The Gateless Barrier

By LUCAS MALET

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
1900

Copyright, 1900, by
Dodd, Mead and Company

UNIVERSITY PRESS
JOHN WILSON AND SON
CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.

CONTENTS

[Preface]
[I]
[II]
[III]
[IV]
[V]
[VI]
[VII]
[VIII]
[IX]
[X]
[XI]
[XII]
[XIII]
[XIV]
[XV]
[XVI]
[XVII]
[XVIII]
[XIX]
[XX]
[XXI]
[XXII]
[XXIII]
[XXIV]
[XXV]
[By the same author]

Preface

"What is the book?"

"According to the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese characters of the title, we call it Mu-Mon-Kwan, which means 'The Gateless Barrier.' It is one of the books especially studied by the Zen sect, or the sect of Dhyâna. A peculiarity of some of the Dhyâna texts—this (story) being a good example—is that they are not explanatory. They only suggest. Questions are put, but the student must think out the answers for himself. He must think them out but not write them. You know that Dhyâna represents human effort to reach, through meditation, zones of thought beyond the range of verbal expression; and any thought narrowed into utterance loses all Dhyâna quality.... Well, this story is supposed to be true; but it is used only for a Dhyâna question...."

LAFCADIO HEARN.

"Exotics and Retrospectives," pages 83, 84.

The Gateless Barrier

I

Laurence leaned his arms upon the broad wooden hand-rail of the bulwarks. The water hissed away from the side. Immediately below it was laced by shifting patterns of white foam, and stained pale green, violet, and amber, by the light shining out through the rounds of the port-poles. Further away it showed blue black, but for a glistening on the hither side of the vast ridge and furrow. The smoke from the funnels streamed afar, and was upturned by a following wind. The great ship swung in the trough, and then lifted—as a horse lifts at a fence—while the seas slid away from under her keel. As she lifted, her masts raked the blue-black night sky, and the stars danced in the rigging.

This was the first time since his marriage, nearly two years before, that Laurence found himself alone and altogether his own master. His marriage was a notable success—every one said so, and he himself had never doubted the fact so far. Yet this solitary voyage, this temporary return to bachelorhood, possessed compensations. He reproached himself, as in duty bound, for being sensible of those compensations. He excused himself to himself. He gave reasons. Doubtless his present sense of freedom and content took its rise not in his enforced absence from Virginia, from her bright continuous talk, her innumerable and perfectly constructed dresses, her perpetual and skilful activities; but in his escape from the highly artificial and materialised society in which she lived and moved and had her being. Laurence had certainly no ostensible cause of complaint against that society. Its members had recited his verses, given a charming performance of his little comedy—in the interests of a deserving charity—quoted his opinions on literature and politics, and waxed enthusiastic over his strokes at golf and his style at rackets and polo. He had, in fact, been the spoilt child of two New York winters and two Newport summers. No Englishman, he was repeatedly assured, had ever been so popular among the "smart set" of the great republic. It had petted and fêted him, and finally given him one of its fairest daughters to wife. And for all this Laurence Rivers was sincerely grateful. His vanity was most agreeably flattered. His natural love both of pleasing and of pleasure was well satisfied. Yet—such is the perversity of human nature—the very completeness of his success tended to lessen the worth of it. He even questioned, at moments, whether that success did not offer the measure of surrounding immaturity of taste and judgment, rather than of the greatness of his personal talent and merit. He was haunted by the conviction that he had never yet given his best, the highest and strongest of his nature, either in thought, or art, or adventure, or even—perhaps—he feared it—in love. The demand had been for a thoroughly presentable and immediately marketable article; and the Best is usually far from marketable, often but doubtfully presentable either. It followed that Laurence had, almost of necessity, kept the best of himself to himself—kept it to himself so effectually that he had come uncommonly near forgetting its existence altogether, and letting it perish for lack of air and exercise.

Now leaning his arms upon the hand-rail of the bulwarks, while the stars danced in the rigging, and the great ship ploughed her way eastward across the mighty ridge and furrow of the Atlantic, gratified vanity ceased to obtain in him. His thoughts travelled back to periods of his career at once more obscure and more ambitious—to the few vital raptures, the few fine failures, the few illuminating aspirations which he had known. The bottom dropped out of the social side of things, so to speak. He looked below superficial appearances into the heart of it all. Life put off its cheap frippery of fancy dress, Death its cunningly devised concealments and evasions. Backed by the immensities of sea and sky, both stood before him naked and unashamed, in all their primitive and eternal vigour, their uncompromising actuality, their inviolable mystery; while, with a sudden and searching apprehension of the profound import of the question, Rivers asked himself—

"What shall it profit a man—what in good truth—if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

He had been summoned to England by the illness of an uncle whose estates and considerable wealth he would inherit. That illness had been pronounced incurable; but the approaching death of this near relation made small demand upon his intimate feelings. A decent seriousness of thought and speech, concerning the impending event, were all that could reasonably be required of him; for the elder Mr. Rivers was both morose and eccentric, and had given his nephew a handsome allowance on the express understanding that he saw as little of him as possible. A declared misogynist, he had received the announcement of Laurence's proposed marriage with an exasperating mixture of contempt and approval.

"I am sincerely sorry for you," he had written on this occasion. "The more so that you appear to labour under the impression that the step you have in contemplation is calculated to secure your happiness. This, you must pardon my remarking, is obviously absurd. I grant that you are under a moral obligation to perpetuate our family and secure the succession to our estates in the direct line. I cannot, therefore, but be glad that you should adopt the recognised means to attain the above ends. I should, however, respect both your motives and your intelligence more highly had you done this in a rational and scientific spirit, without indulgence in sentimental illusions which every sane student of human history has long since perceived to be as pernicious to the moral, as they are enervating to the mental health. I could say much worthy of your attention upon this point; but, in your present condition of emotional inebriation, it would be a waste of energy on my part,—I might add, a throwing of pearls before swine. Still, justice, my dear Laurence, compels me to own that, even so, I must ever consider myself in a measure your debtor, since the fact of your existence, your remarkably sound physical condition, your normal and slightly unintelligent outlook on life, have combined to relieve me of the odious necessity of sacrificing my time and my personal liberty to the interests of our family, by entering into those domestic relations, which you appear to regard with as much thoughtless complacency as I with reasoned repulsion and distrust."

This being the attitude of the elder Mr. Rivers's mind, it followed that when, by his request, Mr. Wormald, the family solicitor, summoned his nephew and heir to attend his deathbed, the young man's wife was not included in that gloomy invitation. And this Laurence could not by any means honestly regret. Virginia at a disadvantage was an idea almost inconceivable. Yet so immediate and concrete a being would not, he felt, shade quite gracefully into the mortuary landscape. She would not suit it, neither would it suit her. For she was almost amazingly in harmony with her modern, mundane environment; and, save in the way of costly mourning costumes, it seemed incredible that death should have any dominion over her. It struck him, moreover, that if he gauged the position aright, Virginia, notwithstanding her many charms and much cleverness, would have to take a back seat in his eccentric uncle's establishment. And Virginia in a back seat was again an idea almost inconceivable. So he said—

"It's an awful nuisance to have to leave you like this, but this is going to be a pretty dismal bit of business anyhow. I'd much better just worry through it alone. You'll join me later when it's all over, and we are free to take possession and knock the place in shape. Stoke Rivers is really rather delightful, though it is not very large. There used to be some good pictures and books and things in it I remember. I believe my uncle is a virtuoso in his way, though he is such a cross-grained old chap. You'll enjoy the place, at all events for a few months every year, I think, Virginia. And you can have all your own people over in turn, you know; and show them how the savage English do it in their savage little island. You'll make the neighbourhood sit up, I fancy. It'll be amusing."

But as Laurence leaned his arms upon the broad hand-rail of the bulwarks, in the chill of the March night, while the water hissed away from the side, and the engines drummed and pounded, and the bows of the great ship lifted against the far, blue-black horizon, he began to wonder whether he had not been somewhat over hasty in proposing chronic invasion of Stoke Rivers by all Virginia's smart friends in turn. They were well-bred, hospitable, amusing, very much up-to-date. He owed them thanks for a most uncommonly good time. But they seemed a trifle thin, a trifle superficial and ephemeral just now, in face of the immensities of ocean and sky, and of the ancient mysteries of Life and Death.

II

Not until after dinner, on the evening of his arrival, was Laurence admitted to his uncle's presence. The aspect of the room was rich though sombre. Long in proportion to its width, with a low, heavily-moulded ceiling, the walls of it were panelled in black oak three parts of their height. The space between the top of the panelling and the cornice was hung with dark blue silk-damask, narrow diagonal lines of yellow crossing the background of the raised pattern. The short, full curtains drawn over the wide window were of the same handsome material. So were the counterpane and hangings of the half-tester, ebony bed. This last was elaborately carved. Two couchant sphinxes, the polished surface of whose cup-like breasts glowed in the firelight, supported the footboard, as did a couple of caryatides—naked to the loins—the canopy. Near the fireplace stood an oaken table, on which lay a few well-bound books. The further end of it was covered by a cloth of gold and crimson embroidery—evidently fashioned from some priestly vestment—upon which rested a memento mori, about four inches in height, cut out of a solid block of rock crystal, the olive crown which encircled the brow being of pale, green jade.

