Yet Maurice often thought of Lily. And now that he was no longer bowed under the tyranny of a shattered nervous system he felt a new tenderness for her. He recalled her devotion and no longer linked her with his persecution. He remembered her unselfishness. He wished her back again. And then—he remembered all his misery, and that, with her, it went. And his selfishness said to him—it is better so. And his mental cowardice whispered to him—your safety is in your solitude. And he put the memory of Lily's love and of the beauty of her nature from him.
So his silent autumn passed by. And his silent winter came. One day, in a December frost, he met the Canon, muffled up to the chin and on his way to see Miss Bigelow, who professed herself once againin extremis. They stopped in the snow and spoke a few commonplace words, but Maurice thought he observed a peculiar furtivenessin the old man's manner, a hint of some suppressed excitement in his voice.
"How is Lily?" Maurice asked.
"Fairly well," the Canon said.
"She is still at the inn?"
"No, she lately moved into a little house further up the valley."
"Further up the valley," Maurice said. "But there's only one other house in that direction. I have been there you know," he added hastily.
"Lily told me you had stayed there."
"Well, but—" Maurice persisted, "there is only one house, a private house."
"They have been building up there," the Canon said evasively. "Houses are springing up. It is a pity. Good-night."
And he turned and walked away. Maurice stood looking after him. So they had been building in the valley, and End Cottage no longer possessed the distinction of being the finale of man in that Arcadia of woods and streams, and rugged hills on which the clouds brooded, from which the rain came like a mournful pilgrim, to weep over the gentle shrine of nature.
So they had been building in the valley.
Maurice made his way home. His mind was full of memories.
The close of the year drew on. It was a bad season, a cruel season for the poor. Men went about saying to one another that it was a hard winter. The papers were full of reports of abnormalfrosts, of tremendous falls of snow, of ice-bound rivers and trains delayed. There were deaths from cold. The starving died off like flies, under hedges by roadsides, in the fireless attics of towns. Comfortable and well-to-do persons talked vigorously of the delights of an old-fashioned Christmas. The doctors had many patients. Among them Maurice was very busy. His talent had monopolised Brayfield and his time was incessantly occupied. He scarcely noticed Christmas. For even on that day he was full of work. Several people managed to be very ill among the plum puddings. The year died and was buried. The New Year dawned, and still the evil weather continued. In early January Maurice came down one morning to find by his plate a letter written in a hand of old age, straggling and complicated. It proved to be from Mrs. Whitehead, Lily's old nurse; and it contained that summons of which Lily had spoken long ago in her letter to her husband. Lily was ill and wished to see Maurice at once. The letter, though involved, was urgent.
Maurice laid it down. There was a date on it but no name of a house. By the date Maurice saw that the letter had been delayed in transit. Blizzards, snow-storms, had been responsible for many such delays. He got up from the table. At that moment there was no hesitation in his mind. He would go to Lily at once, as fast as rail could carry him. In a few moments his luggagewas packed. Within an hour he was on his way to the station. He stopped the carriage at the Rectory and asked to see the Canon for a moment. The servant, looking reproachful, told him her master had started three days before to see "Miss Lily," who was ill.
"Miss Lily," Maurice said. "You mean Mrs. Dale. I am on my way to see her too. What is the matter? They do not tell me."
"I don't know, sir," the servant said, softening a little on learning that Maurice was going north to his wife.
Maurice drove on to the station.
In all his after life he never could forget his white journey. It seemed to him as if nature gathered herself together to delay him, to turn him from his purpose of obeying the summons of Lily. Even the line from Brayfield to London was blocked, and when at length Maurice reached London he found the great city staggering under a burden of snow that rendered its features unrecognisable. All traffic was practically suspended. He missed train after train, and when he drove at last into Euston Station and expressed his intention of going north by the night mail the porter shook his head and drew a terrible picture of that arctic region.
"Most of the lines are blocked, sir," he said, "or will be. It's a-coming on for more snow."
"I can't help that," Maurice said. "I must go. Label my luggage."
The train was due to start at midnight. Maurice had a lonely dinner at the station hotel. While he ate in the gaily lighted coffee-room he thought of Lily and of his coming journey. The influence of the weather had surrounded it with a curious romance such as English travel seldom affords. Maurice was very susceptible to the mental atmosphere engendered by outward circumstances, and yielded more readily than the average man to the wayward promptings of the faithful spirit that nestles somewhere in almost every intellect. He began to regard this white journey to the ice-bound and rugged north with something of a child's wide-eyed, half-delighted, half-alarmed anticipation. He thought of the darkness, of the dangers by the way, of the multitudes of lonely snow-wreathed miles the train would have to cover; of the increasing cold as they went higher and higher up the land, of the early dawn over fells and stone walls, of the grey light on the grey sea. Then he listened to the strangely muffled roar of a London hoarse with cold. And he shivered and had feelings of a man bound on some tremendous and novel quest. As he came out of the hotel the wintry air met him and embraced him. He entered the station, dull and sinister in the night, with its haggard gas-lamps and arches yawning to the snow. There were few passengers, and they looked anxious. The train drew in. Maurice had his carriage to himself. The porter wished him good luck on his journey with the voice andmanner of one clearly foreseeing imminent disaster and death. The whistle sounded, and the train glided, a long black and orange snake, into the white wonder of the clouded night. Snow beat upon the windows, incrusted with the filagree work of frost, and as the speed of the train increased the carriage filled with the persistent music of an intense and sustained activity. This music, and the thoughts of Maurice fought against sleep. He leaned back with open eyes and listened to the song of the train. Its monotony was like the monotony of an irritable man, he thought, always angry, always expressing his anger. Beneath bridges, in tunnels, the anger was dashed with ripples of fury, with spurts of brutalising passion. And then the normal current of dull temper flowed on again as before. Maurice wished that the windows were not merely thick white blinds completely shutting out the night. He longed to see the storm in which they fled towards greater storms, the country which they spurned as they sprang northwards! Northwards! And to that valley!
