The funeral was over. Those few gentlemen of the neighbourhood who had felt it incumbent upon them to appear in person, had departed. So had the empty broughams of their more numerous neighbours, who proposed to offer a maximum of respect to the dead with a minimum of trouble to themselves. The Archdeacon also had started on his homeward journey to Bishop's Pudbury. At Mr. Beal's earnest entreaty he had been invited by Laurence Rivers to take part in the function. The young clergyman had been sadly exercised by scruples regarding the propriety of consigning the mortal remains of an admitted sceptic and scoffer to the grave, with words of Christian hope and blessing. What was left for believers if unbelievers thus benefited? The conscience of his superior officer was happily of less flabby texture.
"Charity before all things, my dear Walter," the latter had said, in his full, sonorous voice, when the ingenuous young man had unfolded his difficulties. "It is not for you, or even for me, to judge and condemn a fellow-creature. If not an active churchman, remember Mr. Rivers displayed no leanings towards Rome or any other schismatic body. For this we must be very thankful. There are occasions, moreover, as you will learn in time, when the purely ecclesiastical attitude may fitly be modified by the knowledge of the man of the world. We yield no point, mark you; but we abstain from pressing a wrong point at a wrong time. Judgment, statesmanship—therein lies the practical application of the sacred injunction, 'Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves.' To raise objections in the present case would be to increase rather than mitigate the possibility of scandal—probably, moreover, it would be to alienate the sympathies of young Mr. Rivers. We must learn never to sacrifice the future to the present, my dear Walter. To do so is to fall into errors of misplaced zeal—a very dangerous thing. Much, I cannot but think, may be done with young Mr. Rivers. Wisely handled, he should prove of considerable local service to the Church."
So the good young man's soul received comfort.
"What a privilege it is to talk with you, sir!" he said. "I always learn so much."
Last to go, as he had been first to arrive at Stoke Rivers, was Captain Bellingham.
"Poor old chap, I tell you, I've had him very much on my mind, Louise, these last few days," he had said to his wife, that morning, at breakfast. "It's only decent charity to see him through. I hear he's looking uncommonly hipped. You thought him rather queer, you know, the day he had luncheon here. Mercy for him the old gentleman died as soon as he did—perfectly mad, too, I hear, and an infernal temper. It's enough to make any one jumpy to be dancing attendance on such a deathbed as that day after day; and in that gloomy, ghostly house too. I couldn't have done it, I know, without getting most frightfully broken up. We must try to get him over here for a day or two. Write him a nice note, will you, Louise; it would be awfully good of you, and I will do my best to bring him back with me to-night. Ought to be quiet to-morrow, I suppose, for the sake of appearances; but the day after let's have General Powys and the Westons to dinner. I want to rattle him up a bit."
But neither Mrs. Bellingham's neatly worded note, nor her husband's hospitable entreaties, moved Laurence Rivers. He had quite other fish to fry. All he asked for was solitude and sunset; and his courtesy was slightly perfunctory and formal in consequence—so much so, indeed, that on his return Jack Bellingham remarked to his wife:—
"Rivers always was such a good-hearted, sensible sort of fellow, that it's hardly likely coming into this property would turn his head. He's above any vulgarity of that kind. All the same, he really was curiously stand-offish to everybody to-day. The Archdeacon meant to make an afternoon of it, and was a little bit huffed, I think. Rivers was perfectly civil, only he gave us pretty clearly to understand there was no call for any of us to dawdle. I don't know, but somehow I tell you, Louise, I don't quite like his look. We shall see. It would be an awful pity if he followed in the footsteps of the late lamented and turned out a crank."
"I know it," Mrs. Bellingham replied calmly. "But you omit Virginia. I have never seen a woman less likely to tolerate a crank as her husband than Virginia."
And so at length the accustomed quiet settled down on Stoke Rivers. Dinner was over, and the unwelcome daylight fairly flown. Abstinence had gone to sharpen the edge of hunger, and Laurence made his way down the corridor, pulled the curtain towards him, and entered the room of mysterious meetings in a humour to venture much. At the escritoire stood his fairy-lady, and at the sound of the closing door she turned and extended her arms, a world of delicate welcome in her gesture and her face. Then, as he came towards her, she drew back a little, as though penitent of the fervour of her greeting. Her lips moved, but no sound issued from them; and a quick fear went through the young man that, through the action of some malign influence, she had declined upon her former condition and once again become dumb. This raised the spirit of battle in him, and reinforced his resolution to effect her emancipation from the control of whatever opposing power—physical or spiritual—might hold her in its grasp. The more so that, for all her gladness, there was a hint of trouble, a little cloud of distress upon her face, which provoked him to indignation. He hated that—be it what it might—which held her sweet being in thrall.
"Agnes, why is this? Why don't you speak to me?" he demanded.
Whereat she smiled, as one who loves yet deprecates another's unreasoning heat.
"How can I speak," she asked, "until you have first spoken to me?"
"But why not? I don't understand," he said.
"Nor I," she answered; "only I know that so it is. I cannot explain the why and wherefore of this, or of much besides, to myself. I am to myself at once real and unreal—as an echo, a shadow, the reflection in a mirror, is at once real and unreal."
She looked at him seriously, wonderingly, as though trying to take counsel with him against herself.
"I see with your eyes, I speak with your voice, I comprehend with your mind when you are present. When you are absent, I become as the echo unevoked by any sound, as the shadow when neither sun or moon look forth to cast it, as the reflection in the mirror when that of which it was the image has moved away. Only my heart remains to me; and it, when you are absent, longs and searches, journeying from place to place, formless, wordless, and blind, sensible only of its own infelicity, while seeking that which alone can bring it ease and light."
"My poor love!" Laurence said gently, greatly moved; "my poor love!"
For a space he was silent, pondering upon her words, almost staggered by the intensity of her innocent passion. He was not worthy to inspire such devotion. Had that other Laurence Rivers, his predecessor and namesake, been more worthy, he wondered. Shame covered him in face of the deception he was in process of practising upon her. But he put the thought of that from him fiercely. For was he not prepared to take all the risks? Surely his action was justified—was it not a work of mercy to rescue and restore this gentle and homeless ghost? And then, since the air was mild and the young moon lent an added charm to the formal alleys of the Italian garden, Laurence, hoping thereby both to allay his own perturbation of spirit and dissipate the melancholy which still sat in the clear depths of Agnes Rivers's lovely eyes, engaged her to come out, once more, and walk. But though the charm of the garden was great, he almost regretted that he had invited her to leave the shelter of the house, she appeared so anxiously elusive and fragile a creature. Watching her, though his courage was stubborn and his will fiercely set, the task he had undertaken appeared hopeless of accomplishment. But if the task was hopeless, all the more must it be fulfilled—that had been the way of his people, and henceforth it was to be his way. And so he talked to her with a certain lightness, looking at her and smiling.
"Are you happy, Agnes?" he asked her at last.
And she answered with a return to her daintily demure and old-world manner—
"I should, indeed, be ungrateful were I not so, dear Laurence. Yet, since you question me, I must own a distrust of the future works a black thread through all the glad pattern of the present."
She paused, glancing back somewhat timidly at the house. Every window of it was lighted, save those of Mr. Rivers's bed-chamber. These last were dark and blank, producing an arresting effect, and recalling to Laurence the empty eye-sockets of the crystalmemento mori.
"You are here with me," she continued, "and again I taste happiness. Yet I am oppressed by the persuasion that, as before, in some hour of peculiar promise and security you will be called from my side. And that this time—ah! I fear you may justly reproach my weakness and deride my far-fetched alarms—this time, going, you will not return; or returning, you will no longer find me here to greet you."
