yes, it is,very,' he replied. There was the faintest accent, a little drawl ofunfriendliness in the remark.

  'You often sit here?' Lawford persisted.

  The stranger raised his eyebrows. 'Oh yes, often.' He smiled. 'It ismy own modest fashion of attending divine service. The congregation israpt.'

  'My visits,' said Lawford, 'have been very few--in fact, so far as Iknow, I have only once been here before.'

  'I envy you the novelty.' There was again the same faint unmistakableantagonism in voice and attitude; and yet so deep was the relief intalking to a fellow creature who hadn't the least suspicion of anythingunusual in his appearance that Lawford was extremely disinclined to turnback. He made another effort--for conversation with strangers had alwaysbeen a difficulty to him--and advanced towards the seat. 'You mustn'tplease let me intrude upon you,' he said, 'but really I am veryinterested in this queer old place. Perhaps you would tell me somethingof its history?' He sat down. His companion moved slowly to the otherside of the broken gravestone.

  'To tell you the truth,' he replied, picking his way as it were fromword to word, 'it's "history," as people call it, does not interest mein the least. After all, it's not when a thing is, but what it is, thatmuch matters. What this is'--he glanced, with head bent, across theshadowy stones, 'is pretty evident. Of course, age has its charms.'

  'And is this very old?'

  'Oh yes, it's old right enough, as things go; but even age, perhaps,is mainly an affair of the imagination. There's a tombstone near thatlittle old hawthorn, and there are two others side by side under thewall, still even legibly late seventeenth century. That's prettygood weathering.' He smiled faintly. 'Of course, the church itself iscenturies older, drenched with age. But she's still sleep-walking whilethese old tombstones dream. Glow-worms and crickets are not such badbedfellows.'

  'What interested me most, I think,' said Lawford haltingly, 'was this.'He pointed with his stick to the grave at his feet.

  'Ah, yes, Sabathier's,' said the stranger; 'I know his peculiar historyalmost by heart.'

  Lawford found himself staring with unusual concentration into therather long and pale face. 'Not, I suppose,' he resumed faintly--'not, Isuppose, beyond what's there.'

  His companion leant his hand on the old stooping tombstone. 'Well, youknow, there's a good deal there'--he stooped over--'if you read betweenthe lines. Even if you don't.'

  'A suicide,' said Lawford, under his breath.

  'Yes, a suicide; that's why our Christian countrymen have buried himoutside of the fold. Dead or alive, they try to keep the wolf out.'

  'Is this, then, unconsecrated ground?' said Lawford.

  'Haven't you noticed,' drawled the other, 'how green the grass growsdown here, and how very sharp are poor old Sabathier's thorns? Besides,he was a stranger, and they--kept him out.'

  'But, surely,' said Lawford, 'was it so entirely a matter of choice--thelaws of the Church? If he did kill himself, he did.'

  The stranger turned with a little shrug. 'I don't suppose it's a matterof much consequence to HIM. I fancied I was his only friend. May Iventure to ask why you are interested in the poor old thing?'

  Lawford's mind was as calm and shallow as a millpond. 'Oh, a ratherunusual thing happened to me here,' he said. 'You say you often come?'

  'Often,' said the stranger rather curtly.

  'Has anything--ever--occurred?'

  '"Occurred?"' He raised his eyebrows. 'I wish it had. I come heresimply, as I have said, because it's quiet; because I prefer the companyof those who never answer me back, and who do not so much as condescendto pay me the least attention.' He smiled and turned his face towardsthe quiet fields.

  Lawford, after a long pause, lifted his eyes. 'Do you think,' he saidsoftly, 'it is possible one ever could?'

  '"One ever could?"'

  'Answer back?'

  There was a low rotting wall of stone encompassing Sabathier's grave;on this the stranger sat down. He glanced up rather curiously at hiscompanion. 'Seldom the time and the place and the revenant altogether.The thought has occurred to others,' he ventured to add.

  'Of course, of course,' said Lawford eagerly. 'But it is an absolutelynew one to me. I don't mean that I have never had such an idea, just inone's own superficial way; but'--he paused and glanced swiftly into thefast-thickening twilight--'I wonder: are they, do you think, really, allquite dead?'

  'Call and see!' taunted the stranger softly.

