Mr Bethany rose cheerfully. ‘All right, Danton; I am afraid you are exactly what the poor fellow in his delirium solemnly asseverated. And, jesting apart, it is in delirium that we tell our sheer, plain, unadulterated truth: you’re a nicely covered sceptic. Personally, I refuse to discuss the matter. Mere dull, stubborn prejudice; bigotry, if you like. I will only remark just this—that Mrs Lawford and I, in our inmost hearts, know. You, my dear Danton, forgive the freedom, merely incredulously grope. Faith versus Reason—that prehistoric Armageddon. Some day, and a day not far distant either, Lawford will come back to us. This—this shutter will be taken down as abruptly as by some inconceivably drowsy heedlessness of common Nature it has been put up. He’ll win through; and of his own sheer will and courage. But now, because I ask it, and this poor child here entreats it, you will say nothing to a living soul about the matter, say, till Friday? What step-by-step creatures we are, to be sure! I say Friday because it will be exactly a week then. And what’s a week?—to Nature scarcely the unfolding of a rose. But still, Friday be it. Then, if nothing has occurred, we will, we shall have to call a friendly gathering, we shall be compelled to have a friendly consultation.’
‘I’m not, I hope, a brute, Bethany,’ said Danton apologetically; ‘but, honestly, speaking for myself, simply as a man of the world, it’s a big risk to be taking on—what shall we call it?—on mere intuition. Personally, and even in a court of law—though Heaven forbid it ever reaches that stage—personally, I could swear that the fellow that stood abusing me there, in that revolting fashion, was not Lawford. It would be easier even to believe in him, if there were not that—that glaze, that shocking simulation of the man himself, the very man. But then, I am a sceptic; I own it. And ‘pon my word, Mrs Lawford, there’s plenty of room for sceptics in a world like this.’
‘Very well,’ said Mr Bethany crisply, ‘that’s settled, then. With your permission, my dear,’ he added, turning untarnishably clear childlike eyes on Sheila, ‘I will take all risks—even to the foot of the gibbet: accessory, Danton, after the fact.’ And so direct and cloudless was his gaze that Sheila tried in vain to evade it and to catch a glimpse of Danton’s small agate-like eyes, now completely under mastery, and awaiting confidently the meeting with her own.
‘Of course,’ she said, ‘I am entirely in your hands, dear Mr Bethany.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Lawford slept far into the cloudy Monday morning, to wake steeped in sleep, lethargic, and fretfully haunted by inconclusive remembrances of the night before. When Sheila, with obvious and capacious composure, brought him his breakfast tray, he watched her face for some time without speaking.
‘Sheila,’ he began, as she was about to leave the room again.
She paused, smiling.
‘Did anything happen last night? Would you mind telling me, Sheila? Who was it was here?’
Her lids the least bit narrowed. ‘Certainly, Arthur; Mr Danton was here.’