‘You see,’ he said presently, and while still his companion’s face was smiling around the remembrance of his laughter like ripples after the splash of a stone, ‘Bethany has been absolutely my sheet-anchor right through. And I was—it was—you can’t possibly realise what a ghastly change it really was. I don’t think any one ever will.’
Herbert opened his hand and looked reflectively into its palm before allowing himself to reply. ‘I wonder, you know; I have been wondering a good deal; simply taking the other point of view for a moment; was it? I don’t mean “ghastly” exactly (like, say, smallpox, G.P.I., elephantiasis), but was it quite so complete, so radical, as in the first sheer gust of astonishment you fancied?’
Lawford thought on a little further. ‘You know how one sees oneself in a passion—why, how a child looks—the whole face darkened and drawn and possessed? That was the change. That’s how it seems to come back to me. And something, somebody, dodging behind the eyes. Yes; more that than even any excessive change of feature, except, of course, that I also seemed—Shall I ever forget that first cold, stifling stare into the looking-glass! I certainly was much darker, even my hair. But I’ve told you all this before,’ he added wearily, ‘and the scores and scores of times I’ve thought it. I used to sit up there in the big spare bedroom my wife put me up in, simply gloating. My flesh seemed nothing more than an hallucination: there I was, haunting my body, an old grinning tenement, and all that I thought I wanted, and couldn’t do without, all I valued and prided myself on—stacked up in the drizzling street below. Why, Herbert, our bodies are only glass or cloud. They melt, don’t they, like wax in the sun once we’re out. But those first few days don’t make very pleasant thinking. Friday night was the first, when I sat there like a twitching waxwork, soberly debating between Bedlam here and Bedlam hereafter. I even sometimes wonder whether its very repetition has not dulled the memory or distorted it. My wife,’ he added ingenuously, ‘seems to think there are signs of a slight improvement—a going back, I mean. But I’m not sure whether she meant it.’
Herbert surveyed his visitor critically. ‘You say “dark,” he said; ‘but surely, Lawford, your hair now is nearly grey; well-flecked at least.’
Although the remark carried nothing comparatively of a shock with it, yet it seemed to Lawford as if an electric current had passed over his scalp, coldly stirring every hair upon his head. But somehow or other it was easier to sit quietly on, to express no surprise, to let them do or say what they liked. ‘Well’ he retorted with an odd, crooked smile, ‘you must remember I am a good deal older than I was last Saturday. I grew grey in the grave, Herbert.’
‘But it’s like this, you know,’ said Herbert, rising excitedly, and at the next moment, on reflection, composedly reseating himself. ‘How many of your people actually saw it? How many owned to its being as bad, as complete, as you made out? I don’t want for a moment to cut right across what you said last night—our talk—but there are two million sides to every question, and as often as not the less conspicuous have sounder—well—roots. That’s all.’
‘I think really, do you know, I would rather not go over the detestable thing again. Not many; my wife, though, and a man I know called Danton, who—who’s prejudiced. After all, I have myself to think about too. And right through, right through—there wasn’t the least doubt of that—they all in their hearts knew it was me. They knew I was behind. I could feel that absolutely always; it’s not just eyes and ears we use, there’s us ourselves to consider, though God alone knows what that means. But the password was there, as you might say; and they all knew I knew it, all—except’—he looked up as if in bewilderment—‘except just one, a poor old lady, a very old friend of my mother’s, whom I—I Sabathiered!’
‘Whom—you—Sabathiered!’ repeated Herbert carefully, with infinite relish, looking sidelong at his visitor. ‘And it is just precisely that....’
But at that moment his sister appeared in the doorway to say that supper was ready. And it was not until Herbert was actually engaged in carving a cold chicken that he followed up his advantage. ‘Mr. Lawford, Grisel,’ he said, ‘has just enriched our jaded language with a new verb—to Sabathier. And if I may venture to define it in the presence of the distinguished neologist himself, it means, “To deal with histrionically”; or, rather, that’s what it will mean a couple of hundred years hence. For the moment it means, “To act under the influence of subliminalization; To perplex, or bemuse, or estrange with otherness.” Do tell us, Lawford, more about the little old lady.’ He passed with her plate a little meaningful glance at his sister, and repeated, ‘Do!’
‘But I’ve been plaguing your sister enough already. You’ll wish...’ Lawford began, and turned his tired-out eyes towards those others awaiting them so frankly they seemed in their perfect friendliness a rest from all his troubles. ‘You see,’ he went on, ‘what I kept on thinking and thinking of was to get a quite unbiased and unprejudiced view. She had known me for years, though we had not actually met more than once or twice since my mother’s death. And there she was sitting with me at the other end of just such another little seat as’—he turned—to Herbert ‘as ours, at Widderstone. It was on Bewley Common: I can see it all now; it was sunset. And I simply turned and asked her in a kind of a whining affected manner if she remembered me; and when after a long time she came round to owning that to all intents and purposes she did not—I professed to have made a mistake in recognising her. I think,’ he added, glancing up from one to the other of his two strange friends, ‘I think it was the meanest trick I can remember.’