His thoughts went to his old life alone there, to the coming into it of the haunting voice, to his terror, his struggle, his flight southward. He had never thought to return there. Yet now he fled towards that place of memories, calm, sane, cleansed of persecution, with his mind fortified, and his heart steadily and calmly beating, unshaken by the agonies of old. Was he the sameman? It seemed almost impossible. And now Maurice said to himself again that perhaps after all the cry of the child had been imagination, a symptom of illness in him from which he had—perhaps even through some obscure physical change—recovered completely. Yet Lily had believed in the cry and believed in the unquiet spirit behind it. But women are romantic, credulous—
The train rocked in a rapture of motion. Maurice drew his rugs more closely round him. With the advance of night the cold grew more deadly.
Towards morning the pace of the train incessantly decreased. Huge masses of snow had drifted upon the line. For a rising wind drove it together under hedgerows and walls until expanding upon the track, it impeded the progress of the engines. Maurice let down a window and peered out. He saw only snow, stationary or floating, at rest in shadowy heaps that fled back in the darkness, or falling in a veil before his eyes. It seemed to him now as if a hand were stretched out to stay his impetuous advance to Lily. The train went slower and slower. At last, towards morning, it stopped. A long and distracted whistling pierced the air. There was a jerk, a movement forward, then another stoppage. They were snowed up in the middle of a desolate stretch of country, with a blizzard raging round them.
How many hours passed before they were released Maurice never knew. He lay wrapped up to the eyes, numbed and passive, of body, but mentally travelling with an extraordinary rapidity. At first he was in the valley. He saw it, as he had seen it in old days, in snow, its river ice-bound, its waterfall arrested in the midst of an army of crystal spears. White mountains rose round it to a low sky, curved, like a bosom, in grey cloud shapes. The air was sharp and silent, clearer than southern air, a thing that seemed to hold itself alert in its narrow prison on the edge of solitude. He heard the bark of a dog on the hills, in search of the starving sheep.
Then he came to one of those new houses of which the Canon had spoken, and in it he found Lily. She was pale, but he scarcely noticed that, engrossed in the strangeness of finding her there. For in the south he had never fully realised Lily at home in the valley, walking on the desolate narrow roads by day, sleeping in the shadow of the hills by night. Now he began to realise her there. Where would the house be? Near End Cottage, perhaps in sight of the garden to which he had stolen on that evil night to listen for the voice of a bird!
After many hours the train was dug out of the snow, and sped forward again in daylight. Maurice slept a little, but uneasily. And now, when he was awake, he began to be filled with an unreasonableapprehension, for which he accounted by taking stock of the low temperature of his body, and of the loss of vitality occasioned by want of food and rest. He was seized with fear as he came up into the north and saw vaguely the moors around him, the snowy waves where the white woods rippled up the flanks of the white hills. He began to realise again his former condition when his life was full of the lamentation of the child. He began to feel as if he drew near to that lamentation once more. Perhaps the little sorrowful spirit had only deserted him to return to the valley in which it first greeted him. Perhaps it would come again to him there. He might hear the cry from the garden of the cottage as he hastened past.
He shuddered and cursed his wild fancies. But they stayed with him through all the rest of the journey, through all the delays and periods of numb patience. And they increased upon him. When at last he reached the dreary station by the flat sandbanks, at which he changed into the valley train, he was pale and careworn, and full of alarm.
Very slowly the tiny train crawled up into the heart of the hills as the darkness of the second night came down. Maurice was the only passenger in it. He felt like one alone in a lonely world, fearing inhabitants unseen, but whose distant presence he was aware of. Could Lily indeed be here, beyond him in this desolation? Itseemed impossible. But the child might be here, wandering, a lost spirit, in this unutterable winter. That would not be strange to him. And his soul grew colder than his body. He could see nothing from the window, but occasionally he heard the dry tapping of twigs upon the glass, as the train crept among the leafless woods. And this tapping seemed to him to be the tiny fingers of the child, feebly endeavouring to attract his attention. He shrank away from the window to the centre of the carriage.
At the last station in the valley the train stopped. Maurice got out into the darkness, and asked the guard the name of the house in which Mrs. Dale lived.
"Mrs. Dale," he said, in the broad Cumberland dialect, "Oh, she bides at End Cottage."
Maurice stared at his rugged face peering above the round lamp which he held.
"End Cottage?"
"Yes, sir. The poor lady took it on a six months' lease, but I hear she's—"
But Maurice had turned away with a muttered:
"I'll send up for the luggage."
He stumbled out into the white lane and through the little village. One or two lads, roughly dressed and sprinkled with snowflakes, eyed him from the shelter of the inn porch. As he moved past them, he heard their muttered comments. He left the houses behind and foundhimself among snow-laden trees. End Cottage was hidden in this narrow wood which was generally full of the sound of the waterfall.
Now the waterfall was silent, motionless, a dead thing in a rocky grave. Maurice saw a faint and misty light among the bare trees. It came from his old home, and now his hand touched the white garden gate, prickly with ice. He pushed it open and stole up the path till he reached the little porch of the cottage. As he stood there his heart beat hard and his breath fluttered in his throat. It seemed to him that there must be some strange and terrible meaning in Lily's presence here. With a shaking hand he pulled at the bell. He waited. No one came. He heard no step. The silence was dense, even appalling. After a long pause he turned the handle of the door, opened it, and stood on the threshold of the cottage. Instead of entering at once he waited, listening for any sound of life within the house, for the voices or footsteps of those inhabiting it.
Just so had he waited on a summer night long ago, with the moon behind him and leaf-laden trees. He listened, and, after a moment of profound stillness, he heard—as he had heard in that very place so long ago—the faint cry of a child. It came from within the house, clear and distinct though frail and feeble.
Involuntarily Maurice moved a step backward into the snow. Horror overwhelmed him. The dead child was here then with Lily, in his oldabode. The spirit was not laid to rest. It had only deserted him for a while to greet him again here, to take up again here its eternal persecution; and this resurrection appalled and unmanned him more than all the persistent haunting of the past. He was dashed from confidence to despair. The little cry paralysed him, and he leaned against the wall of the porch almost like a dying man.
And again he heard the cry of the child.
How live and how real it was! Maurice remembered that he had said to himself that the cry was a phantasy of the brain, an imaginary sound vibrating from an afflicted body. And now his intellect denied such a supposition; the cry came from a thing that lived, although it lived in another world. It seemed to summon him with a strange insistence. Against his will, and walking slowly as one in a trance, he moved forward up the narrow stairway till he reached the room that had been his old bedroom.
