So when Lawford again opened his eyes he found himself lying wide awake, clear and refreshed, and eager to get up. But upon the air lay the still hush of early morning. He tried in vain to catch back sleep again. A distant shred of dream still floated in his mind, like a cloud at evening. He rarely dreamed, but certainly something immensely interesting had but a moment ago eluded him. He sat up and looked at the clear red cinders and their maze of grottoes. He got out of bed and peeped through the blinds. To the east and opposite to him gardens and an apple-orchard lay, and there in strange liquid tranquillity hung the morning star, and rose, rifling into the dusk of night, the first grey of dawn. The street beneath its autumn leaves was vacant, charmed, deserted.
Hardly since childhood had Lawford seen the dawn unless over his winter breakfast-table. Very much like a child now he stood gazing out of his bow-window—the child whom Time’s busy robins had long ago covered over with the leaves of numberless hours. A vague exultation fumed up into his brain. Still on the borders of sleep, he unlocked the great wardrobe and took out an old faded purple and crimson dressing-gown that had belonged to his grandfather, the chief glory of every Christmas charade. He pulled the cowl-like hood over his head and strode majestically over to the looking-glass.
He looked in there a moment on the strange face, like a child dismayed at its own excitement, and a fit of sobbing that was half uncontrollable laughter swept over him. He threw off the hood and turned once more to the window. Consciousness had flooded back indeed. What would Sheila have said to see him there? The unearthly beauty and stillness, and man’s small labours, garden and wall and roof-tree idle and smokeless in the light of daybreak—there seemed to be some half-told secret between them. What had life done with him to leave a reality so clouded? He put on his slippers, and, gently opening the door, crept with extreme caution up the stairs. At a long, narrow landing window he confronted a panorama of starry night-gardens, sloping orchards; and beyond them fields, hills, Orion, the Dogs, in the clear and cloudless darkness.
‘My God, how beautiful!’ a voice whispered. And a cock crowed mistily afar. He stood staring like a child into the wintry brightness of a pastry-cook’s. Then once more he crept stealthily on. He stooped and listened at a closed door, until he fancied that above the beating of his own heart he could hear the breathing of the sleeper within. Then, taking firm hold of the handle with both hands, he slowly noiselessly turned it, and peeped in on Alice.
The moon was long past her faint shining here. The blind was down. And yet it was not pitch dark. He stood with eyes fixed, waiting. Then he edged softly forward and knelt down beside the bed. He could hear her breathing now: long, low, quiet, unhastening—the miracle of life. He could just dimly discern the darkness of her hair against the pillow. Some long-sealed spring of tenderness seemed to rise in his heart with a grief and an ache he had never known before. Here at least he could find a little peace, a brief pause, however futile and stupid all his hopes of the night had been. He leant his head on his hands on the counterpane and refused to think. He felt a quick tremor, a startled movement, and knew that eyes wide open with fear were striving to pierce the gloom between them.
‘There, there, dearest,’ he said in a low whisper, ‘it’s only me, only me.’ He stroked the narrow hand and gazed into the shadowiness. Her fingers lay quiet and passive in his, with that strange sense of immateriality that sleep brings to the body.
‘You, you!’ she answered with a deep sigh. ‘Oh, dearest, how you frightened me. What is wrong? why have you come? Are you worse, dearest, dearest?’
He kissed her hand. ‘No, Alice, not worse. I couldn’t sleep, that was all.’
‘Oh, and I came so utterly miserable to bed because you would not see me. And Mother would tell me only so very little. I didn’t even know you had been ill.’ She pressed his hand between her own. ‘But this, you know, is very, very naughty—you will catch cold, you bad thing. What would Mother say?’
‘I think we mustn’t tell her, dear. I couldn’t help it; I felt much I wanted to see you. I have been rather miserable.’