The agitation pervading the house was sinister. Laurence felt as though witnessing the convulsions of some human body, seen only heretofore amid the restraints and graceful amenities of society; but now abandoned and indecently torn in its last agony. If indeed Mr. Rivers was dying, his soul was not merely quitting its fragile, fleshly tabernacle; but was also, very sensibly, quitting this larger tabernacle of house and household which it had informed through a long course of years, and moulded to express its tastes, flatter its idiosyncrasies, and forestall its every wish. It was fitting, therefore, though fearful, that this outer envelope of the owner's life should be shaken, and lose its habitual immutability and impervious calm; while his well-drilled servants, usually obedient as machines to the direction of his hand, ran distracted, scared and helpless as a flock of frightened sheep.
The men hurried aimlessly, spoke in whispers. Members of the establishment with whom Laurence was unacquainted invaded the corridor from the direction of the offices. At the foot of the staircase were grouped the stout, Frenchchef, in spotless, linen cap and jacket, his attendant scullions, and a couple of men arrayed in long, green baize aprons and black, calico blouses, the full sleeves of which buttoned tight around the wrist. The coachman was there too, a stable helper, and the groom who had accompanied Laurence on his first visit to Bishop's Pudbury. All these persons were well on in middle life, some old, white-haired, and bent. All appeared deeply moved, an inarticulate confusion in their looks, as though finding themselves suddenly confronted by dire calamity. Laurence had seen men look thus in the breathless pause, between recurrent earthquake shocks, among the rocking buildings of a far-away, Spanish-American city. As he passed them, coming from that light, clear-coloured room, they stared at him, and slunk aside as though a fresh terror was added to those which already so unmanned them. In their present state of feeling the seemly decorum of respectful service was relaxed; and to Laurence, overwrought by his recent and strange experiences, it appeared that they shrunk from him as from one unclean and outcast.
He turned rather sternly upon Renshaw. "What is the meaning of all this commotion? If I was wanted, why on earth was I not called sooner?"
The butler's large, smooth, egg-shaped face turned from purple to something approaching grey.
"We had looked for you everywhere, sir, both myself and Mr. Watkins," he answered. "But until Mr. Lowndes suggested it, in consequence of some remark passed by Mr. Rivers, it had never occurred to us that you would be in the yellow drawing-room, sir."—Renshaw cleared his throat, recovering some of his accustomed dignity of bearing. "The electric light is switched on from the corridor outside, you will observe, sir. It has always been understood that no one—neither the upper or the under servants, sir—are ever required to go into the yellow drawing-room after dusk."
And with these words, and their implication of commerce on his part with something unlawful and malign, sounding in his ears, Laurence passed into his uncle's bed-chamber.
As he did so, a blast of air, hot and dry as from the mouth of a furnace, met him. The fire upon the hearth was piled up into a mountain of blazing coal and wood. The light of it filled the room with a fitful, lurid brilliance such as is produced by a great conflagration. In it, the breasts of the couchant sphinxes glowed, seeming to rise and fall as though they breathed. The caryatides supporting the ebony canopy likewise appeared imbued with life. Their smooth arms and bowed shoulders strained under the weight resting upon them; while the wreaths of fruit and blossom, girding their naked loins, heaved from the painfully sustained effort of nerve and muscle. The snake-locks of the Medusa's head, carved in high relief upon the circular, central panel of the back of the bedstead, writhed, twisted, interlaced and again slid asunder, as in frustrated desire and ceaseless suffering.
And along the middle of the great bed, surrounded by these opulent forms, and, at first sight, far less alive than they, lay Mr. Rivers. His face was so blanched, so unsubstantial, that, but for the glittering eyes still greedy of knowledge, it would have hardly been distinguishable from the white pillows supporting him. His shoulders and chest were muffled in a costly, sable cape; from beneath the lower edge of which his hands, thin as reeds, protruded, lying inert upon the thickly-wadded, blue-and-gold, damask coverlet. On the oak table—moved from its place by the armchair to the bedside—were the few handsomely bound books, the crystalmemento moriresting on its strip of crimson embroidery, and a silver bell, the handle of it shaped as a slender, winged Mercury, elegantly poised for flight.
Behind the table stood Lowndes, the long-armed, hard-featured valet. He apparently remained untouched by the spirit of anarchy let loose in the house. Laurence, drawing near, looked at him, silently asking instructions. The man fetched a chair and placed it close against the bedside.
"Be so good as to lean down, sir," he said. "Mr. Rivers wishes to converse with you; but he has had a seizure, which has slightly affected both his speech and hearing. He cannot raise his voice."
Laurence did as he was bidden. He leaned towards the old man, resting his right hand upon the haunches of the ebony sphinx, which felt singularly warm to his touch.
"The term of your probation and of mine alike draws to its close," Mr. Rivers said in a small, thin voice; and, for almost the first time in their intercourse, Laurence saw him smile.
"I hope this is only a passing attack, sir, and that you may rally," he answered.—He looked up at Lowndes. "Has everything been done that can be? Have you telegraphed for the doctors?"
"I have administered the prescribed restoratives. But Mr. Rivers ordered that no further measures should be attempted until after his interview with you, sir."
The sick man raised his hand feebly, yet with an imperious gesture.
"I do not propose to ask further advice of physicians," he said. "Their science is but a mockery at this juncture; at least, in the estimation of a person of my habit of mind. That by the employment of drugs and of stimulants they might prolong a semblance of animation in this physical husk of me, I do not deny. But what advantage can accrue from that, when my mental activity is becoming paralysed, and the action of my brain grows sluggish and intermittent? When all that differentiates a human being from the brute beasts has perished, let the animal part perish also. The sooner, the better; for, in itself, it is far from precious."
His voice had become very faint, and he waited, making a determined effort, as Laurence perceived, to rally his ebbing powers.
"Tell Lowndes to go," he whispered. "I wish to be alone with you."
Then as the man-servant noiselessly withdrew, the thin, but barely audible accents again stole out upon the fiercely heated air.
"The body, its necessities, its passions, its perpetually impeding grossness throughout life, is an insult to the mind. But the final act of this long course of insult, namely, the decay of this vile associate, is the culminating insolence, the most unpardonable insult of all. I have trained myself to ignore these thoughts, to disregard them as a proud man disregards some mutilation or personal disfigurement. But they crowd in upon me, refusing to be disregarded, to-night. Here lies the sting of the insult! For as the strength of this vile, animal part of me lessens, far from setting the intellect free, it infects this last with its own increasing degradation. The lower drags the higher down along with it. They grovel together. Contemptible doubts and fears assail me. Discredited traditions press themselves upon my remembrance. And the burden of it all is this, that I have laboured in vain. As the body dies, so dies the mind. All the garnered knowledge of years will be lost, will drop infertile, into the void—the insatiable void which yawns alike for high philosopher and for drivelling pothouse sot."
