‘My dear fellow—’ began Herbert reassuringly.
‘It was only because I wanted so very much to have your translation. I get muddled up with other things groping through the dictionary.’
Herbert surveyed him critically. ‘What exactly is your interest now, Lawford? You don’t mean that my old “theory” has left any sting now?’
‘No sting; oh no. I was only curious. But you yourself still think it really, don’t you?’
Herbert turned for a moment to the open window.
‘I was simply trying then to find something to fit the facts as you experienced them. But now that the facts have gone—and they have, haven’t they?—exit, of course, my theory!’
‘I see,’ was the cryptic answer. ‘And yet, Herbert,’ Lawford solemnly began again, ‘it has changed me; even in my way of thinking. When I shut my eyes now—I only discovered it by chance—I see immediately faces quite strange to me; or places, sometimes thronged with people; and once an old well with some one sitting in the shadow. I can’t tell you how clearly, and yet it is all altogether different from a dream. Even when I sit with my eyes open, I am conscious, as it were, of a kind of faint, colourless mirage. In the old days—I mean before Widderstone, what I saw was only what I’d seen already. Nothing came uncalled for, unexplained. This makes the old life seem so blank; I did not know what extraordinarily real things I was doing without. And whether for that reason or another, I can’t quite make out what in fact I did want then, and was always fretting and striving for. I can see no wisdom or purpose in anything now but to get to one’s journey’s end as quickly and bravely as one can. And even then, even if we do call life a journey, and death the inn we shall reach at last in the evening when it’s over; that, too, I feel will be only as brief a stopping-place as any other inn would be. Our experience here is so scanty and shallow—nothing more than the moment of the continual present. Surely that must go on, even if one does call it eternity. And so we shall all have to begin again. 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. What is the reality to this infernal dream?’
‘The reality is, Lawford, that you are fretting your life out over this rotten illusion. Be guided by me just this once. We’ll go, all three of us, a good ten-mile walk to-day, and thoroughly tire you out. And to-night you shall sleep here—a really sound, refreshing sleep. Then to-morrow, whole and hale, back you shall go; honestly. It’s only professional strong men should ask questions. Babes like you and me must keep to slops.’