Laurence drew himself up with a sharp sensation of annoyance, geniality and wistfulness alike departing from his aspect. The matter had never presented itself to him in this combination before, and it offended his taste, even, in a degree, his sense of decency. He paused a moment, and then took refuge in slight insincerity.
"Always assuming, dear Mrs. Bellingham, that there is a family spectre for Virginia, or anybody else, to be on terms with?"
"Why, you do not really propose to call that thrilling fact in question?" the lady answered, very brightly. "That would be too mortifying. It would constitute the climax of theennuifrom which I have suffered during the many months of this English winter. I had promised myself at least one vital sensation when you and I should meet, and you should tell me the true, inward history of that romantic, old house of yours, Stoke Rivers."
She sat in an attitude, arranged the folds of her boxcloth shirt, patted the lace into place about her neck.
"You make me feel very badly," she said.
Laurence objected to soiling his conscience by lying at least as much as most men. But surely, he argued, there are cases of justifiable perjury, as of justifiable homicide.
"I am awfully sorry," he said, "to dash your hopes of a sensation. But, you see, neither the romantic, old house or its inward history are my property as yet, so I can't give either away however much I may desire to do so."
"I know it. I do not ask you to commit any indiscretion. I do not ask you to tell me anything."
Laurence braced himself.
"How fortunate, since there's nothing to tell!" he said.
His hostess looked hard at him for a moment, and then at the floor.
"There was a time, before I lived among them, when I believed the English to be a simple and undiplomatic nation," she said. "I know better now."
Laurence was half-amused, half-irritated.
"Oh, come!" he retorted, "it's too bad to make it an international question."
"I had promised myself such a fine time in that house," she continued, still gazing abstractedly at the floor. "Virginia is, I consider—and I believe you know that—the most perfectly lovely woman of my acquaintance. She represents the last word of our American culture; and I would advise every young girl, who was ambitious of social success, to study her as a model. She catches right on to everything new at once, and her power of repartee is great. My admiration for Virginia is so overpowering, that it would really be a wonderful encouragement to my self-respect to get a step ahead of her for once. Well, I concluded I could do that in a perfectly legitimate manner. I planned to ask you to let me go right around that house from cellar to garret, and acquaint myself with the whole interior. I wanted to see it before Virginia had brought our younger and more complex Western civilisation to bear upon it. I promised myself great gratification from doing that."
As she finished speaking, Mrs. Bellingham raised her eyes. That she was in earnest, keenly inquisitive, there could be no doubt.
"But, unhappily, in asking that you would be asking me to commit the greatest possible indiscretion," Laurence answered, laughing a little. "You see, my uncle is alive as yet. And while he lives I must obey orders."
"Orders?"
"Yes; and they are such preposterously unchivalrous orders that I tremble to mention them to you."
Mrs. Bellingham looked away. She grew a trifle anxious, having the greatest fear of hearing anything even remotely, morally or socially, incorrect. But the young man's manner tended to reassure her. He appeared particularly engaging at that moment.
"Yes, it will shock you," he said, "shock you outrageously, coming as you do from a country where no member of your delightful sex is ever requested to take a back seat. My uncle is a brilliantly clever person, but on some points he is a little mad. And simply at Stoke Rivers—I blush to mention it—no woman is admitted, no woman is permitted to exist."
Mrs. Bellingham's eyes positively flashed, her face went extremely pink.
"But this is the most unparalleled country!" she exclaimed. "Mr. Rivers, do you seriously intend me to believe that no lady may enter that house? Why, I ask you, how is it possible to conduct a domestic establishment under such circumstances?"
"Ah! that's the worst of it," Laurence said. He was beginning to be amused again. "I tell you, the condition of that house suggests the most awful reflections."
"I am glad to hear it."
"Yes, awful," he repeated. "For it is the best mounted, the best served, the best kept house I have ever stayed in. It is as clean as a new pin. The whole thing moves on wheels—and yet never the trace of a petticoat! It follows that one is assailed by the unholy suspicion that woman may be, after all, a quite superfluous luxury; and that the work of the world, even in its humble, domestic aspects, can get along just as well without her. My uncle entertains this opinion anyhow, and gives the most convincing practical exposition of it. He has supplied me with a large amount of information under this head; and, upon my word, I'm afraid I am beginning to see the force of his arguments. After that, I'd better go, hadn't I?"
"Well, I really believe perhaps you had," she answered. For once she looked perplexed, almost flurried. Her face was still decidedly pink. But she rallied herself, and fired a parting shot.—"Unless," she added, "to make amends for having told me so very plainly that my presence would not be tolerated at Stoke Rivers, you relent and give me the whole story of that family spectre."
Laurence raised his head sharply, and once more his sense of amusement evaporated. The return to this theme jarred on him. The lady's persistence appeared to him in singularly bad taste. The reiteration of that word angered him moreover. In hearing it he was sensible of a turn in his blood, as though an insult were being offered to one very dear to him.
"Spectre?" he said slowly. "Pardon me—I—I don't quite follow you. What spectre?"
His hostess was roused in her turn.
"Why, Mr. Rivers, what has happened to you?" she inquired. "What have I said to disturb your equanimity? I had not supposed you to be so sensitive."
Whereupon the folly of his anger became extremely apparent to Laurence; the more so that he had so recently concluded to eschew ambitious adventures and decline upon the large and unexciting levels of the Commonplace. In those regions hasty resentments, hot blood, the fine-gentleman-duelling-spirit, in short, is clearly out of the picture. And then, why quarrel with Mrs. Bellingham of all people? She was a very charming, little person, specially when—as just now—her glance dwelt fondly upon her red-coated babies and their escort of nurses, donkey, and dogs. If she had trodden on his toes, it was unwittingly, and without any intention of malice. So he proceeded to makeamende honorablewith proper despatch.
"Forgive me," he said; "I am an idiot. But the legends to which my poor old uncle's crankiness have given rise really begin to get upon my brain. Wherever I go they crop up. You can understand it becomes a little exasperating.—Good-bye. I have had a delightful time. Love to Jack."
The lady smiled upon him, yet with an air of criticism and slight reserve.
"Oh yes," she said, "certainly, Mr. Rivers, love to Jack. But I am going to write to Virginia and report on our interview. I believe it is incumbent on me as a true friend to do that.—Yes, you may come again just as soon as you like. Now, do I not display a perfectly lovely spirit in inviting you here after you have done just all you know to explode my romance? Mr. Rivers, this day will leave a scar. I know it. I do regret that spectre."
Laurence smiled back, looking down at her.
"Yes, it's a pity, isn't it," he said, "ever to explode a romance? There aren't too many of them about. Perhaps I too could find it in my heart to regret that spectre."
And there, at least, the young man spoke truth, for regrets pursued him on his homeward way. All this talk, moreover, was a nuisance, an intolerable nuisance. And, though he did not stay to analyse the probabilities of when and how, he apprehended up-croppings, developments, and ramifications of the said nuisance in the future. Mrs. Bellingham's question, as to the attitude Virginia might adopt towards the occult element in her husband's fine inheritance, was more uncomfortably pertinent than the questioner could by any means have imagined. It suggested most disturbing complications. Thus Laurence rode onward heedlessly, harassed by vexatious and perplexing thoughts.