In a deep-seated, high-backed armchair—placed between the table and the outstanding pillars of the chimney piece—propped up by dark silken pillows, his spare frame wrapped in a long, fur-lined, violet, cloth dressing-gown, a violet, velvet skull-cap on his head, sat Mr. Rivers.

Laurence, who had not seen his uncle for the last five or six years, was conscious of receiving an almost painfully vivid impression at once of physical feebleness and intellectual energy. The elder man's face and hands appeared transparent as the crystal memento mori on the table beside him. His long, straight nose showed thin as a knife. His wide, lip-less mouth seemed to shut with a spring, like a trap. The bone of the face and hands was salient, as of one suffering starvation. Yet the blue-grey eyes, though sunk in their cavernous sockets, were brilliant, alert, full of an almost malevolent greed of observation. Laurence noted that a spotless cleanliness and order pervaded the room and the person of its occupant. The angular and attenuated face was shaven with scrupulous nicety. The finger-nails were carefully polished and pointed. An open collar and wristbands of fine lawn showed exquisitely white against the purple cloth and fur of the dressing-gown. It was evident that Mr. Rivers, whatever the peculiarities of his temper or of his opinions, treated illness and approaching dissolution with an admirable effect of stoicism and personal dignity.

As Laurence—himself conspicuously well-groomed, in evening dress, no mark of his long journey upon him, save in a complexion tanned by sun and sea-wind, and by the directness of glance and vigour of movement that remains, for a while, by every true sea-lover after he comes ashore—crossed the space between the door and fireplace, the old man raised himself a little in his chair.

"Believe me, I am very sensible of the consideration you show in so immediately gratifying my desire to see you, my dear Laurence."

"I was very happy to come, sir," the younger man answered. But he was not unconscious of a point of irony in the cold, level tones of the voice, or in the persistent scrutiny of the brilliant eyes. These appeared to regard him as they might some row of figures—mentally casting up, subtracting, dividing, intent on arriving, with all possible despatch, at a conclusive and final result. The effect was not precisely encouraging, nor were the words which followed.

"That is well," Mr. Rivers said. "But it is desirable you should understand from the outset that which you have undertaken. You may be detained here. The disease from which I suffer is, as you have been informed, incurable; though it is, I am happy to say, neither offensive or infectious. But though the final result is assured, the moment of its advent is uncertain. Neither I, nor the physicians who amiably expend their limited and somewhat empirical skill upon me, can determine the date at which this disease will prove fatal. I shall regret to cause you inconvenience, but the event is beyond my control. I may keep you waiting."

"The longer the better, sir," Laurence said, smiling, and his smile was sincere and genial, of the sort which inspires confidence.—"That is," he added, "if you do not suffer unduly."

"When the mind has realised the greatness of its own powers, and trained itself to their exercise, the will can almost invariably reduce suffering to endurable proportions," Mr. Rivers replied contemptuously, as dealing with a matter obvious, and so beneath discussion. He raised one transparent hand, pointed towards a chair, and then let his wrist drop again upon a supporting silken cushion. As he did so the two heavy rings he wore—one an amethyst set in brilliants and engraved with Arabic characters, the other a black scarab on a hoop of rough gold—slipped up the long phalange of his second finger to the knotted knuckle, and back again, with a dry rattle and chink.

"Oblige me by sitting down, Laurence," he said. "I wish you to labour under no misapprehension as to my intentions in sending for you. A certain amount of business may need attention; but all that you can discuss with my agent, Armstrong,—a very worthy, though prejudiced person. My affairs are in order. I am not called upon to waste any of the time remaining to me upon them. Let me explain myself. The disease—for, to do so, I must refer to it once again—which is in process of destroying certain organs, and consequently paralysing certain functions of my body, has in no degree affected my mind. This retains the completeness of its lucidity. Indeed, I am disposed to believe that my enforced physical inactivity, and the small number of objects presented to my sight—I never leave this room—tend to exalt and stimulate my intellectual powers. You recall the legend of the ancient philosopher who plucked out his eyes, that, undisturbed by the vision of irrelevant objects, he might attain to greater concentration of thought. Disease, in limiting my activities, has gone far to confer upon me the boon which the philosopher in question strove, rather violently, to bestow upon himself. I have ever been a student. I propose to continue so to the last. My interest is unabated. My passion for knowledge—the sole passion of my life—remains in full force."

Laurence sat listening, nursing his knee. The speaker's attitude was impressive, in a way admirable. His detachment, his calm, his acumen, commanded his hearer's respect.

"Yes, yes. I see—that's fine," Laurence said under his breath.

A slightly ironical expression passed across the elder man's attenuated face.

"I am, of course, glad that my sentiments meet with your approval. But I fear that approval may prove premature. I have not yet fully explained myself."

Laurence smiled at him good-temperedly. "All right, sir; I'm listening," he said.

"I must frankly admit I did not require your presence with a view to having you endorse my opinions. These are, I trust, too much the outcome of close and lengthened thought to stand in need of support from the agreement of another mind. I have never desired disciples, having the evidence of the history of all great religious, political, and scientific movements to prove conclusively that it is the invariable habit of the disciple to falsify his master's teaching, to attach himself to the weak rather than the strong places of such teaching, to betray intellectually with some emotional, some hysterical kiss. The disciple resembles those parasitic plants of the tropic forests, that strangle the tree upon which they climb upward toward the air and light."

He paused a moment, turned his head against the pillows, with a movement of almost distressing weakness. Then, gathering himself together by a perceptible exercise of will, he looked searchingly at Laurence again, and resumed his speech.

"Nor have I required your presence here during these last days or weeks—as the case may be—with a view to offering to you, or receiving from you, that which is usually termed affection. I am not aware of any demand, or supply, in myself of that very much overrated commodity. I deny the actuality, indeed, of its existence. Subjected to analysis, it can always be resolved into workings of self-interest, or into the gratification, more or less gross, of the animal passions. It is the generator of all the practical folly and intellectual sloth which go to retard the progress of science, and the rule of high philosophy among men. As between ourselves, my dear Laurence, any pretence of affection would be transparently ridiculous. We are barely acquainted. My departure will very clearly be to your advantage. Moreover, our tastes and characters are so divergent, that any real community of interests, any real bond of sympathy, is clearly out of the question."

During the course of this address the young man's pleasant smile had broadened almost to the point of laughter.

"I understand, I really do understand," he said. "And now that we've cleared the decks for action in this very comprehensive manner, I grow—if I may mention it—most uncommonly curious to learn what you did send for me here for."

"I sent for you because there is one matter regarding which my information is conspicuously defective, and because your conversation, your habits, your very appearance, and gestures may serve to enlighten me. I have lived among books, and objects of art of no mean value. I have enjoyed communion, both by letter and in speech, with many of the most distinguished minds of the present century. But I never associated, I have never cared to associate, with the average man of the world, of the clubs and the racecourse, the man of intrigues, of, in short, society. He appeared to me to weigh too lightly in the scale to be a worthy object of study. I ignored him, and in so doing dropped an important link out of the chain of being. For these persons breed, they perpetuate tendencies, they influence and modify the history of the race. Not to reckon with such persons, is not to reckon with a persistent and active factor in intellectual and moral evolution."

Laurence had risen to his feet. He stood with his hands behind him and his back to the fire. He was amused, but he was also slightly nettled.

"Ah!" he said, "exactly. And so you sent for me. You took for granted I was that sort. You wanted to see how we do it."

"Yes," Mr. Rivers answered, "it did appear to me that you were calculated to fulfil the conditions. In any case you were the only example of the type available. Our connection by blood, and the relation in which you stand to my property, gave me certain claims upon your time and your consideration. I wish very much to observe you. I wish to study you from the psychological and other points of view. You need not attempt to assist me. Be yourself, please. Be passive. I need no co-operation on the part of my subject. This will really give you very little trouble, while it will afford me interesting occupation during the period—whether short or protracted, I know not—which must elapse before disease has run its course and procured dissolution."

Laurence listened in silence; and while he did so, he ceased to be nettled, he ceased even to be inclined to treat these singular proposals humorously. For there appeared to him a certain pathos in the earnest desire of this recluse and student now, at the eleventh hour, to acquaint himself with just that which he had so arrogantly despised, namely the Commonplace. It was slightly wounding to personal vanity to be thus selected, from among the millions of mankind, as a fine, thorough-paced example and exponent of the Commonplace. But Laurence was kind-hearted. He also possessed a fund of practical philosophy. No—decidedly the position was not a flattering one! Yet it was rather original, and, moreover, how could one in common charity refuse any little pleasure to a dying man?

"Very well, sir," he said. "I think I quite grasp the necessities of the inquiry. I'm quite willing to be operated on, and I promise to play fair and not let the evidence be faked. But I'm afraid you'll get bored first. I am likely to be more illuminated than illuminating."

"I am obliged to you," Mr. Rivers said. "To-night I will not further detain you. Pray give any orders you please to Renshaw. He is a well-trained and responsible servant. There are horses in the stable. Good-night. I repeat that I am obliged to you."

