Part 7

The view was very noble. Southward the fall of the ground was sufficiently abrupt to exclude all middle distance, with the result that the rough grasses, withered bents and sorrel-stalks of the near pasture-field were outlined against the immense sweep of the flat coastline far below--this last, mauve, and russet, and dim green, was broken here and there by a pallor of sandhills and the shimmer of seaward-tending streams. Looking west, the suave contours of the Downs and Beachy Head rose, in indigo and purple, against a great space of saffron-coloured sky. Above them, but with a bar of strong light between, heavy masses of purple-grey cloud gathered, from out which the freshening wind blew chill. The sea, steel-blue and dashed with white-capped waves, lifted a hard, serrated edge against the horizon.

All this Laurence saw. It made a rather splendid picture, big with the drama of approaching storm. Yet he was persuaded something was lacking. As three days ago upon first entering the yellow drawing-room at Stoke Rivers, he had, after the first moment of surprise, instinctively looked for certain ornaments and pieces of furniture, and derived a singular satisfaction from the conviction that they still occupied their accustomed place--so now and here, though to his knowledge he had never before ridden across this piece of exposed and but half-reclaimed common-land, or seen the great view under its existing aspect,--he instinctively gazed seaward in search of that which should support his half-awakened memory, and complete the scene to his satisfaction. For surely--yes, surely--bowling up Channel, under crowded canvas, before the freshening breeze, he should behold a fleet of some eight or ten square-rigged East Indiamen, their carven poops standing high out of the water,--vessels of about a thousand tons' burden, laden with tea and spices, bales of delicate muslins and silks, flasks of utter, porcelain, ivory fans, bright-hued parrots, and unseemly, little apes.

And as convoy of these rich cargoes, to secure them, their merchant captains and bronzed and sturdy crews, against the rapacity of privateers sweeping out from St. Malo and other ports of Northern France, he should behold--yes, surely he should--a couple of smart English frigates, square-rigged too, whose clean scrubbed decks and the black mouths of whose port holes displayed grim argument of cannon, ready for action should occasion so demand. The ships, hugging the land for greater safety from alert and hungry foes, seemed--while the wind filled the bellying sails, straining their tall masts, as they heeled upon that uneasy, blue-grey sea--like some flight of huge, golden-plumage birds; for all the saffron glory now streaming from beneath the gathering storm-clouds in the west must lie full on them.

For such gallant sight Laurence watched, singularly moved, and with a singular eagerness. And so clear was the vision to his mind, so necessary to the completion of the scene upon which his eyes rested, that for some moments he failed to distinguish where actuality ended and hallucination began. He contemplated the creation of his own brain in absorbed interest; then turned and looked at the rough road and dilapidated turnpike house, and then again out to sea. Only a black-hulled, ocean-going tramp, her deckhouses piled up amidships close against her reeking funnel, laboured slowly down channel in the teeth of the gusty breeze. This was all; and then the young man understood, not without amazement, that the gallant show had been a thing of the imagination only,--at most a thing remembered, but how and whence remembered he could not tell. For how, upon any reasonable hypothesis, could the memory of a man like himself of but just over thirty, put back the clock by close upon a century, and disport itself with incidents belonging by rights to, at least, two generations ago? It was all most exceedingly strange. It amounted to being disquieting. Really he did not half like it. Yet the imagined spectacle had been very inspiring all the same. It had made his blood tingle, and had effectually (or disastrously) exorcised that spirit of indolence and _laisser aller_ which he had solicited to take up its abode with him. He sent his horse forward at a sharp trot, while once again he proceeded to revise the situation.