The cry came surely from within that room. The dead child was shut in there. Yes, never before had Maurice been able to locate the cry precisely. Now he could locate it. With shaking fingers he grasped the handle of the door. He stood in a faint illumination, and the cry of the child came louder to his ears. But there mingled with it another cry, faint yet thrilling with joy:
"Maurice!"
He looked and saw Lily, white as a flower. She was propped on pillows, and, stretching out herthin girl's arms, she held feebly towards Maurice a tiny baby.
"Maurice—it is the child!" she whispered.
"The child!" he repeated hoarsely.
For an instant he believed that his fate was sealed, that the spirit, which for so long had pursued him with its lamenting, now manifested its actual presence to his eyes. Then, in a flash, the truth came upon him. He fell upon his knees by the bedside and put out his arms for the child. He held it. He felt its soft breath against his cheek. A cooing murmur, as if of tiny happiness, came from its parted lips. It turned its little face, flushed like a rose, against the breast of Maurice, and nestled to sleep upon his heart.
And Lily's hand touched him.
"I thought you would not come in time," she said, as the nurse, at a sign from her, stole softly from the room.
"In time?"
"To see me before—they say, you know, that—"
"Lily!" he cried.
"Hush! The child! Listen, dear. If I die, take the child. It is your dead child, I think, come to life through me. Yes, yes, it is the little child that has cried for love so long. Redeem your cruelty, oh, Maurice, redeem it to your child. Give it your love. Give it your life. Give it—"
"Lily!" he said again. And there were tears on his cheeks.
"I gave myself to you for this, Maurice. I was waiting for this. Do you understand me now? You scarcely loved me, Maurice. But I loved you. Let me think—in dying—that I have brought you peace at last."
He could not speak. The mystery of woman, the mystery of child was too near to him. Awe came upon him and the terror of his own unworthiness, rewarded—or punished—which was it?—by such compassion, such self-sacrifice.
"When I left you," Lily murmured, and her voice sounded thin and tired, "it seemed as if the spirit of the child came with me, as if I, too, heard its dead voice in the night, crying for its salvation, for its relief from agony. But, Maurice, you cannot hear it now. You will never hear it again—unless—unless—"
She fixed her eyes on him. They were growing dim.
"God has given the dead to you again through me," she faltered, "that you—may—redeem—redeem—your—sin."
She moved, and leaned against him, as if she would gather him and the sleeping child into her embrace. But she could not. She slipped back softly, almost like a snowflake that falls and is gone.
Maurice Dale is a famous doctor now. He lives with his daughter, who never leaves him and whom he loves passionately. Many patientsthrong to his consulting-room, but not one of them suspects that the grave physician, deep down in his heart, cherishes a strange belief—not based upon science. This belief is connected with his child. Secretly he thinks of her as of one risen from the grave, come back to him from beyond the gates of death.
The cry of the child is silent. Maurice never hears it now. But he believes that could any demon tempt him, even for one moment, to be cruel to his little daughter, he would hear it again. It would lament once more in the darkness, would once more fill the silence with its despair.
And then a dead woman would stir in her grave.
For there are surely cries of earth that even the dead can hear.
Dullpeople often wondered how it came about that Father Murchison and Professor Frederic Guildea were intimate friends. The one was all faith, the other all scepticism. The nature of the Father was based on love. He viewed the world with an almost childlike tenderness above his long, black cassock; and his mild, yet perfectly fearless, blue eyes seemed always to be watching the goodness that exists in humanity, and rejoicing at what they saw. The Professor, on the other hand, had a hard face like a hatchet, tipped with an aggressive black goatee beard. His eyes were quick, piercing and irreverent. The lines about his small, thin-lipped mouth were almost cruel. His voice was harsh and dry, sometimes, when he grew energetic, almost soprano. It fired off words with a sharp and clipping utterance. His habitual manner was one of distrust and investigation. It was impossible to suppose that, in his busy life, hefound any time for love, either of humanity in general or of an individual.
Yet his days were spent in scientific investigations which conferred immense benefits upon the world.
Both men were celibates. Father Murchison was a member of an Anglican order which forbade him to marry. Professor Guildea had a poor opinion of most things, but especially of women. He had formerly held a post as lecturer at Birmingham. But when his fame as a discoverer grew he removed to London. There, at a lecture he gave in the East End, he first met Father Murchison. They spoke a few words. Perhaps the bright intelligence of the priest appealed to the man of science, who was inclined, as a rule, to regard the clergy with some contempt. Perhaps the transparent sincerity of this devotee, full of common sense, attracted him. As he was leaving the hall he abruptly asked the Father to call on him at his house in Hyde Park Place. And the Father, who seldom went into the West End, except to preach, accepted the invitation.
"When will you come?" said Guildea.
He was folding up the blue paper on which his notes were written in a tiny, clear hand. The leaves rustled drily in accompaniment to his sharp, dry voice.
"On Sunday week I am preaching in the evening at St. Saviour's, not far off," said the Father.
"I don't go to church."
"No," said the Father, without any accent of surprise or condemnation.
"Come to supper afterwards?"
"Thank you. I will."
"What time will you come?"
The Father smiled.
"As soon as I have finished my sermon. The service is at six-thirty."
"About eight then, I suppose. Don't make the sermon too long. My number in Hyde Park Place is a hundred. Good-night to you."
He snapped an elastic band round his papers and strode off without shaking hands.
On the appointed Sunday, Father Murchison preached to a densely crowded congregation at St. Saviour's. The subject of his sermon was sympathy, and the comparative uselessness of man in the world unless he can learn to love his neighbour as himself. The sermon was rather long, and when the preacher, in his flowing, black cloak, and his hard, round hat, with a straight brim over which hung the ends of a black cord, made his way towards the Professor's house, the hands of the illuminated clock disc at the Marble Arch pointed to twenty minutes past eight.
The Father hurried on, pushing his way through the crowd of standing soldiers, chattering women and giggling street boys in their Sunday best. It was a warm April night, and, when he reached number 100, Hyde Park Place, he found the Professorbareheaded on his doorstep, gazing out towards the Park railings, and enjoying the soft, moist air, in front of his lighted passage.