His voice sank, in uttering the last few words, into a whisper of concentrated bitterness. His eyes closed, and for some minutes the dying man lay motionless.
Laurence could not bring himself to speak. The words to which he had just listened so nearly reproduced and rendered articulate those sensations he had himself so lately endured. The vision of all-absorbing Nothingness again arose before him, as background to those opulent forms, classic and pagan, upon which his eyes immediately rested. An unholy and voluptuous life seemed to move in those forms still. A smile curved the heavy lips of the sphinxes. The rounded, glistening arms of the caryatides appeared outstretched less in support than in solicitation; while the snake-locks of Medusa writhed, pushing upon each other amorously. The flesh, triumphant in vigour and in carnal invitation, seemed, indeed, to flout the intellect; as though the animal functions of mankind and the symbols of these alone had power to survive from age to age, were alone arbiters and architects of human fate. And yet, yet, somewhere—could he but have reached it—Laurence knew there was a way of escape. That he had come very near reaching it in the final moments of that silent struggle downstairs, when the sweet figure of his dear fairy-lady grew increasingly clear to his sight, he could not doubt. And once again, with a great desiring, he desired her; for his faith was strong that of all these things she somehow—how he could not say as yet—held the key.
Just then Mr. Rivers raised his eyelids slightly and turned his head upon the pillow.
"It is very horrible," he said slowly, speaking to himself rather than to his companion. "The quantity of matter is stable. It for ever seeks its own, and finding it re-unites. The destruction of one form is but the necessary prelude to the development of others, and in this process of perpetual redistribution not a fraction of the sum total is lost. There is no waste save in the higher aspects of man's constitution—"
But here Laurence roused himself to protest.
"Matter returns to matter, sir, granted," he said. "Then why not spirit to spirit? Are you not assuming a waste which you cannot prove? And if spirit does return to spirit, what better than that, after all, can we ask?"
"Spirit?" Mr. Rivers retorted, with a fine inflection of irony, and momentary brightening of those half-closed eyes. "You, my dear Laurence, employ words glibly enough which I hesitate to pronounce! Matter I know. It is evident to the senses. Its actual existence—Berkeley, certain Oriental and other philosophers notwithstanding—is, within certain limits, susceptible of proof. And intellect I know. Its existence, though on other lines, is equally susceptible of proof. Its action can be registered and ratified. But spirit?—I will thank you to inform me—what is spirit?"
The young man bowed himself together, resting his elbows on his knees. He smiled with a half-humorous air of apology.
"That I cannot tell you, sir," he said. "I'm better at conviction than at explanation, I'm afraid. I only know—not with my reason, but with my heart—that spirit is, and has been, and must be everlastingly."
"And its mode of expression, its mode of self-revelation?" the other inquired drily.
Laurence straightened himself up, laughing a little.
"One way, the old why—childish, perhaps, yet really rather charming. In and by love, sir—only so, by love."
Tremulously Mr. Rivers drew the rich, sable cape closer about him, though the heat of the room was intense.
"I become very abject," he said at last. "I procrastinate and risk letting slip the opportunity still permitted me. For in my abjection, I own I clutch at straws, miserably anxious for support. I am ashamed that any other human being should witness the mental prostration to which physical illness has reduced me. But time presses, and compels me to delay no longer in confessing my object in calling you to me to-night. Tell me, Laurence, have you investigated those abnormal phenomena of which we spoke, and have your investigations yielded any result?"
The question took the listener somewhat by surprise, and he hesitated before replying. The whole matter had become of such vital importance to him, personal, intimate, among the dearest and most reverently-held secrets of his heart. So he shrank, as before an act of profanation, from submitting the history of his fairy-lady and of his strange relation to her to the criticism of this cold-blooded, sceptical intelligence. Yet he was bound by his promise to report, if called on to do so—bound, too, in mere humanity towards one lying at the point of death, and to whom that history might, conceivably, bring solace and enlightenment.
"Yes, I have investigated the phenomena in part," he answered.
"And the result?"
"Briefly, I think, that which I ventured to state to you just now—that love is the language of the spirit, the only medium through which spirit can declare itself and be apprehended, the one element of our poor human constitution which promises to continue and to preserve to us a measure of coherence and individuality even after death."
The young man leaned forward again, and laid his hand on the warm haunches of the ebony sphinx with a movement of slight defiance.
"Listen," he said, "please, sir, and I'll do my best to tell you exactly what has happened since we spoke of this subject last."
He steadied himself to his task, trying to keep his narrative circumstantial and restrained, to offer nothing more than a bald statement of fact. But the charm of it, once he had started, was a little too much for him. His speech grew lyrical against his will. And Mr. Rivers listened, his eyes closed, his brow drawn into hard lines by the effort of attention. Once he held up his hand.
"Did you question this appearance?" he asked.
"It was useless," Laurence answered, with a queer break in his voice. "She never spoke—that is in words. She was dumb."
"That is unfortunate," Mr. Rivers said coldly. "Well, pray, go on."
And Laurence obeyed; recounting, with but slight reservation, all, even to the events of the last few hours, when he and his sweet companion had vainly sought to reach each other in defiance of some mighty, opposing force, and how, at the crucial moment of the struggle, Mr. Rivers's summons had come.
"There, sir," said he finally—"now you have it all as far as I can give it you. I don't attempt to explain, though I may have my own ideas on the subject. I've tried to put it quite honestly before you, and must leave you to thrash the meaning out of it for yourself."
For some little space the sick man remained silent; then he raised both hands and let them sink back upon the coverlet with the gesture of one who bids farewell to hope.
"Fables!" he said bitterly; "fables! I ask bread of you and you give me a stone. I offer you an unprecedented opportunity of psychological study, and you approach it in the spirit of a ballad-monger or a mountebank! I require from you close observation, scientific acumen, an unrelenting pursuit of truth; and you put me off with some old wives' tale of lost letters, the ravings of an hysterical girl, of re-incarnation, multiple identity, and I know not what farrago of sickly sentiment and outworn superstition! You trouble me with rubbish, which it would be an impertinence to offer as material for serious consideration to a peasant's child, of ordinary mental capacity, in a modern board-school. Nor can I, my dear Laurence, acquit you of insincerity, since you trick out this unworthy stuff in the extravagant language of an erotic poem, while claiming for yourself an attitude wholly platonic and superior to animal passion."
"You are harsh, sir," Laurence was permitted to remark.
Mr. Rivers turned his head on the pillow. His expression was distinctly malevolent.