"Then very certainly I will never go—that is unless you yourself send me," Laurence said. He walked on a few paces, and then added, speaking almost sullenly, answering his own thoughts rather than her words—"Thank Heaven, I am my own master at last. No one can compel me. I can do as I think fit; and since I think fit to stay, stay I most assuredly will, here among my own people, and in my own house."
He looked at his companion, instinctively desiring to read approval in her eyes; but her expression was one of startled inquiry.
"Forgive me," she said, "either Mrs. Lambart has omitted to tell me, fearing to shock me, or in my heedlessness I have forgotten. Are you indeed master here, dear Laurence? How is that? Can it be that your brother Dudley is dead?"
"Yes," he answered, "the old order has changed—and yet not changed perhaps so very much after all, for it appears the owners of Stoke Rivers, ancient and modern, are very much of one blood. But, in truth, Dudley is gone, and others have gone—God rest both him and them—and I reign in their stead."
"Yes, God rest his soul," she said; and then repeated softly—"Poor Dudley! poor unhappy Dudley!"
But Laurence, noting her pensive bearing, and hearing the gently regretful tones of her voice, was pricked pretty sharply by a point of jealousy from out the long past.
"Is it a matter of so very much grief to you, Agnes," he asked, "to hear the news of your cousin Dudley's death?"
Whereupon she turned on him eyes very reassuringly full of love; while—after a little space—her lips curved into a delicious and almost saucy smile.
"Ah! I feared you had grown old and wise," she exclaimed. "I was foolish to vex myself. I see you are indubitably the same Laurence as ever."
She laughed very sweetly, sweeping him a delicate curtsey.
"The very same Laurence as ever," she repeated exultingly.
Then she flitted away—as though, child-like, joy of heart must needs find relief in movement—down the long alley across the oblique shadows cast by the sentinel cypresses, until she reached the great, stone basin of the terminal fountain. Here she paused, gazing down at the smooth, slow movements of the sleepless fish.
The borders on either side the walk were set out with bulbs and early flowering plants. As yet the majority of these showed but bud, or upstanding sheaths of leaf. The gilly-stocks only were fully in blossom. The clean, homely fragrance of them hung in the still air; but the moonlight had bleached their honest orange and russet faces, making them, like all else of the scene, but varying degrees of light and dark. Alone in this colourless world, frail though it was and ethereal, had the sweet figure of Agnes Rivers retained its actual hues. The brown of her hair, the warm pallor of her skin, the blue of her profound and now laughing eyes, the soft rose-red of her silken gown, defied the chill of the moonlight. And this, as Laurence moved towards her, deepened alike the charm and the mystery of her appearance. It captivated his imagination. It stimulated his ambition. It challenged the deep places of his love. The hopeless task must indeed be accomplished. The impossible must come to pass. Daring that which no other man had dared, he would earn a reward such as no other man had dreamed. But he must be cautious, and discreet, and very gentle. The diplomatist, for a long while to come, must hold the lover in check if the end was to be gained.
And just then Agnes Rivers's voice broke into a little song, hardly articulate, but clear and instinct with delight, even as the songs of birds, very early in spring, when pairing time has but just begun. Yet enchanting as the tones were, there was in them something remote and beyond the compass of human thought, piercing the young man to the very heart, so that he cried to her—
"Ah! my dear, come down, come near. Leave your singing, it is too sweet. It has too much to do with spirit and too little with flesh. It cuts like a knife. There—there—I am not blaming you, God forbid. Only, you have lived so long on the borderland between those two worlds, of which you once spoke, that you have a little lost touch with ordinary mortals such as I. Come down, come near. Don't you see what I mean? Don't you know what I want?"
And after gentle converse, when that morning the dawn broke and with words of tender farewell, his fairy-lady crossed the yellow drawing-room and passed at the back of the outstanding satin-wood escritoire, as her habit was, it appeared to Laurence that, for the first time, a faint shadow followed her little feet. And this filled him with great and far-reaching hope—as the first dim greyness of land along the horizon fills the sailor after long voyaging upon the open sea. Nevertheless, she vanished as before, leaving him solitary, while of the manner of her going there remained no sign.
Days multiplied into weeks, March passed into April, April into May, June came with all its roses, the lime-trees flowered once again, and the scent of them was wafted across the broad lawns and in at the open windows, yet Laurence stayed on at Stoke Rivers. He had ceased to apologise for, or seek to justify his action. The fanatical, extravagant element of his character was fully in the ascendant, and it was conveniently contemptuous of criticism. He had become a law unto himself. He stayed because he intended to stay—there was the beginning and end of the matter. Meanwhile, he made discovery of pleasures subtle and subjective, hitherto unimagined. Living the life of the recluse, he enjoyed that sense of inward harmony and freedom of spirit known only to those who dare divorce themselves from society, with its many tyrannies, and from familiar commerce with their fellowmen. He experienced the sensible increase of will-power, and the mental elation, that are born of solitude, silence, and whole-hearted devotion to a single idea. The values shifted, and many worldly matters, many amusements, which had formerly appeared to him of vital importance, now began to appear slightly absurd. He ate and drank sparingly, since meat and liquor tend to render the action of the brain sluggish, and the imagination somewhat gross. His dear fairy-lady should regain the completeness of her humanity; but he would fit himself to meet her half way on her mysterious return journey from the regions of the dead, by purging himself of all superfluous animality.
And his environment lent itself to these practices and experiments. The household had settled back into its accustomed decorum and regularity. It asked no questions, it obeyed in respectful silence. And, if certain tremors shook it at times in face of its new master's supposed dealings with things occult and supernatural, it accepted them as a necessary part of its service. Indeed, it may be questioned whether Lowndes, the grey-faced, long-armed valet, Renshaw, and Watkins, irreproachably correct of demeanour, would not have suffered far greater inconvenience and perturbation had they been called upon to adapt themselves to the ordinary ways of the ordinary, English country-gentleman. Their pride would have suffered likewise, since eccentricity had been so long enthroned in their midst, that its absence would have seemed a loss ofprestige, a regrettable coming down in the social scale. They displayed much solicitude for Laurence's comfort, and much grim alacrity in turning guests from his door. Captain Bellingham's fears that his friend might develop into a crank appeared to be in very fair road to fulfilment; but the household rejoiced silently and grimly thereat.
So did not Armstrong, the shrewd and kindly Scotch agent.
"Whether the place induces a whimsicality in the family, or the family in the place, I would not presume to declare," he lamented one day, when having a crack with a trusted friend and fellow-countryman. "It is like the matter of priority between the owl and the egg, a hidden thing, transcending human wit. But a certain impracticability is assuredly bred in their bones, poor bodies, which needs must eventually come out in the flesh of every one of them. They're over proud of the intelligence of which it has pleased the Almighty to bestow on them so handsome a portion—as the intelligence of Saxons and Southerners go, you understand. And being puffed up with conceit of themselves they proceed to apply their bit of unusual reason in wild and impolitic speculations, to the endangering of their own and other persons' peace and security. A sair pity, a sair pity! Not that I would deny degrees in the natural wrong-headedness of the poor, misguided creatures. The present representative of the family is a young man of excellent parts and practical ability; and though I fear he is going astray in some particulars, I find in him a praiseworthy application to business, by times."