III

Finding it unlikely that his uncle would ask for him before evening, and that consequently he had plenty of time at his disposal, Laurence embarked after breakfast upon a survey of the house. When a boy at school he had occasionally passed a couple of nights at Stoke Rivers. His recollections of these visits were not gay. He had been glad enough to go away again. It followed that his impressions of the house itself were vague and confused. He now found that it was constructed in the shape of a capital L reversed. The base of the letter, facing east and west, contained kitchens, offices, and servants' quarters. The main building—at right angles to it—was two stories in height, and consisted of suites of handsome rooms opening on to a wide corridor. The windows of the latter looked south, those of the rooms north. The colouring and furnishings resembled, in the main, those of Mr. Rivers' bedroom. Dark panelled walls, rich, sombre hangings of dark blue, crimson, or violet obtained throughout. In the drawing-rooms were some noble landscapes by Cuyp, Ruysdael, and other Dutch masters of note. There was also an admirable collection of Italian ivories, small figures of exquisite workmanship; and several glass cases containing fine antique and renaissance gems. The walls of the libraries were lined with books—a curious and varied collection, ranging from ancient black-letter volumes down to the latest German treatise, on natural science or metaphysics, of the current year. Laurence promised himself to make nearer acquaintance with these rather weighty joys at a more convenient season. Meanwhile, in contrast to the otherwise distinctly old-fashioned character of the house, he remarked a very complete installation of electric light, and an ingenious system of hot-air ventilation, by means of which a temperature of over seventy degrees was maintained throughout the whole interior. This produced a heavy and enervating atmosphere of which Laurence—fresh from the strong clean air of the Atlantic—became increasingly and disagreeably sensible. It made him at once restless and inert; and as he wandered, rather aimlessly from room to room, he was annoyed by finding a slight nervousness gained on him—he, whose nerves were usually of the steadiest, happily conspicuous by their absence, indeed, rather than by their presence!

"Upon my word, this beats the American abomination of steam heat," he said to himself.

His visit to the library, where the smell of old leather bindings added to the deadness of the air, nearly finished him. He went out on to the corridor, and paced the length of it, past the flying staircase of black oak leading to the upper corridor, and back again. A broad strip of deep-pile, crimson carpet was spread along the centre of the polished floor. On one hand, between the doors of the living-rooms, hung a collection of valuable copper-plate engravings, representing classic ruins in Italy and Greece. While on the other, in the spaces between the windows, were ranged a series of busts—Augustus, Tiberias, Nero, the two Antonines, Caligula, and Commodus—set on tall columnar pedestals of dark green or yellow marble. The blind, sculptured faces deepened the general sense of oppression by their rigidity, their unalterable and somewhat scornful repose.

Out of doors the March morning was tumultuous with wind and wet, offering marked contrast to the dry heat, the almost burdensome order and stillness reigning within. The air of the corridor was perhaps a degree fresher than that of the library he had just quitted. Laurence leaned his arms on a stone window-sill, and glanced in a desultory way at the day's Times, which he had picked up off the hall table in passing. But Chinese railway concessions, plague reports from Bombay, even the last racing fixtures, or rumours of fighting on the North-West Indian Frontier, failed to arouse his interest. In his present humour, these items of news from the outside world seemed curiously unimportant and remote. He stared at the wide, well-wooded, rain-blurred landscape. The scene at which he had assisted last night, the intimate drama moving forward relentlessly even now to its close in that well-appointed room upstairs—and the extraordinary character of the chief actor in that drama—his over-stimulated brain and atrophied affections, his greed of experiment and of acquiring information, even yet, in the very article of death—depressed Laurence's imagination as the close atmosphere depressed his body. It was all so painfully narrow, barren, hungry, joyless, somehow. And meanwhile, he, Laurence, was required to play the fool—not for the provocation of laughter, which would after all have had a semblance of cheerful good-fellowship in it. But in cold blood, as an object lesson in the manner and customs of the average man; a lesson the result of which would be tabulated and pigeon-holed by that unwearying intelligence, as might be the habits of some species of obscure, unpleasant insect. The young man had developed slight intolerance of the exclusively worldly side of things lately. It seemed by no means improbable he might develop equal intolerance of the exclusively intellectual side before long, at this rate.

"I seem qualifying as a past-master in the highly unprofitable act of quarrelling with my bread and butter," he said to himself. "If I chuck society, and proceed to chuck brains as well, for a man like myself, without genius and without a profession, what the devil is there left?"

Meditating thus, he had left his station at the window, and walked to the extreme end of the corridor farthest away from the servants' wing of the house. It was closed by a splendid tapestry curtain, whereon a crowd of round-limbed cupids drove a naked and reluctant woman, with gestures of naughty haste, towards a satyr, seated beneath a shadowy grove of trees upon a little monticule, who beckoned with one hand while with the other he stopped the notes of his reed pipe. The tapestry was of great beauty and indubitable worth; but the subject of it was slightly displeasing to Laurence, a trifle gross in suggestion, as had been the sphinxes and caryatides of the carven ebony bed.

"Oh! of course there's that sort of thing left," he said to himself, recurring to his recent train of thought. "But, no thank you, I flatter myself I can hardly find satisfaction in those low latitudes at present."

Having, however, an appreciation of all fine artistic work, he laid hold of the border of the curtain, wishing to feel its texture. To his surprise, it was of very great weight, padded and lined with leather, as are curtains covering the doors of certain Roman churches.

Laurence pulled the corner of it towards him and passed behind it. The curtain fell back into position with a muffled thud, leaving him standing in a narrow, dark, cupboard-like space, closed by a door, of which it took him some stifling seconds to find the handle. He fumbled blindly in the dark, an almost childish sense of agitation upon him. He felt as in dreams, when the place to be traversed grows more and more contracted, walls closing down and in on every hand, while the means of exit become more maddeningly impossible of discovery. To his surprise, he turned faint and broke into a sweat. It was not in the least an amusing experience.

At last the handle gave, with a click, and the door opened, disclosing a large and lofty room quite unlike any one which he had yet visited. It was delicately fresh both in atmosphere and colouring. It wore a gracious and friendly look, seeming to welcome the intruder with a demure gladsomeness. A certain gaiety pervaded it even on this unpropitious morning. The great bay-window, facing east, gave upon a stately Italian garden, beyond the tall cypresses, white statues, and fountains of which spread flat, high-lying lawns of brilliantly green turf. These were crossed by a broad walk of golden gravel leading to an avenue of enormous lime-trees, the domed heads of which were just touched with the rose-pink buds of the opening spring.

The furniture of the room was of satin-wood, highly polished and painted with garlands of roses, true-lovers' knots of blue ribbon, dainty landscapes, ladies and lovers, after the manner of Boucher. The chairs and sofas were upholstered in brocade, the predominating colours of which were white, pale yellow, and pale pink. An old-fashioned, square, semi-grand piano—the case of it in satin-wood and painted like the rest—stood out into the room. On a spindle-legged table beside it lay a quantity of music, the printing very black, the pages brown with age. Close against these was a violin case covered with faded, red velvet, on which were stamped initials and a crest.

Laurence's eyes dwelt on these things. And then—surely there should be a harp in the further left-hand corner, the strings of it covered by a gilded, stamped leather hood? Yes, it was there right enough.—And a tall escritoire, with a miniature brass balustrade running along the top of it, should stand at right angles to the chimney-piece, upon which last, doubled by the looking-glass behind, should be tall azure and gold Sèvres jars, an Empire clock—the golden face of it set in a ring of precious garnets—figures in Chelsea china and branched, gold candlesticks.

Laurence looked for and found these objects, a prey at once to surprise and to a sense of happy familiarity. He was perfectly acquainted with this room—but why or how he knew not. He was filled, too, by a singular sense of expectation. It was to him as though some exquisite presence had but lately quitted this apartment and might, at any instant, return to it. He apprehended something tenderly, delectably feminine. The china ornaments, and many little fanciful silver toys, spoke of a woman's taste. So did a tambour frame, and an ivory work-box, the lid of it open, disclosing dainty property of gold thimble, scissors, cottons, and what not—and a half-finished frill of cobweb-like India muslin, a little, gold-eyed needle sticking in the mimic hem. On the small table beside the work-box lay a white vellum-bound copy of the Vita Nuova of Dante, and the Introduction to the Devout Life of St. Francis de Sales.

Perplexed by his own sensations, possessed too by a sudden, gentle reverence and longing which he could not explain, Laurence touched the pretty trifles in the work-box; fitted the thimble on the tip of his little finger; turned the pages of the Dante, and read how the poet came near swooning at first sight of the maiden of eight years old whom, though she was never destined to be his mistress or wife, he loved ever after, and made immortal in immortal verse. He unlocked the worn red-velvet violin case and drew the bow—not for the first time—he could have sworn not—across the wailing strings. What did it all mean? Yes, what, indeed,—in the name of common-sense, of New York and Newport, of his golf and polo, and cotillions, of crowded opera-house and shouting racecourse? In the name, too, of those hard, brilliant, dying eyes, and that cold, hungry intellect upstairs, what did it mean? He had no recollection of having been into this room on his former visits to Stoke Rivers in his boyhood. And yet, of course, he must have been here—otherwise? But then this overmastering sense of expectation, this apprehension of an exquisite feminine presence, this—

"Upon my word, I'm playing the fool to some purpose," he said, half aloud.

