‘Very,’ she said, turning as gravely at his side.
‘What I wanted to say was—’ began Lawford, and forgetting altogether the thread by which he hoped to lead up to what he really wanted to say, broke off lamely; ‘I should have thought you would have absolutely despised a coward.’
‘It would be rather absurd to despise what one so horribly well understands. Besides, we weren’t cowards—we weren’t cowards a bit. My childhood was one long, reiterated terror—nights and nights of it. But I never had the pluck to tell any one. No one so much as dreamt of the company I had. Ah, and you didn’t see either that my heart was absolutely in my mouth, that I was shrivelled up with fear, even at sight of the fear on your face in the dark. There’s absolutely nothing so catching. So, you see, I do know a little what nerves are; and dream too sometimes, though I don’t choose charnelhouses if I can get a comfortable bed. A coward! May I really say that to ask my help was one of the bravest things in a man I ever heard of. Bullets—that kind of courage—no real woman cares twopence for bullets. An old aunt of mine stared a man right out of the house with the thing in her face. Anyhow, whether I may or not, I do say it. So now we are quits.’
‘Will you—’ began Lawford, and stopped. ‘What I wanted to say was,’ he jerked on, ‘it is sheer horrible hypocrisy to be talking to you like this—though you will never have the faintest idea of what it has meant and done for me. I mean... And yet, and yet, I do feel when just for the least moment I forget what I am, and that isn’t very often, when I forget what I have become and what I must go back to—I feel that I haven’t any business to be talking with you at all. “Quits!” And here I am, an outcast from decent society. Ah, you don’t know—’
She bent her head and laughed under her breath. ‘You do really stumble on such delicious compliments. And yet, do you know, I think my brother would be immensely pleased to think you were an outcast from decent society if only he could be thought one too. He has been trying half his life to wither decent society with neglect and disdain—but it doesn’t take the least notice. The deaf adder, you know. Besides, besides; what is all this meek talk? I detest meek talk—gods or men. Surely in the first and last resort all we are is ourselves. Something has happened; you are jangled, shaken. But to us, believe me, you are simply one of fewer friends—and I think, after struggling up Widderstone Lane hand in hand with you in the dark, I have a right to say “friends”—than I could count on one hand. What are we all if we only realized it? We talk of dignity and propriety, and we are like so many children playing with knucklebones in a giant’s scullery. Come along, he will, some suppertime, for us, each in turn—and how many even will so much as look up from their play to wave us good-bye? that’s what I mean—the plot of silence we are all in. If only I had my brother’s lucidity, how much better I would have said all this. It is only, believe me, that I want ever so much to help you, if I may—even at risk, too,’ she added, rather shakily, ‘of having that help—well—I know it’s little good.’
The lane had narrowed. They had climbed the arch of a narrow stone bridge that spanned the smooth dark Widder. A few late starlings were winging far above them. Darkness was coming on apace. They stood for awhile looking down into the black flowing water, with here and there the mild silver of a star dim leagues below. ‘I am afraid,’ said Grisel, looking quietly up, ‘you have led me into talking most pitiless nonsense. How many hours, I wonder, did I lie awake in the dark last night, thinking of you? Honestly, I shall never, never forget that walk. It haunted me, on and on.’
‘Thinking of me? Do you really mean that? Then it was not all imagination; it wasn’t just the drowning man clutching at a straw?’
The grey eyes questioned him. ‘You see,’ he explained in a whisper, as if afraid of being overheard, ‘it—it came back again, and—I don’t mind a bit how much you laugh at me! I had been asleep, and had had a most awful dream, one of those dreams that seem to hint that some day that will be our real world, that some day we may awake where dreaming then will be of this; and I woke—came back—and there was a tremendous knocking going on downstairs. I knew there was no one else in the house—’
‘No one else in the house? And you like this?’
‘Yes,’ said Lawford, stolidly, ‘they were all out as it happened. And, of course,’ he went on quickly, ‘there was nothing for me to do but simply to go down and open the door. And yet, do you know, at first I simply couldn’t move. I lit a candle, and then—then somehow I got to know that waiting for me was just—but there,’ he broke off half-ashamed, ‘I mustn’t bother you with all this morbid stuff. Will your brother be in now, do you think?’