"What a confounded bother it all is!" he exclaimed impatiently. "I wish to goodness the poor old man would live for ever—outlive me anyhow. That would be the simplest solution of the situation."
He raised his head and looked about him, then became aware that he must have taken some wrong turn in the labyrinth of cross-country roads between Bishop's Pudbury and Stoke Rivers, that he must have struck too far southward and so lost his way. The mouth of the steep, rutted lane, shut in by copse on either hand, which he had been following, now debouched on a high-lying table-land. Small, rough fields bordered the road, their crumbling, ill-kept banks bare of trees. Some fifty yards ahead, where four roads crossed, stood a lonely, one-story, turnpike house; it was six-sided, white-washed, and had a slated roof, rising extinguisher-like to a single central chimney. Placed in an angle of the intersecting roads, it was without garden ground. The turnpike-gate had long ago disappeared; and the house, a thing that had lost its use and become obsolete, was in a half-ruinous condition. An air of cheap desolation pervaded it. Bundles of rags bulged from the broken window-panes. Long-legged, high-shouldered fowls pecked and squatted in the dust before the half-open door. Yet, seeing it, Laurence was sensible that this unsightly building had a tally somewhere in his memory, and claimed recognition. And this impression received unexpected reinforcement when suddenly its squalid walls changed from dirty-white to warm primrose, while the surviving glass in its rickety windows gave off dazzling splendours of light.
Anxious to learn the cause of this transformation, the young man drew up, and, laying his right hand upon his horse's sleek quarters, turned half round in the saddle, and stayed thus, looking and listening.
The view was very noble. Southward the fall of the ground was sufficiently abrupt to exclude all middle distance, with the result that the rough grasses, withered bents and sorrel-stalks of the near pasture-field were outlined against the immense sweep of the flat coastline far below—this last, mauve, and russet, and dim green, was broken here and there by a pallor of sandhills and the shimmer of seaward-tending streams. Looking west, the suave contours of the Downs and Beachy Head rose, in indigo and purple, against a great space of saffron-coloured sky. Above them, but with a bar of strong light between, heavy masses of purple-grey cloud gathered, from out which the freshening wind blew chill. The sea, steel-blue and dashed with white-capped waves, lifted a hard, serrated edge against the horizon.
All this Laurence saw. It made a rather splendid picture, big with the drama of approaching storm. Yet he was persuaded something was lacking. As three days ago upon first entering the yellow drawing-room at Stoke Rivers, he had, after the first moment of surprise, instinctively looked for certain ornaments and pieces of furniture, and derived a singular satisfaction from the conviction that they still occupied their accustomed place—so now and here, though to his knowledge he had never before ridden across this piece of exposed and but half-reclaimed common-land, or seen the great view under its existing aspect,—he instinctively gazed seaward in search of that which should support his half-awakened memory, and complete the scene to his satisfaction. For surely—yes, surely—bowling up Channel, under crowded canvas, before the freshening breeze, he should behold a fleet of some eight or ten square-rigged East Indiamen, their carven poops standing high out of the water,—vessels of about a thousand tons' burden, laden with tea and spices, bales of delicate muslins and silks, flasks of utter, porcelain, ivory fans, bright-hued parrots, and unseemly, little apes.
And as convoy of these rich cargoes, to secure them, their merchant captains and bronzed and sturdy crews, against the rapacity of privateers sweeping out from St. Malo and other ports of Northern France, he should behold—yes, surely he should—a couple of smart English frigates, square-rigged too, whose clean scrubbed decks and the black mouths of whose port holes displayed grim argument of cannon, ready for action should occasion so demand. The ships, hugging the land for greater safety from alert and hungry foes, seemed—while the wind filled the bellying sails, straining their tall masts, as they heeled upon that uneasy, blue-grey sea—like some flight of huge, golden-plumage birds; for all the saffron glory now streaming from beneath the gathering storm-clouds in the west must lie full on them.
For such gallant sight Laurence watched, singularly moved, and with a singular eagerness. And so clear was the vision to his mind, so necessary to the completion of the scene upon which his eyes rested, that for some moments he failed to distinguish where actuality ended and hallucination began. He contemplated the creation of his own brain in absorbed interest; then turned and looked at the rough road and dilapidated turnpike house, and then again out to sea. Only a black-hulled, ocean-going tramp, her deckhouses piled up amidships close against her reeking funnel, laboured slowly down channel in the teeth of the gusty breeze. This was all; and then the young man understood, not without amazement, that the gallant show had been a thing of the imagination only,—at most a thing remembered, but how and whence remembered he could not tell. For how, upon any reasonable hypothesis, could the memory of a man like himself of but just over thirty, put back the clock by close upon a century, and disport itself with incidents belonging by rights to, at least, two generations ago? It was all most exceedingly strange. It amounted to being disquieting. Really he did not half like it. Yet the imagined spectacle had been very inspiring all the same. It had made his blood tingle, and had effectually (or disastrously) exorcised that spirit of indolence andlaisser allerwhich he had solicited to take up its abode with him. He sent his horse forward at a sharp trot, while once again he proceeded to revise the situation.
For the idea presented itself that perhaps he had been over self-confident, arrogating to himself a far greater freedom of will than he, in point of fact, possessed. It was all very fine to foreswear adventure, but what if adventure refused to be foresworn? He might easily propose to decline upon modernity, mediocrity, and the Commonplace; but what if these, as seemed just now highly probable, asserted in unmistakable language their determination to have none of him? He reflected that temperament may constitute your genius or your fate, your opportunity or your ruin, as you have the wit to deal with it; but that temperament is indestructible, and that escape from it,—however inconvenient and contrary to your desire that temperament may be,—is obviously and inherently impossible.
As he meditated thus, the road he followed dipped slightly, leaving the bare upland and passing along the under side of a thick belt of wood, which cut off the seaward view. On the left, between the interspaces of the hedgerow trees, the inland country now lay disclosed for many miles. Clouds had gathered so rapidly in the last ten minutes that the sun was obscured, and all the wide expanse was drowned in heavy violet and indigo shadow. Only a ridge of hill, some three-quarters of a mile distant, was caught by long shafts of wild, rainbow light, so that it floated as a narrow, fish-shaped island upon the ocean of stormy colour. And upon that island, uplifted, transmuted, etherealised, rendered at once unreal yet insistent, vividly defined by the unnatural and searching light, Laurence beheld Stoke Rivers—the long, low house, and its double range of windows, its avenues, and carriage-ways, the block of stable buildings; every detail of the Italian garden, its cypress spires as of full-toned amethyst, its white balustrades and statues iridescent as though made of long-buried Roman glass, its great lawns green as malachite, the dome of its lime-grove touched by a dim glow as of uncut rubies. In this strange and unearthly radiance, Stoke Rivers seemed to call upon Laurence, to challenge his admiration, to assert its existence and its claim upon his heart, with a singular power. It was part of him, and he of it. It laid hands on his past and his future alike. It refused to be taken lightly. As a woman wears her jewels to startle and enthral a desired lover, so this dwelling-place of his people arrayed itself in marvellous wise to conquer his wavering allegiance and command his thought. It would force him not to disregard its secrets. It wooed him to intimacy, to discovery. It cried to him out, as it seemed, of some unplumbed depth of experience in himself.
