‘She said that!’ Mr Bethany sat back. ‘I see, I see,’ he said. ‘I’m nothing but a fumbling old meddler. And there was I, not ten minutes ago, preaching for all I was worth on a text I knew nothing about. God bless me, Lawford, how long we take a-learning. I’ll say no more. But what an illusion. To think this—this—he laid a long lean hand at arm’s length flat upon the table towards his friend—‘to think this is our old jog-trot Arthur Lawford! From henceforth I throw you over, you old wolf in sheep’s wool. I wash my hands of you. And now where am I going to sleep?’
He covered up his age and weariness for an instant with a small crooked hand.
Lawford took a deep breath. ‘You’re going, old friend, to sleep at home. And I—I’m going to give you my arm to the Vicarage gate. Here I am, immeasurably relieved, fitter than I’ve been since I was a dolt of a schoolboy. On my word of honour: I can’t say why, but I am. I don’t care that, vicar, honestly—puffed up with spiritual pride. If a man can’t sleep with pride for a bed-fellow, well, he’d better try elsewhere. It’s no good; I’m as stubborn as a mule; that’s at least a relic of the old Adam. I care no more,’ he raised his voice firmly and gravely—‘I don’t care a jot for solitude, not a jot for all the ghosts of all the catacombs!’
Mr. Bethany listened, grimly pursed up his lips. ‘Not a jot for all the ghosts of all the catechisms!’ he muttered. ‘Nor the devil himself, I suppose?’ He turned once more to glance sharply in the direction of the face he could so dimly—and of set purpose—discern; and without a word trotted off into the hall. Lawford followed with the candle.
‘’Pon my word, you haven’t had a mouthful of supper. Let me forage; just a quarter of an hour, eh?’
‘Not me,’ said Mr Bethany; ‘if you won’t have me, home I go. I refuse to encourage this miserable grass-widowering. What would they say? What would the busybodies say? Ghouls and graves and shocking mysteries—Selina! Sister Anne! Come on.’
He shuffled on his hat and caught firm hold of his knobbed umbrella. ‘Better not leave a candle,’ he said.
Lawford blew out the candle.
‘What? What?’ called the old man suddenly. But no voice had spoken.
A thin trickle of light from the lamp in the street stuck up through the fanlight as, with a smile that could be described neither as mischievous, saturnine, nor vindictive, and was yet faintly suggestive of all three, Lawford quietly opened the drawing-room door and put down the candlestick on the floor within.