Part 5

"A sin is heinous, not in itself, but in relation to the level of virtue habitually maintained by whoso commits it. And so, even were I not disabled, were I still capable of carrying out these investigations, the unsparing prosecution of which could alone give proof of the sincerity of my repentance, that could not really wipe out the iniquity of the past. In morals I cannot logically admit the possibility of cancelling a wrong once done. In the realm of physics we know that vibrations, once generated, ring out everlastingly through space. To send forth a contrary set of vibrations is not to limit, or cause the first generated to cease. Their circles may intersect, yet they are practically independent, and cannot neutralise one another. In the realm of morals it is the same. The act once committed passes into the region of persistent and indubitable fact. Of sins, both passive and active, this is equally true. And consequently I am doomed--so long as I retain conscious individuality--to remain hopelessly lowered in my self-esteem."

The sick man spoke with a fierceness of conviction, his voice usually low and even swelling into full sonorous tones; his attenuated frame vibrant with energy; his face illuminated, as though a lamp burned behind that thin investiture of flesh and bone. Laurence saw in him, for the moment, a great orator, more probably a great preacher, wasted. And the thought of that waste of force, waste of power, stung him out of indolence, out of mere easy good nature. He, at least, would shilly-shally no more with life, but play the game--whatever the game presenting itself--whole-heartedly. And again that queer shiver of excitement ran through him; while again he reminded himself he had now reliable testimony that he had met with something far stranger, more incalculable and mysterious, than any vision of a dream, in that clear-coloured room downstairs last night. He stood silent, thinking intently, feeling keenly, his whole nature alert. But a small rustling sound, as of a chill wind among dry leaves in a winter hedge, recalled him to his immediate surroundings. Mr. Rivers had sunk back against the silken cushions, which rustled under his weight. The light had died out of his face, his hands clutched tremblingly at the crystal _memento mori_ resting on his knees. For the first time Laurence realised how very near--but for the indomitable strength of will which supported him--he was to death. Laurence bent over him.

"This is heavy, sir," he said, touching the crystal skull. "May I put it back on the table?"

Mr. Rivers bowed his head in assent.

"We have talked too much. It would be wise, I think, for me to leave you."

"It would be so."

"May I call your man before I go--I hardly like to leave you alone."

"Thank you; he will come at the accustomed hour. I do not deviate from habits once formed except under stress of necessity."

Laurence was pushed by the desire to say something gentle, something expressive of the honour in which he held his host's rectitude and sincerity. But Mr. Rivers lay back motionless, his eyes closed. It was difficult to find just the words he wished. He turned away towards the door, when the elder man's voice recalled him.

"Laurence," he said, "Laurence--one word before we part. If you should see fit to undertake those investigations of which we have spoken, and in face of which I showed myself unfaithful and a craven--remember I press nothing upon you, I leave you free to undertake them or not as you please--I have one request to make of you."

"Yes, sir," he answered.

"It is this--that you will under no circumstances communicate the result of those investigations to any person save myself, and only to me should I definitely ask you to do so. Will you give me your word?"

"I give you my word, sir."

And with the feeling that he had bound himself to an engagement of unlooked-for solemnity, the young man went out into the steady brightness of the corridor, while--as last night--the odour of the orchids met him, enfolding him in their thick, musky sweetness, half-way down the dark, shining, oaken-stairs.

X

As he pulled the edge of the heavy, leather-lined curtain towards him, Laurence laughed a little, in part at his own eagerness, in part defiant of scruples. Waking in the small hours, as a baby-child, he had often imagined that, could he climb the high rails of his cot and steal back unperceived to the day-nursery, he would find all his toys alive and stirring, at play on their own account. And this conception of the reversal of the natural order of things, while it frightened him, yet enchanted his fancy. Something of that childish alarm and enchantment arose in him now. He felt about to bid farewell to common-sense, possibly--to usual established habits of thought, assuredly. He was about to commit himself to an untried element; offering himself as sport to seas unsounded as yet, to unknown forces which might prove malign and merciless. While the promise, by which he had so lately bound himself, introduced into the coming experience an element of secrecy that made--as enforced secrecy so often does make--for a rather dangerous degree of personal liberty.

So he turned the door-handle not without expectation. And this time expectation suffered no disappointment. In front of the tall, satin-wood escritoire, her back towards him, her delicate hands wandering anxiously over the painted and polished surface, he beheld once more the slender, rose-clad figure.

Laurence drew in his breath with a sigh of satisfaction. He crossed the room boldly to-night and stood beside her; and her pale, ethereal loveliness entranced him as he spoke.