That night Mr. Rivers engaged his nephew until past midnight. His manner was gracious, his mind, apparently, unusually at peace. His conversation was remarkably brilliant, both in range of subject and readiness of expression. First dealing with the earliest known examples of art, and displaying critical acquaintance with Chaldean cylinders and stelæ, he passed on to the persistent influence of Eastern ideas upon Western religious thought. He discoursed of Hindu sacred literature and the crowded pantheon of Hindu gods, noting how certain practices connected with their worship and certain symbols pertaining to it have passed into the common use of the Catholic Church. He discoursed of the Gnostic sects, and their influence upon African and Syrian Christianity. Then, invading the Spanish peninsular in the train of the Moors, he delivered himself of a spirited disquisition upon Averrhoes, the lawyer philosopher of Cordova, his doctrine of the Universal Reason and denial of the immortality of the individual soul.
Laurence went forth onto the bright, hot corridor, and paused at the stairhead. He was honestly tired both in mind and body. He needed, and would take, an honest night's rest. But one thing was sure. Whether he had decided or merely yielded, whether he represented the positive or negative element, he knew not; but this he did know, that the Commonplace, and all the ease of it, might wait. He was not ready for that just yet.
Of the first twelve keys, some slipped round without effect, some stuck and were withdrawn with difficulty. But the wards of the thirteenth bit into the lock, and the bolt gave with a click. Laying hold of the cylindrical front of the escritoire, Laurence pushed it up and back. Within, a row of arcaded pigeon-holes was disclosed; and on either side these, a range of little drawers, the pale, bright wood of which retained its pristine polish, while the colours of the painted medallions adorning them were very fresh though frail. The cupids, the little figures of lover and mistress, courtier and prince, were instinct with vivacity and grace—the heedless vivacity, the artificial grace of those over-ripe, luxurious periods which carry in their womb the seeds of revolution and social catastrophe. Laurence was moved, observing it all. Evidently the bolt had not been shot, the rounded front run back, and this mimic world of fine-fanciful elegance displayed for many years. And then this pretty toy of a thing seemed so slight and incongruous a receptacle for the storage of momentous secrets. Yet that the secrets it held were momentous, dealing with problems of life and death, subtle transformations of flesh and spirit, the young man—notwithstanding the soothing influences of a healthy night's rest, and the pre-eminently unexciting ones of a grey, wet, March afternoon—felt no doubt. For he had given in, as he believed, finally, to the adventure; and with that giving in, his faith in the magnitude of it suffered, by natural rebound, serious increase.
So reverently, and as one who approaches a long disused shrine containing promise of strange and precious relics, he opened the shallow drawers and examined their contents. The first three were filled with packets of letters, written on thin, discoloured paper, and tied, some with pink, some with yellow, sarsenet ribbon. Each packet was neatly dated, the dates ranging, as Laurence gathered in a first hasty survey, from the year 1802 to the year 1805. The remaining drawers contained a collection of objects, miscellaneous in character but united in the thought (as he divined) of whoso placed them there, side by side, by some exquisitely tender sentiment.—A man's paste shoe-buckles, square and bowed, the silver settings of them tarnished to blackness, reposed beside a woman's striped, waist ribbon, cinnamon and white, embroidered in buds and scattered full-blown roses. Here were seals cut from envelopes, the cracked and blistered wax of them impressed with the Rivers's arms and crest; and a store of semi-transparent, delicately tinted shells, spoils of some far-distant, southern coast. There were trinkets, too, rings and bracelets of intricate Indian workmanship; and a cluster of coral charms, of Neapolitan origin, with the tiny golden hand, first and fourth fingers stiffly extended, which keeps off the Evil Eye. Next, little posies, such as a lover might pluck and his mistress might wear for an evening, pinned, to please him, in the bosom of her dress. These last were pressed and flattened, the several hues of the once radiant blossoms faded to an ashen uniformity of tint. They were sadly brittle, too; and though Laurence raised them with careful fingers, crumbled to nothingness under his touch. Then he lighted on a man's watch, a great, gold warming-pan of a thing, with a guard of black lustre ribbon and a bunch of heavy seals attached. The back of the case bore the Rivers's crest—a bird of doubtful lineage, its wings extended for flight, its talons holding something, which to Laurence always appeared to bear humorous relation to a fool's cap. The case was also engraved with the initials L. R. in flowing and ornate lettering.
And over these initials Laurence paused. They piqued his curiosity. They also, somewhat to his own amusement, provoked in him a feeling suspiciously akin to jealousy. They were his own; yet he could not but imagine that they were also those of a person closely connected with the sweet and mysterious companion, who had walked the lawns and garden alleys with him during the small hours, fled and vanished at cock-crow, two nights back. A very definite purpose of learning more about this same person—of whom, he divined, this pathetic store of objects to be gifts or memorials—possessed Laurence. Had he wronged the gentle lady in life, so causing her after sorrow? Or had some tragic happening parted him from her, without fault of his? And what manner of man had he been, while a dweller here, in ordinary fashion, upon earth? It became of great moment to Laurence to answer these questions. Perhaps those packets of discoloured letters would tell. Meanwhile, there remained another shallow, painted drawer to be searched.
It contained, wrapped face to face, in a lace and lawn handkerchief, two very exquisite miniatures by Cosway. And then, though he courted surprises, agreeing with himself to expect nothing save the unexpected, and to accept all possible extravagance of improbability that might arise with as little dislocation of mind as one accepts the extravagancies of a dream, Laurence stood for a moment speechless, absolutely confounded.
For one miniature represented his fairy-lady, her lovely eyes and lips smiling with discreet gladsomeness, her expression an enchanting union of sprightliness and of content. An azure ribbon was threaded through the soft masses of her elaborately-dressed hair, little curls of which strayed down on to her forehead. The string of pearls was clasped around her throat. She wore her transparent, white, frilled cape and rose-red, silken gown. Her graceful head and slender figure—to the waist—were seen against a background of faint dove-coloured cloud. The painter had painted fondly as a friend, it would seem, as well as a master of his craft.—And the other miniature, by the same hand, showing the same delightful sympathy of artist with his subject, touched by the same poetic insight and grace, was a portrait of whom? Well, of himself—himself, Laurence Rivers, not as he was to-day, but as he had been, ten years ago, at one-and-twenty. With astonishment, bordering very closely on alarm, he observed that colouring, features, the square cutting of the nostrils, a certain softness in the lines of the mouth, the shape of the head, the straight set of the shoulders, all these were perfectly exact. While the countenance was instinct with that inimitable charm of unsullied youth, that fearlessness and happy self-confidence, the attractive power of which he had only fully realised as they had begun to fade out of his aspect in the course of his passage from early to maturer manhood, while the boundlessly generous aspirations of inexperience were in course of being discredited by increasing knowledge of the standards and habits of this not altogether noble or virtuous world.