For the idea presented itself that perhaps he had been over self-confident, arrogating to himself a far greater freedom of will than he, in point of fact, possessed. It was all very fine to foreswear adventure, but what if adventure refused to be foresworn? He might easily propose to decline upon modernity, mediocrity, and the Commonplace; but what if these, as seemed just now highly probable, asserted in unmistakable language their determination to have none of him? He reflected that temperament may constitute your genius or your fate, your opportunity or your ruin, as you have the wit to deal with it; but that temperament is indestructible, and that escape from it,--however inconvenient and contrary to your desire that temperament may be,--is obviously and inherently impossible.

As he meditated thus, the road he followed dipped slightly, leaving the bare upland and passing along the under side of a thick belt of wood, which cut off the seaward view. On the left, between the interspaces of the hedgerow trees, the inland country now lay disclosed for many miles. Clouds had gathered so rapidly in the last ten minutes that the sun was obscured, and all the wide expanse was drowned in heavy violet and indigo shadow. Only a ridge of hill, some three-quarters of a mile distant, was caught by long shafts of wild, rainbow light, so that it floated as a narrow, fish-shaped island upon the ocean of stormy colour. And upon that island, uplifted, transmuted, etherealised, rendered at once unreal yet insistent, vividly defined by the unnatural and searching light, Laurence beheld Stoke Rivers--the long, low house, and its double range of windows, its avenues, and carriage-ways, the block of stable buildings; every detail of the Italian garden, its cypress spires as of full-toned amethyst, its white balustrades and statues iridescent as though made of long-buried Roman glass, its great lawns green as malachite, the dome of its lime-grove touched by a dim glow as of uncut rubies. In this strange and unearthly radiance, Stoke Rivers seemed to call upon Laurence, to challenge his admiration, to assert its existence and its claim upon his heart, with a singular power. It was part of him, and he of it. It laid hands on his past and his future alike. It refused to be taken lightly. As a woman wears her jewels to startle and enthral a desired lover, so this dwelling-place of his people arrayed itself in marvellous wise to conquer his wavering allegiance and command his thought. It would force him not to disregard its secrets. It wooed him to intimacy, to discovery. It cried to him out, as it seemed, of some unplumbed depth of experience in himself.

That night Mr. Rivers engaged his nephew until past midnight. His manner was gracious, his mind, apparently, unusually at peace. His conversation was remarkably brilliant, both in range of subject and readiness of expression. First dealing with the earliest known examples of art, and displaying critical acquaintance with Chaldean cylinders and stelae, he passed on to the persistent influence of Eastern ideas upon Western religious thought. He discoursed of Hindu sacred literature and the crowded pantheon of Hindu gods, noting how certain practices connected with their worship and certain symbols pertaining to it have passed into the common use of the Catholic Church. He discoursed of the Gnostic sects, and their influence upon African and Syrian Christianity. Then, invading the Spanish peninsular in the train of the Moors, he delivered himself of a spirited disquisition upon Averrhoes, the lawyer philosopher of Cordova, his doctrine of the Universal Reason and denial of the immortality of the individual soul.

Laurence went forth onto the bright, hot corridor, and paused at the stairhead. He was honestly tired both in mind and body. He needed, and would take, an honest night's rest. But one thing was sure. Whether he had decided or merely yielded, whether he represented the positive or negative element, he knew not; but this he did know, that the Commonplace, and all the ease of it, might wait. He was not ready for that just yet.

XIII

Of the first twelve keys, some slipped round without effect, some stuck and were withdrawn with difficulty. But the wards of the thirteenth bit into the lock, and the bolt gave with a click. Laying hold of the cylindrical front of the escritoire, Laurence pushed it up and back. Within, a row of arcaded pigeon-holes was disclosed; and on either side these, a range of little drawers, the pale, bright wood of which retained its pristine polish, while the colours of the painted medallions adorning them were very fresh though frail. The cupids, the little figures of lover and mistress, courtier and prince, were instinct with vivacity and grace--the heedless vivacity, the artificial grace of those over-ripe, luxurious periods which carry in their womb the seeds of revolution and social catastrophe. Laurence was moved, observing it all. Evidently the bolt had not been shot, the rounded front run back, and this mimic world of fine-fanciful elegance displayed for many years. And then this pretty toy of a thing seemed so slight and incongruous a receptacle for the storage of momentous secrets. Yet that the secrets it held were momentous, dealing with problems of life and death, subtle transformations of flesh and spirit, the young man--notwithstanding the soothing influences of a healthy night's rest, and the pre-eminently unexciting ones of a grey, wet, March afternoon--felt no doubt. For he had given in, as he believed, finally, to the adventure; and with that giving in, his faith in the magnitude of it suffered, by natural rebound, serious increase.

