‘I think, Miss Sinnet,’ said Lawford solemnly, ‘that you were perfectly justified. Oh, perfectly. I wonder even you had the patience to give the real Arthur Lawford a chance to ask your forgiveness for—for the stranger.’
‘Well, candidly,’ said Miss Sinnett severely. ‘I was very much scandalised; and I shouldn’t be here now telling you my story if it hadn’t been for your mother.’
‘My mother!’
The old lady rather grimly enjoyed his confusion. ‘Yes, Mr Lawford, your mother. I don’t know why—something in his manner, something in his face—so dejected, so unhappy, so—if it is not uncharitablnesse to say it—so wild: it has haunted me: I haven’t been able to put the matter out of my mind. I have lain awake in my bed thinking of him. Why did he speak to me, I keep asking myself. Why did he play me so very aimless a trick? How had he learned my name? Why was he sitting there so solitary and so dejected? And worse even than that, what has become of him? A little more patience, a little more charity, perhaps—what might I not have done for him? The whole thing has harassed and distressed me more than I can say. Would you believe it, I have actually twice, and on one occasion, three times in a day made my way to the seat—hoping to see him there. And I am not so young as I was. And then, as I say, to crown all, I had a most remarkable dream about your mother. But that’s my own affair. Elderly people like me are used—well, perhaps I won’t say used—we’re not surprised or disturbed by visits from those who have gone before. We live, in a sense, among the tombs; though I would not have you fancy it’s in any way a morbid or unhappy life to lead. We don’t talk about it—certainly not to young people. Let them enjoy their Eden while they can; though there’s plenty of apples, I fear, on the Tree yet, Mr Lawford.’
She leant forward and whispered it with a big, simple smile:—‘We don’t even discuss it much among ourselves. But as one gets nearer and nearer to the wicket-gate there’s other company around one than you’ll find in—in the directory. And that is why I have just come on here tonight. Very probably my errand may seem to have no meaning for you. You look ill, but you don’t appear to be in any great trouble or adversity, as I feared in my—well, there—as I feared you might be. I must say, though, it seems a terribly empty house. And no lights, too!’
She slowly, with a little trembling nodding of her bonnet, turned her head and glanced quietly, fixedly, and unflinchingly, out of the half-open door. ‘But that’s not my affair.’ And again she looked at him for a little while.
Then she stooped forward and touched him kindly and trustingly on the knee. ‘Trouble or no trouble,’ she said, ‘it’s never too late to remind a man of his mother. And I’m sure, Mr Lawford, I’m very glad to hear you are struggling up out of your illness again. We must keep a brave heart, forty or seventy, whichever we may be: “While the evil days come not nor the years draw nigh when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them,” though they have not come to me even yet; and I trust from the bottom of my heart, not to you.’
She looked at him without a trace of emotion or constraint in her large, quiet face, and their eyes met for a moment in that brief, fixed, baffling fashion that seems to prove that mankind is after all but a dumb masked creature saddled with the vain illusion of speech.
‘And now that I’ve eased my conscience,’ said the old lady, pulling down her veil, ‘I must beg pardon for intruding at such an hour of the evening. And may I have your arm down those dreadful steps? Really, Mr Lawford, judging from the houses they erect for us, the builders must have a very peculiar notion of mankind. Is the fly still there? I expressly told the man to wait, and what I am going to do if—!’
‘He’s there,’ Lawford reassured her, craning his neck in their slow progress to catch a peep into the quiet road. And like a flock of birds scared by a chance comer at their feeding in some deserted field, a whirring cloud of memories swept softly up in his mind—memories whose import he made no effort to discover. None the less, the leisurely descent became in their company something of a real experience even in such a brimming week.