Laurence took the miniature in his hand, and considered it closely, with a twinge of self-abasement. Endowed with so ingratiating a personality, so admirable a physical equipment, he ought surely to have made a definite name and place for himself in contemporary history! And what of moment had he to show, after all, for his thirty-one years of living? Practically nothing, he feared. And the young man of the miniature made better play with his handsome person, and the qualities and talents which might be expected to accompany it? He had been a sailor apparently, for he wore the dark-blue, naval uniform of the early years of the century, his brown hair being tied back into a queue. But for these details the resemblance to himself was absolute. And then, suddenly, with a sense of faintness as though his identity were slipping away from him, and his hold on actuality loosening as he imagined it might loosen in the moments immediately preceding death, Laurence remembered that he had worn a precisely similar costume—that of a naval lieutenant of the time of Nelson—at a fancy dress ball given in his honour, at the country house of certain of his mother's relations, on the eve of his twenty-first birthday. He had been mightily chaffed about his good looks and air of assured conquest upon the occasion in question; and had laughingly replied that he, too, intended to fight his battle of Trafalgar and win it, only that he should take jolly good care not to fall in the hour of success, but to survive and thoroughly enjoy the fruits of victory.
The miniatures were oval, each set in a plain gold band. Laurence turned them over in search of a possible inscription. Upon the reverse of the one were engraved the words—"Agnes, a gift to her dear cousin," and the date, "August 1803." Upon the other—"Laurence, a gift to his dear love," and the same date.
Rain had followed on the stormy splendours of the preceding evening; and as the young man raised his eyes absently and stared out of the great bay-window, he became sensible that the outlook was comfortless enough. The gardens and the distant view were blurred and blotted by driving mist; while, in the room itself, there reigned a singularly blear and cheerless light. A damp, earthy odour, moreover, pervaded the atmosphere, as though the moisture prevailing out of doors had gained access to the house. Carefully, rather sadly, Laurence laid the two miniatures side by side upon the filmy handkerchief. The radiant, pictured faces, the two graceful, young heads turned slightly towards each other as in mutual tenderness and sympathy, offered, he thought, pathetic contrast to the melancholy of this tearful morning. That this young man had in no way wronged the fair and gentle woman, he now felt assured. But that assurance, so perverse is human nature, did not serve to elate him. Far from it. As he looked first at the charming pair, and then at the driving mist, a sense of great loneliness, almost of desolation, came over him; while the word spectre—which, when employed yesterday by his lively hostess Mrs. Bellingham, had seemed of such meagre and even vulgar significance—now occurred to him with a new and immediate meaning. Spectral—that this room was in the present dreary light. While, if the idea called for further and concrete presentiment, he could—looking on the fearless and hopeful countenance of that other Laurence Rivers—offer it in his own person. Involuntarily he shivered, since, for the moment, his tenure of name, person and individuality, seemed so questionable, a matter of sufferance merely—amounting to no more, in fact, than a remote reversionary interest in another man's goods.
At random he picked up a couple of packets of letters off the top of the escritoire, where he had laid them, and moved across to the window. It was not wholesome to look at those happy faces—one his own—any longer. The letters tied with a pink ribbon were in a woman's hand, sloped and pointed, but with a peculiar elegance of lettering and evenness of line. Then for an instant he debated, questioning whether he could without breach of honour, and of the respect in which all decent-minded persons hold the dead, open and read these letters. The position was extraordinary to the point of abrogating accustomed rules of conduct; yet he felt a certain delicacy in reading a woman's letters and surprising the secrets of her heart. But as he turned them over, glancing at the first page of each, he perceived that in every case they were addressed to himself; for at the top corner of each was written—"To Laurence Rivers, Esq.," and below either "Dear cousin" or "Dear love." Then the irony of the thing taking him, he smiled to himself and said:
"Oh, well, come along, surely I have a right to the smooth as well as the rough. If I am such a very second-hand affair any way, with not so much as a name or face of my own to be proud of, I'll at least have the advantages of my disabilities. I will know how my other, first-hand, self was made love to and made love."
Yet no sooner had he begun to read, than he became aware that he knew that already. For as he perused the thin, deeply-creased pages, he felt, with a certainty independent of and passing all proof, that he had read these sweet effusions, these innocent chronicles of home life, of meetings and partings, pretty pleasures and junketings, not once but many times already. He remembered them. He could almost tell what words would meet his eye as he straightened and turned the fluttering sheets of paper.
"—I am much concerned," wrote Agnes Rivers, "that so many months must elapse before I can again receive news of you. I preach Patience to myself; but that virtue, though a good servant, is but a sorrowful master. I am pursued by fears on your account, which often move me to tears when I am alone, or have retired to my chamber at night. You will reprove my feminine weakness and bid me take courage. Yet I defy you to maintain such fears are wholly misplaced, in face of the wild scenes of tempest and of battle which you may be called upon to witness."
Again—"It grieves me that I cannot write to you of my affection with the freedom dictated by my heart. But my means of communicating with you amid the convulsions of the present terrible war are so uncertain, that I constantly tremble lest my letters should fall into other hands than yours. My good Mrs. Lambert, who, as you will remember, is ever solicitous for the maintenance of propriety, impresses this danger upon me, and urges reticence and circumspection. I therefore entreat you, dear Laurence, not to measure the depth of my regard by my present expression of it. Recall, rather, all the happy and unclouded hours we have enjoyed together, and let them speak for me."
And again—"Your brother Dudley, though, I grieve to say, not less harsh and imperious towards others, continues to treat me with all brotherly consideration and courtesy. He is very thoughtful of the improvement of my mind, and we still follow our studies in the Italian and Spanish languages. His great knowledge and intelligence are of incalculable advantage to me, and I trust that I prove a docile, if not a very brilliant, pupil. I own my thoughts at times wander, though I strive, in gratitude to my kind preceptor, to keep them fixed upon my tasks. Mrs. Lambert is, unfortunately, as much alarmed by Dudley's opinions and conversation as ever. I could myself wish that he would express himself with less violence on the subject of politics and of religion. But his early travels in the unfortunate country of France, and his intimate association with Mr. Robespierre and other leaders of her sanguinary revolution, have, I much fear, permanently warped his mind and prejudiced his judgment. Yesterday, at dinner, he entered into a discussion with our new rector, Mr. Burkinshaw—a scholarly and estimable person—upon the Rights of Man, and the nature and attributes of the Deity, asserting subversive and atheistical views with so much heat and intemperance of language, that Mrs. Lambert fled from table in tears, while Mr. Burkinshaw was, I could not but see, seriously offended and hurt."
Once more—"The weather recently has been continuously wet and stormy. Dudley reports great destruction of timber in the park. I have been unable to leave the house, and have spent many hours in the east parlour, which your brother kindly bids me regard as my exclusive property. I have read much, I trust with profit. Nor have I neglected my music, though the melancholy character of the season and ever-present fears for your safety have rendered me but a joyless performer. For the songs you most admire, I cannot find voice. Indeed, I struggle with my weakness, and make every effort to present a serene exterior. But Memory is never, perhaps, a more sorry companion than when she speaks of happy scenes."