He crossed the room, threw wide the French window and went onto the head of the semicircular flight of stone steps without. The wind buffeted him roughly. The rain spattered in his face. On the left, the lawns were divided from the downward slope of rough park and woodland by a sunk fence. Beyond was outspread an extensive tract of rolling, wooded country—red and white hamlets half buried among trees, here and there the spire of a village church, flat, green pastures lying along the valleys, brown patches of hop-garden and ploughland, and uplifted against the grey, storm-drifted horizon a windmill crowning some conspicuous height. Suddenly the cry of hounds, running, saluted Laurence's ear. Then the whole pack, breaking covert, crossed the open park. The field followed, horses pulling, riders leaning forward, squaring their shoulders to the wind—a flash of scarlet, chestnut, black and bay, behind the dappled joy of the racing pack.

For a moment the strange influences of this strange day made even the merry hunt appear to Laurence as the pageant of an uneasy dream. But soon the honest outdoor life claimed him again, forcing him back upon unquestioned realities. He closed the French window behind him, stood on the wet steps spending some anxious moments in the lighting of a cigar, and then strolled, hatless, round to the stables to make inquiry as to what his uncle might own in the matter of horseflesh.

IV

In the afternoon Laurence drove over to Bishop's Pudbury, some eight miles distant from Stoke Rivers. An English soldier—by name Bellingham—whom he had known in New York, and who had married a Miss Van Renan, a cousin of Virginia—had taken a house there for the hunting season. His wife had impressed upon Laurence the duty of making an early call on these connections—he being the bearer of certain gifts to a small daughter of the family, Virginia's godchild. A revulsion in favour of the ordinary ways of ordinary modern life, in favour, indeed, of that very Commonplace of which last evening he had supposed himself so unwilling an exponent, was upon him. He wanted to get in with his accustomed habits, his accustomed outlook, again. The last twenty-four hours had been somewhat of a strain, and Laurence was as lazy as are most healthy Englishmen. He hated energising, specially of the super-induced, involuntary sort. And Mrs. Bellingham's society would be helpful. She was an agreeable woman, of this world worldly. He could have a good, square gossip with her. She was possessed, moreover, of a cult for Virginia—for her beauty, her clothes, her social ability. And in the back of his mind, somehow, Laurence was conscious that it would be an excellent thing for him to hear Virginia's praises sounded loudly. Mrs. Bellingham would count his blessings to him. That recital would be at once humbling and bracing—altogether salutary. But, unfortunately, neither the lady nor her husband were at home; so he could but deposit Virginia's immaculate parcels, tied with flaring bows of amber ribbon, and drive homeward through the rolling Sussex country—now engulfed in its deep, narrow lanes, now climbing its breezy, wooded hills, catching glimpses of the smooth, open downs ranging away to Beachy Head, and of the grey turmoil of the dirty Channel sea.

All this was not very exciting, it must be owned, but it afforded him relief from the singular sensations he had experienced during the morning. He came into the house in excellent spirits, bringing the clean chill of the March evening along with him—came in to meet the same dry, dead atmosphere, the same dark, glossy walls, and rich, sombre colours, the same at once unemotional yet almost voluptuous suggestion from objects of art. A lonely dinner followed, admirably served by two silent, middle-aged men-servants. Their faces were sallow and without expression, their manner was correct to the point of absolute nullity of character, they moved as automata. The dinner itself was a little chef-d'œuvre, and was served on remarkably handsome silver plate. As centre-piece, three dancing female figures in silver-gilt—copied apparently from those on some Etruscan vase—supported a cut-glass bowl, in which floated fantastic orchids, some mottled, dull, brown-green, toad-like, some in long sprays of mauve, or tiger-colour, striped with glossy black. These last gave off a thick musky scent.

Towards the end of the meal Renshaw, the butler, delivered a note to him, which Laurence read not without kindly amusement. It was from the curate-in-charge—the Rector of Stoke Rivers preferring to dwell amid the social excitements of Cheltenham, and but rarely, on the plea of bad health, visiting the parish. Laurence judged the curate-in-charge to be a very young man. His letter ran thus:—

"Dear Sir,—I trust I am not presuming upon my official connection with this parish by hastening to express to you the great relief which I feel in learning that you have arrived at the Courthouse. As representative of the incumbent of this parish, I hold myself responsible for the spiritual welfare of all persons resident in it, whether of exalted or humble station. I have, therefore, suffered much anxiety regarding your uncle's, Mr. Rivers, spiritual condition, in his present very serious state of health. I know that his views are regrettably latitudinarian, and that his attitude is far from conciliatory towards the Church. These sad facts, however, far from relieving me of responsibility, only increase it. I would so gladly read and pray with him, and reason with him of those things necessary to salvation. The time permitted him may, I understand, be short. It is my duty first to warn, and then to console. I cannot reproach myself with negligence in calling at the Courthouse. I do so regularly three times a week. Unhappily, Mr. Rivers is persistent in his refusal to receive me. This is not only very shocking, as precluding the possibility of my offering either the warnings or consolations of religion to the invalid; but it injuriously affects my position with my parishioners, who, seeing me thus slighted by the principal landowner in the parish, show a painful disposition to treat my ministrations with levity, and my person with disrespect. I trust to your sense of justice to obtain my admittance to the sickroom, both in the interests of your uncle's eternal welfare and in those of the Church, of which I am a humble, but, I trust, efficient minister.—I have the honour to remain, dear Sir, yours obediently,

"Walter Samuel Beal."

Laurence finished his glass of claret and his cigarette with a smile. He sat a minute or two, gazing at the dancing, golden figures and at the rather malign loveliness of the orchids.

"Poor little Padre Sahib!" he said to himself. "I'll go and see him to-morrow and do my best to quiet his worthy conscience. Funny mixture of soul and of self in that letter! But he's very much too mild a Daniel to fling into the lion's den upstairs. He little imagines what he's asking. Well, he won't get it anyhow, so that doesn't much matter. Pah!—how hot this room is!"

Laurence rose from the table, folded up the letter, and put it in his pocket.

"Now for processes of vivisection. It's the most original fashion of paying succession duty I ever heard of. My word, if I ever do come into possession, won't I just open the windows in this house!"

V

The conversation that evening did not move very smoothly. Laurence brought all the good temper and practical philosophy at his command into play. But the elder man was captious. His blank scepticism, his keen, unsparing statements jarred on his companion. An inclination towards revolt arose in Laurence.

"I am half afraid, sir," he permitted himself to say at last, while his eyes rested on the gleaming breasts of the ebony sphinxes,—"that we have made a radical mistake and put the cart before the horse. To understand the average man, and his relation to things in general, must not you begin with the study of the average woman? Is not cherchez la femme, after all, the keynote of our inquiry?"

Mr. Rivers raised his thin hand almost as in warning, and the heavy finger-rings chinked as he let it fall again on the arm of his chair.

"The subject of sex in connection with human beings is distasteful to me," he said.

Laurence glanced at the speaker and then back at the carven sphinx again. His eyes were a little merry—he could not help it.

"Oh! no doubt," he said; "there are times when it is distasteful to many of us, and most infernally inconvenient into the bargain. Only you see, unluckily, it is the pivot on which the whole history of the race turns."

"A most objectionable pivot! An insult to the intellect, a degradation."

"That may be so," Laurence answered. "Still the thing is there—always has been, always will be, modern science notwithstanding, unless humanity agrees to voluntary and universal suicide, a consummation which does not seem immediately probable in any case.—'Male and female created He them.' An error perhaps of judgment, but one the Creator has never shown much sign of wishing to correct as yet. The most venerable religious systems recognise this. I need not remind you that it lies at the heart of their mysteries. Christianity too—Catholic Christianity—the only form, that is, of Christianity worth considering seriously—acknowledges the profound significance of it in the worship of the divine motherhood and the perpetually renewed miracle of the Incarnation."

"You interest me," Mr. Rivers said slowly.

"I am glad of that," Laurence answered. He had warmed up unexpectedly to his subject. "I am glad of that, for I can't help seeing—"

Mr. Rivers interrupted him.