  'Ah, yes, I know,' said Lawford. 'But I believe in the resurrection ofthe body; that is what we say; and supposing, when a man dies--supposingit was most frightfully against one's will; that one hated the awfulinaction that death brings, shutting a poor devil up like a childkicking against the door in a dark cupboard; one might surely onemight--just quietly, you know, try to get out? wouldn't you?' he added.

  'And, surely,' he found himself beginning gently to argue again,'surely, what about, say, him?' He nodded towards the old and brokengrave that lay between them.

  'What, Sabathier?' the other echoed, laying his hand upon the stone.

  And a sheer enormous abyss of silence seemed to follow the unanswerablequestion.

  'He was a stranger; it says so. Good God!' said Lawford, 'how he musthave wanted to get home! He killed himself, poor wretch, think of thefret and fever he must have been in--just before. Imagine it.'

  'But it might, you know,' suggested the other with a smile--'might havebeen sheer indifference.'

  '"Nicholas Sabathier, Stranger to this parish"--no, no,' said Lawford,his heart beating as if it would choke him, 'I don't fancy it wasindifference.'

  It was almost too dark now to distinguish the stranger's features butthere seemed a faint suggestion of irony in his voice. 'And how doyou suppose your angry naughty child would set about it? It's narrowquarters; how would he begin?'

  Lawford sat quite still. 'You say--I hope I am not detaining you--yousay you have come here, sat here often, on this very seat; have you everhad--have you ever fallen asleep here?'

  'Why do you ask?' inquired the other curiously.

  'I was only wondering,' said Lawford. He was cold and shivering. He feltinstinctively it was madness to sit on here in the thin gliding mistthat had gathered in swathes above the grass, milk-pale in the risingmoon. The stranger turned away from him.

  '"For in that sleep of death what dreams may come must give us pause,"'he said slowly, with a little satirical catch on the last word. 'Whatdid you dream?'

  Lawford glanced helplessly about him. The moon cast lean grey beamsof light between the cypresses. But to his wide and wandering eyes itseemed that a radiance other than hers haunted these mounds and leaningstones. 'Have you ever noticed it?' he said, putting out his handtowards his unknown companion; 'this stone is cracked from head tofoot?... But there'--he rose stiff and chilled--'I am afraid I havebored you with my company. You came here for
solitude, and I have beentrying to convince you that we are surrounded with witnesses. You willforgive my intrusion?' There was a kind of old-fashioned courtesy in hismanner that he himself was dimly aware of. He held out his hand.

  'I hope you will think nothing of the kind,' said the other earnestly;'how could it be in any sense an intrusion? It's the old story ofBluebeard. And I confess I too should very much like a peep into hiscupboard. Who wouldn't? But there, it's merely a matter of time, Isuppose.' He paused, and together they slowly ascended the path alreadyglimmering with a heavy dew. At the porch they paused once more. And nowit was the stranger that held out his hand.

  'Perhaps,' he said, 'you will give me the pleasure of some daycontinuing our talk. As for our friend below, it so happens that I havemanaged to pick up a little more of his history than the sexton seems tohave heard of--if you would care some time or other to share it. I liveonly at the foot of the hill, not half a mile distant. Perhaps you couldspare the time now?'

  Lawford took out his watch, 'You are really very kind,' he said. 'But,perhaps--well, whatever that history may be, I think you would agreethat mine is even--but, there, I've talked too much about myselfalready. Perhaps to-morrow?'

  'Why, to-morrow, then,' said his companion. 'It's a flat wooden house,on the left-hand side. Come at any time of the evening'; he paused againand smiled--'the third house after the Rectory, which is marked up onthe gate. My name is Herbert--Herbert Herbert to be precise.'

  Lawford took out his pocket-book and a card. 'Mine,' he said, handingit gravely to his companion. 'is Lawford--at least...' It was really thefirst time that either had seen the other's face at close quarters andclear-lit; and on Lawford's a moon almost at the full shonedazzlingly. He saw an expression--dismay, incredulity, overwhelmingastonishment--start suddenly into the dark, rather indifferent eyes.

  'What is it?' he cried, hastily stooping close.

  'Why,' said the other, laughing and turning away, 'I think the moon musthave bewitched me too.'