And finally—"My own dear love, your packet from Madalena has at last reached us. What can I say to you save that my heart dances with rapture? I cannot sit still, but must needs run from place to place for very gladness. Mrs. Lambert reproves my lack of occupation. But she is mistaken. I am fully occupied in reading and re-reading your letter, and in thanking our Merciful Creator for this unhoped-for assurance of your safety. I have retired to the stone bench beneath the lime-trees. They are in blossom now, and their agreeable fragrance fills the air. Here I write to you, while the sun shines, and summer winds play lightly with the leaves. Do you remember our sitting here the evening you stole the new black ribbon from my embroidered bag with which to tie your hair? Dear love, now I am convinced that you will be permitted to return to me, and that we shall add yet other happy hours to those already treasured in our hearts. All will be well. Nay—what am I writing?—all is well already. But for my past anxiety and all my cruel fears, I could not have known the rapture of the present. My heart overflows. I would not have one unhappy creature breathe to-day. I have emptied my purse to a beggar; and have expended unpermitted dainties upon my cage-birds, and Dudley's horses and dogs. The servants smile upon me, rejoicing in my joy. Ah! my love, I am half ashamed to wear so gay a face. Dudley has withdrawn to the library. He is preoccupied and silent. Mrs. Lambert, for all her affection, regards me, I fear, with disapproval. But how can I feign indifference? You are safe. You will return to me. In six months I shall attain my majority, and then your brother Dudley can no longer, as my guardian, legally prohibit our marriage. Of that dear union, the consummation of all our prayers and hopes, I can scarcely dare trust myself to—"
And here Laurence found himself forced to cease reading. The page was blotted, the writing obliterated, by rusty stains of the nature of which he could be in no doubt. The further record of Agnes Rivers's pure passion was smothered in blood.
He folded the letters together, tied them up, put them back in the drawer, closed and locked the escritoire. Well, it must have been worth while to have been loved like that! Did women ever love so still, he wondered? He opened the tall French window, and once again went out, hatless, into the driving wet.
"Mr. Rivers regrets that he is unable to receive you to-night, sir."
Laurence looked round with something approaching a start at Renshaw, the butler, whose respectful, colourless voice broke in thus upon his meditations. The dining-room struck him as hotter and more oppressive than ever—by contrast probably with the buffeting wind and driving mist in which he had paced the lime-tree walk for a good hour before the dressing-bell rang. To-night the glass bowl, supported by the wanton, dancing, Etruscan figures, was filled with tuberoses and carmine-stained Japanese lilies; and the odour given off by these acted on the young man's brain as opium or hashish might have acted—at least so it appeared to him. The longer he meditated, the less could he distinguish between real and unreal, fact and phantasy. The best accredited articles of his moral and scientific creed had passed into the region of the open question. Speculation ran riot, all the accustomed landmarks of his thought being for the time submerged; while the wildest and most extravagant ideas presented themselves as within the range of practical action. That last read letter of Agnes Rivers, and his own resemblance to her lover, had inflamed his imagination and his heart. Even in their one night's intercourse, he had seen intelligence, purpose, gaiety, return to her. Now the daring conception that such a process might be continued, until his sweet and mysterious companion recovered all the senses and attributes of living womanhood, formed itself in his mind. Was it not conceivable that this appearance might be materialised, so that the fair and gracious spirit should once again inhabit a human body, and know all those dear joys of love and motherhood which had been—by some evil fortune, some catastrophe, as he supposed—denied to her? An immense ambition to be the instrument of this restoration, this recovery, grew within him. He would work a miracle, he would be as God, clothing the soul with flesh, raising the dead. And this by no exercise of charlatanism, by no dabbling in old-world superstitions, or dealings in folly of White Magic or of Black; but simply by force of will, by the action of mind on mind, by the incalculable power of a great love. It was impious, perhaps. Morally it was doubtful—circumstanced as he, Laurence, was. But it was the most magnificent experiment ever offered either to man of science, or to poet. Here was the opportunity he had desired, had waited for. Here was his chance in life!
Then the butler's voice cut in, bringing him down to the everyday level. No wonder he looked round a little dazed.
"Mr. Rivers regrets that he will be unable to receive you to-night, sir," it said.
And Laurence asked in answer—
"Is my uncle ill? Is he worse?"
"Mr. Lowndes has brought down word that he is tired, sir. Mr. Armstrong, the agent, arrived from Scotland this afternoon while you were out. Mr. Rivers has had a long interview with him—too long an interview in Mr. Lowndes's opinion."
"I am sorry," Laurence said absently. He fell to caressing his wonderful idea again, but the butler waited.
"Mr. Armstrong requested me to add, sir, that if convenient to you, as you will not be engaged with Mr. Rivers, he would be obliged if you would allow him to speak to you in the course of the evening."
"Oh, by all means," the young man said, rising. Then he added—"Tell Mr. Armstrong I will see him at once. Later I may be occupied. Where? In the small library—yes."
Laurence betook himself to the library, prepared to be bored with a good grace. But he might have spared himself such preparation, for looking on the new-comer, he liked him. The man, in age about sixty, was of barely middle height, broad-shouldered and lean about the flanks. He carried his head forward, stooping slightly, in observant, meditative fashion. He was slow of movement, calm, one capable of having his joke and keeping it to himself. His face was shaped like a kite, remarkable in the breadth of the lower part of the forehead and the high cheek-bones, narrowing down to a long, flat chin. The upper lip was long too, a somewhat pragmatical and self-righteous upper lip. While the eyes, set far apart under the wide brow, showed a clear, kindly blue between the narrow lids that ended in a fan-like system of wrinkles at the outward corners. The nose was thin and straight at the bridge, with wide-winged, open nostrils. The hair, formerly sandy, was now grey, smooth on the low dome of the head, and thickly waved above and behind the flat-set, long-lobed ears. In all a shrewd, humorous, sober countenance, ruddy, moreover, as a well-ripened, autumn apple.
At first the agent's talk was professional, dealing in matters of leases and rights-of-way; of draining operations and the breeding and rearing of cattle; of the iniquitous heaviness of road rates, the culture of hops, and the cutting of copses. But gradually it began to take on a more personal and racial character, since the Scotchman is yet to be born who can go very long in conversation without blowing—be it never so discreetly—the trumpet of his own unrivalled nation. So he fell to dilating upon the superiority of the Scotch to the English system of national education; upon the indolence and general incapacity of the south-country labourer; upon the glaring futilities and imbecilities of district and parish councils; and upon the congenital incapacity of the Anglican clergy—every man-Jack of them—to deliver a sermon which would satisfy the intelligence and theological acumen of the most ordinary congregation north of Tweed.
Laurence listened, amused by the exhibition of the speaker's both conscious and unconscious prejudices. The man was alive; he was self-secure and dependable. Laurence saw he would be a pleasant fellow to work with. And the thought of that work began to occupy his mind, opium dreams giving place before practical interests and activities. Laurence talked in his turn, showing a keenness in business and a knowledge of it, which Armstrong, with pursed-up lips and slow noddings of the head, evidently relished.