For in good truth, notwithstanding the dominion of his fixed idea, Laurence was determined on the improvement of his somewhat neglected estate. Every afternoon saw him ride forth to visit farm or distant hamlet, to superintend operations of fencing, draining, or building, to mark wood and copse-land for future cutting. Specially was he interested in the construction of a light railway from Stoke Rivers Road to some gypsum quarries at Hazledown, about three miles distant, the worth of which would be doubled by direct and permanent means of transport. Silent and self-absorbed for the most part, he rode about the charming Sussex country while the gay, spring weather matured into the glow and heat of summer. And all the while against his heart lay the poignant delight of a great romance, and in his eyes sat the light of a great adventure. He was very happy, so happy that, while he longed for the attainment of his purpose and strained every nerve to accomplish it, he almost dreaded that accomplishment since it must rob him of the sweet and gracious present.
And that such accomplishment drew on as the summer went forward he could not doubt. For his fairy-lady had grown less timid than of old, braving now the earlier dusk, now the later dawn, as the fancy took her; while a veritable shadow clung unquestionably to her little feet, and lengthened behind or beside her. Though no less slender and graceful than before, her person was less ethereal. It appeared to gain a certain substance, a greater opacity; while her movements were more measured. Once or twice Laurence had fancied he saw her pale face flush under sudden emotion, as though blood once more began to course beneath the clear, smooth skin. Her talk, moreover, was less of the past than of the present. At times she would ask questions, not wholly easy for him to answer without revealing those things regarding which he had agreed with himself to keep silence. But on many matters he had come to speak to her freely, telling her of his daily occupations and affairs, of the books he read, even of passing events of public interest. And to all his talk she listened now thoughtfully, now with pretty mirth, offering not only sympathy, but discreet counsel, while sometimes a touch of far-reaching and singularly mature wisdom gave a significant value to her speech. There were moments, indeed, when Laurence gazed at her in wonder, for she betrayed a depth and daring of thought impossible to a young girl, however good her training and notable her natural talents—thought only possible to one who had discounted the many subterfuges and illusions of life, as most mortals see and live it, by apprehension of things supramundane, eternal, and so of infinite moment to the conscience and the heart.
She grew in womanhood, and she grew in the charm of distinction and of a fine equality. Yet the mystery surrounding her was to Laurence in no wise lessened. For he began to perceive that, if he held back somewhat from her knowledge concerning himself, she, notwithstanding her transparent sincerity and the perfection of her love, held back somewhat from him. She played with him, she eluded him; and he perceived that her lovely soul—did he dwell with her for a thousand years—would still have its surprises for him, and its secret places, adorably difficult of access. Then, too, for all her increasing humanity, the way of her coming at sundown, and going at sunrise remained unexplained as ever.
One morning in late June, standing in the bay-window, with the fragrance of the blossoming garden and the songs of awakening birds saluting them, he questioned her on this matter. Her hand rested in his—no longer perceptible as a mere pulsation, such as might be caused by the fluttering wings of a captive butterfly. It had substance now, actual, though very delicate, weight. And feeling this, amazement and ecstasy invaded Laurence. His eyes were alight and his blood hot.
"You are going?" he asked. "But why should you go? Stay and see the day in its beauty."
But she smiled on him, a serious and enigmatic smile, though very full of tenderness.
"The day does not belong to me yet," she answered. "I cannot take that which is not mine."
"Everything is ours if we dare take it," Laurence said. "Possession is in the act, not in the fact. You create law by believing in and submitting to it. Cease to believe, cease to submit, the prohibition, the obligation, vanishes into fine air. The day is yours, dear love, and all the vigorous life and joy of it, if you will but venture. Have just a little courage. Try—"
But she shook her pretty head, still smiling, though, as it seemed to Laurence, rather mournfully.
"Then tell me where you go," he said. "Tell me where you pass all the hours when you are not here? See, I have been very patient, I have asked you no questions. And yet, loving you as I do, I have a right to hear."
"Ah!" she answered playfully, though with a touch of sadness—"what an importunate being you have suddenly become! Yet why?—Half your life is hidden from me, dear Laurence, and I do not ask to have it otherwise. Why, then, should not half of mine be hidden from you? Indeed, it is always so between man and woman, I think, whether they know it—as we do—or know it not."
But Laurence was not in the humour to have his inquiry put aside thus lightly.
"Still tell me—tell me," he insisted. "Look here, really I am not unreasonable." He laughed a little, looking at her very charmingly in mingled eagerness and command,—"For your exits and entrances are not as those of other women, Agnes, so tell me. Or let me go with you wheresoever you go. Or just—it is very simple—don't go—stay right here, and brave the glory of the sunrise. Stay!—"
As he spoke, long shafts of pale, golden light shot through the openings between the high-standing trees of the eastern woodland, and lay in misty radiance along the dewy lawns, touching the heads of the cypresses, and flashing upon the upspringing waters of the fountains.
"Ah, have patience—but a little trifle of patience yet, dearest love," Agnes Rivers pleaded. "Only wait, and that which is to be will surely declare itself. I would so gladly stay—or gladly take you with me, going; but I can do neither, though why, I do not at present fully comprehend."
She turned, and for a moment stood facing the sunlight, bright in its royal brightness, looking out on the fair, summer landscape, an infinite hope and yearning in her lovely face. Then she folded her hands high upon her bosom—slightly ruffling the smooth surface of her dainty, muslin cape—bowed her head meekly as in worship, and moved away. As she passed, Laurence—standing a little behind her—for the first time heard the soft sound of her rapid footfall, and the whisper of her silken gown.
The young man, too, worshipped the rising sun after his manner—a manner, it must be admitted, by no means of the meekest. The room was empty, but he did not greatly care, for his great purpose seemed so close upon consummation. The crisis was very near now. Before that splendid, June sun rose to-morrow—so he told himself—his work would be complete. She was so nearly human, his dear fairy-lady; her pure spirit so strangely, yet sensibly, in process of clothing itself with sweet, living flesh. He would set bread and wine before her, in the small hours when this bright day was dead. She should eat and drink of a sacramental feast, designed to secure, not eternal life to the soul, in this case, but mortal life to the beautiful, young body which he so desired and loved.
Thus did Laurence Rivers hail the sunrise, filled with an immense pride of his own action, his own will, and the powers of his race, deeming himself a worker of miracles and equal of the immortal gods.
Laurence swung himself down from the high, two-wheeled dogcart at the front door. The sky was lowering, the evening sultry after a burning day. Down in the south-east a storm was brewing, with low mutterings of thunder. The air was curiously still, yet now and again, among the thick foliage of the limes and chestnuts, a few leaves would flutter tumultuously as though stricken with panic, and then become motionless as suddenly and causelessly as they had become agitated. Laurence was late and had driven home rapidly, not sparing his horse—a young, thorough-bred brown, which he had bought about a fortnight before, and which was new as yet to harness. It was all of a lather and sweat, and stood with outstretched neck and open, heavily-breathing nostrils. He looked at it with a slight sense of compunction, and gave some orders to the groom. It was a little hard to have pressed the poor beast; but he had been out all the afternoon, mapping out the projected course of the light railway to the Hazledown quarries, with Armstrong and an engineering expert, and he had been kept later than he anticipated. As it was, he had barely time for a bath, and to dress, before dinner at a quarter-past eight. His mind still ran upon questions of gradients and detail of expenditure. He had thrown himself energetically into practical work. It was best to do so, with the climax of his great adventure looming so large just ahead. All day he had been conscious of a quiet, sustained excitement engendered by the double life he was leading. It stimulated the action of his brain. The engineer had warmly approved some of his suggestions and adopted them. This pleased Laurence. It was not a little satisfactory to find himself thus capable and "on the spot," while interests of so very different a character formed the under-current of his thought. It fed self-confidence, and justified his determination of daring action.