"Pardon me," he said. "I would not have you labour even temporarily under a misapprehension. It is less your exposition that interests me than yourself. I note indications of thought and feeling for which I was not wholly prepared. Taking you as a fair example of the type, I perceive that the mind of the average member of society is of an even lower order than I had supposed. I had, in my ignorance, imagined that, even in the class to which you belong, modern, scientific ideas had taken sufficient root to oust such effete superstitions as those to which you have alluded. A more or less stupid Agnosticism, an utter indifference, would not have surprised me. From such a condition development is still possible. But here I recognise traces of a return to fetich worship, to savage standards—this indeed is hopeless, a degeneration from which revival is impossible. I admit, of course, the necessity of the existence of woman, since the perpetuation of the race appears at present desirable. It would be childish to argue the matter. She must be kept and cared for by qualified persons, as are the other higher, domestic animals, but—"

"But, but," Laurence said, laughing, "I must protest. Perhaps his type of mind is too low for yours to be able to stoop to it; but, upon my word, sir, even with so thorough-paced a specimen as myself before you, you have not grasped the characteristics of the average man one bit. I don't say we are conspicuously noble, or virtuous, or godly creatures, and I don't say that the side of our lives which has to do with our ambitions, with public affairs, our profession, or our art—the side, in fact, in which woman counts least—may not give scope to that which is best in us. I have no end of belief in the life a man lives among men. I grant a good deal on your side of the question, you see. Only I know it will be a precious bad day when we keep our women merely for breeding purposes. We shall have degeneration in uncommonly full swing then. There is an immense lot in the relation between man and woman beside the physical one; and—and—I'm not ashamed to thank whatever gods there be for that."

"Your wife—" began Mr. Rivers. Laurence looked hard at him, while the good temper, the geniality, died out of his face.

"My wife does not enter into our contract, sir," he said shortly.

The coldly brilliant eyes fastened on him with a certain voracity of observation. Then the elder man bowed slightly, courteously, contemptuously.

"You interest me extremely," he said. "I am obliged to you. But I must not presume upon your complaisance. You have supplied me with sufficient subjects of meditation for to-night. I will not detain you further. I thank you, my dear Laurence. Good-night."

"I was a fool to let myself go, and a still bigger one to lose my temper," the young man said to himself as he closed the door and passed out on to the corridor.

Save for a ticking of clocks, silence prevailed throughout the house. The electric light, clear and steady, revealed every object in its completeness. The temperature was some degrees higher than during the day, and airless in proportion to its increased warmth. Half-way down the shining oak staircase, Laurence was saluted by the musky odour of the orchids. Clinging, enfolding, it seemed to meet him more as a presence than a scent. The dining-room door stood wide open. The under-butler came forth and went noiselessly towards the offices. There followed a muffled sound of baize doors swinging to. Then simultaneously, sharply, from all quarters, clocks struck the half hour.

"Only half-past ten!" Laurence exclaimed. "How villainously early! I wish to goodness I had not lost my temper though. It was slightly imbecile. If the poor, old gentleman enjoys being offensive, why shouldn't he be so? He has none too many opportunities of amusement."

He paused, looking down the bright, vacant, silent corridor, past the open doors of all the bright, vacant, silent rooms.

"If it comes to that, nor have I," he added, "when I come to think of it. There's a notable paucity of excitement in this existence, and this beastly hot air makes one too muzzy to read." He yawned.—"What a mercy Virginia didn't come! She would have been most extensively and articulately bored."

He sauntered aimlessly along the passage, past the fine, copper-plate engravings, and the impassive, Roman emperors, and drew up before the great, tapestry curtain. Again he looked curiously at the figures worked so skilfully upon it. The light took the silken surface, bringing the warm flesh-tints into high relief, against the dim, grey-green background of shadowy hill and grove.

"No wonder my uncle blasphemes if that represents his only idea of the relation of the sexes."

He sighed involuntarily.

"Yes, but, thank God, there is more in it all than merely that," he said. Then he repeated:—"It is a mercy Virginia did not come. It would not have suited her from any point of view. She'd have been hideously bored, and she would have been offended and a good deal shocked. It is queer the way the Puritanic element survives over there, notwithstanding their modernity."

Laurence smiled to himself, becoming aware of the slight inconsistency of his own attitude—his late heated championship of the claims of the Eternal Feminine, his self-congratulation at the fact that his own particular investment in the matter of womanhood was, at present, safely away on the other side of the Atlantic.

Then, taken by a sudden impulse—born in part of a desire of escape from the suffocating atmosphere around him—he pulled the edge of the heavy curtain outwards, passed round it, letting it drop into place behind him. He stood a moment in a contracted, blind space. The place seemed possessed of singular influences. Again he grew faint as he groped for the door handle; while a conviction grew upon him that he had stood just here, and so groped an innumerable number of times already, and that he should so stand and grope—either in fact or in imagination, just as long, indeed, as consciousness remained to him—an innumerable number of times again.

At last the handle was found and yielded. Breathing rather quickly, Laurence entered the lofty, fair-coloured room. It too was bright with electric light, but the air of it was sensibly purer than that of the corridor; while, standing before the painted satin-wood escritoire, at the further side of the fireplace, was a slender woman. Her back was towards him. She wore a high-waisted, clinging, rose-pink, silken gown. Her dark hair was gathered up in soft, yet elaborate, bows and curls high on her small head, after the fashion prevalent in the early years of the century. A cape of transparent muslin and lace veiled her bare shoulders.

VI

The young man's astonishment was immense. Recovering from the first shock of it, he was taken with reprehensible irreverence towards the sick man upstairs.

"The old sinner, how he has lied!" he said to himself. "A pretty ass he has made of me with this card up his iniquitous, old sleeve all the while!"

He debated momentarily whether good manners demanded his retirement before his presence was perceived; or whether he was free to go forward and make acquaintance with this unacknowledged member of his uncle's household. Strong curiosity, coupled with a spirit of mischief, provoked him to adopt the latter course. He owed it to himself, surely, not to neglect so handsome an opportunity of turning the tables upon old Mr. Rivers. While, astonishment and levity, notwithstanding, Laurence was aware of a strong attraction drawing him towards the slender, rose-clad figure. He began to question, indeed, whether it, like the room and its furnishings, was not in a degree familiar to him? Whether it was not the embodiment of just all that of which he had been so singularly expectant when visiting the room this same morning?

Meanwhile the young lady's hands moved over the rounded cover of the escritoire as though endeavouring to open it. The lace frills, edging her muslin cape, flew upwards, showing her bare arms. These were thin, but beautifully shaped; while the movement of her hands was singularly graceful and rapid. She touched, yet seemed unable firmly to grasp the gilded handles of the escritoire again and again; clasped her hands, as it appeared to Laurence—for her back was still towards him—with a baffled, despairing gesture, and then moved away across the room. She appeared to flit rather than walk, so light and silent were her steps, bird-like in their swift and dainty grace. Watching her, Laurence was reminded of a certain Spanish danseuse, who, during the previous winter, had excited the wild enthusiasm and considerably lightened the pockets of the jeunesse dorée of New York. But the charm of the dancer had, for him at least, been spoilt by the somewhat unbridled pride of success perceptible in her bearing. Whereas the flitting figure now before him, notwithstanding the beguiling loveliness of its motions, struck him as penetrated with the sorrow of failure, rather than the arrogance of success.

She wandered to and fro, regardless or unconscious of his presence, searching—searching—as it seemed; passing her hands over the work-table, sweeping them along the surface of the chimney-piece between the ornaments and china, fingering the music upon the piano. He caught sight of a delicate profile, a round and youthful cheek. But her movements were so anxious and rapid that he could get no definite view of her face. Indeed, her action was so quick that it was not without effort Laurence followed it.

At first the young man's attitude had been one of slightly irritated amusement at the concealment practised on him by his host. But as the rose-clad lady's search continued, the sense of amusement was merged in one of sympathy. She was so graceful a creature. She appeared so sadly baffled and perplexed. A subtle anxiety laid hold of him—an apprehension that something momentous and of far-reaching consequence to himself was in act of accomplishment—that he was himself deeply involved, and pledged by a long train of antecedent circumstances to assist those delicately framed and apparently so helpless hands in their unceasing search.

"Pardon me, but what have you lost?" he asked her at last, speaking gently as to a timid and unhappy child. "Tell me, and let me try to help you find it."

At the sound of his voice the flitting figure paused, stood a moment listening, as though striving to collect the purport of his address. Then it turned to him. For the first time Laurence saw his companion's face clearly, and he shrank back, penetrated at once by a great admiration and a vague dread of her. For it was a very lovely face, but shy and wild as no other human face he had ever beheld. The sweet mouth drooped at the corners, as with some haunting, but half-comprehended distress. The eyes were serious; blue-purple—as are deep, high-lying, mountain tarns, set in a soft gloom of pine-trees and of heather. A gentle distraction pervaded the young lady's aspect. And this was the more arresting, that each bow and curl of her pretty hair was in place; every detail of her dress fresh and finished, from the string of pearls about her white throat, to the toes of her rose-pink, satin slippers, sparkling with an embroidery of brilliants, which showed beneath the small flounce edging her rose-pink skirt.

Laurence had lived at least as virtuously as most men of his class; yet it would be idle to declare Virginia his first and only flame. He had married her, which constituted the difference between her and all those other flames—and at times it occurred to him what a prodigiously great difference that was! Since his marriage he had been guiltless of looking to the right hand or to the left even in thought. But, before that event, it must be owned, he had had his due share of affairs of the heart. He was thoroughly conversant with the premonitory symptoms of that fascinating disorder, commonly known as "falling in love." And, to his dismay, as he looked on the sad and lovely person before him, he was conscious that some of those premonitory symptoms were not entirely absent. An immense pity and tenderness took him; a deepening conviction, too, of recollection, as one who after a long lapse of years hears again some almost forgotten melody, or sees again a once well-known and well-beloved landscape. The sad face was new to him, not in itself, but in its sadness only. The corners of the sweet mouth should not droop, but tip upward in soft, discreet laughter. The serious eyes should dance, as the surface of these same mountain tarns in sunlight under a rippling breeze. The face, remembered thus, had indeed never been wholly forgotten—he knew that. It formed part of inherent prenatal impressions, of which, all his life, he had been potentially if not actively aware.