"Aweel," he remarked at last, after the younger man had given a particularly lucid description of certain labour-saving farm-implements employed in the wheat-growing states of Western America,—"I trust it is no disrespect to an old master, whom it pleases the Almighty to withdraw to some other sphere of usefulness—or the contrary, for it would be overbold to prophesy largely on that subject of utility in the case of your uncle, Mr. Rivers—it is no disrespect, I say, I trust, for a man who has served such an one for over thirty years to the best of his ability, to feel himself not indisposed to welcome the new master. I am constrained to tell you, Mr. Laurence Rivers, that I looked to find in you some flighty, flimsy, modern run-about of a creature. I acknowledge my error with thanksgiving. The impression you make on my mind is far from unfavourable."
"That's right," Laurence said genially. "I am new to all these landed property concerns as yet; but I expect I shall be able to get round them pretty smartly when the time comes."
"I think you will, I think you will." The agent's blue eyes twinkled with a certain quiet humour, upon the young man, from between their narrow lids. "Your uncle, I must admit, is but a feeble body in the practical domain. His great understanding has, so to speak, not infrequently got between his legs and thrown him down. It is pitiful to see any person so clever that he cannot condescend to take advantage of the handsome position the Almighty has allowed him. I own there have been times when I have felt rebellious against the Lord's too great generosity in the goods of this world—perishable, I know, yet deserving of consideration—to one constitutionally incapable of drawing full profit out of them. Therefore I perceive with thankfulness, Mr. Rivers, you are of a different make."
Laurence leaned back in his chair, and lighted another cigarette. It was early yet—and he liked the man. He would encourage him to talk on for a while longer.
"Oh yes," he said, "you needn't be worried under that head, Armstrong. I've the reputation of by no means quarrelling with my bread and butter, or despising the goodly fruits of this admittedly naughty world, in whatever form I find them."
"Temperance is a canny virtue; and I would recommend moderation in all things, after the teaching of the Apostle Paul. Yet I am glad to find, Mr. Rivers, you have your feet upon the floor. It will be well for your estates, at the preservation and improvement of which I and my kin have laboured—not unfaithfully—for three generations."
"So long as that?" the young man ejaculated. The statement indirectly suggested a former strain of thought.
"Yes, for three generations—and not without trials. For I would have you understand that a certain impracticability runs in your family, Mr. Rivers—a perversity, not sinful altogether, but very wearing to those that have your temporal interests at heart."
Gently Laurence blew a little cloud out of his nostrils, and watched it float upward across the dark, warm-hued landscape by Nicholas Poussin hanging over the chimney-piece. Against the windows the rain beat, while the heavy folds of the crimson, damask curtains, covering them, swayed just perceptibly in the draught.
"I can believe it," he said. "My people have been afflicted with ideas; and ideas play the very mischief with business, don't they, Armstrong?"
"In their degree, and subject to a thrifty discretion in their application, I would not wholly condemn them," the agent replied. His shrewd glance dwelt on the younger man with undisguised pleasure. He was so handsome, well bred, well made, and apparently so able a fellow.—"But ideas are kittle cattle, Mr. Rivers," he continued, "needing strenuous supervision if you would not have them break out of pasture and run mad, sairly to the dislocation of all legitimate traffic. And it has been the affliction of more than one member of your family to let his ideas run abroad to a length of pernicious extravagance. For instance, my grandfather, a person of capacity and circumspection beyond the average, was factor to your great uncle, Mr. Dudley Rivers, and—"
Laurence kept his eyes fixed on the last blue of the little smoke-cloud curling about the intricate foliations of the upper corner of the picture frame; yet his voice had a certain quickness and vibration in it as he exclaimed—
"Ah! Dudley Rivers—yes. Well, how about him, Armstrong?"
"Not much good, not much good. Like the foolish body recorded by the Psalmist, he had 'said in his heart, There is no God.' And having made that very impious and lying observation, and so disposed of the Deity, he proceeded to supersede the latter in his own person, and attempt the reorganisation of society according to his own hare-brained fancies. Regarding his deliverance from dangerous delusions my grandfather could do but little, being himself a godly man, and holding firmly by the doctrine of Election. If the poor misguided creature would go to the devil, Mr. Rivers, it was—so my grandfather held—because to the devil he was righteously foredoomed and predestined to go. And so my grandfather, relieved of all responsibility in that respect, felt free to apply the whole of his abilities to saving the poor, erring person's treasure on earth, since it was manifestly not the intention of Providence that he should inherit any treasure in heaven. He had long taken entire charge of those estates in the county of Fife, which belonged to Mr. Dudley's young cousin and ward, Miss Agnes Rivers—"
"Ah!" Laurence ejaculated softly.
"And many a time did my grandfather undertake the tedious journey down here, from the north, to lend a seasonable hand in restraining Mr. Dudley from committing some ruinous foolishness in respect of Miss Agnes, or of his own southern property. For Mr. Dudley was just completely saturated with pernicious opinions derived from the writings of Rousseau, and Tom Paine, and other such seditious persons; and Satan entering into him at intervals, and blinding his small surviving modicum of reason, he proposed to reduce them to practice—poor, demented body."
"Yes," Laurence said, "he had graduated in a rather impossible school, no doubt. But—but—Armstrong, what about his private life—his morals?"
"Blameless—blameless—more's the pity, since his virtues could but come under the head of works of supererogation—so my grandfather held—profitless alike in this world and in the next. Indeed, though a strict man himself, I am constrained to believe he would have experienced relief in seeing Mr. Dudley enjoy the pleasures of sin—they are real, very real while they last, unfortunately—for a season."
Laurence flung away the stump of his cigarette, and turned sideways in his chair.
"Now, as we're on the subject," he said, "and as you seem to know all about these people of mine, what sort of fellow was Dudley's younger brother, my namesake, Laurence Rivers?"
"Weel, I have reason to believe he was a very promising sprig—a likely young gentleman, high-spirited, clean-living, and not without a show of capacity for affairs. My grandparents, both of them, entertained a warm affection for him."—The man paused in his slow sing-song talk, smiling.—"I should surmise him to have been much such a person as yourself, Mr. Rivers, with a natural gift of winning the hearts of those brought into contact with him. But he fell at Trafalgar, shot through the lungs, as no doubt you have heard—cut off before he had opportunity to acquaint the world with the worth of the talents that might reside in him. It was a grievous misfortune, for his death took place but three months before the day appointed for his and his cousin's marriage. And often, as a soft-hearted bit of a laddie, I have cried to hear my grandmother tell of the coming of the awful news and the grief of the poor young lady. She was a gracious, winsome thing, as bright as a sunbeam on a running brook; very pious, too, and charitable, so that no mortal soul could but wish her well that looked on her. But she was shivered by the stroke of her sorrow, as you might shiver some fragile trifle of an ornament with a careless blow. She would not eat or speak for many days, and her sleep departed from her. And, indeed, during the few months of life that remained to her she rarely uttered a word. Her poor bits of wits seemed to drain out of her with her tears, for all that she was highly educated, and an accomplished musician and sweet singer."
Laurence had risen to his feet. He stood with his back to the fire, his hands behind him, and his head bent.
"Poor child!" he said softly. "Well, she knew how to love, anyway."