"I begin to gauge the average man," he replied calmly. "I begin to recognise that he is a willing, probably wilful, self-deceiver—that he is incapable of mental advance, that he will never expunge the mythological element from his religious outlook, or learn to discriminate between emotion, the product of the senses, and accurate knowledge, the product of laborious enquiry and elevated thought."
"Perhaps he is wiser so," Laurence said. "Perhaps—I speak subject to correction, sir—but perhaps he gets into touch, that way, with things not altogether unimportant in the long history of the human race."
"Here, within measurable distance of dissolution, I grow somewhat weary ofperhaps. Yet I deserve that you should answer me this, since I have shown myself very weak. I had not courage to embrace the remarkable opportunity of investigating the phenomena of which we have spoken when it was offered me in my prime. Now, in my decadence, surreptitiously and at second hand, I try to acquire the knowledge I then repudiated. I clutch at straws, and the straws sink with me. It is just. For the second time I am untrue to my principles. I accept the rebuke."
During the last half hour there had been a lull in the storm; but now the wind, shifting to a point north of west, hurled itself against the house-front with renewed fury, and screamed against the shuddering casements as though determined to gain entrance. The effect was that of personal violence intended, and, with difficulty, repulsed. To Laurence an inrush of the tempest would have been hardly unwelcome, for the heat of the atmosphere oppressed him to the point of distress. Nor was this all. Once more he became aware, so it seemed to him, of the tremendous, unseen presence with which he had struggled earlier this same evening in the yellow drawing-room below. He was aware that it stood on the far side of the great, ebony bed, waiting, and the young man's heart stood still. He saw Mr. Rivers gather the sable cape more closely about him, as he lay staring out into the austere yet luxurious room; and he recognised that for all his mortal weakness there was a certain magnificence in the dying man's aspect.
"And beyond the superb, and always unredeemed, promise of human life, a blank," Mr. Rivers said at last, his voice hollow, and, though so small, asserting itself strangely against the tumult of the storm. "Reason, learning, the senses, carry us thus far, only to project us against a gateless barrier at the last!"
But Laurence's whole nature arose in fierce revolt. Again he renewed that awful struggle, but this time in articulate speech.
"No, no, sir," he cried sharply, authoritatively, "the barrier is not gateless—that is, to any one of us who has ever, even dimly and passingly, known true-love, and that of which true-love is the everlasting exponent and blessed symbol, namely, Almighty God."
"And I have known neither," Mr. Rivers answered. "Love I have never felt. God I have never needed, either as an object of worship, or as incentive to prayer. Therefore, for me, on your own showing, the barrier needs must remain gateless."
He bowed his head slightly, smiling upon the young man with a fine, ironical courtesy.
"I will ask your pardon for any weariness I may have caused you, Laurence," he added. "And now I think we have nothing further to say to one another. I have no quarrel with your fulfilment of your part of the contract. It has been only—possibly—too complete. So I will detain you no longer. You can leave me. I bid you good-night."
The young man would have answered with some kindly words of farewell; but as the other ceased speaking, he became aware that, under the glistening, outstretched arms of the caryatides, that tremendous unseen presence bent downwards, extending itself sensibly over the bed. Suddenly, and with a surprising effect of strength, Mr. Rivers started into a sitting position.
"Lowndes," he called imperatively, and reached out for the handle of the silver bell.
But before Laurence could render him any help he sunk down sideways—as though under the weight of a heavy blow—the upper part of his body hanging over the edge of the bed, and his thin, reed-like hands, with their ancient and mysterious rings, dragging upon the carpet—dead.
The afternoon was fair and mild, a pensive charm upon it of misty sunshine and light fugitive shadows—one of those tender, silvery afternoons very characteristic of an English spring. It was as though nature, repentant of the violence of the past night, would disarm resentment by softness of mood, pretty invitations, and all manner of insinuating caresses. Thrushes piped among the high branches, and on the house-roofs starlings whistled and chattered, their crops filled with succulent comfort of worms and slugs. Upon the wide lawns two pairs of grey wag-tails scampered, with interludes of love-making and rapid upward flutterings after young gnats and flies—born out of due time and paying speedy and final penalty of too precocious an advent. The year had fairly turned its back on winter at last, and a promise of genial days, warm, lingering twilights, and tranquil nights was in the air.
Yet the late storm had not departed altogether without witness. For Laurence, pacing the broad walk from the last steps of the Italian garden to the confines of the lime-grove, could hear the hushing of birch-brooms and the ring of an axe. One of the tall cypresses had fallen right across the central alley, and gardeners were still busy chopping it up, carting away blocks of red wood and barrow-loads of scented branches, and obliterating the traces of its downfall.
Laurence paced the walk in a state of dreamy abstraction. The influences of the hour and the place were soothing to him. Their last interview and the final scene in his uncle's bed-chamber had affected him deeply. To-day had been full of detail. He had spent great part of the morning at the little, grey, Norman church, in company with Armstrong, Mr. Beal, and the estate mason, superintending the opening of the Rivers's vault, and such alteration of the position of the coffins it contained as to render possible the addition of another to their number. Upon the coffin-plates he read the names of many members of his family—of Dudley Rivers and others; and that of his own father, Denbigh Rivers, who had died on foreign service in Malta, when he—Laurence—was a child, and whose body had been sent home, not without cost and difficulty, to lie among his kindred in this quiet place. Of Agnes Rivers's coffin—though he closely examined all such as were still intact—he discovered no trace.
"There won't be room for me or mine down there, Armstrong," he said to the agent, as the two stood in the sunny churchyard, flicking the clinging cobwebs of the vault from off their clothes. "Not that I'm particularly sorry for that. Look here, you see the vacant space there by the chancel wall? Just try if you can arrange to have it staked out and reserved, without encroaching on the rights or hurting the feelings of any of the parishioners. I rather fancy lying there—unless I'm lucky enough to die at sea, and be dropped over the ship's side into the clear, blue water, with a shot at my feet."
"Every man to his humour, no doubt, Mr. Rivers," the other answered, in his slow sing-song. "Though I could find it in my heart to wish you a less uneasy resting-place than the swaying deeps of the ocean. Yet I suppose it was just there, and in the manner you have indicated, that your namesake and great-uncle, Laurence Rivers, found burial after the glorious battle of Trafalgar."
Laurence had stopped beating the clinging cobwebs from his sleeve, and turned to the speaker with a look of quick intelligence.
"Why, of course it was," he said, presently adding—"Upon my word, I wonder—will history repeat itself in that particular also!"