"Ha, a long sermon!" he exclaimed. "Come in."
"I fear it was," said the Father, obeying the invitation. "I am that dangerous thing—an extempore preacher."
"More attractive to speak without notes, if you can do it. Hang your hat and coat—oh, cloak—here. We'll have supper at once. This is the dining-room."
He opened a door on the right and they entered a long, narrow room, with a gold paper and a black ceiling, from which hung an electric lamp with a gold-coloured shade. In the room stood a small oval table with covers laid for two. The Professor rang the bell. Then he said,
"People seem to talk better at an oval table than at a square one."
"Really. Is that so?"
"Well, I've had precisely the same party twice, once at a square table, once at an oval table. The first dinner was a dull failure, the second a brilliant success. Sit down, won't you?"
"How d'you account for the difference?" said the Father, sitting down, and pulling the tail of his cassock well under him.
"H'm. I know how you'd account for it."
"Indeed. How then?"
"At an oval table, since there are no corners, the chain of human sympathy—the electric current, is much more complete. Eh! Let me give you some soup."
"Thank you."
The Father took it, and, as he did so, turned his beaming blue eyes on his host. Then he smiled.
"What!" he said, in his pleasant, light tenor voice. "You do go to church sometimes, then?"
"To-night is the first time for ages. And, mind you, I was tremendously bored."
The Father still smiled, and his blue eyes gently twinkled.
"Dear, dear!" he said, "what a pity!"
"But not by the sermon," Guildea added. "I don't pay a compliment. I state a fact. The sermon didn't bore me. If it had, I should have said so, or said nothing."
"And which would you have done?"
The Professor smiled almost genially.
"Don't know," he said. "What wine d'you drink?"
"None, thank you. I'm a teetotaller. In my profession andmilieuit is necessary to be one. Yes, I will have some soda water. I think you would have done the first."
"Very likely, and very wrongly. You wouldn't have minded much."
"I don't think I should."
They were intimate already. The Father felt most pleasantly at home under the black ceiling.He drank some soda water and seemed to enjoy it more than the Professor enjoyed his claret.
"You smile at the theory of the chain of human sympathy, I see," said the Father. "Then what is your explanation of the failure of your square party with corners, the success of your oval party without them?"
"Probably on the first occasion the wit of the assembly had a chill on his liver, while on the second he was in perfect health. Yet, you see, I stick to the oval table."
"And that means——"
"Very little. By the way, your omission of any allusion to the notorious part liver plays in love was a serious one to-night."
"Your omission of any desire for close human sympathy in your life is a more serious one."
"How can you be sure I have no such desire?"
"I divine it. Your look, your manner, tell me it is so. You were disagreeing with my sermon all the time I was preaching. Weren't you?"
"Part of the time."
The servant changed the plates. He was a middle-aged, blond, thin man, with a stony white face, pale, prominent eyes, and an accomplished manner of service. When he had left the room the Professor continued,
"Your remarks interested me, but I thought them exaggerated."
"For instance?"
"Let me play the egoist for a moment. Ispend most of my time in hard work, very hard work. The results of this work, you will allow, benefit humanity."
"Enormously," assented the Father, thinking of more than one of Guildea's discoveries.
"And the benefit conferred by this work, undertaken merely for its own sake, is just as great as if it were undertaken because I loved my fellow man and sentimentally desired to see him more comfortable than he is at present. I'm as useful precisely in my present condition of—in my present non-affectional condition—as I should be if I were as full of gush as the sentimentalists who want to get murderers out of prison, or to put a premium on tyranny—like Tolstoi—by preventing the punishment of tyrants."
"One may do great harm with affection; great good without it. Yes, that is true. Evenle bon motifis not everything, I know. Still I contend that, given your powers, you would be far more useful in the world with sympathy, affection for your kind, added to them than as you are. I believe even that you would do still more splendid work."
The Professor poured himself out another glass of claret.
"You noticed my butler?" he said.
"I did."
"He's a perfect servant. He makes me perfectly comfortable. Yet he has no feeling of liking for me. I treat him civilly. I pay himwell. But I never think about him, or concern myself with him as a human being. I know nothing of his character except what I read of it in his last master's letter. There are, you may say, no truly human relations between us. You would affirm that his work would be better done if I had made him personally like me as man—of any class—can like man—of any other class?"
"I should, decidedly."
"I contend that he couldn't do his work better than he does it at present."
"But if any crisis occurred?"
"What?"
"Any crisis, change in your condition. If you needed his help, not only as a man and a butler, but as a man and a brother? He'd fail you then, probably. You would never get from your servant that finest service which can only be prompted by an honest affection."
"You have finished?"
"Quite."
"Let us go upstairs then. Yes, those are good prints. I picked them up in Birmingham when I was living there. This is my workroom."
They came into a double room lined entirely with books, and brilliantly, rather hardly, lit by electricity. The windows at one end looked on to the Park, at the other on to the garden of a neighbouring house. The door by which they entered was concealed from the inner and smaller room by the jutting wall of the outer room, inwhich stood a huge writing-table loaded with letters, pamphlets and manuscripts. Between the two windows of the inner room was a cage in which a large, grey parrot was clambering, using both beak and claws to assist him in his slow and meditative peregrinations.
"You have a pet," said the Father, surprised.
"I possess a parrot," the Professor answered, drily, "I got him for a purpose when I was making a study of the imitative powers of birds, and I have never got rid of him. A cigar?"
"Thank you."
They sat down. Father Murchison glanced at the parrot. It had paused in its journey, and, clinging to the bars of its cage, was regarding them with attentive round eyes that looked deliberately intelligent, but by no means sympathetic. He looked away from it to Guildea, who was smoking, with his head thrown back, his sharp, pointed chin, on which the small black beard bristled, upturned. He was moving his under lip up and down rapidly. This action caused the beard to stir and look peculiarly aggressive. The Father suddenly chuckled softly.
"Why's that?" cried Guildea, letting his chin drop down on his breast and looking at his guest sharply.
"I was thinking it would have to be a crisis indeed that could make you cling to your butler's affection for assistance."
Guildea smiled too.
"You're right. It would. Here he comes."
The man entered with coffee. He offered it gently, and retired like a shadow retreating on a wall.
