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THE RETURN

Walter de la Mare


"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 mild and golden September afternoon was old, green, and
refreshingly still. The silence in which it lay seemed as keen
and mellow as the light--the pale, almost heatless, sunlight that
filled the air. Here and there robins sang across the stones,
elvishly shrill in the quiet of harvest. 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. And in spite of a peculiar melancholy that had
welled up into his mind during these last few days, he had
certainly smiled with a faint sense of the irony of things on
lifting his eyes in an unusually depressed moodiness to find
himself looking down on the shadows and peace of Widderstone.

With that anxious irresolution which illness so often brings in
its train he had hesitated for a few minutes before actually
entering the graveyard. But once safely within he had begun to
feel extremely loth to think of turning back again, and this not
the less at remembering with a real foreboding that it was now
drawing towards evening, that another day was nearly done. He
trailed his umbrella behind him over the grass-grown paths;
staying here and there to read some time-worn inscription;
stooping a little broodingly over the dark green graves. Not for
the first time during the long laborious convalescence that had
followed apparently so slight an indisposition, a fleeting sense
almost as if of an unintelligible remorse had overtaken him, a
vague thought that 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 he been rapped into a galvanic activity
out of the deep reveries he used to 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 distant thought or
fleeting vision that the sudden clash of self-possession had made
to seem quite illusory, and yet had left so strangely haunting.
And now the old habit had stirred out of its long sleep, and,
through the gate 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,' he had 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 to come up--and really keen about it
too'--he had glanced up with a kind of challenge in his face at
the squat little belfry--'and then, without the slightest reason
or warning, down you go, and it all begins to wear thin, and you
get wondering what on earth it all means.' Memory slipped back
for an instant to the life that in so unusual a fashion seemed to
have floated a little aloof. Fortunately he had not discussed
these inward symptoms with his wife. How surprised Sheila would
be to see him loafing in this old, crooked churchyard. How she
would lift her dark eyebrows, with that handsome, indifferent
tolerance. He smiled, but a little confusedly; yet the thought
gave even a spice of adventure to the evening'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 gilding the fading leaves, the crisp turf underfoot.
With a slight effort he stooped 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 blunt green stone and the rambling crimson-berried brier
that had almost encircled it with its thorns, the echo of that
whisper rather jarred. He was, he supposed, rather a dull
creature--at least people seemed to think so--and he seldom felt
at ease even with his own small facetiousness. Besides, just that
kind of question was getting very common. Now that cleverness was
the fashion most people were clever--even perfect fools; and
cleverness after all was often only a bore: all head and no body.
He turned languidly to the small cross-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's just it--just it; that's just how it goes!'... He yawned
softly; the pathway had come to an end. Beyond him lay ranker
grass, one and another obscurer mounds, an old scarred oak seat,
shadowed by a few everlastingly green cypresses and coral-fruited
yew-trees. And above and beyond all hung a pale blue arch of sky
with a few voyaging clouds like silvered wool, and the calm wide
curves of stubble field and pasture land. He stood with vacant
eyes, not in the least aware how queer a figure he made with his
gloves and his umbrella and his hat among the stained and
tottering gravestones. Then, just to linger out his hour, and
half sunken in reverie, he walked slowly over to the few solitary
graves beneath the cypresses.

One only was commemorated with a tombstone, a rather unusual
oval-headed stone, carved at each corner into what might be the
heads of angels, or of pagan dryads, blindly facing each other
with worn-out, sightless faces. A low curved granite canopy
arched over the grave, with a crevice so wide between its stones
that Lawford actually bent down and slid in his gloved fingers
between them. He straightened himself with a sigh, and followed
with extreme difficulty the well-nigh, illegible inscription:

'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 even of the 'Stranger.' There was a great rich 'S,'
and the twisted tail of a 'g' ; and, whether or not, Lawford
smilingly thought, he is no Stranger now. But how rare and how
memorable a name! French evidently; probably Huguenot. And the
Huguenots, he remembered vaguely, were a rather remarkable
'crowd.' He had, he thought, even played at 'Huguenots' once.
What was the man's name? Coligny; yes, of course, Coligny. 'And I
suppose,' Lawford continued, muttering to himself, 'I suppose
this poor beggar was put here out of the way. They might, you
know,' he added confidentially, raising the ferrule of his
umbrella, 'they might have stuck a stake through you, and buried
you at the crossroads.' And again, a feeling of ennui, a faint
disgust at his poor little witticism, clouded over his mind. It
was a pity thoughts always ran the easiest way, like water in old
ditches.

'"Here lie ye bones of one, Nicholas Sabathier,"' he began
murmuring again--'merely bones, mind you; brains and heart are
quite another story. 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 his voice alarmed even a robin
that had perched on a twig almost within touch, with glittering
eye intent above its dim red breast on this other and even rarer
stranger.