After a look, first at the sweating horse and then at the lowering sky, he hurried into the hall. The storm, if it came up at all, would not break yet. Probably it would travel along the northern horizon following the line of the Downs. How hot it was, though! The house felt cool by comparison with the atmosphere outside. Then, just inside the door, the two men-servants met him, Renshaw with a salver in his hand.
"A telegram for you, sir," he said—adding—"do you wish dinner put off for a quarter-of-an-hour or so, sir?"
"No—no," Laurence answered absently, "I shall be down in plenty of time."
As he spoke he tore open the ugly, orange-coloured envelope. The sheet of dirty-pink paper within contained but a few words.
"Wanted here immediately. Return next steamer. Virginia."
Laurence bathed, dressed, dined, while at intervals the thunder muttered far away in the east, and the dark came swiftly as with great strides. In the centre of the table the cut-glass bowl, upheld by the dancing, golden figures, again to-night, as on the second night of Laurence's visit to Stoke Rivers—which now seemed such an incredibly long time ago—held fantastic, single flowers and sprays of orchids, some mottled, warty, toad-like, some tiger-coloured striped with black. These last gave off a heavy, musky scent. The oppressive heat, too, was suggestive of that earlier evening,—though the windows now stood wide open. But then, whatever the discomfort of his physical sensations, Laurence had been light-hearted enough. His life, if not particularly full of purpose, had at least been free of entanglement. He had neither climbed heights nor sounded depths. His honour was untarnished, by so much as a questionable thought. Now the splendour of life had got him, he was in the full swing of his great opportunity; but his conscience was not clear as at that former period, and that—which seemed not a little ironical—though he had lived more austerely than of old, abjuring all frivolity and denying himself all bodily indulgence.
Laurence juggled neither with himself or with the facts of the case. He did not whimper or grumble. In accepting the risks of his own action, he had of necessity accepted this one. It was just the fortune of war—not an altogether pretty fortune for a man who plumed himself on a nice taste in matters of honour, perhaps, but that was hardly to the point. The present position was an inevitable consequence of all which had preceded it, and was bound to present itself sooner or later. Remorse and anger were alike futile and out of place. The question resolved itself into this—what to do next?
Laurence dropped the stump of his cigarette into his finger-bowl, and sat resting his elbows on the table and his forehead in his hands, thinking.—For Virginia meant what she said. Of course she did. Virginia always meant what she said, sometimes a little more—certainly never less. And her reasons for saying that which she said were always perfectly convincing to herself. Virginia was never impulsive; her action was always the outcome of intention. Therefore it was useless to temporise or ask explanations by means of that far-flashing cable. In her letters Virginia had lately commented upon the length of his absence—quite good-temperedly. Virginia was always good-tempered; partly, perhaps, because she had never had occasion to learn what opposition meant. This telegram was her ultimatum; but whether delivered of her own free will and initiative, or in deference to some unusual circumstance, illness, accident, or sudden financial crisis, he could not, of course, divine. Yet even so, the position remained very simple. There were but two paths. One or other he must choose. Either he must obey her, and that unquestioningly and directly—this was Thursday, the next American mail left Liverpool at the end of the week—or he must refuse; and that, he believed, meant a break with Virginia.
Laurence remained very still for a time. A break with Virginia?—Yes; the storm was working round by the north as he had anticipated.—He had no complaint to make against Virginia, Heaven forbid! She was just precisely that which she had always been—in her own sphere and connection, from the modern and mundane point of view, an eminently and admirably clever person. He agreed with her disciple, Mrs. Bellingham, that in social affairs she possessed asavoir faireand intelligence amounting to positive genius. She was absolutely self-reliant. She had never been surprised or nonplussed in all her life, and—and—
Laurence rose to his feet, crossed the room and rang the bell. His face had grown singularly hard. It bore but slight resemblance to that of his namesake, the gallant and debonair young Laurence Rivers of the Cosway miniature. Indeed, his eyes were coldly brilliant, his lips almost as thin as those of Montagu Rivers, his uncle, but lately dead.—Well, he proposed to enlarge Virginia's experience. He proposed to surprise, to nonplus her. It was a blackguardly thing to do, and she, of all women, would be the last to forgive it. So much the better, he did not want her to forgive it. He proposed to repudiate Virginia, he proposed to desert her—and then, fortunately, the American divorce laws are easy.
When Renshaw answered the bell he said—
"Leave the fruit and wine on the table, and bring an uncut loaf of new, white bread. Don't sit up. I shall be late, and I wish to have the house to myself to-night."
Pulling out the heavy curtain, Laurence paused, for an unwonted sound saluted his ears, to which, at first, they refused credence. He opened the door quietly. The sound continued. The keys of the piano were struck so softly that they gave forth little more than the echo of a melody. His fairy-lady sat at the instrument; and, so absorbed was she in the making of this dainty music, that the young man had crossed the room and leaned his elbows on the edge of the flat piano-case opposite to her before she looked up at him. Nor, meeting his eyes, did she leave playing, but let her fingers still draw forth that procession of slender phrases from the discoloured, ivory notes—phrases not only exquisitely refined, but with a tremulouscoquetteriein them, the music of some polite and graceful minuet, in which Boucher's fine fanciful, little figures of lover and mistress, courtier and prince, painted upon the satin-wood escritoire, might have moved and postured, with a hundred pretty arts and invitations at the court of Louis the Fifteenth, over a century ago.
The fine-drawn, little melody, and all its suggestions of past intrigues, heart-burnings, elegant if questionable joys, and luxurious living, knocked at the door of the listener's heart with rather perilous pathos, notwithstanding his stern humour. Agnes Rivers's eyes too, as she looked steadily at him, were at once grave with thought and beseeching as those of a child, covetous of a possible pleasure, yet ready to swallow its poor tears should that pleasure be denied. Her lips were parted, but she did not speak. She only gazed and gazed at him—while still calling forth those frail and courteous harmonies—as though she sought to penetrate the most hidden recesses of his nature.
And all this worked strongly upon Laurence, stirring in him memories of just such hot evenings, when, with windows set wide upon the fragrant garden, and the wild brightness of the summer lightning pulsing—as now—upon the far horizon, they had sat together making music, she and he, nearly a hundred years back. That first love of theirs had been shattered by cruel calamity of wounds and death. It had never found its consummation; and now the ache of its frustration was added to the ache of the present—of his passion so strongly held in check during the last many weeks; of his long-sustained effort, now touching on attainment; of his so recently made resolution to let honour go by the wall rather than again be defrauded of his love.
At length he could no longer endure the playful, yet in a way tragical, music, nor the sustained scrutiny of those grave yet wistful eyes.
"That's enough, Agnes; that's enough," he cried, and, leaning across the case of the piano, laid hold on her hands and raised them off the keyboard. And as he did so the blood leapt in his veins, for the fact was no longer open to question—those hands were firm and softly warm as a living woman's hand should be, and the clasp of them met and clung in his. He drew her up, making the sweet musician stand opposite to him, while, bending down, he kissed and kissed those dear, warm hands, looking at her, his face on a level with hers. And as he did so her cheeks lost their waxen pallor and became beautifully flushed with clear colour, while—so it seemed to him—he could hear the beating of her heart. And thus for a space they stood speechless, consumed by a very ecstasy of love.
Laurence was the first to break that enchanted silence. For he was feverish to complete the working of the miracle—to establish her in this earthly life upon which she was re-entering, to chain her spirit to this recovered human body by some corporeal act. He was feverish to set a seal upon her new condition, which it should not be possible for her to evade or to break.