All this flashed through him in the space of a few seconds; while he repeated, somewhat staggered by the fulness of emotion which the tones of his own voice implied—

"Only tell me what you have lost—tell me; and let me help you find it."—Then he added more lightly, smiling at her with his sincere and kindly smile:—"Really, my services are worth enlisting. I've always been a rather famous hand at finding things, you know."

She gazed at the young man for a minute or more, a tremulous wonder in her expression, while she fingered the string of pearls about her rounded throat. Her lips moved, but no sound came from them. Her attitude changed. She stood with her head raised, apparently listening. Then reluctantly, as in obedience to some unwelcome summons, she moved swiftly across the room to the outstanding, painted satin-wood escritoire, passed at the back of it, and the young man found himself alone.

VII

Though usually an excellent sleeper, Laurence passed a restless night. Like most sane persons, he was disposed to resent that which he could not account for; and, with the best will in the world to evolve ingenious hypotheses explanatory of her disappearance, the manner of his sweet companion's going remained a mystery. He had examined the escritoire, and found it locked. He had also examined the wall-space in its vicinity. This was hung, from cornice to wainscot, with pale yellow-and-white brocade, as was all the room. But neither behind the brocade, nor in the wainscot, was any door or sliding panel discoverable. Indeed, when he came to think of it, remembering the structure of the house as he had seen it on his way along the south front to the stables, that side of the room consisted of a blank wall, doorless and windowless. This fact, when he realised it, caused Laurence something of a shock. It was unpleasant to him. And so he took refuge in scepticism. He laughed at himself, declaring that the unwholesome atmosphere of the house, and the lonely, uneventful life he was compelled to lead, were breeding morbid fancies in him. All that talk about woman and the relation of the sexes had stamped itself upon his mind in an exaggerated way, thanks to his surroundings. The musky scent of the orchids had a word to say in the matter too, no doubt. So had his revulsion from the gross suggestions of the scene represented on the tapestry curtain. Heavy sleep, amounting almost to torpor, induced by the heavy atmosphere, had fallen upon him directly after he had entered that strangely engaging and familiar room. And, in that sleep, imagination had created a woman who should embody all that which the room and its furnishings suggested—an ideal woman, far away alike from the brilliant young leader of smart society whom he had married—but on this clause Laurence refused to allow his thoughts to dwell—and from the mere human brood-mare, whom his uncle pronounced to be the only admissible exponent of the Eternal Feminine. He had dreamed a poem—one of those poems he kept at the bottom of his despatch-box, and had never felt any inclination to read aloud to Virginia—had dreamed instead of writing it, that was all.

Laurence got out of bed and threw open the window. Where the eastern angle of the house stood out dark against the sky, he could see the pallor of the dawn warming into rose, while overhead the stars died out one by one as the light broadened.

"Yes, the vision of a dream," he said to himself. "Only another of those thousand exquisite things which belong to the language of symbol, and possess, alas! no tally in reality—reality, that is, as most of us hide-bound victims of conventionality are destined to know it."—He laughed a little grimly.—"Reality, as we know it, being precisely the biggest illusion of all!"

He watched the fading stars, the deepening rose and gold of day, above the woods and lawns, the black cypresses and white statues upon the northern boundary of the Italian garden. Starlings chattered joyously from the gutters under the eaves; and then swept down, with a rush of passing wings, on to the grass. A keeper, gun on shoulder, with a busy, little, black cocking-spaniel, and a long-limbed, red, Irish setter behind him, crossed the rough downward slope of the park; and the wide, blue-grey landscape began to grow definite, to assert itself right away up to the horizon. The earth seemed to awake with a quiet smile from the kindly sleep of night.

Laurence drank in his fill of the moist, sharp air.

"Poor dear Virginia!" he said suddenly. And it was probably the very first time in her whole life that this popular, admirably finished, and much admired young lady had ever excited pity.

After breakfast Laurence set forth to visit his clerical correspondent, and strive to ease the latter's conscience while refusing his request. The rectory, distant about three-quarters of a mile, stood on the rising ground across the valley, backed by a fringe of high-lying woods. The church, a small but very perfect example of Norman architecture, closely adjoined the house. There were good details of carving about the narrow, round-headed windows of the chancel, and the low, heavy arch of the porch—the floor of which was sunk several steps below the level of the churchyard. The tower, square and solid, but little higher than the roof of the nave, was surmounted by a squat, shingled spire. It struck Laurence as a calm, self-contained, little building, on which the centuries had set but slight mark of decay. The churchyard, too—shadowed by a few ancient yew-trees—was singularly peaceful, full for the most part of unnamed, grass-grown graves. Death, seen thus, had nothing awful, nothing repulsive, about it—quiet "rest after toil," it amounted to no more than that.

But then the charm of spring was in the air, and the young man was pleasantly beguiled by it. He sat down on the broad coping of the churchyard wall, lighted a cigarette, and idly watched the rooks streaming out from the rectory elms, and dropping on the fragrant, fresh-turned earth of a plough-field in the valley. He listened idly to the nimble wind that blew up from the ten-mile-distant sea, sang in the woodland above, and whispered through the dark, plume-like branches of the yews here in this sheltered piece of ground. The sky was a thin, bright blue, and across it wandered little clouds, like flocks of white sheep, herded by that same nimble wind up from the Channel.

It seemed to Laurence that here, indeed, would be a pleasant enough place to lie when life was over. But then that time had by no means arrived for him yet. He felt again—as he had felt that night on board ship—that he had never done complete justice to his own capacity. Whether the fault lay in himself or in circumstance, he could not say; but he knew that neither body, nor mind, nor heart, had worked up to their full strength yet. Ambition of some notable and absorbing undertaking stirred in him. He looked out over the goodly land. Would this by no means contemptible inheritance, on the threshold of the possession of which he now stood, afford him his great opportunity? And then his thought harked back to the lovely and pathetic vision which had blessed his sleep—for, of course, he was asleep—last night. A man could find fulness of satisfaction in a great passion for such a woman—if so be she actually existed, instead of being only the ideal vision of an ideal dream. Yes, a man could go very far down that road if—if—And there Laurence, being a decent fellow, laid strong hands on his imagination. To indulge it was just simply not right, since whatever woman's existence might belong to the land of fancy, his wife, Virginia's, belonged, to the land of very positive fact. He got up, shook himself, and walked away to the rectory house, through the sunshine and shadow of the peaceful, country graveyard.

VIII

Mr. Beal received his guest with an agitation in which natural timidity warred with professional pride. He laboured under the conviction that he was called upon at all times and in all places to maintain the dignity of the Anglican Church. He believed she was very much in the midst of foes, Rome and Non-conformity alike perpetually plotting her downfall; while Atheism cruised about in the offing ever ready to seize any who escaped the machinations of these more declared enemies. And, unfortunately, the young man, neither in appearance nor constitution, was a born fighter, or even a born diplomatist. In appearance he was mild, with sandy, down-like hair, a high narrow forehead and freckled skin, pale, anxious eyes behind spectacles, and a moist white hand. He opened the front door to Laurence himself; and it occurred to the latter that his clothes were very black, and that he wore a great many of them.

"Mr. Laurence Rivers, I presume?" he said, looking up nervously into his guest's face.

"Yes; I thought it would be simplest to answer your letter in person," the other replied. He felt a certain kindly pity for the young clergyman, whose existence he divined to be of a somewhat limited and unproductive sort.—"I should have given myself the pleasure of calling on you in any case in a day or two. But your letter seemed to require attention at once. I am sorry you are having any bother about—"

"Will you not come in?" Mr. Beal asked hurriedly. "Our conversation might be overheard and commented upon. This way, please. You will excuse the dining-room? I always occupy this room during the winter months. It is both necessary and right that I should practise economy, and to occupy this room exclusively saves a fire."

In his nervousness Mr. Beal talked continuously.

"Pray take a seat," he said, pushing forward an armchair, the leather cover and springs of which were decidedly tired. "I at once begged you to come in here, because in speaking of personal and parochial matters one cannot, I feel, be too careful. Mr. Wingate—the rector of Stoke Rivers, you know—wished, I am sure, to treat me with generosity when I undertook the duty here. He not only placed the whole of this house at my disposal, but he left two female servants—not on board wages—an elderly woman and a younger person as her assistant. The intention was generous, I feel sure; but I grieve to say they are not such staunch church-women as I could desire, and this has led to difficulties between us. I thought it my duty to admonish them, separately, of course, suiting my remonstrances to their respective ages and dispositions. But they did not receive my admonitions in a submissive spirit. Since then I have found it necessary to exercise great caution. There has been much gossip. Remarks of mine have been repeated, and that not in a manner calculated to improve my position with the parishioners. My actions are spied upon. There is a small, but bigoted, dissenting element in the village, and——"

"Ah! yes, they're a nuisance, I dare say," Laurence put in, smiling. "Still, it's a charming place, all the same. I have just been poking round the church. There are some wonderfully quaint bits about it. And I like the churchyard."