Subsequently, there had been letters to write, telegrams to despatch, the disorganised household gently, but firmly, to lay hold on. And now he paced the broad walk in an interval of leisure, listening till the grinding of carriage-wheels upon the gravel of the chestnut avenue should advise him that Mr. Wormald, his uncle's lawyer—whom he had summoned from town—had arrived at Stoke Rivers Road, and completed the transit from that station. And as he thus paced, while the silvery sunshine and shadow gently followed one another across the face of the fair, woodland landscape, a little of the pride of possession awoke in the young man. He had hardly had time to think of that before; nor did it seem quite fitting or seemly to do so when the breath had but so lately left the body lying in that stately room upstairs. Yet it was indisputable, this was precisely the event which, consciously or unconsciously, he had waited for ever since his boyhood. The prospect of one day succeeding to this property had handicapped him; he felt that. It had placed him in a position, socially, slightly beyond his means. It had taken from him the incentive and inclination to carve out an independent career. So far it had been the reverse of an advantage, from the more serious standpoint. But now all that was changed. He had a very definite "name and local habitation." He was absolutely his own master—no longer heir-apparent, but recognised owner and ruler of a by no means contemptible territory. This was as the step from boyhood to manhood—from the last of a public school to the freedom and personal responsibility of youth no longer subject to tutelage. Laurence smiled to himself. It occurred to him he had really got to grow up at last. Well—he had been a precious long time about it! And then, somehow, it occurred to him that this change in his fortunes altered and modified his relation to Virginia. He had lived in Virginia's country, and among her friends, almost exclusively, since his marriage. He had, he was aware, ranked somewhat as Virginia's husband. Now the state of affairs was reversed. He was in a position to claim full masculine prerogatives—those of an old country, of a ripe and finished civilisation, well understood. In future Virginia—she was very charming, very, he'd no quarrel with her of course—only, in future, Virginia would have to rank as his wife.
And, thereupon, involuntarily his eyes sought the bay-window of the yellow drawing-room. At the foot of the semicircular stone steps, on to which that window opened, the gardeners still moved to and fro—slow, brown-clad figures—collecting and wheeling away thedébrisof the fallen cypress. Laurence refused to formulate further the thoughts that arose in his mind. Only one thing was clear to him—clear as the songs and whistlings of the birds, clear as the tinkle and plash of the fountains, the spray of which glittered so brightly silver in the silvery light—Virginia could not come to Stoke Rivers just yet. It was better—better in every way—that her coming should be postponed for a while—till the period of mourning for his uncle was over—till he, Laurence, had mastered all the business, and organised the existent masculine household upon a new basis—till he had thoroughly acquainted himself not only with the working of this, but of the Scotch estate—till he and Virginia were free to keep open house—till—till—
At that moment, perhaps fortunately, the dogcart emerged from the shelter of the great chestnut-trees, and swung round the carriage sweep to the front door. Laurence crossed the lawns and the angle of the Italian garden quickly.—What a pity that cypress had fallen! It broke the line, destroying the symmetry of the garden; and it was almost the tallest and finest grown of the lot.
In the hall Mr. Wormald discoursed affably with the men-servants, while the latter divested him of more than one overcoat. He was a small, withered man, his back bowed and his hands sadly crippled by rheumatic gout, by much handling of pens, and leaning over lengthy legal documents; yet his movements were noticeably alert. His clean-shaven, busy, little face was enlightened by nimble, red-brown, squirrel-like eyes.
"Thank ye, Renshaw," he said. "Gently—ah, yes, you remember! These damp, spring days get into my joints, I promise you. Ah! there you are, Watkins. Yes, sad affair this, and sudden. Great shock to you all, no doubt. Quite so—but I observe that so frequently is the case. A lingering illness, the termination of which grows to seem more and more remote, and then the end with unlooked-for rapidity. Yes, very sad."
Disengaging himself from the sleeves of his second coat, he perceived Laurence's arrival, and his squirrel-like eyes scampered, so to speak, over the young man from head to foot. Like the agent, he appeared to receive an agreeable impression, for he gave a subdued squeak evidently indicative of satisfaction.
"Ah! Mr. Rivers," he exclaimed, "you will not remember me. It is many years since we met. You were a little shaver in an Eton-jacket and round collar. And your poor uncle passed away quite suddenly at last?—Not a matter for regret, I venture to think. Few men would have been more fretted by a consciousness of failing powers. Remarkable intellect"—Mr. Wormald keckled softly, as he passed with the young man into the library—"quite beyond me, out of my humble range altogether, you know, Mr. Rivers. I admired his conversation; yet I cannot venture to pretend I attached any intelligible meaning to one-half of what your uncle said. But our business relations were very simple. He disliked business too much to wish to prolong the discussion of it. You will find all legal arrangements very direct. The death duties will be heavy; but, otherwise there are no deductions, I believe, save one or two small legacies to the servants.—Dinner, yes, Mr. Rivers, the earlier the better for me. I should be glad to put in a long evening with Armstrong; then we will have everything ready for you in the morning. I have an appointment with a client at five to-morrow afternoon, so I will ask you to let me go up by the two o'clock. I shall not need to encroach on your time to-night."
Therefore it happened, that, comparatively early Laurence found himself free to go down the red-carpeted corridor, pull back the heavy, leather-lined curtain, and enter the room of strange and delectable meetings once again. What fortune, good or bad, awaited him, he could not even surmise. He had learned one thing at least, that, in this connection, nothing was certain save the unforeseen. Nevertheless, he was sensible of slight surprise on finding the room shrouded in vague gloom. By some oversight the electric light had not been turned on. But the March evenings were long, and he had come to the trysting-place before the accustomed hour. The day was not wholly dead yet, and twilight lingered in the neighbourhood of the bay-window. After his first movement of surprise, Laurence found a restful charm in the soft obscurity surrounding him. Once again the room had resumed its effect of friendliness; and if his fairy-lady was not there as yet, no more were malign and opposing powers. The place was kindly and peaceful. It, like the weather, had settled back into a mild and engaging mood.
The young man felt his way across to the window, and sat down in one of the gilt-framed, brocade-covered armchairs on the right of the bay. There he waited, looking out now at the garden, growing mysterious and shadowy in the deepening dusk; now at the tall, satin-wood escritoire, the highly polished surfaces of which, reflecting the expiring light, glistened so that the shape of it remained visible after surrounding objects had faded from sight.
How long he waited Laurence did not know, nor did he greatly care. He had been very actively employed for the better part of the last six-and-thirty hours, and both as to mind and body he was in an unusually quiescent state. His energies were in pleasant suspension. The dimly seen room swam before his eyes. He made no effort of resistance. A mist clouded his vision, clouded all his faculties, and he slept.
