Part 12

For this was to be a night of abstinence, so the young man had decided, from the dear sight of his fairy-lady and the delight of her miraculously recovered speech. He had a duty to perform to the dead man, lying solitary upstairs--though hardly more solitary now, than during the long years past in which he had repudiated all solace of human affection. To Laurence himself life had become almost terribly well worth living since he had set foot in Stoke Rivers little more than a week ago; and it was to this man, of cold and narrow nature, that, after all, he owed this notable enlargement of interests and opportunity--not to mention those material advantages of houses, lands, and costly furnishings which had come to him. Gratitude was very much in place; and it seemed to him that a silent vigil in that stately bed-chamber would be only fitting, both as an act of piety, and as testimony to the gratitude now no longer permitted expression either in spoken word or kindly act. Nor could Laurence help hoping that during those solemn hours he might arrive at a clear determination regarding the future--ceasing merely to drift passive and acquiescent to the push of circumstance, as a rudderless boat to the push of the tide. He would direct his own course, be master of his own action, prepared to take--for good or ill--all the consequences that action might involve. For, all the while--and it was worse than useless to shirk remembrance of that--all the while, across the Atlantic, under the bright American skies, bright as they, immediate and modern as the civilisation on which they look down, was the vivacious, young, society beauty, whom he had believed he loved, whom he very certainly had married, and to whom--in the opinion of both her world and his own--his honour and his whole future stood pledged. The question of Virginia--for the whole situation resolved itself fundamentally into that--the question of Virginia must be reckoned with, and the results of such reckoning accepted once and for all.

He had not visited that upstairs room since the night of his uncle's death. The impression then received of the furnace-like fire, and the apparent life and motion of those figures of enslaved and half-bestial womanhood supporting the bed, were still present to his recollection. But now, as he passed into the room, he found the change worked there very arresting. All trace of that which had gone forward, earlier in the evening, under the hands of the eminent surgeon, had been obliterated. The room was orderly, stately as ever; but it was very cold. The hearth was swept and empty. One casement stood wide open, and by it entered a continuous breathing of bleak wind. A single electric burner was turned on, and, in the low steady light shed by it, the carven figures of the ebony bed offered no illusion of life or motion; they showed rigid as the long, narrow body they guarded, the angular outline of which was perceptible beneath the fine linen sheet--upon the surface of which sprigs of rosemary and box lay scattered.

Laurence moved across, intending to turn back the upper part of the sheet and look on the face of the dead; but as he did so a bent form rose silently from the armchair, set at right angles to the fireless hearth, and took up its position on the far side of the bed opposite to him. Though by no means addicted to nervous alarms, Laurence felt a chill run through him, right up to the roots of his hair. Was it conceivable that he beheld the Umbra or Corporeal Soul, of which Ovid speaks, and that this phantom would keep watch with him over its own unburied corpse during the coming hours? His sweet fairy-lady was one thing, and this quite another, in the line of disembodied spirits. Stoke Rivers, apparently, was not a comfortable place to die in. Laurence registered a hasty vow that he, for one, would take precious good care to arrange to die somewhere else! But as he gazed, somewhat fearfully, at the intruder, it declared itself pathetically and pitifully human--nothing more recondite, indeed, than Lowndes, the wiry, long-armed, grey-faced valet.

"I thought it proper to wait till you should come, sir," he said, under his breath. "Though Mr. Rivers has no need of my services now, I have attended on him too constantly to feel it fitting I should be out of call."--His voice quavered, and he cleared his throat.--"He was a gentleman that rarely praised, sir. Some might have thought him harsh; but that was because his mind was so engaged with study. In all the forty years I waited on him, he never gave me an uncivil word; and it is not many gentlemen of whom you can say that."

He lent across, carefully removed some sprigs of box lying high on the sheet, then folded it down quickly and skilfully across the chest. Laurence was aware of a jealous devotion in his attitude. No hands save his own should again touch his dead master. But the sheet once arranged to his satisfaction, he stepped back, a pace or two, into the shadow of the damask curtains.

Then the young man looked long and silently upon the dead. Notwithstanding its extreme emaciation, the face was gentler than in life. This was not merely owing to the closing of the brilliant eyes. An immense calm rested on it. The hunger of the intellect was stayed at last; and the face was majestic in its composure--the face of one who has passed, for ever, beyond the tyranny of desire. Looking on it, Laurence bowed himself reverently in spirit, while the conviction rooted itself in him, that of all virtues the most fertile, the most admirable, is courage. For the weak, the dismayed, for skulkers, liars, and dastards, in whatever department of action or of thought, there is small hope--so he told himself--either here or hereafter. The battle is to the strong; and, therefore, to be strong is the one and only thing which really signifies.

And then it came to him, with a sense of sudden satisfaction, that this most desirable thing, strength, was altogether part of his own inheritance, did he choose to claim it. For the first time he appreciated the value of that strain of fanaticism resident in his blood. He had feared it a little, and apologised to himself for its existence heretofore. He had made a prodigious mistake; for now that strain of fanaticism revealed itself as among the most excellent things of his birthright. He remained motionless, gazing, no longer at the carven bed and its rigid burden, but away to the open casement--in at which came the breathing of the bleak night-wind--his head held high, and a singular compression about the corners of his mouth. Virginia?--Just now Virginia, and all and any obligation he might have contracted towards her, went for very little. He stood apart, complete in himself, regardless of custom, regardless even of so-called morality, should these interfere between him and his purpose. His sense of humour in regard to himself--humour, eternal enemy of all exaggerations and fixed ideas--was in abeyance. He knew that, knew it was dangerous. But then, as the courtly surgeon had so lately reminded him, what so adorable, after all, as those same "bright eyes of danger"--let danger come, how and when it may?--Conventionalities? He bade them pack, all the sort of them. Their day was over. The day of scruples was over likewise. His position was unexampled. He took the risks, along with the joys, of it. As his forefathers had been, so would he be. He felt an extraordinary exaltation and freedom of spirit. And feeling this he laughed a little, just as he had laughed when rallying his men amid the roar of cannon and scream of the grinding ships, in the famous sea-fight off the southern Spanish coast at Trafalgar.

But the old valet, hearing that most unexpected, and to him unseemly, sound, emerged from the discreet shadow of the damask curtains and stretched his long arms to draw the sheet again up over the face of the corpse.

"You have done, sir?" he asked in accents of severity.

"No," Laurence answered, the excitement of his thoughts still strong upon him--"I have only just begun; but, thank God, or devil, or what you will, I have begun at last."

XX

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 crystal _memento 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.

XXI

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.