"Splendid, inhuman fellow," remarked Guildea.
"I prefer the East End lad who does my errands in Bird Street," said the Father. "I know all his worries. He knows some of mine. We are friends. He's more noisy than your man. He even breathes hard when he is specially solicitous, but he would do more for me than put the coals on my fire, or black my square-toed boots."
"Men are differently made. To me the watchful eye of affection would be abominable."
"What about that bird?"
The Father pointed to the parrot. It had got up on its perch and, with one foot uplifted in an impressive, almost benedictory, manner, was gazing steadily at the Professor.
"That's the watchful eye of imitation, with a mind at the back of it, desirous of reproducing the peculiarities of others. No, I thought your sermon to-night very fresh, very clever. But I have no wish for affection. Reasonable liking, of course, one desires," he tugged sharply at his beard, as if to warn himself against sentimentality,—"but anything more would be most irksome, and would push me, I feel sure, towards cruelty. It would also hamper one's work."
"I don't think so."
"The sort of work I do. I shall continue tobenefit the world without loving it, and it will continue to accept the benefits without loving me. That's all as it should be."
He drank his coffee. Then he added, rather aggressively:
"I have neither time nor inclination for sentimentality."
When Guildea let Father Murchison out, he followed the Father on to the doorstep and stood there for a moment. The Father glanced across the damp road into the Park.
"I see you've got a gate just opposite you," he said idly.
"Yes. I often slip across for a stroll to clear my brain. Good-night to you. Come again some day."
"With pleasure. Good-night."
The Priest strode away, leaving Guildea standing on the step.
Father Murchison came many times again to number one hundred Hyde Park Place. He had a feeling of liking for most men and women whom he knew, and of tenderness for all, whether he knew them or not, but he grew to have a special sentiment towards Guildea. Strangely enough, it was a sentiment of pity. He pitied this hard-working, eminently successful man of big brain and bold heart, who never seemed depressed, who never wanted assistance, who never complained of the twisted skein of life or faltered in his progress along its way. The Father pitiedGuildea, in fact, because Guildea wanted so little. He had told him so, for the intercourse of the two men, from the beginning, had been singularly frank.
One evening, when they were talking together, the Father happened to speak of one of the oddities of life, the fact that those who do not want things often get them, while those who seek them vehemently are disappointed in their search.
"Then I ought to have affection poured upon me," said Guildea, smiling rather grimly. "For I hate it."
"Perhaps some day you will."
"I hope not, most sincerely."
Father Murchison said nothing for a moment. He was drawing together the ends of the broad band round his cassock. When he spoke he seemed to be answering someone.
"Yes," he said slowly, "yes, thatismy feeling—pity."
"For whom?" said the Professor.
Then, suddenly, he understood. He did not say that he understood, but Father Murchison felt, and saw, that it was quite unnecessary to answer his friend's question. So Guildea, strangely enough, found himself closely acquainted with a man—his opposite in all ways,—who pitied him.
The fact that he did not mind this, and scarcely ever thought about it, shows perhaps as clearly as anything could the peculiar indifference of his nature.
OneAutumn evening, a year and a half after Father Murchison and the Professor had first met, the Father called in Hyde Park Place and enquired of the blond and stony butler—his name was Pitting—whether his master was at home.
"Yes, sir," replied Pitting. "Will you please come this way?"
He moved noiselessly up the rather narrow stairs, followed by the Father, tenderly opened the library door, and in his soft, cold voice, announced:
"Father Murchison."
Guildea was sitting in an armchair, before a small fire. His thin, long-fingered hands lay outstretched upon his knees, his head was sunk down on his chest. He appeared to be pondering deeply. Pitting very slightly raised his voice.
"Father Murchison to see you, sir," he repeated.
The Professor jumped up rather suddenly and turned sharply round as the Father came in.
"Oh," he said. "It's you, is it? Glad to see you. Come to the fire."
The Father glanced at him and thought him looking unusually fatigued.
"You don't look well to-night," the Father said.
"No?"
"You must be working too hard. That lecture you are going to give in Paris is bothering you?"
"Not a bit. It's all arranged. I could deliver it to you at this moment verbatim. Well, sit down."
The Father did so, and Guildea sank once more into his chair and stared hard into the fire without another word. He seemed to be thinking profoundly. His friend did not interrupt him, but quietly lit a pipe and began to smoke reflectively. The eyes of Guildea were fixed upon the fire. The Father glanced about the room, at the walls of soberly bound books, at the crowded writing-table, at the windows, before which hung heavy, dark-blue curtains of old brocade, at the cage, which stood between them. A green baize covering was thrown over it. The Father wondered why. He had never seen Napoleon—so the parrot was named—covered up at night before. While he was looking at the baize, Guildea suddenly jerked up his head, and, taking his hands from his knees and clasping them, said abruptly:
"D'you think I'm an attractive man?"
Father Murchison jumped. Such a question coming from such a man astounded him.
"Bless me!" he ejaculated. "What makes you ask? Do you mean attractive to the opposite sex?"
"That's what I don't know," said the Professor gloomily, and staring again into the fire. "That's what I don't know."
The Father grew more astonished.
"Don't know!" he exclaimed.
And he laid down his pipe.
"Let's say—d'you think I'm attractive, that there's anything about me which might draw a—a human being, or an animal, irresistibly to me?"
"Whether you desired it or not?"
"Exactly—or—no, let us say definitely—if I did not desire it."
Father Murchison pursed up his rather full, cherubic lips, and little wrinkles appeared about the corners of his blue eyes.
"There might be, of course," he said, after a pause. "Human nature is weak, engagingly weak, Guildea. And you're inclined to flout it. I could understand a certain class of lady—the lion-hunting, the intellectual lady, seeking you. Your reputation, your great name——"
"Yes, yes," Guildea interrupted, rather irritably—"I know all that, I know."
He twisted his long hands together, bending the palms outwards till his thin, pointed fingers cracked. His forehead was wrinkled in a frown.
"I imagine," he said,—he stopped and coughed drily, almost shrilly—"I imagine it would be very disagreeable to be liked, to be run after—that is the usual expression, isn't it—by anything one objected to."