When he awoke it was high noon. He lay on the stone bench beneath the lime-trees, the innumerable leaves of which rustled and danced in the warm, summer wind. He awoke laughing from a wholly delicious dream—a young man's dream of very lovely love, which after long denial and delay had found perfect fulfilment. He felt very light and content. Life was sweet, this smiling, summer world infinitely hopeful and sympathetic. Then he stretched himself, smoothed the revers of his flowered, silk waistcoat, and straightened his lawn cravat, which had been somewhat displaced during the pleasant relaxation of slumber. He rubbed a trifle of dust, too, from the knee of his plumb-coloured breeches with his handkerchief. Then he stood up still laughing, yet with a growing hunger in his heart, since he began to realise that those delights were his, as yet, only within the gates of sleep and of dreams. He stretched again, a sigh mingling with his laughter; and then discovered that through the shifting, dappled sunlight and shadow Agnes Rivers approached him with her pretty, flitting, bird-like grace. To-day she wore a pale, lemon-yellow, India-muslin dress, spotted with cinnamon-coloured sprigs, and a white and cinnamon coloured waist ribbon embroidered in blown roses and tiny buds. A black, velvet work-bag, with long yellow and black strings to it, hung upon her arm; while her charming head and neck showed up in high relief against the open blue-grey sunshade she carried tilted over her right shoulder. Laurence went forward to meet her, all aglow from his recent sleep and from the fond imaginations of that delicious dream. Half playfully, half in sharp desire of mastery, he took away her sunshade and work-bag, and threw them down upon the turf. Then grasping both her hands in his, he kissed and kissed them, holding them high and bending his head so that his eyes were on a level with hers. And there must have been something in his eyes fearful, though enchanting, to her perfect maidenliness, for she flushed and tried to withdraw her hands, moving back a step from him with an air of questioning and innocent dignity.
"Laurence, Laurence," she said chidingly, "what does this mean? What has taken you?"
"Only happiness," he answered, "of which, having seen the dear vision, I very badly need the still dearer reality."
"Ah!" she said, "and yet you will go away—how soon we do not know—to this most unhappy war, and leave me desolate."
"Yes, and it is best so, sweetheart," he replied; serious, though still smiling—she was so pure, so trustful, and so very fair. Her gentle beauty racked him—"Best so," he repeated—"best pass the time honourably, fighting for king and country, until your twenty-first birthday is past, and Dudley can no longer forbid our marriage, and I can claim you, make and keep you mine forever and a day—"
And thereupon he stopped abruptly, for his elder brother had come upon them unperceived—Dudley, thin and tall, clothed in sad-coloured, brown-grey coat and vest, the locks of his long, pale hair stirred by the summer wind, in his hand a bundle of papers—Dudley, whose high, narrow head, refined features, and deep-set, fanatical eyes reminded Laurence strangely of his uncle, Montagu Rivers, lying upstairs in the carven, ebony bed, with the crystalmemento moriand the silver bell of the elegantly poised Mercury handle on the table beside him.—But how was that? How could it be? He confused two generations. Dudley Rivers's coffin he had seen, in the vault of the little, Norman church, only this morning. The dust lay thick on it. For more than half a century it had reposed there undisturbed; whereas his uncle, Montagu Rivers, died but last night!
Yet even while he thus reasoned, the scene suffered change. All around him was the roar of cannon; and beneath him the screaming of two ships, grinding into one another, side to side, upon the lift and fall of the Atlantic, where the sea grows short towards Gibraltar and the Straits. They screamed, those ships, as fighting stallions scream—a fierce and terrible sound. And all their decks were slippery with blood, through which half-naked men ran red-footed, or falling, wallowed, while the yell of battle went up hoarse from many hundred throats. The white sails, torn and streaming, were dyed wild, lurid colours by the flash of musketry and up-rolling volumes of smoke from the heavy guns. It was as hell let loose. Yet discipline prevailed, as did a desperate and persistent purpose, through all the tumult and slaughter. Laurence himself felt cool, light-hearted even, as he shouted orders and rallied his men in no mild language. His courage was high and his life strong in him. He laughed, notwithstanding the murderous noise, the sickening and brutal sights. But, to his fury, just in the turn of the engagement, when victory seemed assured at last, he felt a shattering blow at the top of his chest, and the blood welled up from his pierced lungs, and all the world about him grew black. He staggered back against the splintered bulwarks, putting his left hand upon the thin packet of letters buttoned inside his uniform against his heart, and called aloud—"Agnes, Agnes."
And out of the blackness a sweet voice, speaking as from some far distance, answered, crying—"Laurence, Laurence"—in accents of tremulous but very exquisite joy. Then within his palm he felt once more that just perceptible pulsation, as of the fluttering wings of a captive butterfly; while, in the ghostly twilight still glimmering in through the great bay-window, he beheld the slender form and rose-red, silken dress of his sweet fairy-lady, there, close at his side.
For some moments the young man dared not move. The anguish of his shattered ribs, the choking up-rush of blood from his lungs, was so present to him, that he turned deadly faint. By degrees he realised that all these sensations were illusory; or rather memory of that which had, long ago, befallen him. Then he asked himself—was the cry which had just now answered his cry illusory, a matter of memory, likewise? This he must ascertain. He began speaking slowly and softly; and the conviction of his identity with that other Laurence Rivers, his namesake, was so complete, that in speaking as he did he had no sense of practising any deceit upon his hearer.
"Agnes," he said, "do you remember the summer morning when, like a lazy fellow, I fell asleep under the lime-trees, and how you came to me just as I woke up, and how we spoke to one another, and how my brother Dudley interrupted our conversation."
A pause followed, during which he listened with almost feverish anxiety, looking up into the sweet, dimly-seen face. Was it possible that she had already gained in physical attributes and powers to the point of audible speech? He almost prayed it might be so; and yet what tremendous issues such development opened up!
At last the low, far-away voice began to answer him. The words came lispingly, at first, with a pathetic effort and hesitancy. It was as the utterance of a baby child but just learning to articulate.
"How could I fail to remember that morning, since the joy of it proved the prelude to the sorrow of your departure?"
Laurence could barely control his excitement; but he just managed to remain very still and to continue speaking slowly and softly.
"Was that so?" he said. "I had forgotten."
"Surely it was so," she answered. "For Dudley brought you the orders, which had just been delivered by a despatch-rider, requiring your immediate return to your ship."
"Yes, yes—of course. I begin to recollect," he rejoined. "Lord Nelson had news of the whereabouts of the French fleet, and we put to sea at a few hours' notice. Recollect, dear me, I should rather think I did! It was an awful rush to get one's kit together, and get through, and there was no end of a bother about post-horses."
Laurence rose to his feet. It was impossible to him to sit still any longer. This strange awakening of memory, and the miracle of his sweet, phantom companion's recovered speech, moved him too deeply. He went across to the escritoire.
