The Return by Walter de la Mare

Author:Walter de la Mare
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780486312903
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2012-08-27T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XIV

SHEILA, calm, alert, reserved, was sitting at the open window when he awoke again. His breakfast tray stood on a little table beside the bed. He raised himself on his elbow and looked at his wife. The morning light shone full on her features as she turned quickly at sound of his stirring.

‘You have slept late,’ she said, in a low, mellow voice.

‘Have I, Sheila? I suppose I was tired out. It is very kind of you to have got everything ready like this.’

‘I am afraid, Arthur, I was thinking rather of the maids. I like to inconvenience them as little as possible; in their usual routine, I mean. How are you feeling, do you think, this morning?’

‘I—I haven’t seen the glass, Sheila.’

She paused to place a little pencil tick at the foot of the page of her butcher’s book. ‘And did you—did you try?’

‘Did I try? Try what?’

‘I understood,’ she said, turning slowly in her chair, ‘you gave me to understand that you went out with the specific intention of trying to regain . . . But there, forgive me, Arthur; I think I must be getting a little bit hardened to the position, so far at least as any hope is in my mind of rather amateurish experiments being of much help. I may seem unsympathetic in saying frankly what I feel. But amateurish or no, you are curiously erratic. Why, if you really were the Dr Ferguson whose part you play so admirably you could scarcely spend a more active life.’

‘All you mean, Sheila, I suppose, is that I have failed.’

‘“Failed” did not enter my mind. I thought, looking at you just now in your clothes on the bed, one might for the moment be deceived into thinking there was a shght—quite the slightest improvement. There was not quite that’—she hovered for the right word—‘that tenseness. Whether or not, whether you desired any such change or didn’t, I should have supposed in any case it would have been better to act as far as possible like any ordinary person. You were certainly in an extraordinarily sound sleep. I was almost alarmed; until I remembered that it was a little after two when I looked up from reading aloud to keep myself awake and discovered that you had only just come home. I had no fire. You know how easily late hours bring on my headaches; a little thought might possibly have suggested that I should be anxious to hear. But no; it seems I cannot profit by experience, Arthur. And even now you have not answered surely a very natural question. You do not recollect, perhaps, exactly what did happen last night? Did you go in the direction even of Widderstone?’

‘Yes, Sheila, I went to Widderstone.’

‘It was of course absurd to suppose that sitting on a seat beside the broken-down grave of a suicide would have the slightest effect on one’s—one’s physical condition; though possibly it might affect one’s brain. It would mine; I am at least certain of that.

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