"No woman better; but I am thinking, Mr. Rivers, she introduced into her affections a touch of that same extravagance which pertains to so many members of your family. For my grandmother used to tell me that, though altogether gentle and docile, she studied nothing but to turn over her dead love's letters, and play with the various gifts he had bestowed upon her, as a little lass plays with its puppets and toys. It was the pitifulest spectacle under the dome of the sky, that of her affliction; and Mr. Dudley, notwithstanding his reprehensible opinions and infamous heresies, watched over her like a father. His patience knew no bounds, poor body. He would have laid himself down as the ground for her to walk on, could that have accelerated her recovery. He spared no expense of doctors, both foreign and English, to prescribe for her; and carried her away to Bath, by their advice, to drink the waters there. But all the medicinal waters that ever welled up through the length and breadth of God Almighty's curious earth are powerless to ease the ache of a broken heart. She wanted but one thing, and that no mortal soul could give her. And so, poor, white lily of a thing, she just sickened, and faded, and died."
Laurence stood very still, looking down at the hearthrug between his feet, while the rain beat against the windows. The agent watched him for a little space, and then rose, a trifle stiffly and carefully, from his chair.
"I am keeping you over long with my family histories, Mr. Rivers," he said. "But it comes to me that we are about to see great changes in this place very speedily; and our conversation to-night has been a valediction to the old dynasty and a recognition of the new. There has been no lady at Stoke Rivers since Miss Agnes died, and you, so I learn, are a married man."
Laurence left his contemplation of the hearthrug, and drew himself up rather sharply.
"Yes," he said, "my wife is much interested in the prospect of this English property."
He turned his back, and stared into the fire.
"Look here, Armstrong," he said, "where was she—Agnes Rivers, I mean—where was she buried?"
A singularly acute expression came over the agent's countenance. He looked hard at the young man, but the latter did not move or turn his head. The wind, increasing in force broke, as in great waves, against the house front and the curtains swayed sullenly in the draught. Armstrong cleared his throat.
"I am thinking it's a calamitous night for too many poor folks at sea," he remarked; and then added:—"Buried? Weel, presumably at Bath, where she died, Mr. Rivers. A grand funeral took place there, to my grandfather's knowledge, for he was called upon to journey the whole long way from Cupar to attend it, and the snow lay some foot deep in the North. A grand funeral, truly, in appearance, with black horses, and plumes, and lumbering black coaches, and all signs of respect and customary outward manifestations of woe."
Still Laurence did not move; but the gusty wind was so loud that it obliged him to raise his voice in asking—
"Well, well, if there was all this display about the funeral, whypresumablythen?"
"Because I am constrained to admit that a certain mystery surrounded that transaction. My grandparents would never speak directly of it, being prudent persons, and knowing, conceivably, more than it was becoming for them to tell. But there were tongues that said, Mr. Rivers, that no sweet lassie's corpse lay in that coffin; but only books, and cast clothes, and bricks, and rubbish, to make up the weight."
Laurence turned round suddenly. His face was keen, his eyes alight.
"But why?" he asked.
"Partly, I surmise, on account of Mr. Dudley's atheistical views, which caused him to hate and scorn all decent Christian rites and ceremonies. And partly because of the feelings he entertained towards his cousin—for it was well known she was the only human creature that had ever moved him to love—it was apprehended he refused to part with her body even in death."
For a few moments the two men looked hard at each other.
"And what then?" Laurence demanded. Armstrong raised his hands, almost as in repudiation of his own thought.
"The Lord only knows," he said. "As the poet says, 'There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy.' But I, being a practical man, do not concern myself with such, Mr. Rivers. I would not learn more of hidden matters than is strictly necessary to salvation. If it is the intention of the Deity that further revelation of laws, either natural or spiritual, should be granted us, such revelation will, without doubt, come at the time appointed. And so I, personally, would not force the hand of Providence or be over forward in pushing myself into its secret counsels."
He paused, regarding the younger man with much friendliness and some anxiety. But Laurence did not speak. He merely smiled, holding out his hand.
"Aweel, good night to you then, Mr. Rivers," the agent said, taking the outstretched hand and holding it awhile.—"I must repeat, I am glad to carry away so favourable an impression of our first meeting. But, as a word at parting having in mind the tendencies of your family constitution, I would earnestly commend to you those canny virtues, moderation and temperance, in all your undertakings.—I will be resident here for the coming week, or longer should a more protracted stay be incumbent on me, in the interests of your affairs or your uncle's. My sons are good, steady lads, and will mind our northern business for me—a business not unprosperous or decreasing. And so you can notify me at any time should you feel an inclination to acquaint yourself further with the workings of this estate, or other items of poor Mr. Rivers's by no means inconsiderable property."
For some minutes Laurence remained in the same position before the library fireplace, while the rush and wail of the storm without offered marked contrast to the silence and close warmth reigning within. He knew all the facts of the case now, as far as they were attainable by tradition. They proved to be very simple; but, as he reflected, the simplicity of the symbol by no means invalidates the profound character of the mystery of which it may be the outward and visible sign. Nay, the very simplicity, the tender, human pathos, of this story of love and sorrow, only engaged his heart and provoked his enterprise the more. Counsels of self-saving moderation he waved aside with a smile. Of danger, material, moral, or spiritual, he was defiant. With the Veil of Isis there, visibly confronting him and inviting—in gentlest, most confiding fashion—his hand to lift it, would it not be unpardonably poor-spirited, callous, and unfaithful to draw back?
But Virginia? Laurence moved impatiently from his place. He wished to goodness Armstrong had not referred to Virginia, or rather to that circumscription of his personal liberty which Virginia presented—to his marriage, in short! He was very fond of her. Of course, he was very fond of her—not for a moment did he doubt that. But must it be a matter of primary duty and honour that he should relinquish the part of hero in this piece—this noble and enthralling piece, which made vibrant his whole being, and stirred the finest of him into activity—simply because Virginia's name did not happen to be in the bill? Marriage came perilously near a disaster if it clipped your wings as much as all that! And he would, indeed, be a bigoted moralist who should maintain that no circumstances can be so extraordinary, no opportunities of knowledge or spiritual advancement so rare, that they justify a neglect of conventional rules of conduct, or permit the relegation of ordinary obligations—for a time at least—to the second place!
Thus did the young man argue—ambition, chivalry, and those hereditary tendencies towards a rather violent reduction of theory to practice against which he had so lately been warned, all conspiring to one result. And so, at last, his head erect, and—though he knew it not—that air of assured conquest about him which had sat so charmingly upon his namesake—perhaps his rival—the Laurence Rivers of the Cosway miniature, he swung down the still, crimson-carpeted corridor, pulled the stiff tapestry curtain forward, passed behind it, and entered the room beyond. He laughed a little to himself, he was all of a white heat, he would be as the Gods, working miracles, righting wrong, conquering death.
Sharp disappointment awaited him. The yellow drawing-room was brilliantly lighted. The atmosphere of it was fresh, almost to the point of chill. The miniatures lay side by side upon the escritoire, where he had placed them some four or five hours earlier; but his sweet fairy-lady was not there to receive him. The room was vacant of all human, all visible, presence save his own.