"Come here, Agnes," he said. "I want to look at you. I must see you clearly. And I—I want you to look at me. Come."
While speaking he struck a match, and lighted, first the tall wax candles standing upon the escritoire, and then those in the candelabra upon the chimney-piece. Beheld in their mellow light, the room assumed a more than ever familiar and friendly aspect. Laurence felt that he was at home—at home, consciously, and with a security and content upon him such as he had never experienced before. It was singularly pleasant to feel thus. Moving back he stood in front of the slender, rose-clad figure. His manner was serious, though very gentle, and his voice somewhat broken by the emotion under which he laboured.
"See, I have opened your little treasure-chest for you," he said. "And I have read your dear letters—that constituted no breach of faith, or act of presumption, considering how often I have read them already. I have put everything carefully back in its place, save our two miniatures, which lie here side by side. I tell you honestly, I am perplexed. I can't fit in the bits of the puzzle, or piece out the story as yet; but that, to my mind, doesn't matter very much. For we are here together, once again, you and I."
He shifted the position of the candles so that their full light should fall upon her.
"Now let me look at you," he said.
And as he looked his eyes grew somewhat moist, for he perceived that which he had blindly desired, blindly sought all his days, that which had been as an ache at his heart even in his gayest hours, because he needed it and had it not—though he had had no knowledge of what indeed it was he needed—now stood visibly before him. Sweet phantom, old-time love, exquisite companion—having found her, how could he ever again let her go? Listening to her pretty, halting speech the flattering belief had once more grown strong in him that he had the power—had he also the will—to restore her to complete and living womanhood. The ambition of so doing possessed him with redoubled force; and the love of her, rooted so deeply in that mysterious former life and former personality of his, possessed him too. Considerations of right and wrong, of duty, even of honour, he brushed aside. The peace and content of the present, the daring effort, the triumph and delight of the future should that effort succeed, rendered him callous to all things beside. Then a touch of self-distrust took him. Did he please, as he was pleased? He wondered.
"Agnes," he asked her almost wistfully, "tell me, have I changed very much?"
Her eyes, which had grown somewhat shy beneath his searching scrutiny, regained their serenity. She replied more readily, and in more assured accents, while a gentle playfulness was perceptible in her bearing.
"You appear older," she said; "but I will not reproach you with that, since I think you have matured in character rather than greatly increased in years. I could fancy you taller, were not such a supposition absurd. The fashion of your clothes is much altered—you affect very sober colours now."
But suddenly her expression changed. A wide-eyed, haunting sadness came back into her lovely face, and she spread abroad her hands in mingled apology and appeal.
"Ah! indeed," she cried, "I fear a long, long period has elapsed during my illness and alienation of mind. You have had time and to spare in which to grow older, to acquire new habits of thought, perchance—but that idea I cannot tolerate—to form fresh ties. I bitterly deplore my weakness, but they assured me of your death. Their purpose was not cruel, I am sure; but when I refused to believe their statements, your brother Dudley and Mrs. Lambart sent for our rector, Mr. Burkinshaw, to talk with me and preach resignation. He preached to deaf ears, poor man! How could I be resigned to see all the joy of my life cut down as grass under the sweep of a scythe? I did not believe them, yet their reiterated assertions so worked on me that they killed hope in me, and, in so doing, killed reason likewise. Yet in my heart of hearts, Laurence, I have always known that you would come again."
She clasped her hands high on her bosom and smiled upon him.
"And you have come, oh! my love," she said; "you have come!"
"Yes, in good truth," he answered, while a sense of fear took him—"I have come."
For he was filled with pity and with wonder concerning the end of this adventure; while her innocent passion softened his whole nature to a great tenderness, as the sun softens the frozen earth in spring. Then he held out his hand to her in invitation, and led her across to the brocade-covered sofa, set corner-wise between the piano and the fireplace, and for a while they both remained silent, sitting there side by side. And as the minutes slid away, the young man's fears departed, and content returned to him. It was so natural to sit with her thus! Yet his content had an underlying pathos in it, since their situation—his and hers—though immediately happy was so very strange.
At last he asked her:—"Did you know me from the first?"
And she replied with an air of gracious diffidence infinitely engaging:—"I can hardly tell you. For so long confusion has reigned in my poor mind that all had become to me vague and undetermined. I was so very tired that even that which I most craved, I, in a measure, shrank from. I seemed to wander everlastingly in blank and desolate places. I seemed to move in an interspace between the confines of two worlds, to neither of which could I gain admittance. I could not go forward, neither could I go back. Everything baffled me; everything was so difficult to understand."
"But now you have left those blank and desolate places? Now you understand?" Laurence asked, keenly interested in, yet a little dreading her answer.
"I think so. Still joy has been too long a stranger, for me wholly to trust it even yet. And I fear there are still lapses and deficiencies in my intelligence. I could fancy—but doubtless these are but silly fancies, born of illness—that I am not as I used to be, and that I feel the miss of much I once had and now have not."
She looked up at him, her eyes troubled once more to their very depths.
"In what am I lacking, Laurence?" she inquired piteously. "I feel that I am lacking, and I tremble lest I should disappoint you. Indeed, I will strive to remedy my fault, whatever it may be, if you will but be patient with me and tell me plainly of it, and give me opportunity to effect a cure."
But he answered her soothingly, stung by the humility and innocence of her attitude.
"You are wanting in nothing that time will not set right. But we must make haste slowly, sweetheart. So put all these sick fancies out of your head. We will worry neither about past or future; but, like true economists, will enjoy the present. Now let us talk of the time before I left you to rejoin my ship. Of that other melancholy time, after I left you and before I came back, and of the changes it has brought along with it, we will talk some other day—I trust there are many days for us ahead."
And so they remained speaking of the incidents of that mysterious former life, of which Laurence's recollection became momentarily more circumstantial and coherent—speaking of little things, merry and tender, such as lovers love—until, more than once, gusts of gentle laughter swept through the yellow drawing-room, which, for such a length of years, had been empty of all sound of human mirth. And not until the rose-red fingers of the dawn—in colour matching his fairy-lady's rose-red gown—first touched the eastern sky above the dome of the lime grove and the broken outline of the woods, did Laurence and Agnes Rivers cease to talk. Then she got up from her place in pretty haste.
"Ah!" she said, smiling, "I must go. Good Mrs. Lambart will reprove my indiscretion in having remained here so late."
But Laurence was bound to ask her one question, which had been in his mind during the whole course of their interview, yet had not so far dared put to her.
"Tell me," he said, "I waited for you—why did you not meet me here last night?"