And now he half turned in his chair, crossed his legs one over the other, and looked at his guest with an unusual, almost piercing interrogation.
"Anything?" said the Father.
"Well—well, anyone. I imagine nothing could be more unpleasant."
"To you—no," answered the Father. "But—forgive me, Guildea, I cannot conceive you permitting such intrusion. You don't encourage adoration."
Guildea nodded his head gloomily.
"I don't," he said, "I don't. That's just it. That's the curious part of it, that I——"
He broke off deliberately, got up and stretched.
"I'll have a pipe, too," he said.
He went over to the mantelpiece, got his pipe, filled it and lighted it. As he held the match to the tobacco, bending forward with an enquiring expression, his eyes fell upon the green baize that covered Napoleon's cage. He threw the match into the grate, and puffed at the pipe as he walked forward to the cage. When he reached it he put out his hand, took hold of the baize and began to pull it away. Then suddenly he pushed it back over the cage.
"No," he said, as if to himself, "no."
He returned rather hastily to the fire and threw himself once more into his armchair.
"You're wondering," he said to Father Murchison. "So am I. I don't know at all what tomake of it. I'll just tell you the facts and you must tell me what you think of them. The night before last, after a day of hard work—but no harder than usual—I went to the front door to get a breath of air. You know I often do that."
"Yes, I found you on the doorstep when I first came here."
"Just so. I didn't put on hat or coat. I just stood on the step as I was. My mind, I remember, was still full of my work. It was rather a dark night, not very dark. The hour was about eleven, or a quarter past. I was staring at the Park, and presently I found that my eyes were directed towards somebody who was sitting, back to me, on one of the benches. I saw the person—if it was a person,—through the railings."
"If it was a person!" said the Father. "What do you mean by that?"
"Wait a minute. I say that because it was too dark for me to know. I merely saw some blackish object on the bench, rising into view above the level of the back of the seat. I couldn't say it was man, woman or child. But something there was, and I found that I was looking at it."
"I understand."
"Gradually, I also found that my thoughts were becoming fixed upon this thing or person. I began to wonder, first, what it was doing there; next, what it was thinking; lastly, what it was like."
"Some poor creature without a home, I suppose," said the Father.
"I said that to myself. Still, I was taken with an extraordinary interest about this object, so great an interest that I got my hat and crossed the road to go into the Park. As you know, there's an entrance almost opposite to my house. Well, Murchison, I crossed the road, passed through the gate in the railings, went up to the seat, and found that there was—nothing on it."
"Were you looking at it as you walked?"
"Part of the time. But I removed my eyes from it just as I passed through the gate, because there was a row going on a little way off, and I turned for an instant in that direction. When I saw that the seat was vacant I was seized by a most absurd sensation of disappointment, almost of anger. I stopped and looked about me to see if anything was moving away, but I could see nothing. It was a cold night and misty, and there were few people about. Feeling, as I say, foolishly and unnaturally disappointed, I retraced my steps to this house. When I got here I discovered that during my short absence I had left the hall door open—half open."
"Rather imprudent in London."
"Yes. I had no idea, of course, that I had done so, till I got back. However, I was only away three minutes or so."
"Yes."
"It was not likely that anybody had gone in."
"I suppose not."
"Was it?"
"Why do you ask me that, Guildea?"
"Well, well!"
"Besides, if anybody had gone in on your return you'd have caught him, surely."
Guildea coughed again. The Father, surprised, could not fail to recognise that he was nervous and that his nervousness was affecting him physically.
"I must have caught cold that night," he said, as if he had read his friend's thought and hastened to contradict it. Then he went on:
"I entered the hall, or passage, rather."
He paused again. His uneasiness was becoming very apparent.
"And you did catch somebody?" said the Father.
Guildea cleared his throat.
"That's just it," he said, "now we come to it. I'm not imaginative, as you know."
"You certainly are not."
"No, but hardly had I stepped into the passage before I felt certain that somebody had got into the house during my absence. I felt convinced of it, and not only that, I also felt convinced that the intruder was the very person I had dimly seen sitting upon the seat in the Park. What d'you say to that?"
"I begin to think you are imaginative."
"H'm! It seemed to me that the person—the occupant of the seat—and I, had simultaneously formed the project of interviewing eachother, had simultaneously set out to put that project into execution. I became so certain of this that I walked hastily upstairs into this room, expecting to find the visitor awaiting me. But there was no one. I then came down again and went into the dining-room. No one. I was actually astonished. Isn't that odd?"
"Very," said the Father, quite gravely.
The Professor's chill and gloomy manner, and uncomfortable, constrained appearance kept away the humour that might well have lurked round the steps of such a discourse.
"I went upstairs again," he continued, "sat down and thought the matter over. I resolved to forget it, and took up a book. I might perhaps have been able to read, but suddenly I thought I noticed——"
He stopped abruptly. Father Murchison observed that he was staring towards the green baize that covered the parrot's cage.
"But that's nothing," he said. "Enough that I couldn't read. I resolved to explore the house. You know how small it is, how easily one can go all over it. I went all over it. I went into every room without exception. To the servants, who were having supper, I made some excuse. They were surprised at my advent, no doubt."
"And Pitting?"
"Oh, he got up politely when I came in, stood while I was there, but never said a word. I muttered 'don't disturb yourselves,' or something ofthe sort, and came out. Murchison, I found nobody new in the house—yet I returned to this room entirely convinced that somebody had entered while I was in the Park."
"And gone out again before you came back?"
"No, had stayed, and was still in the house."
"But, my dear Guildea," began the Father, now in great astonishment. "Surely——"
"I know what you want to say—what I should want to say in your place. Now, do wait. I am also convinced that this visitor has not left the house and is at this moment in it."
He spoke with evident sincerity, with extreme gravity. Father Murchison looked him full in the face, and met his quick, keen eyes.
"No," he said, as if in reply to an uttered question: "I'm perfectly sane, I assure you. The whole matter seems almost as incredible to me as it must to you. But, as you know, I never quarrel with facts, however strange. I merely try to examine into them thoroughly. I have already consulted a doctor and been pronounced in perfect bodily health."
He paused, as if expecting the Father to say something.
"Go on, Guildea," he said, "you haven't finished."