"Listen to me," he said. "We are strangers to one another--so strangely strangers that I half distrust the evidence of my senses, as, only too conceivably, you distrust the evidence of yours. I don't pretend to understand what distance of time, or space, or conditions, separates us. I only know that I see you, and that you are unhappy, and that you search for something you are unable to find.--Look here, look here--listen to me and try to lay hold of this idea--that I am a friend, not an enemy; that I come to help, not to hinder you. Try to enter into some sort of relation with me. Try to cross the gulf which seems to lie between us. Try to believe that you have found some one who will keep faith with you, and do his best to serve you; and believing that, put sorrow out of your face--"

He stopped suddenly. When he began speaking he might have been addressing a sleep-walker or a person in a trance. There was no speculation in her sweet eyes. They were wild with a wondering distress, looking on him as though not seeing him. But as he continued to plead with her--speaking slowly, pausing at the close of each sentence in the hope that the sense of his words might so reach and arrest her--a gradual change came over her aspect, as of one awakening from prolonged and troubled slumber. There was a dawning of intelligence in her expression, as in that of a little child first struggling to apprehend and measure, not by means of its senses merely, but in obedience to the conscious effort of its mind. The drooping corners of the mouth straightened, turned upward, the lips breaking into a timid, questioning smile. She stretched herself a little, clenched her fists gently, rubbed her eyes with them in innocent, baby fashion, stretched again, and then looked full at Laurence--a woman shy, diffident, but in possession of her faculties, expectant, and alive.

"Yes--yes--there, that's right. Now you look, as you used to, look as you should," he exclaimed, his voice low, shaken with very vital excitement. He felt as when--once or twice--bringing a racing yacht in to the finish, a fair spread of blue water between her stern and her competitor's bows, he had felt her pace quicken while the tiller throbbed and danced under his hand. A buoyancy of heart, a delicious conviction of successful attainment was upon him. Sportsman and poet alike rejoiced in Laurence just then, and the spiritual side of his nature was touched as well. He seemed to have witnessed a glad resurrection, enforcing belief in the immortality of the soul, as he gazed on this lovely face in which reason, hope, even gaiety, were so visibly born anew.

"Never mind about that which you have lost," he said. "Let it be for the present. We will arrive at it in time sure enough--leave all that to me. You want these drawers opened, their locks picked?--Well, that shall be done all in good time. But whatever treasures we find there will be but a trifle, it strikes me, compared with that which we have already found to-night. For I have found you--found you once more--and you, thank God, have found yourself."

Again his companion stretched, and passed her hands across her eyes, while her lips parted in a soundless sigh. Silence held her yet, but that appeared to make singularly little difference in their intercourse. For he perceived that she understood, that she sympathised, that she too was penetrated with quick, intimate joy, and an exquisite and innocent good-fellowship, as plainly as though a very torrent of eloquent explanation and asseveration had issued from her mouth. Indeed, this wordlessness had for him an extraordinary charm. Far from a power being lacking, it was to him as though a new power had been granted, and that the most subtle and convincing to the heart.

Laurence stood tall, upright, in the full pride of his young manhood, of his virile energy and strength, before this slender fairy-lady, with her softly gleaming jewels, her dainty frills and laces, her clinging rose-red, old-world, silken gown, and held out his hands to her.

"Come," he said, "the night is fair and windless and full of stars. Shall we go out into it and read the great poem of the sky and the woodland while all men sleep, you and I--good comrades, old friends, though as most mortals count meeting, we have met each other, it would seem, but twice?--You have known sad things. Well, forget them. You have searched vainly for lost things. Well, forget them too. The finest house at best remains somewhat of a prison, and this room is pervaded by melancholy memories. Leave it. Let us give the past, give convention, give reason even, the slip for once--and go."

For a minute or more she hesitated, looking at Laurence profoundly, as though trying to read his inmost thought. Then she laid her hand in his. It had neither weight nor substance, but touched his palm as a light summer wind might have touched his cheek, or a butterfly's wings might have fluttered, with a just perceptible pulsation, within the hollow of his hands.

And so Laurence threw open the high French window, and together they passed out onto the grey, semicircular flight of steps. Immediately below lay the Italian garden--its formal flower-borders, its faintly dripping fountains, its black, spire-like cypresses, white balustrades and statues, vague, mysterious, in the starlight. The great lawns stretched away beyond, crossed by the broad gravel walk, which showed pale for some fifty yards, and then was lost in the dusky shadow of the grove of lime-trees. In the north was a wide, white light travelling--since the March nights now grew short--along the horizon, through the quiet hours, from the last death-flush of sunset to the first birth-flush of the dawn.

