Lawford heard the door close, and the dying away of the sound that had been the unceasing accompaniment of all these later years—the rustling of his wife’s skirts, her crisp, authoritative footstep. And he turned towards the flooding sunlight that streamed in on the upturned surface of the looking-glass. No clear decisive thought came into his mind, only a vague recognition that so far as Sheila was concerned this was the end. No regret, no remorse visited him. He was just alone again, that was all—alone, as in reality he had always been alone, without having the sense or power to see or to acknowledge it. All he had said had been the mere flotsam of the moment, and now it stood stark and irrevocable between himself and the past.
He sat down dazed and stupid. Again and again a struggling recollection tried to obtrude itself; again and again he beat it back. And rather for something to distract his attention than for any real interest or enlightenment he might find in its pages, he took out the grimy dog’s-eared book that Herbert had given him, and turned slowly over the leaves till he came to Sabathier once more. Snatches of remembrance of their long talk returned to him, but just as that dark, water-haunted house had seemed to banish remembrance and the reality of the room in which he now sat, and of the old familiar life; so now the house, the faces of yesterday seemed in their turn unreal, almost spectral, and the thick print on the smudgy page no more significant than a story one reads and throws away.
But a moment’s comparison in the glass of the two faces side by side suddenly sharpened his attention—the resemblance was so oddly arresting, and yet, and yet, so curiously inconclusive. There was then something of the stolid old Saxon left, he thought. Or had it been regained? Which was it? Not merely the complexity of the question, but a half-conscious distaste of attempting to face it, set him reading very slowly and laboriously, for his French was little more than fragmentary recollection, the first few pages of the life of this buried Sabathier. But with a disinclination almost amounting to aversion he made very slow progress. Many of the words were meaningless to him, and every other moment he found himself listening with intense concentration for the least hint of what Sheila was doing, of what was going on in the house beneath him. He had not very long to wait. He was sitting with his head leaning on his hand, the book unheeded beneath the other on the table, when the door opened again behind him, and Sheila entered. She stood for a moment, calm and dignified, looking down on him through her veil.
‘Please understand, Arthur, that I am not taking this step in pique, or even in anger. It would serve no purpose to go on like this—this incessant heedlessness and recrimination. There have been mistakes, misconceptions, perhaps, on both sides. To me naturally yours are most conspicuous. That need not, however, blind me to my own.’
She paused in vain for an answer.
‘Think the whole thing over candidly and quietly,’ she began again in a quiet rapid voice. ‘Have you really shown the slightest regard, I won’t say for me, or even for Alice, but for just the obvious difficulties and—and proprieties of our position? I have given up as far as I can brooding on and on over the same horrible impossible thoughts. I withdraw unreservedly what I said just now about punishment. Whatever the evidence, it is not even a wife’s place to judge like that. You will forgive me that?’
Lawford did not turn his head. ‘Of course,’ he said, looking rather vacantly out of the window, ‘it was only in the heat of the moment, Sheila; though, who knows? it may be true.’
‘Well,’ she took hold of the great brass knob at the foot of the bed with one gloved hand—‘well, I feel it is my duty to withdraw it. Apart from it, I see only too clearly that even though all that has happened in these last few days was in reality nothing but a horrible nightmare, I see that even then what you have said about our married life together can never be recalled. You have told me quite deliberately that for years past your life has been nothing but a pretence—a sham. You implied that mine had been too. Honestly, I was not aware of it, Arthur. But supposing all that has happened to you had been merely what might happen at any moment to anybody, some actual defacement (you will forgive me suggesting such a horrible thing)—why, if what you say is true, even in that case my sympathy would have been only a continual fret and annoyance to you. And this—this change, I own, is infinitely harder to bear. It would be an outrage on common sense and on all that we hold seemly and—and sacred in life, even in some trumpery story. You do, you must see all that, Arthur?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Lawford, narrowing his eyes to pierce through the sunlight, ‘I see all that.’
‘Then we need not go over it all again. Whatever others may say, or think, I shall still, at least so long as nothing occurs to the contrary, keep firmly to my present convictions. Mr Bethany has assured me repeatedly that he has no—no misgivings; that he understands. And even if I still doubted, which I don’t, Arthur, though it would be rather trying to have to accept one’s husband at second-hand, as it were, I should have to be satisfied. I dare say even such an unheard-of thing as what we are discussing now, or something equally ghastly, does occur occasionally. In foreign countries, perhaps. I have not studied such things enough to say. We were all very much restricted in our reading as children, and I honestly think, not unwisely. It is enough for the present to repeat that I do believe, and that whatever may happen—and I know absolutely nothing about the procedure in such cases—but whatever may happen, I shall still be loyal; I shall always have your interests at heart.’ Her words faltered and she turned her head away. ‘You did love me once, Arthur, I can’t forget that.’ The contralto voice trembled ever so little, and the gloved hand smoothed gently the brass knob beneath.