So reverently, and as one who approaches a long disused shrine containing promise of strange and precious relics, he opened the shallow drawers and examined their contents. The first three were filled with packets of letters, written on thin, discoloured paper, and tied, some with pink, some with yellow, sarsenet ribbon. Each packet was neatly dated, the dates ranging, as Laurence gathered in a first hasty survey, from the year 1802 to the year 1805. The remaining drawers contained a collection of objects, miscellaneous in character but united in the thought (as he divined) of whoso placed them there, side by side, by some exquisitely tender sentiment.--A man's paste shoe-buckles, square and bowed, the silver settings of them tarnished to blackness, reposed beside a woman's striped, waist ribbon, cinnamon and white, embroidered in buds and scattered full-blown roses. Here were seals cut from envelopes, the cracked and blistered wax of them impressed with the Rivers's arms and crest; and a store of semi-transparent, delicately tinted shells, spoils of some far-distant, southern coast. There were trinkets, too, rings and bracelets of intricate Indian workmanship; and a cluster of coral charms, of Neapolitan origin, with the tiny golden hand, first and fourth fingers stiffly extended, which keeps off the Evil Eye. Next, little posies, such as a lover might pluck and his mistress might wear for an evening, pinned, to please him, in the bosom of her dress. These last were pressed and flattened, the several hues of the once radiant blossoms faded to an ashen uniformity of tint. They were sadly brittle, too; and though Laurence raised them with careful fingers, crumbled to nothingness under his touch. Then he lighted on a man's watch, a great, gold warming-pan of a thing, with a guard of black lustre ribbon and a bunch of heavy seals attached. The back of the case bore the Rivers's crest--a bird of doubtful lineage, its wings extended for flight, its talons holding something, which to Laurence always appeared to bear humorous relation to a fool's cap. The case was also engraved with the initials L. R. in flowing and ornate lettering.

And over these initials Laurence paused. They piqued his curiosity. They also, somewhat to his own amusement, provoked in him a feeling suspiciously akin to jealousy. They were his own; yet he could not but imagine that they were also those of a person closely connected with the sweet and mysterious companion, who had walked the lawns and garden alleys with him during the small hours, fled and vanished at cock-crow, two nights back. A very definite purpose of learning more about this same person--of whom, he divined, this pathetic store of objects to be gifts or memorials--possessed Laurence. Had he wronged the gentle lady in life, so causing her after sorrow? Or had some tragic happening parted him from her, without fault of his? And what manner of man had he been, while a dweller here, in ordinary fashion, upon earth? It became of great moment to Laurence to answer these questions. Perhaps those packets of discoloured letters would tell. Meanwhile, there remained another shallow, painted drawer to be searched.

It contained, wrapped face to face, in a lace and lawn handkerchief, two very exquisite miniatures by Cosway. And then, though he courted surprises, agreeing with himself to expect nothing save the unexpected, and to accept all possible extravagance of improbability that might arise with as little dislocation of mind as one accepts the extravagancies of a dream, Laurence stood for a moment speechless, absolutely confounded.