"No. I felt that night positive that somebody had entered the house, and remained in it, and my conviction grew. I went to bed as usual, and, contrary to my expectation, slept as well as Igenerally do. Yet directly I woke up yesterday morning I knew that my household had been increased by one."
"May I interrupt you for one moment? How did you know it?"
"By my mental sensation. I can only say that I was perfectly conscious of a new presence within my house, close to me."
"How very strange," said the Father. "And you feel absolutely certain that you are not over-worked? Your brain does not feel tired? Your head is quite clear?"
"Quite. I was never better. When I came down to breakfast that morning I looked sharply into Pitting's face. He was as coldly placid and inexpressive as usual. It was evident to me that his mind was in no way distressed. After breakfast I sat down to work, all the time ceaselessly conscious of the fact of this intruder upon my privacy. Nevertheless, I laboured for several hours, waiting for any development that might occur to clear away the mysterious obscurity of this event. I lunched. About half-past two I was obliged to go out to attend a lecture. I therefore, took my coat and hat, opened my door, and stepped on to the pavement. I was instantly aware that I was no longer intruded upon, and this although I was now in the street, surrounded by people. Consequently, I felt certain that the thing in my house must be thinking of me, perhaps even spying upon me."
"Wait a moment," interrupted the Father. "What was your sensation? Was it one of fear?"
"Oh, dear no. I was entirely puzzled,—as I am now—and keenly interested, but not in any way alarmed. I delivered my lecture with my usual ease and returned home in the evening. On entering the house again I was perfectly conscious that the intruder was still there. Last night I dined alone and spent the hours after dinner in reading a scientific work in which I was deeply interested. While I read, however, I never for one moment lost the knowledge that some mind—very attentive to me—was within hail of mine. I will say more than this—the sensation constantly increased, and, by the time I got up to go to bed, I had come to a very strange conclusion."
"What? What was it?"
"That whoever—or whatever—had entered my house during my short absence in the Park was more than interested in me."
"More than interested in you?"
"Was fond, or was becoming fond, of me."
"Oh!" exclaimed the Father. "Now I understand why you asked me just now whether I thought there was anything about you that might draw a human being or an animal irresistibly to you."
"Precisely. Since I came to this conclusion, Murchison, I will confess that my feeling of strong curiosity has become tinged with another feeling."
"Of fear?"
"No, of dislike, of irritation. No—not fear, not fear."
As Guildea repeated unnecessarily this asseveration he looked again towards the parrot's cage.
"What is there to be afraid of in such a matter?" he added. "I'm not a child to tremble before bogies."
In saying the last words he raised his voice sharply; then he walked quickly to the cage, and, with an abrupt movement, pulled the baize covering from it. Napoleon was disclosed, apparently dozing upon his perch with his head held slightly on one side. As the light reached him, he moved, ruffled the feathers about his neck, blinked his eyes, and began slowly to sidle to and fro, thrusting his head forward and drawing it back with an air of complacent, though rather unmeaning, energy. Guildea stood by the cage, looking at him closely, and indeed with an attention that was so intense as to be remarkable, almost unnatural.
"How absurd these birds are!" he said at length, coming back to the fire.
"You have no more to tell me?" asked the Father.
"No. I am still aware of the presence of something in my house. I am still conscious of its close attention to me. I am still irritated, seriously annoyed—I confess it,—by that attention."
"You say you are aware of the presence of something at this moment?"
"At this moment—yes."
"Do you mean in this room, with us, now?"
"I should say so—at any rate, quite near us."
Again he glanced quickly, almost suspiciously, towards the cage of the parrot. The bird was sitting still on its perch now. Its head was bent down and cocked sideways, and it appeared to be listening attentively to something.
"That bird will have the intonations of my voice more correctly than ever by to-morrow morning," said the Father, watching Guildea closely with his mild blue eyes. "And it has always imitated me very cleverly."
The Professor started slightly.
"Yes," he said. "Yes, no doubt. Well, what do you make of this affair?"
"Nothing at all. It is absolutely inexplicable. I can speak quite frankly to you, I feel sure."
"Of course. That's why I have told you the whole thing."
"I think you must be over-worked, over-strained, without knowing it."
"And that the doctor was mistaken when he said I was all right?"
"Yes."
Guildea knocked his pipe out against the chimney piece.
"It may be so," he said, "I will not be so unreasonable as to deny the possibility, although Ifeel as well as I ever did in my life. What do you advise then?"
"A week of complete rest away from London, in good air."
"The usual prescription. I'll take it. I'll go to-morrow to Westgate and leave Napoleon to keep house in my absence."
For some reason, which he could not explain to himself, the pleasure which Father Murchison felt in hearing the first part of his friend's final remark was lessened, was almost destroyed, by the last sentence.
He walked towards the City that night, deep in thought, remembering and carefully considering the first interview he had with Guildea in the latter's house a year and a half before.
On the following morning Guildea left London.
Father Murchisonwas so busy a man that he had little time for brooding over the affairs of others. During Guildea's week at the sea, however, the Father thought about him a great deal, with much wonder and some dismay. The dismay was soon banished, for the mild-eyed priest was quick to discern weakness in himself, quicker still to drive it forth as a most undesirable inmate of the soul. But the wonder remained. It was destined to a crescendo. Guildea had left Londonon a Thursday. On a Thursday he returned, having previously sent a note to Father Murchison to mention that he was leaving Westgate at a certain time. When his train ran in to Victoria Station, at five o'clock in the evening, he was surprised to see the cloaked figure of his friend standing upon the grey platform behind a line of porters.
"What, Murchison!" he said. "You here! Have you seceded from your order that you are taking this holiday?"
They shook hands.
"No," said the Father. "It happened that I had to be in this neighbourhood to-day, visiting a sick person. So I thought I would meet you."
"And see if I were still a sick person, eh?"
The Professor glanced at him kindly, but with a dry little laugh.
"Are you?" replied the Father gently, looking at him with interest. "No, I think not. You appear very well."
The sea air had, in fact, put some brownish red into Guildea's always thin cheeks. His keen eyes were shining with life and energy, and he walked forward in his loose grey suit and fluttering overcoat with a vigour that was noticeable, carrying easily in his left hand his well-filled Gladstone bag.
The Father felt completely reassured.