'I wonder if it is XXXIX.; it might be LXXIX.' Lawford cast a
cautious glance over his round grey shoulder, then laboriously
knelt down beside the stone, and peeped into the gaping cranny.
There he encountered merely the tiny, pale-green, faintly
conspicuous eyes of a large spider, confronting his own. It was
for the moment an alarming, and yet a faintly fascinating
experience. The little almost colourless fires remained so
changeless. But still, even when at last they had actually
vanished into the recesses of that quiet habitation, Lawford did
not rise from his knees. An utterly unreasonable feeling of
dismay, a sudden weakness and weariness had come over him.

'What is the good of it all?' he asked himself inconsequently--
this monotonous, 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 his disquiet.

He stared vacantly at the green and fretted gravestone, dimly
aware that his heart was beating with an unusual effort. He felt
ill and weak. He leant his hand on the stone and lifted himself
on to the low wooden seat nearby. He drew off his glove and
thrust his bare hand under his waistcoat, with his mouth a little
ajar, and his eyes fixed on the dark square 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
very clearness and the crystal silence were their ambush. He alone
seemed to be the target of cold and hostile scrutiny. There was
not a breath to breathe in this crisp, pale sunshine. It was all
too rare, too thin. The shadows lay like wings everlastingly
folded. The robin that had been his only living witness lifted
its throat, and broke, as if from the uttermost outskirts of
reality, into its shrill, passionless song. 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....

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 stooping stones above it a pure faint purple, waned
softly back like a falling fountain into its basin. In a few
minutes, only a faint orange burned in the west, dimly
illuminating with its band of light the huddled figure on his low
wood seat, his right hand still pressed against a faintly beating
heart. Dusk gathered; the first white stars appeared; out of the
shadowy fields a nightjar purred. But there was only the silence
of the falling dew among the graves. Down here, under the
ink-black cypresses, the blades of the grass were stooping with
cold drops; and darkness lay like the hem of an enormous cloak,
whose jewels above the breast of its wearer might be in the
unfathomable clearness the glittering constellations....

In his small cage of darkness Lawford shuddered and raised a
furtive head. He stood up and peered eagerly and strangely from
side to side. He stayed quite still, listening as raptly as some
wandering night-beast to the indiscriminate stir and echoings of
the darkness. He cocked his head above his shoulder and listened
again, then turned upon the soundless grass towards the hill. He
felt not the faintest astonishment or strangeness in his solitude
here; only a little chilled, and physically uneasy; and yet in
this vast darkness a faint spiritual exaltation seemed to hover.

He hastened up the narrow path, walking with knees a little bent,
like an old labourer who has lived a life of stooping, and came
out into the dry and dusty lane. One moment his instinct
hesitated as to which turn to take--only a moment; he was soon
walking swiftly, almost trotting, downhill with this vivid
exaltation in the huge dark night in his heart, and Sheila merely
a little angry Titianesque cloud on a scarcely perceptible
horizon. He had no notion of the time; the golden hands of his
watch were indiscernible in the gloom. But presently, as he
passed by, 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 he hurried just be home before dinner.

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

Sheila was out, it seemed, for the maid had forgotten to light
the lamp. Without pausing to take off his greatcoat, he hung up
his hat, ran nimbly 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, and sat down on the bedside for a moment,
in the darkness, so that he could scarcely hear any other sound,
as he sat erect and still, like some night animal, wary of
danger, attentively alert. Then he rose from the bed, threw off
his coat, which was clammy with dew, and lit a candle on the
dressing-table.

Its narrow flame lengthened, drooped, brightened, gleamed clearly.
He glanced around him, unusually contented--at the ruddiness of
the low fire, the brass bedstead, the warm red curtains, the soft
silveriness here and there. It seemed as if a heavy and dull
dream had withdrawn out of his mind. He would go again some day,
and sit on the little hard seat beside the crooked tombstone of
the friendless old Huguenot. He opened a drawer, took out his
razors, and, faintly whistling, returned to the table and lit a
second candle. And still with this strange heightened sense of
life stirring in his mind, he drew his hand gently over his chin
and looked unto the glass.

For an instant he stood head to foot icily still, without the
least feeling, or thought, or stir--staring into the
looking-glass. Then an inconceivable drumming beat on his ear. A
warm surge, like the onset of a wave, broke in him, flooding
neck, face, forehead, even his hands with colour. He caught
himself up and wheeled deliberately and completely round, his eyes
darting to and fro, suddenly to fix themselves in a prolonged stare,
while he took a deep breath, caught back his self-possession and
paused. Then he turned and once more confronted the changed
strange face in the glass.

Without a sound he drew up a chair and sat down, just as he was,
frigid and appalled, at the foot of the bed. To sit like this,
with a kind of incredibly swift torrent of consciousness, bearing
echoes and images like 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 frown darkened the features
stooping out of the direct rays of the light, and his eyes
wandered like busy and inquisitive, but stupid, animals over the
floor.

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

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

'May I come in?' Lawford stood softly up and glanced once more
into the glass. 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
into the glass.

