‘“Bizarre,” you said; God knows I am.’ But Herbert still remained obdurately silent. ‘You remember, perhaps,’ Lawford faintly began again, ‘our talk the other night?’
‘Oh, rather,’ replied the cordial voice out of the dusk.
‘I suppose you thought I was insane?’
‘Insane!’ There was a genuinely amused astonishment in the echo. ‘You were lucidity itself. Besides—well, honestly, if I may venture, I don’t put very much truck in what one calls one’s sanity: except, of course, as a bond of respectability and a means of livelihood.’
‘But did you realise in the least from what I said how I really stand? That I went down into that old shadowy hollow one man, and came back—well—this?’
‘I gathered vaguely something like that. I thought at first it was merely an affectation—that what you said was an affectation, I mean—until—well, to be frank, it was the “this” that so immensely interested me. Especially,’ he added almost with a touch of gaiety, ‘especially the last glimpse. But if it’s really not a forbidden question, what precisely was the other? What precise manner of man, I mean, came down into Widderstone?’
‘It is my face that is changed, Mr Herbert. If you’ll try to understand me—my face. What you see now is not what I really am, not what I was. Oh, it is all quite different. I know perfectly well how absurd it must sound. And you won’t press me further. But that’s the truth: that’s what they have done for me.’
It seemed to Lawford as if a remote tiny shout of laughter had been suddenly caught back in the silence that had followed this confession. He peered in vain in the direction of his companion. Even his cigarette revealed no sign of him. ‘I know, I know,’ he went gropingly on; ‘I felt it would sound to you like nothing but frantic incredible nonsense. You can’t see it. You can’t feel it. You can’t hear these hooting voices. It’s no use at all blinking the fact; I am simply on the verge, if not over it, of insanity.’
‘As to that, Mr Lawford,’ came the still voice out of the darkness; ‘the very fact of your being able to say so seems to me all but proof positive that you’re not. Insanity is on another plane, isn’t it? in which one can’t compare one’s states. As for what you say being credible, take our precious noodle of a spook here! Ninety-nine hundredths of this amiable world of ours would have guffawed the poor creature into imperceptibility ages ago. To such poor credulous creatures as my sister and I he is no more and no less a fact, a personality, an amusing reality than—well, this teacup. Here we are, amazing mysteries both of us in any case; and all round us are scores of books, dealing just with life, pure, candid, and unexpurgated; and there’s not a single one among them but reads like a taradiddle. Yet grope between the lines of any autobiography, it’s pretty clear what one has got—a feeble, timid, creeping attempt to describe the indescribable. As for what you say your case is, the bizarre—that kind very seldom gets into print at all. In all our make-believe, all our pretence, how, honestly, could it? But there, this is immaterial. The real question is, may I, can I help? What I gather is this: You just trundled down into Widderstone all among the dead men, and—but one moment, I’ll light up.’
A light flickered up in the dark. Shading it in his hand from the night air straying through the open window, Herbert lit the two candles that stood upon the little chimneypiece behind Lawford’s head. Then sauntering over to the window again, almost as if with an affectation of nonchalance, he drew one of the shutters, and sat down. ‘Nothing much struck me,’ he went on, leaning back on his hands, ‘I mean on Sunday evening, until you said good-bye. It was then that I caught in the moon a distinct glimpse of your face.’