"Ah!" she replied, "do not let us closely inquire into that. Something terrible was abroad in the house. I think it was the Shadow of Death. It stood between us—or I dreamed it did so.—But we fought against it. We conquered it—at least I dreamed that we did. And it is gone.—But now, dear love, indeed I too must go. Good-night, or rather good-morrow. Carry happy thoughts away with you, even as I do, to sweeten rest."
And, without more ado, she flitted across the room, as though her little feet in their diamond-powdered slippers could not go soberly, but must dance for very joy, and, passing behind the tall escritoire, Laurence once again was aware that she had disappeared and left no trace.
The disposition of Montagu Rivers's property proved—as Mr. Wormald had already advised Laurence it would prove—of a simple and straightforward description. All the servants connected with the house and stables would receive a couple of years' wages. Lowndes, the valet, would in addition draw a substantial pension. Outside these provisions, Laurence inherited wholly and solely. A single clause in the brief will revealed somewhat of the eccentric character of its maker. Mr. Rivers directed that within forty-eight hours of his reported death a London surgeon of acknowledged eminence should use means to ascertain, beyond all possibility of doubt, that death had veritably and indeed taken place. He further directed that Armstrong, the agent, and a local practitioner who had attended him at intervals during his illness, should be present at this rather ghastly demonstration. It was added that the corpse should receive Christian burial not less than twenty-four hours after the autopsy had been carried out. The clause concluded with the following words:—
"I desire these measures to be taken—childish and superstitious though they may appear—as a precaution against that happening, in my own case, which would appear to have happened in the case of a former inhabitant of Stoke Rivers."
The eminent surgeon in question, hastily summoned from amid a press of work, could spare but one evening for his visit. He proved to be a courtly and agreeable person, an amateur of the fine arts, with a turn for copper-plate engravings, a weakness for Italian ivories, and an enthusiasm for antique and renaissance gems. His work in the death-chamber accomplished, he readily turned his attention to more pleasing investigations; and during the hour after dinner, before the coming of the carriage to take him to catch the up-express at Stoke Rivers Road, he examined the contents of certain glass cases in the library, and looked at the engravings hanging in the lower corridor.
"I little imagined, when I left town this afternoon," he said, addressing Laurence with a peculiarly charming smile, "that such delectable entertainment was in store for me. I am proud of my profession—no man more so; but I am not sorry to put it aside for a time and forget injury and disease, and even successful dealing with them, in favour of art. This collection of your uncle's, though not large, is remarkable. It reflects great credit upon his judgment and taste. It contains absolutely no rubbish, hardly, indeed, a single object which it would be just to qualify as second-rate.—Ah! here is another admirable thing, though less in my line than those delightful gems."
The two men had reached the end of the corridor, and the doctor paused in front of the tapestry curtain.
"This is a very fine example," he continued, "though I could not, off hand, be sure of the date. How broad and yet how harmonious in colouring! Just a trifle broad in subject, too, perhaps; but our forefathers were blessed or cursed—I am often at a loss to decide which—with a more robust taste in sentiment than ourselves. A witty modern writer has spoken of 'the saving grace of coarseness.' There have been times when I have been tempted to endorse his phrase."
As he spoke, he laid hold of the edge of the curtain.
"Dear me, how singularly weighty!" He looked at his host quickly, inquiringly, and with heightened interest. "Singularly weighty," he repeated. "This house enjoys a reputation for a certain originality, I understand. Would it be indiscreet to inquire to what this splendidportièreeither gives, or denies, access?"
Just for a moment Laurence hesitated, staring his guest very full in the face. So far this new acquaintance had interested him greatly. His conversation had been refreshingly varied; moreover, Laurence, in listening to it, had become increasingly and pleasingly impressed with the value and distinction of his lately acquired possessions. He recognised a steadiness and sanity in the great surgeon's outlook; an appreciation of things rare and beautiful, combined with a wisdom born of wide practical experience; a large compassion, too, for the foibles, and sufferings, and sins of poor human nature, unembittered by any flavour of contempt. And so it happened that, during that moment of hesitation, Laurence was sorely disposed to lay bare to this man—whom he would in all probability never meet again—the abnormal situation in which he, at the present time, found himself. If any one could grasp that situation, and deal with it at once justly and sympathetically, he thought this man could do so; since he appeared to have passed the limits of denial and scepticism, and reached that composure and poise of mind wherein revolt ceases and the capacity of acceptance and belief becomes almost unlimited. But—perhaps unfortunately—Laurence put the inclination towards free speech from him as a temptation. Was he not bound by his promise to the dead? He was bound still more, perhaps, by personal pride. It appeared to him free speech would be a yielding, a weakness; so he answered suavely, yet with a sufficient loftiness to leave no room for further question—
"Behind the curtain is that which, indirectly, has procured me the great pleasure of receiving you here to-day."
As he spoke he turned, and led the way in the direction of the hall again.
"I'm uncommonly glad," he added, "that you have such a high opinion of my uncle's little collection. Perhaps it may induce you to come down here again sometime, from Saturday to Monday, and overhaul the contents of these cases at your leisure. I am afraid I'm a bit of a barbarian, and don't reckon with them as reverently as I ought. I am a good deal better up in the points of polo ponies than in those of Popes' rings, I know."
"That is no matter for regret," the doctor replied, in his most courtly manner. "My esteem for the barbarian increases rather than diminishes as I grow older. And I never forget that these delicacies of art are, after all, the refuge of those who have outlived or injured their digestion of, and appetite for, simpler and more wholesome diet. Such dyspeptics are to be commiserated rather than commended. As long as the romance of sport and travel holds you, as long as you still 'love the bright eyes of danger,' you can very well afford to leave the consolations offered by gems, and ivories, and such like sweepings from the ruins of departed civilisations, to the physically and emotionally decrepit."
He shrugged his shoulders.
"Ah, youth," he said, "immortal youth, and the rather savage joys of it!—I congratulate you far more profoundly upon the possession of these, and upon the magnificent health which I cannot but perceive to be yours, than upon your extremely interesting house and both its seen"—he paused, looking rather hard at Laurence and smiling—"and unseen treasures.—A cigar? Yes, thanks, I think I will permit myself that indulgence on my way down to the station.—But to return to my contention. Remember we only take to sweet-sop when our teeth are no longer sound enough for ship's biscuit. Eat ship's biscuit and relish it just as long as a merciful Providence permits you to do so, my dear young gentleman. The days of sweet-sop, of the armchair, of what we are pleased to call 'the judicial attitude of mind,' but which is really nothing save the natural consequence of a sluggish and defective circulation, will come all too soon in any case. Adieu to you—"
A flash of carriage lamps at the open hall door, the two men-servants—restored to their habitual correctness of bearing—armed with rugs, greatcoat, and narrow leather bag of slightly sinister aspect—the snort of a horse in the night air, fresh from the comfortable warmth of the stable—and, after further farewells, Laurence went back into the hot, bright, silent house.
