Lawford took a deep breath. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘you realise my wife does not believe me. She thinks,’ he explained naively, as if to himself, ‘she thinks I am an imposter. Goodness knows what she does think. I can’t think much myself—for long!’
The vicar rubbed busily on. ‘I have found, Lawford,’ he said smoothly, ‘that in all real difficulties the only feasible plan is—is to face the main issue. The others right themselves. Now, to take a plunge into your generosity. You have let me in far enough to make it impossible for me to get out—may I hear then exactly the whole story? All that I know now, so far as I could gather from your wife, poor soul, is of course inconceivable: that you went out one man and came home another. You will understand, my dear man, I am speaking, as it were, by rote. God has mercifully ordered that the human brain works slowly; first the blow, hours afterwards the bruise. Oh, dear me, that man Hume—“on miracles”—positively amazing! So that too, please, you will be quite clear about. Credo—not quia impossible est, but because you, Lawford, have told me. Now then, if it won’t be too wearisome to you, the whole story.’ He sat, lean and erect in his big chair, a hand resting loosely on each knee, in one spectacles, in the other a dangling pocket handkerchief. And the dark, sallow, aquiline, formidable figure, with its oddly changing voice, re-told the whole story from the beginning.
‘You were aware then of nothing different, I understand, until you actually looked into the glass?’
‘Only vaguely. I mean that after waking I felt much better, more alert. And my thoughts—’
‘Ah, yes, your thoughts?’
‘I hardly know—oh, clear as if I had had a real long rest. It was just like being a boy again. Influenza dispirits one so.’
Mr Bethany gazed without stirring. ‘And yet, you know,’ he said, ‘I can hardly believe, I mean conceive, how—You have been taking no drugs, no quackery, Lawford?’
‘I never dose myself,’ said Lawford, with sombre pride.
‘God bless me, that’s Lawford to the echo,’ thought his visitor. ‘And before—?’ he went on gently; ‘I really cannot conceive, you see, how a mere fit could... Before you sat down you were quite alone?’ He stuck out his head. ‘There was nobody with you?’
‘With me? Oh no,’ came the soft answer.