"The perfect hour has come," he said, with fierce exultation. "Do you understand what has happened? You asked me once what was lacking. Well, that which was lacking has been restored to you. But it won't do to rest here. We must go on, go forward, so as to make security doubly secure."
Yet she sighed, turning her face away and gently releasing her hands from his grasp.
"Ah! the perfect hour has come—yes," she said. "But, dear Laurence, it came once before, and, remember, along with it came the call for you to depart. Sorrow trod hard on the heels of joy; and I fear—how can I do otherwise?—lest it should do so again to-night."
Laurence felt his throat go dry and his lips stiffen, so that speech did not come quite readily.
"It lies with you to prevent that catastrophe," he answered. "Only be brave. Do as I ask you, and we can put all fear behind us for ever and a day. All the world may call me; I shall not go. It may howl at me, even, using foul names; but what does that matter? I have chosen. I abide by my choice."
As he spoke she moved a little further from him, while the thunder growled and muttered in the north, and the lightning showed fitfully, as with the glare of a burning town, low down in the night sky.
"What has taken you, Laurence?" she asked. "You are strange in manner and in voice. I hardly know you thus. Yet indeed I would do anything you ask, however difficult, if that which you would have me do is not in itself sinful or wrong."
"And this is right," he declared; "incontestably, everlastingly right. Indeed, it is little more than bare justice—the restitution of that which was once ours, the paying of a long-owed debt. In past years happiness was snatched from us by jealous fate. Fate has repented—though late—and gives us back our happiness. We should be fools not to take it."
He stood by her holding out his hand, his eyes alight as with a dull flame, the determination of conquest very forceful in him.
"See," he said hoarsely, "I have loved you back into life again, Agnes; and so your life belongs to me as no woman's life has ever belonged to a man before. That which I ask, you must do; for, believe me, I comprehend this matter and all the issues of it best."
He led her towards the door and she came meekly, yet with a certain wonder and reserve in her bearing, as one who ponders and questions silently even while they obey. He threw the door wide open revealing the back of the leather-lined curtain. But on the threshold she hesitated and drew back.
"I have never crossed this," she said with gentle decision. "I cannot cross it."
"But you must cross it," he answered, "or all is lost."
A strong shuddering ran through her. The corners of her sweet mouth turned down and quivered, while her hand grew very cold.
"Ah, me! ah, me! my love," she cried, "then I fear indeed all must needs be lost. For to cross this threshold is to force some barrier which I have neither the strength or the right to force. I do not know its name, but it is ancient and venerable, and forbids my passage with authority."
"All the more shall you force it then," Laurence replied. "Just now, sweetheart, I tell you I admit no authority but my own. And barriers are made to be forced, that's the use of them. The more apparently ancient and venerable, the more must they go; so that the new may supersede the decrepit and old, truth may supersede superstition, hope fear, and the living the dead."
He laughed a little, partly in defiance of that more sane and modest self of his, with whom for the time being he had parted company, partly to rally his dear companion's courage, and compel her faltering steps.
"Come," he said; "don't I love you better than my own soul? Would I, of all men, do you any injury, do you think? Surely you can trust me—come."
But still that strong shuddering ran through her and she hung back. Then Laurence lost patience.
"You foolish child," he said, "you are very much a woman. Your words are so wise; yet you prove so weak in action and scare yourself with self-invented terrors."
He set his back against the heavy curtain, pushing it outward. Then he took her delicate body in his arms, lifted her over the threshold, and set her feet on the crimson carpet of the sombre and stately corridor without. The curtain swept back into its place across the door with a dull thud, which mingled ominously with the muttering thunder. Against the panes of the long range of windows the lightning peeped and flickered, as in malicious curiosity of that going forward within, while the Roman emperors looked on, supercilious, impassive, with sightless, marble eyes. His fairy-lady's delicate body had been light as a feather, so light that, lifting it, Laurence had trembled lest it should slip out of his encircling arms, as the little summer winds might slip should one strive to embrace them; and yet that same lifting of her had taxed every muscle in his frame, and set his heart thumping like a steam hammer. It was the very oddest sensation, suggesting that there was something very much more than a narrow piece of polished, oak flooring and deep, pile carpet to lift her across. He stood now, breathless, singularly shaken by the effort, notwithstanding his natural vigour and physical strength—shaken, yet triumphant.
"There, my beloved," he cried, "there! It's not such a very dangerous experiment after all, you see, to go out at an open door!—And now you are redeemed from slavery, free to range the pleasant earth at will and accept all the glad chances of it."
But she shrunk against him, trembling, all her pretty pride humbled, like that of a little child detected in a fault. Her countenance had become shy and wild, moreover, and clear reason had ceased to sit enthroned in her serious and lovely eyes. She looked now, as she had looked on the night he first found her flitting to and fro in the yellow parlour, searching, searching, vainly and hopelessly, for the lost key of the satin-wood escritoire. And Laurence, seeing her thus, was smitten with self-reproach and alarm. Was it possible that, along with the restoration of her body, had returned that alienation of mind from which—as he had learned from her own testimony, and from the well-authenticated tradition of Armstrong, the agent—she had formerly and so pitifully suffered? As more than once before, an immense compassion filled the young man; so that, coaxing her, and using tender and endearing names—such as even the wisest of lovers weakly decline upon at times—he half-led, half-carried her past the doorways of all those brightly-lighted, silent rooms, through the square hall—its flying staircase gleaming upward step above step—until finally the dining-room was reached.
Here the musky odour of the tiger-coloured orchids met them, with the effect, as it seemed, of a presence rather than a scent. It was full of subtle suggestions, that seeming presence, wooing them with insidious provocations of sense to partake of the mysterious, sacramental feast set out before them—a feast designed to wed, irrevocably, the sweet spirit to its so lately recovered body, and rivet upon it once again not only the natural joys, but the inevitable cares and pains, all the grievous burdens of mortal life.
The cloth had been withdrawn and upon the dark surface of the bare table, doubled by vertical reflections, a service of costly china, antique silver, and fine glass, was spread. Rare wines filled the long-necked bottles and quaint high-shouldered decanters; while the painted and gilded dishes held velvet-skinned, hot-house peaches, red-gold nectarines, little black Italian figs, and pyramids of fragrant strawberries set in a fringe of fresh and lustrous leaves. The loaf of white bread was there also, a simple and humble item offering something of contrast to its ornate surroundings.
Laurence placed his fairy-lady in the carven armchair at the head of the table. Seated there, her slight figure, in its high-waisted, rose-red, silken gown and transparent lace and muslin cape, looked singularly youthful and fragile. Her graceful head and white throat showed up against the dark panelling of the wall. Her hands rested languidly upon the arms of her chair. The corners of her mouth still quivered, and her eyes were wide with inarticulate distress. And all the while, opposite to her, in at the windows at the far end of the room, the lightning, away there in the north, peeped evilly and flickered, and sometimes glared, a broad sheet of pale flame, behind the blackness of the distant woods crowning the rounded hills.
Laurence stood close beside her. He filled her glass with wine and placed fruit upon her plate, speaking to her very gently; possessed, meanwhile, by an adoration of her extreme and pensive beauty, a great resolution to complete his work in respect of her, and a distrust lest that work was going sorely amiss. But though he did his best to secure her attention, for many minutes she neither moved nor uttered any sound.