"I never saw you look better," he said.
"I never was better. Have you an hour to spare?"
"Two."
"Good. I'll send my bag up by cab, and we'll walk across the Park to my house and have a cup of tea there. What d'you say?"
"I shall enjoy it."
They walked out of the station yard, past the flower girls and newspaper sellers towards Grosvenor Place.
"And you have had a pleasant time?" the Father said.
"Pleasant enough, and lonely. I left my companion behind me in the passage at Number 100, you know."
"And you'll not find him there now, I feel sure."
"H'm!" ejaculated Guildea. "What a precious weakling you think me, Murchison."
As he spoke he strode forward more quickly, as if moved to emphasise his sensation of bodily vigour.
"A weakling—no. But anyone who uses his brain as persistently as you do yours must require an occasional holiday."
"And I required one very badly, eh?"
"You required one, I believe."
"Well, I've had it. And now we'll see."
The evening was closing in rapidly. They crossed the road at Hyde Park Corner, and entered the Park, in which were a number of peoplegoing home from work; men in corduroy trousers, caked with dried mud, and carrying tin cans slung over their shoulders, and flat panniers, in which lay their tools. Some of the younger ones talked loudly or whistled shrilly as they walked.
"Until the evening," murmured Father Murchison to himself.
"What?" asked Guildea.
"I was only quoting the last words of the text, which seems written upon life, especially upon the life of pleasure: 'Man goeth forth to his work, and to his labour.'"
"Ah, those fellows are not half bad fellows to have in an audience. There were a lot of them at the lecture I gave when I first met you, I remember. One of them tried to heckle me. He had a red beard. Chaps with red beards are always hecklers. I laid him low on that occasion. Well, Murchison, and now we're going to see."
"What?"
"Whether my companion has departed."
"Tell me—do you feel any expectation of—well—of again thinking something is there?"
"How carefully you choose language. No, I merely wonder."
"You have no apprehension?"
"Not a scrap. But I confess to feeling curious."
"Then the sea air hasn't taught you to recognise that the whole thing came from overstrain."
"No," said Guildea, very drily.
He walked on in silence for a minute. Then he added:
"You thought it would?"
"I certainly thought it might."
"Make me realise that I had a sickly, morbid, rotten imagination—heh? Come now, Murchison, why not say frankly that you packed me off to Westgate to get rid of what you considered an acute form of hysteria?"
The Father was quite unmoved by this attack.
"Come now, Guildea," he retorted, "what did you expect me to think? I saw no indication of hysteria in you. I never have. One would suppose you the last man likely to have such a malady. But which is more natural—for me to believe in your hysteria or in the truth of such a story as you told me?"
"You have me there. No, I mustn't complain. Well, there's no hysteria about me now, at any rate."
"And no stranger in your house, I hope."
Father Murchison spoke the last words with earnest gravity, dropping the half-bantering tone—which they had both assumed.
"You take the matter very seriously, I believe," said Guildea, also speaking more gravely.
"How else can I take it? You wouldn't have me laugh at it when you tell it me seriously?"
"No. If we find my visitor still in the house, I may even call upon you to exorcise it. But first I must do one thing."
"And that is?"
"Prove to you, as well as to myself, that it is still there."
"That might be difficult," said the Father, considerably surprised by Guildea's matter-of-fact tone.
"I don't know. If it has remained in my house I think I can find a means. And I shall not be at all surprised if it is still there—despite the Westgate air."
In saying the last words the Professor relapsed into his former tone of dry chaff. The Father could not quite make up his mind whether Guildea was feeling unusually grave or unusually gay. As the two men drew near to Hyde Park Place their conversation died away and they walked forward silently in the gathering darkness.
"Here we are!" said Guildea at last.
He thrust his key into the door, opened it and let Father Murchison into the passage, following him closely and banging the door.
"Here we are!" he repeated in a louder voice.
The electric light was turned on in anticipation of his arrival. He stood still and looked round.
"We'll have some tea at once," he said. "Ah, Pitting!"
The pale butler, who had heard the door bang, moved gently forward from the top of the stairs that led to the kitchen, greeted his master respectfully, took his coat and Father Murchison's cloak, and hung them on two pegs against the wall.
"All's right, Pitting? All's as usual?" said Guildea.
"Quite so, sir."
"Bring us up some tea to the library."
"Yes, sir."
Pitting retreated. Guildea waited till he had disappeared, then opened the dining-room door, put his head into the room and kept it there for a moment, standing perfectly still. Presently he drew back into the passage, shut the door, and said,
"Let's go upstairs."
Father Murchison looked at him enquiringly, but made no remark. They ascended the stairs and came into the library. Guildea glanced rather sharply round. A fire was burning on the hearth. The blue curtains were drawn. The bright gleam of the strong electric light fell on the long rows of books, on the writing table,—very orderly in consequence of Guildea's holiday—and on the uncovered cage of the parrot. Guildea went up to the cage. Napoleon was sitting humped up on his perch with his feathers ruffled. His long toes, which looked as if they were covered with crocodile skin, clung to the bar. His round and blinking eyes were filmy, like old eyes. Guildea stared at the bird very hard, and then clucked with his tongue against his teeth. Napoleon shook himself, lifted one foot, extended his toes, sidled along the perch to the bars nearest to the Professor and thrust his headagainst them. Guildea scratched it with his forefinger two or three times, still gazing attentively at the parrot; then he returned to the fire just as Pitting entered with the tea-tray.
Father Murchison was already sitting in an armchair on one side of the fire. Guildea took another chair and began to pour out tea, as Pitting left the room closing the door gently behind him. The Father sipped his tea, found it hot and set the cup down on a little table at his side.
"You're fond of that parrot, aren't you?" he asked his friend.
"Not particularly. It's interesting to study sometimes. The parrot mind and nature are peculiar."
"How long have you had him?"
"About four years. I nearly got rid of him just before I made your acquaintance. I'm very glad now I kept him."
"Are you? Why is that?"
"I shall probably tell you in a day or two."
The Father took his cup again. He did not press Guildea for an immediate explanation, but when they had both finished their tea he said:
"Well, has the sea-air had the desired effect?"
"No," said Guildea.
The Father brushed some crumbs from the front of his cassock and sat up higher in his chair.