'It's no use,' he began, as if repeating a lesson, 'it's no use
your asking 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? I will send for Dr. Simon.'

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

'Arthur, I insist on knowing at once what's wrong; this does not
sound a bit 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
know what 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 something seriously wrong: I shall send Ada for
assistance.'

'If you do that, Sheila, it will be disastrous. I cannot answer
for the con--. 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 ask such 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
sat down once more to try to think. Like a squirrel in a cage his
mind seemed to be aimlessly, unceasingly astir. 'What is it
really? What is it really?--really?' He sat there and it seemed
to him his body was transparent as glass. It seemed he had no
body at all--only the memory of an hallucinatory reflection in
the glass, and this inward voice crying, arguing, questioning,
threatening out of the silence--'What is it really--really--
REALLY?' And at last, cold, wearied out, he rose once more and
leaned between the two long candle-flames, and stared on--on--on,
into the glass.

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



CHAPTER TWO

But the coolness and deliberation of his scrutiny, had to a
certain extent calmed Lawford's mind and given him confidence.
Hitherto he had met the little difficulties of life only to
vanquish them with ease and applause. Now he was standing face to
face with the unknown. He burst out laughing, into a long, low,
helpless laughter. Then he arose and began to walk softly,
swiftly, to and fro across the room--from wall to wall seven
paces, and at the fourth, that awful, unseen, brightly-lit
profile passed as swiftly over the tranquil surface of the
looking-glass. The power of concentration was gone again. He
simply paced on mechanically, listening to a Babel of questions,
a conflicting medley of answers. But above all the confusion and
turmoil of his brain, as a boatswain's whistle rises above a
storm, so sounded that same infinitesimal voice, incessantly
repeating another question now, 'What are you going to do? What
are you going to do?'

And in the midst of this confusion, out of the infinite, as it
were, came another sharp tap at the door, and all within sank to
utter stillness again.

'It's nearly half-past eight, Arthur; I can't wait any longer.'

Lawford cast a last fleeting look into the glass, turned, and
confronted the closed door. 'Very well, Sheila, you shall not
wait any longer.' He crossed over to the door, and suddenly a
swift crafty idea flashed into his mind.

He tapped on the panel. 'Sheila,' he said softly, 'I want you
first, before you come in, to get me something out of my old
writing-desk in the smoking-room. Here is the key.' He pushed a
tiny key--from off the ring he carried--beneath the door. 'In the
third little drawer from the top, on the left side, is a letter;
please don't say anything now. It is the letter you wrote me, you
will remember, after I had asked you to marry me. You scribbled
in the corner under your signature the initials "Y.S.O.A."--do
you remember? They meant, You Silly Old Arthur!--do you remember?
Will you please get that letter at once?'

'Arthur,' answered the voice from without, empty of all
expression, 'what does all this mean, this mystery, this hopeless
nonsense about a silly letter? What has happened? Is this a
miserable form of persecution? Are you mad?--I refuse to get the
letter.'

Lawford stooped, black and angular, against the door. 'I am not
mad. Oh, I am in the deadliest earnest, Sheila. You must get the
letter, if only for your own peace of mind.' He heard his wife
hesitate as she turned. He heard a sob. And once more he waited.

'I have brought the letter,' came the low toneless voice again.

'Have you opened it?'

There was a rustle of paper. 'Are the letters there underlined
three times--"Y.S.O.A."?'

'The letters are there.'

'And the date of the month is underneath, "April 3rd." No one
else in the whole world, living or dead, could know of this but
ourselves, Sheila?'

'Will you please open the door?'

'No one?'

'I suppose not--no one.'

'Then come in.' He unlocked the door and opened it. A dark,
rather handsome woman, with sleek hair, in a silk dress of a dark
rich colour entered. Lawford closed the door. But his face was in
shadow. He had still a moment's respite.

'I need not ask you to be patient,' he began quickly; 'if I could
possibly have spared you--if there had been anybody in the world
to go to... I am in horrible, horrible trouble, Sheila. It is
inconceivable. I said I was sane: so I am, but the fact is--I
went out for a walk; it was rather stupid, perhaps, so soon: and
I think I was taken ill, or something--my heart. A kind of fit, a
nervous fit. Possibly I am a little unstrung, and it's all, it's
mainly fancy: but I think, I can't help thinking it has a little
distorted--changed my face; everything, Sheila; except, of
course, myself. Would you mind looking?' He walked slowly and
with face averted towards the dressing-table.

'Simply a nervous--to make such a fuss, to scare!...' began his
wife, following him.

Without a word he took up the two old china candlesticks, and
held them, one in each lank-fingered hand, before his face, and
turned.

Lawford could see his wife--every tint and curve and line as
distinctly as she could see him. Her cheeks never had much
colour; now her whole face visibly darkened, from pallor to a
dusky leaden grey, as she gazed. It was not an illusion then; not
a miserable hallucination. The unbelievable, the inconceivable,
had happened. He replaced the candles with trembling fingers and
sat down.

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