Lawrence watched his companion anxiously as her little feet in their diamond-powdered slippers crossed the window-sill. With that impalpable hand in his, that scarcely perceptible flutter--as of a captive butterfly--against his fingers, he could not but entertain fears that the strong open air might work some change in her; that she might be drawn up and absorbed by the sharp, glittering starlight; that she might be resolved into nothingness by the keen breath of the night, or that some sturdy sea-breeze might arise and blow her quite away. But such as she was--woman, or sprite, or visitant from beyond the gates of the grave--she remained by his side. And together they passed down the garden alleys, and lingered by the dripping fountains watching the sleepless fish that moved--silent as the dainty lady herself--through the water of the lichen-encrusted, stone basins. They stood together beneath the dark cypresses which, even on winter nights, smell dry and warm of the south, and talk in husky, whispering accents of classic lands--of marble columns mellow with age, and saffron-plastered walls, over which great vines hang, and in the hot cracks of which scorpions breed, and light-footed lizards glance and scamper. And, still together, they went on--the unspoken sympathy between them growing, deepening--down the second flight of steps and along the broad, gravelled way. Here, in the open space, the whole panorama of the heavens was disclosed; and then, almost in spite of himself, Laurence broke into utterance. He talked, as never, even in his most brilliant moments, he had talked before. The scene was so majestic, and moreover he had so perfect a listener, every movement of whose graceful body, every glance of whose profound and gentle eyes expressed comprehension, accord--as when the violin strings answer, in exquisite melody, to the skilfully handled bow.

And so forgetting himself, ceasing to exercise that reticence--half-humorous, half-reverent--with which, as with a cloak, modern, civilised man strives to hide the noblest and purest of his thought, Laurence laid bare his heart and soul to his sweet companion. He told her tender, trivial incidents of his youth and childhood--in themselves of little moment, yet such as leave an indelible mark on the imagination and character. He told her of the splendid hopes of his opening manhood, when, with the magnificent self-confidence of inexperience, the whole world seemed his to conquer if he pleased. He told her of those plays and poems, so full of promise that, could he have realised the fulness of his own conceptions, they must have rendered his name famous through all the coming years. He told her, too, of those brief, fugitive moments of spiritual illumination, when he had felt himself draw very near to the ultimate meaning and purpose of things; when he had apprehended God as the Eternal Lover, the soul of man as the Eternal Bride, and how, in the light of that blessed apprehension, all confusion had ceased, all life, all death, becoming at once very simple and very holy, guiltless alike of suffering and of shame.

Then--as they wandered yet further into the thin shadow of the still leafless lime-trees, and, sitting for a while upon the stone bench beside the broad, dim walk, looked forth under the down-sweeping branches, to the vast expanse of the distant country--he descended from discourse of these high matters. He told her of the joys of manly sports and pastimes, and of the still greater joys of travel and adventure, in far countries, among alien peoples, by land and sea.

Thus did the hours pass in glad and fearless communion of heart with heart, and soul with soul, while upon the horizon the white light walked slowly, surely eastward. And then, at last, it seemed as though some disturbing thought invaded his fairy-lady's mind, causing her attention to waver, her gentle gaiety to wane. The purport of that thought Laurence failed to read, and this troubled him with a sensation of helplessness, as though a gulf was once again opening between his state of being and hers, which he was powerless to cross. She rose from her place beside him and moved restlessly to and fro. And when he pleaded with and questioned her, she moved yet further from him, and stood with one hand raised as imploring silence. She appeared to listen for some call, some summons, quite other than welcome, for he could see the corners of her dear mouth droop once more, while her eyes grew shy and wild. Unwillingly as though constrained by some force she did not love yet must obey, she passed out on to the clear, smooth spaces of the great lawns. The grass blades were touched with a whiteness of frost; but Laurence observed that neither her footsteps, nor the little frills bordering her gown as they swept it, left any track upon the spangled turf.

Sheep bells sounded plaintively from some far-off fold. Rabbits slipped out timorously from the edge of the wood to take their morning feed, and, perceiving no threatening presence, waxed bold, skipping and gambolling upon the frosty grass. Then with a sullen roar, breaking up the gracious quiet of nature with the hoarse voice of man's business, man's necessity of labour, and unappeasable unrest, a train thundered along the valley, leaving a long trail of pale smoke hanging among the grey-brown masses of the indistinguishable trees.

The roar died out as it had come, sullen and imperative to the last. There followed a pause as though for a minute or two all nature, all living creatures, held their breath. And then from the near stables, and from distant homestead and farm, cocks challenged one another--some in tones high and shrill, some faint and low--heralding the sunrise and telling all the world that day was once more born.

Immediately, to his consternation, Laurence beheld his lovely companion and friend turn away; and, without farewell, without smallest apparent recollection of his presence, flit--as some bird, or rather as some rose-red rose-leaf driven by a storm wind--across the lawns, past the dripping fountains and sighing cypresses of the Italian garden, back, back, up the grey steps and in at the open window of the silent house.