"No one need sit up, Renshaw," he said to the waiting butler. "I shall watch in Mr. Rivers's room alone to-night."
For this was to be a night of abstinence, so the young man had decided, from the dear sight of his fairy-lady and the delight of her miraculously recovered speech. He had a duty to perform to the dead man, lying solitary upstairs—though hardly more solitary now, than during the long years past in which he had repudiated all solace of human affection. To Laurence himself life had become almost terribly well worth living since he had set foot in Stoke Rivers little more than a week ago; and it was to this man, of cold and narrow nature, that, after all, he owed this notable enlargement of interests and opportunity—not to mention those material advantages of houses, lands, and costly furnishings which had come to him. Gratitude was very much in place; and it seemed to him that a silent vigil in that stately bed-chamber would be only fitting, both as an act of piety, and as testimony to the gratitude now no longer permitted expression either in spoken word or kindly act. Nor could Laurence help hoping that during those solemn hours he might arrive at a clear determination regarding the future—ceasing merely to drift passive and acquiescent to the push of circumstance, as a rudderless boat to the push of the tide. He would direct his own course, be master of his own action, prepared to take—for good or ill—all the consequences that action might involve. For, all the while—and it was worse than useless to shirk remembrance of that—all the while, across the Atlantic, under the bright American skies, bright as they, immediate and modern as the civilisation on which they look down, was the vivacious, young, society beauty, whom he had believed he loved, whom he very certainly had married, and to whom—in the opinion of both her world and his own—his honour and his whole future stood pledged. The question of Virginia—for the whole situation resolved itself fundamentally into that—the question of Virginia must be reckoned with, and the results of such reckoning accepted once and for all.
He had not visited that upstairs room since the night of his uncle's death. The impression then received of the furnace-like fire, and the apparent life and motion of those figures of enslaved and half-bestial womanhood supporting the bed, were still present to his recollection. But now, as he passed into the room, he found the change worked there very arresting. All trace of that which had gone forward, earlier in the evening, under the hands of the eminent surgeon, had been obliterated. The room was orderly, stately as ever; but it was very cold. The hearth was swept and empty. One casement stood wide open, and by it entered a continuous breathing of bleak wind. A single electric burner was turned on, and, in the low steady light shed by it, the carven figures of the ebony bed offered no illusion of life or motion; they showed rigid as the long, narrow body they guarded, the angular outline of which was perceptible beneath the fine linen sheet—upon the surface of which sprigs of rosemary and box lay scattered.
Laurence moved across, intending to turn back the upper part of the sheet and look on the face of the dead; but as he did so a bent form rose silently from the armchair, set at right angles to the fireless hearth, and took up its position on the far side of the bed opposite to him. Though by no means addicted to nervous alarms, Laurence felt a chill run through him, right up to the roots of his hair. Was it conceivable that he beheld the Umbra or Corporeal Soul, of which Ovid speaks, and that this phantom would keep watch with him over its own unburied corpse during the coming hours? His sweet fairy-lady was one thing, and this quite another, in the line of disembodied spirits. Stoke Rivers, apparently, was not a comfortable place to die in. Laurence registered a hasty vow that he, for one, would take precious good care to arrange to die somewhere else! But as he gazed, somewhat fearfully, at the intruder, it declared itself pathetically and pitifully human—nothing more recondite, indeed, than Lowndes, the wiry, long-armed, grey-faced valet.
"I thought it proper to wait till you should come, sir," he said, under his breath. "Though Mr. Rivers has no need of my services now, I have attended on him too constantly to feel it fitting I should be out of call."—His voice quavered, and he cleared his throat.—"He was a gentleman that rarely praised, sir. Some might have thought him harsh; but that was because his mind was so engaged with study. In all the forty years I waited on him, he never gave me an uncivil word; and it is not many gentlemen of whom you can say that."
He lent across, carefully removed some sprigs of box lying high on the sheet, then folded it down quickly and skilfully across the chest. Laurence was aware of a jealous devotion in his attitude. No hands save his own should again touch his dead master. But the sheet once arranged to his satisfaction, he stepped back, a pace or two, into the shadow of the damask curtains.
Then the young man looked long and silently upon the dead. Notwithstanding its extreme emaciation, the face was gentler than in life. This was not merely owing to the closing of the brilliant eyes. An immense calm rested on it. The hunger of the intellect was stayed at last; and the face was majestic in its composure—the face of one who has passed, for ever, beyond the tyranny of desire. Looking on it, Laurence bowed himself reverently in spirit, while the conviction rooted itself in him, that of all virtues the most fertile, the most admirable, is courage. For the weak, the dismayed, for skulkers, liars, and dastards, in whatever department of action or of thought, there is small hope—so he told himself—either here or hereafter. The battle is to the strong; and, therefore, to be strong is the one and only thing which really signifies.
And then it came to him, with a sense of sudden satisfaction, that this most desirable thing, strength, was altogether part of his own inheritance, did he choose to claim it. For the first time he appreciated the value of that strain of fanaticism resident in his blood. He had feared it a little, and apologised to himself for its existence heretofore. He had made a prodigious mistake; for now that strain of fanaticism revealed itself as among the most excellent things of his birthright. He remained motionless, gazing, no longer at the carven bed and its rigid burden, but away to the open casement—in at which came the breathing of the bleak night-wind—his head held high, and a singular compression about the corners of his mouth. Virginia?—Just now Virginia, and all and any obligation he might have contracted towards her, went for very little. He stood apart, complete in himself, regardless of custom, regardless even of so-called morality, should these interfere between him and his purpose. His sense of humour in regard to himself—humour, eternal enemy of all exaggerations and fixed ideas—was in abeyance. He knew that, knew it was dangerous. But then, as the courtly surgeon had so lately reminded him, what so adorable, after all, as those same "bright eyes of danger"—let danger come, how and when it may?—Conventionalities? He bade them pack, all the sort of them. Their day was over. The day of scruples was over likewise. His position was unexampled. He took the risks, along with the joys, of it. As his forefathers had been, so would he be. He felt an extraordinary exaltation and freedom of spirit. And feeling this he laughed a little, just as he had laughed when rallying his men amid the roar of cannon and scream of the grinding ships, in the famous sea-fight off the southern Spanish coast at Trafalgar.
But the old valet, hearing that most unexpected, and to him unseemly, sound, emerged from the discreet shadow of the damask curtains and stretched his long arms to draw the sheet again up over the face of the corpse.
"You have done, sir?" he asked in accents of severity.
"No," Laurence answered, the excitement of his thoughts still strong upon him—"I have only just begun; but, thank God, or devil, or what you will, I have begun at last."