Mr Bethany had been listening attentively. He scrambled up from his knees with a half-empty syphon of sodawater. ‘See here, Lawford,’ he said; ‘if you really want to know what’s your most insidious and most dangerous symptom just now, it is spiritual pride. You’ve won what you think a domestic victory; and you can scarcely bear the splendour. Oh, you may shrug! Pray, what is this “other side” which the superior double-faced creature’s going to win through to now?’ He rapped it out almost bitterly, almost contemptuously.
Lawford hardly heard the question. Before his eyes had suddenly arisen the peace, the friendly unquestioning stillness, the thunderous lullaby old as the grave. ‘It’s only a fancy. It seemed I could begin again.’
‘Well, look here,’ said Mr Bethany, his whole face suddenly lined and grey with age. ‘You can’t. It’s the one solitary thing I’ve got to say, as I’ve said it to myself morn, noon, and night these scores of years. You can’t begin again; it’s all a delusion and a snare. You say we’re alone. So we are. The world’s a dream, a stage, a mirage, a rack, call it what you will—but you don’t change, you’re no illusion. There’s no crying off for you no ravelling out, no clean leaves. You’ve got this—this trouble, this affliction—my dear, dear fellow what shall I say to tell you how I grieve and groan for you oh yes, and actually laughed, I confess it, a vile hysterical laughter, to think of it. You’ve got this almost intolerable burden to bear; it’s come like a thief in the night; but bear it you must, and alone! They say death’s a going to bed; I doubt it; but anyhow life’s a long undressing. We came in puling and naked, and every stitch must come off before we get out again. We must stand on our feet in all our Rabelaisian nakedness, and watch the world fade. Well then, and not another word of sense shall you worm out of my worn-out old brains after today—all I say is, don’t give in! Why, if you stood here now, freed from this devilish disguise, the old, fat, sluggish fellow that sat and yawned his head off under my eyes in his pew the Sunday before last, if I know anything about human nature I’d say it to your face, and a fig for your vanity and resignation—your last state would be worse than the first. There!’
He bunched up a big white handkerchief and mopped it over his head. ‘That’s done,’ he said, ‘and we won’t go back. What I want to know now is what are you going to do? Where are you sleeping? What are you going to think about? I’ll stay—yes, yes, that’s what it must be: I must stay. And I detest strange beds. I’ll stay, you sha’n’t be alone. Do you hear me, Lawford?—you sha’n’t be alone!’
Lawford gazed gravely. ‘There is just one little thing I want to ask you before you go. I’ve wormed out an extraordinary old French book; and—just as you say—to pass the time, I’ve been having a shot at translating it. But I’m frightfully rusty; it’s old French; would you mind having a look?’
Mr Bethany blinked and listened. He tried for the twentieth time to judge his friend’s eyes, to gain as best he could some sustained and unobserved glance at this baffling face. ‘Where is your precious French book?’ he said irritably.
‘It’s upstairs.’
‘Fire away, then!’ Lawford rose and glanced about the room. ‘What, no light there either?’ snapped Mr Bethany. ‘Take this; I don’t mind the dark. There’ll be plenty of that for me soon.’
Lawford hesitated at the door, looking rather strangely back. ‘No,’ he said, ‘there are matches upstairs.’ He shut the door after him. The darkness seemed cold and still as water. He went slowly up, with eyes fixed wide on the floating luminous gloom, and out of memory seemed to gather, as faintly as in the darkness which they had exorcised for him, the strange pitiful eyes of the night before. And as he mounted a chill, terrible, physical peace seemed to steal over him.
Mr Bethany was sitting as he had left him, looking steadily on the floor, when Lawford returned. He flattened out the book on the table with a sniff of impatience. And dragging the candle nearer, and stooping his nose close to the fusty print, he began to read.