"See, dear love," the young man pleaded—"see, I have made you a dainty supper. Remember, this is the first time I ask you to eat a meal in my house. You were Dudley's guest often enough in old days, and did not refuse what was set before you. Surely it is pleasanter to you to be my guest than his? So do not wander off, even for a little while, to walk those dim and dreary interspaces between two worlds. All that is over. Don't become intangible and remote, or yield yourself to malign influences which would enthrall you and draw you away. Lay hold of your womanhood, sweetheart; and let human love wrap you about, and keep you safe and warm. There is nothing, nothing in all this to fear, if you will but believe me. Eat, my beloved, you have fasted long. You have come from very far—how far heaven only knows! You are faint and weary with the length of the way. Therefore eat, drink—let your body be refreshed and let your heart grow glad."
And presently, while he thus encouraged her, slowly, as one who shakes off the torpor of exhaustion, she stretched, sitting very upright in the great, high-backed chair. The distress and desolation of her expression began to give place to a gentle curiosity. She looked at the costly furnishings of the table, the dancing, golden figures in their flowing robes, the fantastic flowers, the delicious fruits; fingered a silver spoon, and seeing her own reflection in the bowl of it, quaintly distorted, smiled. Then suddenly putting up both hands and covering her face she gave a quick, little sneeze—sign in the East of Life, but in the West precursor of Death. Of whichever the sign in the present case, incontestible it was, that, with this same little sneeze a change was perceptible in her, which her lover noting, hailed as indicative of success. So he urged her yet more.
"Yes, my beloved, you are tired," he said; "and it is so long since you have sat at table in this room, that very simple things appear perplexing to you. But that's a small matter. The old habits will soon re-assert themselves, and all be natural and obvious enough. For in the coming days I intend we shall very constantly sit here together, you and I; and perhaps others will sit here with us as time goes on"—Laurence paused, his voice shook a little—"our children, fair girls and handsome lads, whom we shall greatly love, and in whose youth our own youth will live again. But to secure all that, Agnes, you must eat and drink now in plain, honest fashion, sleep sound of nights, wake in the kindly sunshine, put morbid fears and fancies far from you and grow strong. You are compounded of too tenuous and sublimated stuff for motherhood as yet. Therefore eat, dear love. Delay no longer. The hours run on towards the morning and this matter must be assured before the morning comes. Do not be wayward. In the name of your love for me, and of all your sorrows, I entreat you, eat and be strong!"
Once again she covered her face with her hand and gave a quick, little sneeze. Then looking full at him, she smiled, though somewhat sadly.
"Let it be even as you wish," she said very meekly. "Give me bread."
Laurence, mightily rejoicing, cut the loaf, and placed the bread upon her plate. Tremblingly, as though putting a great force upon herself, she broke it into little pieces, carried one to her lips, then laid it back beside the others on her plate; next stretched out her hand for the glass of wine her lover held towards her, but shook her head, and set it down untasted. While he, eager to the point of desperation, yet dreading in any way to affright her and so defeat his own ends, fell to coaxing her once more, with a certain playful seriousness.
"See here," he said, "learn by experience. The threshold which you declared impassable was very easily crossed. And this affair of your little supper is exactly parallel. You are the victim of your own imagination. What after all holds you back?"
Once more she essayed valiantly to obey him; but once more laid the morsel of bread down on her plate. The thunder rolled from east to west along the northern heights, and the lightning flickered; but both had grown faint and very distant, while a soft, cool air wandered in at the open window, dispelling the clinging and insidious odour of the orchids, purifying the heavy atmosphere of the room, and lightly stirring the little lace frills of Agnes Rivers's muslin cape.
"What after all holds you back?" he demanded, with some agitation. For that cool draw of air, though pleasant, affected him unexpectedly. It appeared to blow across the valley from Stoke Rivers churchyard, where, in the spring morning three months before, he had watched the little shadows cast by the feathery branches of the age-old yew-trees dance and beckon among the grass-grown graves.
But his fairy-lady pushed her plate aside. All her gentle dignity had returned to her, and a wisdom born of knowledge more profound than that granted to most human creatures sat once again enthroned in her eyes. There was an effulgence in her loveliness which almost awed him, yet she did that which during all their intercourse she had never done before. Calmly, fearlessly, and as of right, she put up her sweet lips and kissed him.
"This holds me back," she said, "that at last all the confusion which oppressed my mind is gone, and that I understand who and what I am. I have striven, and ah! how gladly would I have proved victorious in that strife, for all my heart goes forth in natural desire, not only to obey your dear wishes, but to secure to myself those things which your wishes would bring. I perceive that to eat is to live, not the shadowy, unrelated life of a disembodied spirit, divorced from the activities of earth, yet—by some inherent wilfulness—still so wedded to earth that it cannot enter the peaceful regions of the Faithful Departed. To eat is to live, as you live—and rightly—in the shock and tumult of the world; to love as you love—needs must, dear heart—with all the passions of the unstable flesh, as well as the pure and immutable passion of the soul. I have dallied too long with temptation, and in my weakness brought sorrow on you—perhaps worse than sorrow, disgrace. But the temptation was so potent, the promise of it so enchanting, that, until to-night, I had not grasped its full significance and scope. As to our first mother Eve, ages back, in the mystic garden, so to me to-night to eat, O my love, is sin!"
Laurence straightened himself up, and all the fierceness, the relentlessness of his race, stiffened itself within him; yet he kept himself in hand because love still was paramount to all other emotions.
"And if it be sin, it is too late to vex ourselves about that. You have forced the barrier after all. The curtain, which closes the entrance to your not very cheerful Eden, has swung back into place. I have you, and I keep you. I have fought for you, won you, not wholly without personal loss. So you are to me as the spoils of battle, which a man having taken, is very certainly in no humour hurriedly to give up. And even were this so, had I not these claims on your obedience, to eat, my dear, couldn't be sin. On the contrary, it is bare common-sense—just the next move, logically necessary, in the particularly delicious game which you and I, for cause unknown, are ordained to play together. With logic and common-sense as backers, how can sin have a word to say in the matter?"
"Thus," she answered—"because now as once before, when the perfect hour had come, and things showed so fair that to better them appeared almost impossible, the call has come for you to leave me, and leave me you surely must."
"You are mistaken," Laurence answered hoarsely. "You confuse both the events and obligations of the past with those of the present. The call has not come."
Then Agnes Rivers rose up, pushing the carven chair away from her, and standing with a certain graceful independence before the sumptuously spread table, in the centre of the highly-lighted room, between the open window and the open door. Her person, thus seen, suggested some clear jewel of infinite value in a dark and heavy though splendid setting; or some tender, solitary flower amid the lifeless magnificence of a desert city, rich with the tombs of long-dead kings. A gentle daring, a self-assertion strong as steel yet soft as a silken thread, seemed to animate her whole being.
"Rather is it you that are mistaken," she answered; "but whether with your consent or against it, I cannot tell. It is you that dream just now, my love, and suffer, perhaps subscribe to, delusion—strong man though you are—and I that wake. For the call has come to you; and though you should employ all the eloquence of all the sages to convince me it is otherwise, I could not be convinced."
"You are very stubborn," he said.
"And yet, I spare you," she replied, in a tone of half mirthful, half tender, reproach; "for I only assert the fact. The exact nature of the call I do not know, and I do not ask you to tell it me. I am sufficiently human—you have brought me so far on the backward road, which my naughty feet were only too willing to tread—to greatly long to know the exact nature of that call. Yet, did I know it, I fear it might provoke a wicked spirit of jealousy in me, and of envy towards one who has, in the natural sequence of things, that which I have not, yet fain would have. Therefore do not try me too far, lest my courage fail and I decline from right, and break the perfect circle of our dealings with one another, so painting both past and future with the ugly colours of remorseful regret. You told me you would never leave me again unless I bade you do so. Well, now, the time has come. Redeem your word."