"I could wish to have the graves levelled, and the head and foot stones placed neatly in line on the confines of the enclosure."

"Oh! no, no; that would destroy the character of the place. We can't carry anything away with us—granted—when we go. And so there's a certain subjective comfort in knowing we leave a little mound of earth and turf behind to mark our resting-place. That's hardly ostentatious, considering our pretensions during life—do you think so?"

Mr. Beal shifted the position of his spectacles. He braced himself.

"The churchyard has been levelled at Bishop's Pudbury," he said. "I had the privilege of being assistant priest there for five years. The archdeacon is considered a man of great taste."

"I should have thought the parishioners would have objected now," Laurence remarked.

"So they did," Mr. Beal replied. "I grieve to say some persons displayed a most illiberal spirit. They called meetings, and behaved in a really seditious manner. Many even became guilty of the sin of schism. They ceased to attend the church services, and frequented dissenting places of worship. The archdeacon was pained; but he felt a principle was at stake. He has long contended that the churchyard is legally the rector's freehold. He therefore felt it a duty to the Church to be firm."

Laurence contemplated the young clergyman with a touch of good-natured amusement, wondering if, with that anæmic physique, he was capable of emulating the militant virtues of the archdeacon-rector of Bishop's Pudbury.

"But about this letter of yours, Mr. Beal," he said. "That's what I came to talk to you about."

"I am afraid my conversation has been a little irrelevant. But—but—" the young man sat opposite to Laurence, shifting his spectacles, and washing his hands in an access of nervousness. "I confess I am not quite myself this morning, Mr. Rivers. I was made an object of public ridicule last night."

"I am very sorry to hear it. How was that?"

"I think I am at liberty to tell you, because the incident took its rise in your uncle, the elder Mr. Rivers', refusal to receive me. You see it is known how often I have been repulsed. Last night we had the weekly choir practice at the school. While it was in progress, I was called and informed by the pupil-teacher—whom I excuse of participation in the unseemly jest—that Mr. Rivers had sent for me, and that his carriage was waiting at the gate. This surprised me; but I supposed you might have received, and immediately responded to, the request contained in my note. I excused myself to the organist and choir, and hastily put on my hat and coat. I hurried out, but some ill-disposed youths had placed strings across the school door. I fell. The ground was exceedingly muddy. My reappearance was greeted with hardly concealed derision. I discovered the whole matter was a vulgar hoax."

"Ah! that's very much too bad," Laurence said kindly, though the picture suggested by the young clergyman's story provoked him to internal mirth. "We must straighten this out somehow. And yet I tell you frankly your letter placed me in a difficulty. Even when in good health my uncle was not an easy person to approach, and now, as you know, he is fatally ill——"

"I would deal with him very gently," Mr. Beal remarked, bracing himself.

"I am sure of that. But I am afraid he might deal anything but gently with you."

"I think—I believe—I am prepared to suffer for my faith."

"I am sure of that," Laurence repeated consolingly. "But it appears to me this would be both a superfluous and inglorious martyrdom. My uncle is perfectly secure of his own position and opinions. The latter are peculiar, and he has a very trenchant way of stating them."

"You would convey to me that I should be worsted in argument?" Mr. Beal inquired.

"Yes, I really am more than half afraid you would. And so, you see, no end would be gained. You would be pained, and possibly humiliated; while my uncle's victory would render him more stubborn in the maintenance of his own views. He would be irritated too, and that might accelerate the action of the disease from which he suffers. Remember, he's both old and ill. I own I think he must just go his own way. I hesitate to coerce him."

During this address Walter Beal had washed his moist hands in a very agony of agitation. This handsome stranger impressed him greatly. He was sympathetic, moreover, a patient and kindly listener. The young clergyman could have found it in his heart to adore him with a humble and dog-like devotion. But then his own professional dignity must be asserted. So he whipped down his natural and wholesome inclination to hero-worship, and whipped up his rather spavined, ecclesiastical valour; and said, with all the sternness his tremulous voice could command—

"I fear you are not a true Christian, Mr. Rivers, or you would find no room for hesitation where the salvation of a soul is involved."

Laurence turned his chair sideways to the dinner-table, crossed his legs, and rested his elbow on the bare, white cloth. Some crumbs remained on it, left over from Walter Beal's breakfast; but happily they were at the far corner. The young man deserved a snub, but he was an innocent creature, a great sincerity in his foolishness. Laurence looked out of window, across to the sunny peaceful churchyard. After all, why be harsh? Why snub anybody? So he smiled again genially enough upon the distracted Beal.

"Oh! we must discuss the heights and depths of my Christianity some other time," he said. "The point is to stop this impertinence of which you are the victim. Look here, honestly I don't see my way to making a meeting between you and my uncle at present. But as you can't get the uncle, let me beg you to put up with the nephew. Let it be known that you and I are on excellent terms. Come and see me. Let's see—to-morrow evening I shall be free till half-past nine or ten. Come and dine with me."

But Mr. Beal shrunk back and raised his moist, white hands in protest.

"Oh, no!" he exclaimed. "That is, I am sure your intentions are most kind, most kind—indeed, indeed, really, I am sure of that. But except professionally, except at the urgent call of duty—and then grace would be given me—I felt that yesterday when I received the summons during the choir practice—I prayed—I was praying when those strings intercepted my passage and caused me to fall—I knew I should be supported—but, except professionally, I could not make up my mind to enter that house—Stoke Rivers. And after dark too! I could not. It would be too dreadful."

Laurence stared at him blankly. "Why, my good man," he said, laughing a little, "what on earth is the matter with the house?"

"I understand that it contains pictures and statues of an immoral character. It is very frightful to think of a soul, the soul of a scoffer, of one who speaks lightly of holy things, going forth to meet its doom from among such heathenish surroundings.—But it is not that so much which deters me. I ought to cope with that, strong in faith. But from a child, I own it, I have suffered from the fear of the supernatural."

Laurence's eyebrows drew together. "The supernatural," he said.

"Yes—yes—the supernatural."

Laurence paused a moment, gazing down at the worn drugget between his feet.

"Look here," he said, "either you are talking great nonsense, or there is something uncommonly serious at the bottom of all this, of which I ought to be informed. Tell me plainly, what are you afraid of?"

"There, there are lights all night."

"Certainly there are. The electric light is left on. It is a fancy of my uncle's—and not an unreasonable one in time of illness. If your fears take their rise in nothing worse than that, why—" Laurence shrugged his shoulders.

"Oh! but—but—" Mr. Beal's voice sunk to a whisper, and his pale eyes looked piteously upon his guest from behind his spectacles. "It is commonly reported there is a female in the house——"

Laurence shook his head.—"Oh, no, pardon me," he said. "That is a mistake. There are only men-servants in the house. That I know. No lady has stayed at Stoke Rivers—so my uncle informed me—since my mother stayed there with me when I was quite a small boy."

"But—but," poor Walter Beal almost wailed, "I don't mean any lady visitor. The—the Scarlet Woman—you know. I understand the keepers have frequently seen her at night at the windows downstairs. And I believe I saw her once this winter myself——"

"Saw her yourself?"

"Yes; I had been to call and inquire for Mr. Rivers. It was dusk, and I was much alarmed at going; but I would not permit myself to neglect a duty. I was going back up the avenue, when I saw a person in a red dress coming out from the bow-window. I—I—I—I—did not wait—"

Laurence had risen. He stood for a moment speechless. Then a sudden gladness took him. The sun was bright outside there, but the yew-trees waved their dusky arms quaintly, making little shadows dance and flit upon the churchyard grass.

"No—I see. You ran away," he said. "Well, Mr. Beal, perhaps that was the very best thing under the circumstances that you could have done.—You can't make up your mind to dine with me? All right, I'll come and see you then. We'll let the parish know you and I are on excellent terms anyhow. I should be glad to have a talk with you about the schools and charities. And, of course, if Mr. Rivers should soften and express any willingness to receive your ministrations I'll not fail to let you know."

On reaching the house, Laurence went straight down the corridor, pulled aside the tapestry curtain, and entered the room beyond. As yesterday, it was fresher in atmosphere than the rest of the interior. The furniture, the knick-knacks, even the little frill in the open work-box were stationary, untouched, precisely in the same position as last night. Again Laurence examined the room carefully. Very certainly there was no exit from it save the door or the bay-window, and no human being in it save himself.

IX

That afternoon Captain Bellingham called at Stoke Rivers. He was a large, fair, fresh-coloured man of about five-and-thirty—extremely well-groomed, addicted to field-sports, and an arrant gossip. This last characteristic was much in evidence during his visit. He gossiped of London, of New York, of Sussex, displaying a vast amount of knowledge of other people's affairs.