For one miniature represented his fairy-lady, her lovely eyes and lips smiling with discreet gladsomeness, her expression an enchanting union of sprightliness and of content. An azure ribbon was threaded through the soft masses of her elaborately-dressed hair, little curls of which strayed down on to her forehead. The string of pearls was clasped around her throat. She wore her transparent, white, frilled cape and rose-red, silken gown. Her graceful head and slender figure--to the waist--were seen against a background of faint dove-coloured cloud. The painter had painted fondly as a friend, it would seem, as well as a master of his craft.--And the other miniature, by the same hand, showing the same delightful sympathy of artist with his subject, touched by the same poetic insight and grace, was a portrait of whom? Well, of himself--himself, Laurence Rivers, not as he was to-day, but as he had been, ten years ago, at one-and-twenty. With astonishment, bordering very closely on alarm, he observed that colouring, features, the square cutting of the nostrils, a certain softness in the lines of the mouth, the shape of the head, the straight set of the shoulders, all these were perfectly exact. While the countenance was instinct with that inimitable charm of unsullied youth, that fearlessness and happy self-confidence, the attractive power of which he had only fully realised as they had begun to fade out of his aspect in the course of his passage from early to maturer manhood, while the boundlessly generous aspirations of inexperience were in course of being discredited by increasing knowledge of the standards and habits of this not altogether noble or virtuous world.

Laurence took the miniature in his hand, and considered it closely, with a twinge of self-abasement. Endowed with so ingratiating a personality, so admirable a physical equipment, he ought surely to have made a definite name and place for himself in contemporary history! And what of moment had he to show, after all, for his thirty-one years of living? Practically nothing, he feared. And the young man of the miniature made better play with his handsome person, and the qualities and talents which might be expected to accompany it? He had been a sailor apparently, for he wore the dark-blue, naval uniform of the early years of the century, his brown hair being tied back into a queue. But for these details the resemblance to himself was absolute. And then, suddenly, with a sense of faintness as though his identity were slipping away from him, and his hold on actuality loosening as he imagined it might loosen in the moments immediately preceding death, Laurence remembered that he had worn a precisely similar costume--that of a naval lieutenant of the time of Nelson--at a fancy dress ball given in his honour, at the country house of certain of his mother's relations, on the eve of his twenty-first birthday. He had been mightily chaffed about his good looks and air of assured conquest upon the occasion in question; and had laughingly replied that he, too, intended to fight his battle of Trafalgar and win it, only that he should take jolly good care not to fall in the hour of success, but to survive and thoroughly enjoy the fruits of victory.

The miniatures were oval, each set in a plain gold band. Laurence turned them over in search of a possible inscription. Upon the reverse of the one were engraved the words--"Agnes, a gift to her dear cousin," and the date, "August 1803." Upon the other--"Laurence, a gift to his dear love," and the same date.

Rain had followed on the stormy splendours of the preceding evening; and as the young man raised his eyes absently and stared out of the great bay-window, he became sensible that the outlook was comfortless enough. The gardens and the distant view were blurred and blotted by driving mist; while, in the room itself, there reigned a singularly blear and cheerless light. A damp, earthy odour, moreover, pervaded the atmosphere, as though the moisture prevailing out of doors had gained access to the house. Carefully, rather sadly, Laurence laid the two miniatures side by side upon the filmy handkerchief. The radiant, pictured faces, the two graceful, young heads turned slightly towards each other as in mutual tenderness and sympathy, offered, he thought, pathetic contrast to the melancholy of this tearful morning. That this young man had in no way wronged the fair and gentle woman, he now felt assured. But that assurance, so perverse is human nature, did not serve to elate him. Far from it. As he looked first at the charming pair, and then at the driving mist, a sense of great loneliness, almost of desolation, came over him; while the word spectre--which, when employed yesterday by his lively hostess Mrs. Bellingham, had seemed of such meagre and even vulgar significance--now occurred to him with a new and immediate meaning. Spectral--that this room was in the present dreary light. While, if the idea called for further and concrete presentiment, he could--looking on the fearless and hopeful countenance of that other Laurence Rivers--offer it in his own person. Involuntarily he shivered, since, for the moment, his tenure of name, person and individuality, seemed so questionable, a matter of sufferance merely--amounting to no more, in fact, than a remote reversionary interest in another man's goods.