Laurence would have spoken; but, still with that air of almost heavenly mirth, she laid her hand upon his mouth. There was hardly perceptible substance or weight in it; and once again—now with despair, though the sensation was in itself delicious—he felt that fluttering, as of the wings of a captive butterfly, against his lips.
"No, no," she protested, "do not speak, for I am woman enough to be resolved to have the last word. Put away delusion and all extravagance.—Think, after all, what do you leave? Not much, believe me. For I am but a ghost. I have no right to any earthly dwelling-place, no right to lie in the arms of living man. It would be monstrous, a thing abhorrent to nature, an insult to the awful and unbroken order of cause and effect that has operated from the beginning of being and of time, that I should force the barrier completely, and project myself, at once unburied and unborn, for a second time into the arena of earthly life. It would be an act of rebellion, of self-seeking, beside which that of Lucifer grows pale—for he at least was an archangel, which might give reasonable cause of pride—whereas I?—No, God in His infinite mercy has granted me fulness of understanding just in time; and I have no fear but that, since I voluntarily resign myself, curb my imperious will and forego the desire of my heart, He will further grant me access to that place of refreshment, light, and peace, in which souls wait until their final beatitude. In God's hands are all things, and I now see that behind the loves of earth, just in proportion as those loves are noble and have in them a seed of permanence, stands for ever the love of God Himself, sure and faithful, full of a satisfaction that can never lessen or pass away. I have been blind and very wilful, loving Him too little, loving you too much. But He who made all men and sees how beautiful they are, so that in loving them—they being made in His image—we unconsciously all the while but love His image evident in them—He will surely understand me and forgive."
There Laurence broke in madly—"Ah, stop talking, stop talking! What are words at such a time as this? You are mine by right of conquest, as I have already told you. For God and the eternities I care not, just now, one little bit. You belong to me. I have bought you at a great price. I love you and will enter into possession of my own."
And he essayed to lay hold of her, his blood on fire, for the moment, with frustrated pride, the agony of relinquishment, and passion baulked.
"And I love you too," she answered fearlessly, "so greatly, so absorbingly, that I have broken all bonds of time and space, and defied all laws of life and death, to find you, and behold you, and speak with you again—"
Yet even as she made this declaration, she slipped away from his urgent embrace, even as a rosy snow-wreath slips from the cliff edge, when the sun climbs high in heaven, drawing back to itself, by the power of its strength and heat, snow and vapours, dews and fair, dissolving mists, such as cling at dawn along the water-courses and haunt the quiet underspaces of the woods. There were tears in her sweet eyes, and that airy frame of hers was shaken by sobs; yet her face very brave and of a marvellous brightness.
"Go back to the world, dear love," she said, "and play your part in the great game finely to the close. Let no shame touch you, or breath of dishonour smirch any page of your record. I will go back too—yet rather go forward—reaching a fairer world than yours, a world which in my folly I disdained, being blinded by the things of sense. There I shall await your coming; and we shall be one at last, being one with Almighty and Eternal God."
She passed from the room; but, though Laurence followed her swiftly, he found the corridor empty. The yellow drawing-room, when he entered it, was vacant too, though retaining its gracious and friendly aspect. A cool wind blew through it, laden with the scent of the rose borders of the Italian garden. The storm was over, and the night sky was clear and very full of stars.
Quite a number of people had come to luncheon. Quite a number still remained, though it was past four o'clock, upon the great, deep-eaved verandah, in attendance on Virginia. There was a babel of clear, penetrating voices, occasionally an outbreak of laughter, though, in point of fact, notwithstanding its ready verbal wit, the New World is less addicted to laughter than the Old. Laurence had listened, had put in a lazy sentence here and there; but now the entertainment began to pall on him slightly. It was too continuous. They were all so young, so emphatic, so tireless in the business of pleasure, these bright, clear-cut, young people. He remembered it was mail day. The English letters and newspapers should have arrived by now. He got up and sauntered, cigarette in mouth, into the great, pale living-room. The Venetian shutters were closed, and the room, with its spare though elegant furniture, and butter-coloured, parquet floor, was full of a clear, green light, quiet, and excellently cool. Sure enough, on one of the tables lay, in goodly array, lately arrived letters and papers. Laurence began opening these in desultory fashion. The glass doors, standing wide on to the verandah, framed Virginia's perfectly finished person lying back in a rocking-chair. Her profile was outlined against a soft, sea-green cushion. She was talking, others were listening, as was usually the case in respect of Virginia. Beyond the hand-rail and uprights of the verandah, could be seen a long sweep of rather coarse grass, and the waters of the river, white in the brilliant, afternoon light, whereon lay some trim rowing-boats and smart pleasure-yachts at anchor. The water was absolutely still, even and gleaming as the surface of a silver mirror; yet it lapped with a just audible gurgle and suck against the indentations of the low, green banks. And this cool, liquid sound formed an agreeable undertone to those clear, penetrating voices, the ceaseless chirrup of crickets and strident fiddlings of countless grasshoppers.
Behind the ample, wide-ranging, wooden house—spotless in its purity of white paint, dignified by its ranges of dark-green, slatted shutters, its grey-brown, shingled roofs, and many gables—a certain puritan simplicity pervading it, somewhat quaintly at variance with its highly-developed appliances of modern comfort, and the almost surprisingly civilised examples of modern humanity now domiciled within it—behind it the ground trended upward, through pleasant orchards of apple, pear, and peach trees, past commodious wooden barns and stables, long, grey snake-fences, and corn patches, where the pumpkins began to grow golden beneath the wide, glistening leaves, the giant cobs and silken tassels of the maize. Down to meet this spacious foreground unencumbered by superfluous detail, wandered the sparse, untamed, ubiquitous woodland of the New England States. Everywhere slender, long-limbed trees, endless scrub, festooning vines, heavy with bunches of little fox-grapes, and below outcroppings of grey rock. Some two months hence, the edge of the woodland would be fringed by spires of golden-rod and processions of purple asters, while the maples set forth an amazement of verdigris green, lemon-colour, and all manner of radiant pinks and scarlets, and sumach dyed the hollows blood-red; but as yet the woods retained their summer tints. There was a slight want of atmosphere no doubt. The landscape was oddly lacking in values of distance; while the sky was blue to the point of crudity, and the sun blazed, had blazed, would blaze, with a youthful and tireless energy—not unsuggestive of the conversation of Virginia and all those friends of hers—throughout the unshadowed and unmitigated day.
To right and left were other hospitable mansions, the limits of their private grounds unmarked by jealous wall or paling. A wide-ranging spirit of good-nature and confidence appeared to reign; yet, in point of fact, the inhabitants of these agreeable country houses formed a distinctly close corporation. The Van Reenan property had been broken up into building lots on the death of its first owner, old Erasmus Van Reenan, merchant and financier of New York, nearly seventy years ago. But the said lots had been acquired by members of his numerous family; and still Van Reenans, direct and collateral, their children and their children's children, found relaxation at times in this amiable, American Capua. But woe to any intruder from the outer world, unless furnished with irreproachable passport and the very highest of high-class references, who should venture to set sacrilegious foot on this thrice sacred ground! For, as Laurence had frequently reflected—not without a measure of amusement—nothing is so essentially aristocratic as a democratic country, nothing so socially exclusive as an immature civilisation.
It was the first time since her marriage that Virginia had honoured the Van Reenan property with her presence; but being debarred, by the fact of her mourning for her husband's uncle, from participation in the gay life of those summer resorts where theéliteof the smart world do mostly congregate, she had elected to retire upon one of these many-gabled, ancestral mansions. She was explaining all this—and really it appeared to require a surprising amount of explanation—to Mr. Horace Greener, a young man of distinguished, social pretensions, the constant frequenter of her entertainments both in Newport and New York, who, finding himself obliged to visit the city on business, had sought at once physical refreshment and satisfaction of the emotion of friendship by running out by train, to-day, to visit her.