The hours which followed were among the most poignant that Laurence had ever experienced. He had made so certain that he needed but to open that door to regain the unreal world, yet world—as he believed—of profoundest reality, which enchanted, while it baffled and perplexed him. He found himself compelled to admit, moreover, not without a sense of humiliation, that his attitude was not exclusively pathological or scientific. A good deal of the natural man, and the natural man's affections and vanities, entered into it. He craved once again to see that slender, flitting figure, to feel the vibration of that otherwise impalpable hand, to read the trust and exquisite sympathy of those lovely eyes; he craved again to be aware of the fervour of his own eloquence, the rush and spring of his own thought. Moreover, he felt jealous, absurdly but increasingly jealous, of that other Laurence Rivers, of whom, for all his vitality and immediate consciousness of living energy and active will, he seemed to be but a second edition. The man had forestalled him in face and semblance, forestalled him too in the heart of the woman it would be—it was, he feared—only too easy for him to love.
And so he wandered aimlessly, restlessly about the bright, empty room, almost as his sweet rose-clad lady had wandered on the night he first met her, searching, searching for some lost good; while, as time lengthened and his nerves grew strained by impatient waiting and want of sleep, fears that by his own action he had procured this disappointment began to assail him. He was always over-confident, blundering from too great self-belief. For might it not be that in opening her little treasure-chest, in touching those objects so dear to her dead fingers and dead eyes, in reading her letters—nay, in striving to approach her and establish relations with her at all—he had outraged her delicacy, had, in a sense, assaulted her soul, had been guilty of spiritual insult, as in grosser, material existence a man might assault or insult a woman's person? Had he, unwittingly, transgressed some law obtaining in the world of spirits, in the state of being which lies outside and beyond the Gates of Death, and of which human beings, bound by the conditions of their earthly environment, have as yet no cognisance?—Why should not the mind and heart be sublimated to as exquisite a fineness of texture, in her case, as the body had been? This idea of possible outrage, of unwitting grossness towards her, was horrible to Laurence. It stabbed him with shame, and provoked in him a passionate desire for absolution. If she would only come—only come, that he might implore her pardon, gain forgiveness, or—still better—receive comfortable assurance that he had not sinned!
His restless wanderings brought him at length to the bay-window, and he looked out into the night. The storm had not abated. Dimly he could perceive, in the light streaming outward from the window, the rain-washed steps, the pale balustrades and statues of the garden; the near cypresses, too, bowed and straining in the gale which shrieked across the open lawns and bellowed hoarsely in the woodland like some fierce beast let loose. And Laurence, viewing this tumult and listening to it, suffered further humiliation. He became but a small thing in his own estimation, weak, futile, incapable. For to what, after all, did his force of will and power of compelling events amount? He thought of Armstrong, the level-headed and circumspect Scotch agent; of his uncle, dignified, and even in mortal illness faithful to the clear purposes of his long life. He thought of Virginia, strong in virtue of her very limitations, glittering as a well-cut jewel, concrete, complete. All these persons occupied a definite place, served, in their degree, a definite end. Whereas, for himself, was he not the veriest sport of nature and of circumstance, endowed with just sufficient wit, sufficient talent, to court failure in any and every direction? His initiative, that had lately showed god-like, now shrivelled to microscopic proportions; while a further unwelcome question presented itself. For had the gracious spectre—he no longer quarrelled with that definition—lived, as he had fondly supposed, through his life, regained reason and glad, human sympathy through the influence of his will, or had the case, in very truth, been precisely the reverse? Had not she been the active, he the merely passive principle? Had he not reached a higher development, and gloried—for a little space—in conscious possession of genius, had he not lived, in short, through her—and this not by exercise of direct intention on her part, but merely in obedience to the might of her love for another man—a man long dead, but whose name he chanced to bear, and whose appearance he chanced to resemble?
And thereupon a hideous persuasion of his own nullity and emptiness took hold of Laurence. Individuality fled away, disintegrated, dissolved, and was not. The component parts of his physical being returned to their original elements—flesh to earth, gases to air, heat to fire, blood to water. While all the qualities of his mind, his tastes and affections, suffered like dispersal, being claimed and absorbed by the members of those many generations, whose earthly existence had contributed to the eventual production of his own. And the terror of this was augmented, in that, although every atom of his being was thus scattered and appropriated, every smallest fraction of that which had gone to compose his personality was dispersed, yet annihilation of thought did not follow. He was reduced to absolute nothingness; but knowledge of disintegration, knowledge of loss, knowledge—rebellious and despairing—of that same nothingness remained.
Appalled, with the instinct of flight upon him as from some menacing and immeasurable danger, Laurence turned and groped his way back—as a blind man gropes—into the centre of the brightly lighted room. The persuasion of his own nothingness seemed to extend itself to his surroundings. All partook of the nature of illusion, from which sense of sight and touch alike seemed powerless to redeem them. And this begot in the young man an immense desolation and a corresponding need of comfort and of quick human sympathy. Involuntarily, in his extremity, his thought fixed itself, stayed itself, upon Agnes Rivers. Ah! if she would but show herself—she, his well-beloved fairy-lady—he was convinced peace and clear-seeing would follow in her train, that this terror of nothingness would depart, and that sanely, calmly, he should enter into possession of himself once more!
And then, presently, as he moved to and fro in restless search for her, it appeared to him that a rose-red gleam of silk, a just perceptible whiteness of muslin and lace, the faintest vision of a vision of her sweet and lovely face, moved beside him as he moved. It was as though an indefinable tenderness yearned towards him from out some impassable distance, striving to declare itself, to make itself seen and felt, yet without force to master some opposing influence and accomplish its object. And this awoke in Laurence not only an answering tenderness, but an answering struggle. He stood quite still, yet with every nerve, every faculty strained to attain and overcome. He felt braced by a sudden exhilaration of battle. Silently, fiercely, he fought with some awful, unseen enemy,—with dimly apprehended powers of time and place, of death, of things spiritual and things material, which intervened between him and the love which sought to reach him. Never had he desired anything as he desired this love. His individuality was actual enough now; and his whole body ached with the effort to penetrate that resistant medium, to be face to face with that love, and look on it, and so doing to read the riddle both of his future and his past.
But when the warfare was at its height, and the unseen enemy seemed to yield a little, while the slender form of his rose-clad lady grew more distinct to Laurence's eyes, unaccustomed noise and confusion arose within the dead-quiet house. Doors opened and slammed, as with the hurry of panic. Men's footsteps echoed imperatively down the corridors and upon the stairs.—Another moment and he would overcome all resistance, and his dear companion would stand before him, smiling, gracious, full of consolation and of help; but just then voices were raised in quick discussion without. Suddenly the door was thrown open. Upon the threshold was Renshaw the butler, bereft of his usual correctness of demeanour, his eyes starting, his skin mottled with purple stains. Behind him stood Watkins holding back the leather-lined curtain to the utmost of its length, thereby disclosing a triangular vista of dark-panelled passage and the proud heads and arrogant, impassive faces of the rulers of Imperial Rome.
Evidently both men dreaded to venture one step further into the room.
"Will you please to come at once, sir," Renshaw called hoarsely. "Excuse me, sir, you are wanted. Mr. Rivers is very ill. He has asked for you. Mr. Lowndes fears he is dying."