At random he picked up a couple of packets of letters off the top of the escritoire, where he had laid them, and moved across to the window. It was not wholesome to look at those happy faces--one his own--any longer. The letters tied with a pink ribbon were in a woman's hand, sloped and pointed, but with a peculiar elegance of lettering and evenness of line. Then for an instant he debated, questioning whether he could without breach of honour, and of the respect in which all decent-minded persons hold the dead, open and read these letters. The position was extraordinary to the point of abrogating accustomed rules of conduct; yet he felt a certain delicacy in reading a woman's letters and surprising the secrets of her heart. But as he turned them over, glancing at the first page of each, he perceived that in every case they were addressed to himself; for at the top corner of each was written--"To Laurence Rivers, Esq.," and below either "Dear cousin" or "Dear love." Then the irony of the thing taking him, he smiled to himself and said:

"Oh, well, come along, surely I have a right to the smooth as well as the rough. If I am such a very second-hand affair any way, with not so much as a name or face of my own to be proud of, I'll at least have the advantages of my disabilities. I will know how my other, first-hand, self was made love to and made love."

Yet no sooner had he begun to read, than he became aware that he knew that already. For as he perused the thin, deeply-creased pages, he felt, with a certainty independent of and passing all proof, that he had read these sweet effusions, these innocent chronicles of home life, of meetings and partings, pretty pleasures and junketings, not once but many times already. He remembered them. He could almost tell what words would meet his eye as he straightened and turned the fluttering sheets of paper.

"--I am much concerned," wrote Agnes Rivers, "that so many months must elapse before I can again receive news of you. I preach Patience to myself; but that virtue, though a good servant, is but a sorrowful master. I am pursued by fears on your account, which often move me to tears when I am alone, or have retired to my chamber at night. You will reprove my feminine weakness and bid me take courage. Yet I defy you to maintain such fears are wholly misplaced, in face of the wild scenes of tempest and of battle which you may be called upon to witness."

Again--"It grieves me that I cannot write to you of my affection with the freedom dictated by my heart. But my means of communicating with you amid the convulsions of the present terrible war are so uncertain, that I constantly tremble lest my letters should fall into other hands than yours. My good Mrs. Lambert, who, as you will remember, is ever solicitous for the maintenance of propriety, impresses this danger upon me, and urges reticence and circumspection. I therefore entreat you, dear Laurence, not to measure the depth of my regard by my present expression of it. Recall, rather, all the happy and unclouded hours we have enjoyed together, and let them speak for me."

And again--"Your brother Dudley, though, I grieve to say, not less harsh and imperious towards others, continues to treat me with all brotherly consideration and courtesy. He is very thoughtful of the improvement of my mind, and we still follow our studies in the Italian and Spanish languages. His great knowledge and intelligence are of incalculable advantage to me, and I trust that I prove a docile, if not a very brilliant, pupil. I own my thoughts at times wander, though I strive, in gratitude to my kind preceptor, to keep them fixed upon my tasks. Mrs. Lambert is, unfortunately, as much alarmed by Dudley's opinions and conversation as ever. I could myself wish that he would express himself with less violence on the subject of politics and of religion. But his early travels in the unfortunate country of France, and his intimate association with Mr. Robespierre and other leaders of her sanguinary revolution, have, I much fear, permanently warped his mind and prejudiced his judgment. Yesterday, at dinner, he entered into a discussion with our new rector, Mr. Burkinshaw--a scholarly and estimable person--upon the Rights of Man, and the nature and attributes of the Deity, asserting subversive and atheistical views with so much heat and intemperance of language, that Mrs. Lambert fled from table in tears, while Mr. Burkinshaw was, I could not but see, seriously offended and hurt."