Virginia's clear intonations rose superior to the chorus of feminine voices around her, their singular vivacity and singular composure alike offering an unconscious challenge to Laurence's mental attitude as he lazily tore open his English letters and newspapers. He had left Stoke Rivers just three weeks, and all that time he had been a prey to vacuity, to a sort of gnawing emptiness. At moments a blind rage took him, but only at moments. In the main his attitude was cynical. Disappointment had embittered him. Nothing mattered much, nothing ever would matter much again. He had had his great chance and lost it, muddled it somehow. A bigger man would have over-ridden the difficulties of the affair. But he was a bungler, a poor creature. He was profoundly contemptuous of himself, and not a little contemptuous also of men and things.
But here was a thick packet from Armstrong, and that awoke an unexpected interest in him. It would be quite pleasant to have news of the light railway, and the gypsum quarries.—Nice fellow, that young engineer, and not at all conceited. Most experts have such a confoundedly good opinion of themselves!—Laurence fell to whistling softly, and involuntarily he recalled the slender, courtly music of a certain eighteenth century minuet. Then he stopped suddenly, an immense nostalgia taking him for a very different scene and place, and—well, a general outlook less secure and circumscribed, and, he had almost said, trivial. He didn't want to be censorious—who was he, after all, in good truth, to be that?—but Horace Greener's trim, light-clad person, leaning against a pillar of the verandah close to Virginia's rocking-chair, caught his eye. The young man was excellently got up, he was well-bred, agreeable, would pass muster in any society; yet Laurence wearied mightily of him just then—of his neatly handsome features, which would photograph so well and paint so poorly, and of his alert and civil manner.
"No, I imagined you would be surprised to find me so at home in this idyllic and patriarchalmilieu, Mr. Greener," Virginia was saying. "I rather counted upon that. You did not accredit me with so much adaptability. Some other of my friends have observed upon that also. And I assure you I am rewarded; for I find it the most recuperative process a woman can go through to retire upon herself and upon nature in this way. My parents had been anxious to come out here all summer this year, and when I concluded to join them we worked out a regular scheme. I assure you it has called forth a quite affecting display of family affection. There are nine houses on the place. They are all full. We all meet daily. Even my cousin, Mrs. Bellingham, has come over with her children from Europe.—Yes, I am very glad you should have met Louise again, Mr. Greener. The English life does not altogether suit her. I observed she was wanting at first in animation. It does her good to see old friends. I apprehend she feels rather exiled. I wonder if I shall feel rather exiled? But I don't propose to take it that way. I propose every one there shall feel exiled because they have not had the inestimable advantage of being born on this side. Do you not think that is the true patriotic platform, now, Mr. Greener?"—
There was another letter. Laurence knew the handwriting, but he could couple no name with it. Yet certainly he knew it, and the sight of it conveyed to him an impression vaguely amusing. He laid aside the agent's voluminous packet and opened the envelope.
"Why, the poor little Padre Sahib, to be sure," he exclaimed, half aloud. "Have they been tripping him up with strings again across the school door?"
But as he read, amusement gave place to quite other sentiments. His eyebrows drew together, and his face, for all its healthy sunburn, blanched to the indistinct, dusty grey of his well-cut flannels.
"This very shocking discovery has, as you will, I feel sure, readily conceive, quite unnerved me," wrote Walter Samuel Beal. "But for the support and invaluable advice of the Archdeacon I should have sunk under the burden of responsibility thrown upon me. A case so extraordinary has rarely, if ever, arisen, I should suppose, during the whole history of the Christian ministry. I should add that the oak coffin was so charred at one corner as to reveal a second coffin, composed of lead, within. As the inscription upon the coffin plate was quite legible, and as Mr. Armstrong was in possession of information bearing upon this very painful matter, I abstained from further investigation myself and entreated others also to do so."
"Thank God for that," Laurence muttered.
There was a drawing back of chairs upon the verandah, an outbreak of rapid question and answer, of laughter, reiterated and extensive farewells. Virginia's clear voice still rose dominant. She was marshalling her forces, arranging future meetings, making appointments, ordering her plan of campaign—and outside, all the while, the sun blazed on the surface of the white waters of the river, the ripple lapped against the green, indented banks, the crickets and grasshoppers kept up their strident serenade.
"I felt that neither my courage nor my judgment was equal to the ordeal," wrote the worthy young clergyman. "I dreaded to entangle myself in legal questions of which I virtually know nothing. I can never express the gratitude I owe to the Archdeacon. He advised that the coffin should be placed provisionally in the plot of ground reserved by you in our parish churchyard. He even came over the considerable distance from Bishop's Pudbury, and himself read the shortened form which he had selected from the burial service. For this I was deeply thankful, as agitation might, I fear, have prevented my performing the last solemn rites in a suitably impressive manner—"
"Why, certainly, Mr. Greener, I will go and put on my golfing suit," this vivaciously from Virginia. "It will be cooler in an hour. We shall have the wind off the river.—Willie Van Reenan's theatricals? Yes, I know it, Louise; I am coming to that directly. Now, Mr. Greener, if you will walk over to her house with Mrs. Bellingham, I will drive around and take you on to the links. I will arrange to have Laurence meet us at the club pavilion. And, Louise, when you see Willie tell him he can come right on here after dinner, and I will cast the play with him. We can count on you for Lord Follington, Mr. Greener? Yes—you really are very kind."
Laurence still stood by the table littered with envelopes and papers. He was reading the agent's missive, or rather trying to do so, for the words were not wholly easy to focus. His eyes had a mist before them, and a singular sensation gained upon him—that of the inherent duality of his being. For some time now he had only been conscious of the existence of the modern Laurence Rivers, wholly and solely the modern Laurence Rivers, and he, baffled and discomfited, by no means at his best. Now that earlier life, the strong emotions and steady purposes of it, crowded in on him calling to and claiming him, until his actual circumstances and surroundings became singularly incredible. The heels of Virginia's very pretty shoes tapped lightly upon the butter-coloured boards of the verandah. She straightened a chair or two, replaced some magazines which slipped from a basket-work lounge on to the floor. Her movements were direct and deliberate; and all the while her trailing skirts made a dragging sound like the wheels of a little cart. In a moment more she would come into the house. The young man tried to pull himself together; but it was so unbelievable to him, just now, this whole matter of Virginia.
He looked across at her, as he might have looked at the merest acquaintance, and found her extremely effective as she came through the cool, green light of the great living-room, her tall, slight, yet rounded figure backed by the untempered brightness of sky and water. Her transparent, black muslin dress was thick with beautiful hand-embroidery upon the tight-fitting sleeves and the shoulders of the bodice. It was girt with a soft, black, chiffon girdle, knotted low down, emphasising the length of the waist, and the spring of the hips—around which her dress fitted very closely. Below the knees her skirts stood away fanwise, over a bewildering arrangement of white, silk kiltings and flounces, which hid her feet and gave a slightly Japanese effect to her costume. Her fair, brown hair was loosely waved and puffed out over the ears. Her eyes, a light hazel, harmonized charmingly with the even tint of her rather sallow skin. Her neck was noticeably long, and her face in shape, colouring, and feature bore an arresting resemblance to that of certain of Botticelli's Madonnas. This, taken in connection with her extremely fashionable attire and her otherwise declared and complete modernity, had in it great piquancy, an element trenching on actual, though unconscious profanity.