He followed her rapidly. The sun-rays shot up into the eastern sky as he crossed the window-sill. Within, the glory of the sunrise struggled with the unyielding glare of the electric light. Every object, every corner and recess, was clearly seen. But the room was vacant. Once again his fairy-lady had vanished leaving no trace, her sweet presence was removed and Laurence found himself alone.

XI

Something drummed and drummed; and, in obedience to that sound, it appeared to Laurence that he returned--whence he knew not--across the most prodigious spaces ever traversed by the spirit of man. Then the matter explained itself. He was on board ship once again, awakened to the familiar pounding of the engines and drum of the screw. Opening his eyes, they would rest on the white iron and wooden walls of his state-room, and the alert figure of his bedroom steward, announcing--"Fair morning, sir; bath ready, sir." And this impression was so distinct that it took him some seconds to focus his actual whereabouts--the stately and serious bed-chamber at Stoke Rivers, and the portly person of Watkins, the under-butler, standing at the bedside, a silver tea-tray in his large, soft hands.

"I beg your pardon, sir, but I have been up twice already and received no answer," he said, his manner correct and respectful as ever, but his face wearing, for once, an expression of quite human solicitude--or was it curiosity? "I spoke to Mr. Renshaw and Mr. Lowndes, and they considered it advisable that I should enter, sir. Mr. Renshaw and Mr. Lowndes felt, with me, not quite comfortable, sir, knowing your habit of early rising."

Watkins set down the tray carefully, turning out the corners of the fine napkin which covered it.

"Your tea, your letters, sir," he added, and then paused.

Laurence tried to rouse himself. Shipboard and the pounding engines were a delusion clearly. But was the night of sweet converse, and the flitting away of a rose-clad, slender figure at the first flush of dawn, a delusion likewise?

"Oh yes, thanks, Watkins, I am all right," he said absently. "I've slept late, have I? What time is it?"

"Between ten minutes and a quarter past eleven when I passed through the hall," the man answered. "Any orders for the stables, sir?"

Laurence was tearing open his letters. One was addressed in his wife's large and elaborate hand. Laughing at her, one day before their marriage, he had declared that did she possess half the amount of character suggested by these opulent hieroglyphics, there would positively be no getting to the end of it, so that his work clearly was cut out for him for the rest of his natural life. Now the sight of that handwriting--though he had possibly ceased to regard it as a perfectly trustworthy index to its writer's personality--affected him with a movement of vague self-reproach. For, as sleep left him, Laurence entertained less and less doubt of the actuality of the existence of his rose-clad fairy-lady; or of the fact that he had spent hours with her--hours, blameless it is true, yet beautiful beyond all remembered hours of his experience. And though he had done no wrong, yet the very beauty of those hours--since she had not shared it--constituted a certain subtle, subjective infidelity towards his wife. This pricked his conscience the more, that he perceived Virginia must have written to him by the very next mail, but three days after he had sailed. And that was rather charming and thoughtful of her, for she had innumerable engagements claiming her time and attention, and was by no means addicted to anxiety regarding the absent. "Why should she worry," as she remarked at parting, "everybody was always crossing now, and you hardly ever heard of any one not getting to the other side safely enough." Therefore it seemed to Laurence it would be a duty, perhaps also a little salve to his conscience, to do something pleasing--however remotely--to Virginia. He had an order for the stables. He would ride over to luncheon with her friend and admirer, Mrs. Bellingham, at Bishop's Pudbury.

Once on his feet, Laurence was somewhat surprised at his own sensations. He found himself singularly tired, as a man may be by some prolonged concentration of brain or of will. He felt as though he had made some tremendous mental effort; and, now that it was over, depression held both his mind and body. His spirits were not as buoyant as usual, nor was his thought clear. He felt dazed, and incapable of grappling with the strange problems raised by the events of the last twenty-four hours. The swing of possibility they suggested was too great. The average, the _banal_ attracted him, as a narcotic attracts one in pain. For the moment he suffered something approaching repulsion towards his recent exaltation and amazing, half-realised discoveries. He wanted to get back on to the ordinary lines of things--be amused, be a trifle stupid, laugh, gossip, forget.

The sun had long since burnt up that sprinkling of frost upon the grass. The air was fragrant and mild. Catkins fringed the hazel twigs, while in the shelter of the deep lanes leaves showed tenderly green. The sap had risen in the trees, so that a broken branch bled. Indications of fertility and growth were everywhere, Nature sensibly putting forth her strength after the sleep of winter. The road which Laurence followed, after crossing the park, turned upward under overhanging trees, and skirted the low, stone wall of the churchyard. And the contrast between this last resting-place of human corpses and the perpetual and so evident fecundity of Nature struck home to him, yet not distressfully. He was not wholly unwilling, in his present mood, to welcome the thought of eventual rest.