"Well, my dear fellow, it's uncommonly pleasant to forgather with you again. Those presents your wife sent my small daughter were princely. Sibyl will write to her. The child has a regular Yankee eye for value—and, I tell you, she was impressed. My wife was awfully disappointed at missing you yesterday. She's frightfully gone on Mrs. Rivers. I think she wants to have a look at you to satisfy herself that you're living up to your high privileges in that quarter. Come over to-morrow, can't you, and dine and sleep?"

Laurence explained that his evenings were bespoken.

"Ah, really—by the way, how is the old gentleman? Making headway towards—don't you know? Rather depressing business for you waiting on like this. Pity you can't come and dine and sleep, it would make a little break for you. I've never seen him, you know, but I hear he is rather a formidable, old person. My wife intends asking you a number of questions about him. Of course, you must know there are a whole lot of queer stories current."

"So I hear," Laurence said.

"Oh, it's not for you to hear; it's for you to tell," Jack Bellingham answered, his eyes twinkling. "Why, my dear fellow, your arrival is the excitement of the hour. The whole neighbourhood is sitting on the edge of its respective chairs just bursting for information about Stoke Rivers. You wait a little. I warn you, you're going to be handed round like a plate of cake at an old maid's tea-party; and my wife, in right of her relationship to Mrs. Rivers, means to have the first slice. She means to walk in, collar you, and then skilfully and economically retail you to her whole local acquaintance. To tell the truth, I've been rather worried about Louise lately. She has an idea—I've noticed nothing to justify it myself—that she has rather missed fire down here. She's taken that awfully to heart, you know. And I think she looks to you to give her her opportunity. She thinks if she gets possession of you and all these queer stories, she'll make the running—all the other women will be nowhere, you know."

Laurence laughed. He felt slightly embarrassed.

"But what the dickens is it all about?" he said.

"That's for you to tell us," Captain Bellingham repeated. "Perhaps you'll be rather glad of an audience in a day or two. Anyhow, come over and see my wife as soon as you can. She's great on spook-hunting, psychical research, all that sort of thing. So give her the first chance. Let her have a postcard in the morning. She'll be brokenhearted if she misses you again."

Laurence partook of another solitary dinner, admirably cooked and served, in company with the dancing, Etruscan figures, and the musky-scented orchids. Again, when the meal was finished, he went upstairs through the steady light and close, dry atmosphere to that stately and sombre sickroom. The last twenty-four hours had been very full of disquieting episodes and suggestions.

"I am inclined to reverse the order of proceedings to-night," he said to himself, "and cross-question my uncle, instead of letting him cross-question me. After all, that'll fit in to his scheme of observation well enough. My questions, no doubt, will be indicative of the depths of my native ignorance and the poverty of my powers. They'll enable him to draw conclusions. Conclusions!" he added, smiling—"a sufficiently fatuous occupation, when one thinks of the limited amount of evidence obtainable and the breadth of the inquiry?"

On the stairhead his uncle's valet, a thin, wiry man, long-armed, grey of hair and of skin, met him, and preceded him silently along the corridor. Laurence's relations with servants, and other persons in an inferior position to his own, were usually of a kindly and cordial sort. Such persons told him of their affairs; they admired and trusted him. But the servants in this house, though caring for his comfort with scrupulous forethought and punctuality, remained, so far, impossible of approach. They seemed to him like so many machines, incapable of hopes or fears, affections, even of sins, inhuman in their rigidity and silence. Now the valet announced him, and stood aside to let him pass, with a perfection of drill and an absence of individuality so complete, that it was to Laurence quite actively unpleasant. Immediately after, he met the hungry glance of those coldly brilliant eyes, looking out of the face fixed in outline, transparent, as the crystal skull lying on the table close by. And this house, so full of beings but half alive, of paralysed activities, defective or one-sided development, seemed to the young man, for the moment, terrible. The country churchyard, in which the wind sang, and the sunshine played among the graves with flitting, beckoning shadows, was gay by comparison. No wonder the place had an evil reputation, and that people invented weird stories about it.

A sensation of loneliness, such as he had not known since early childhood, came over Laurence. Almost involuntarily he made an effort towards closer, more sympathetic, intercourse with his host.

"How are you this evening, sir?" he asked. "Better, I hope. It has been a wonderfully charming day."

"I am glad to learn you have found it so. Weather has always appeared to me an accident, unworthy, save in its scientific aspects, of attention. Yet I understand that it exercises strong influence on certain temperaments—emotional temperaments, I apprehend, undisciplined by reason. That the weather to-day has affected you agreeably is matter for congratulation, since it will have helped to mitigate the tedium of a small portion of this period of waiting."

"Oh! there's not much tedium," Laurence answered. He looked across at the elder man smiling very pleasantly.—"I'm beginning to find things here a little too dramatic, if anything. You were good enough to tell me that you found me interesting last night, sir. I only wish I could be half as interesting to you, as you, and your house, and the whole state of affairs here is to me."

"You find it distinctly interesting?" Mr. Rivers inquired, but whether in approval or disapproval Laurence could not determine.

"Unquestionably," he answered. "The house is cram full of treasures. And there are unexpected influences in it, which get hold of one's imagination. It stands alone in my experience, unlike any place I have ever known."

The elder man sunk further back against the pillows, and, with one long, thin hand, drew the violet, fur-lined dressing-gown closer across his knees as though cold.

"Indeed. Have I divorced myself and my surroundings so completely from the ordinary habits of my contemporaries?"

"You've been strong enough to follow your own tastes and lead your own life, and that has produced something unique, something as finished as it is apart. Of course, this provokes a lot of criticism. Other people, I observe, recognise that it is unique too."

"Other people?" Mr. Rivers said loftily. "I have never entertained."

"Exactly," Laurence answered. "That's where part of the uniqueness comes in. We mostly herd together like sheep in a pen, and can't be easy unless we're rubbing sides."—He paused a moment. "Your refusal to rub sides causes great searchings of heart, I assure you. The poor, little parson here, for instance, is tormented by the idea that it is his duty to the Almighty, and to the Church of England, and to his own abnormally developed conscience, to raid you and do a little spiritual gardening in the neglected flower-beds of your soul."

"My soul is my own," Mr. Rivers observed. "That is, if the term soul is, strictly speaking, admissible. Conscious consciousness is all that I can predicate of my other than physical existence."

"The little parson's point of view is quite different. He is by no means backward in predication. He is quite sure you have a soul; but whether it is your own, or whether it doesn't belong to him as curate-in-charge of Stoke Rivers, he is not at all sure. He has strong leanings to the latter belief, I fancy."

"These are puerilities."

"The average man is puerile," Laurence asserted cheerfully. "We carted away Woman last night, sir, you remember, in deference to your slight prejudice against her—though I still maintain she is by no means foreign to our inquiry. But I really can't consent to the carting away of puerility too, or you will never get hold of the average man at all. Forbid his affections and his ineptitudes both, and you don't leave the poor wretch a leg to stand on. Meanwhile, the little parson is not the only person a good deal worked up by the unique character of your habits and surroundings. These give rise, indirectly, to surprising legends."

"Indeed!"

"Yes, indeed. I think they would amuse you. And in connection with all this, sir, there are one or two questions I should most uncommonly like to ask you."

"You may do so," Mr. Rivers said. His nephew's rapid speech and breezy manner made him slightly breathless. He was unaccustomed to be treated in this light and airy fashion. He moved uneasily in his chair, as one who tries to avoid a draught. Laurence observing this, repented of his purpose.

"I don't tire you, sir, do I?" he asked kindly.

"Exhaustion is a consequence of the failure of the will. My will is still obedient to my mind, and my body to my will."

Laurence looked at him with a certain admiration. He was true to his creed, such as it was, and his pride had, consequently, rather a superb quality.

"Well, then," he said, "since I may ask you—I have found from conversation with several of our neighbours that this house, which I took to be a sort of Temple of Reason, is regarded with a good deal of vulgar suspicion."

Though the room was warm, the atmosphere of it close as that of a thundering night in the tropics, Laurence instinctively leaned forward, spreading out his hands to the glowing wood-fire on the hearth.

"I am not superstitious," he continued; "and you very certainly, I take it, are not so. We shall agree in that. Still, I confess, the whole subject of the occult and supernatural is rather fascinating to me. I can't quite keep my hands off it. I find an idea is prevalent that there are manifestations here, queer things are seen, you know, which cannot be put down to natural agency. I want to know if you—"

But Mr. Rivers interrupted him with unaccustomed vehemence of speech and manner.

"Stop!" he said, "stop if you please. This subject is exceedingly distasteful to me."

"Then we won't pursue it," Laurence answered quickly. Yet he wondered; his interest, already considerably aroused, being sensibly increased by the violence displayed by his companion. It was singular; and he paused a little, thinking, before embarking in further conversation. During that pause, Mr. Rivers leaned sideways, slowly and with difficulty raised the crystal skull from its place on the table beside him. He held it in front of him in both hands, and gazed, as though performing some religious rite, into the cavities of the empty eye-sockets. Then stiffly, letting his hands sink, he rested it upon his knees.

"Pardon me," he said, looking full at Laurence, while a shadow, rather than a flush, seemed to pass over his attenuated face. "I was tempted to act unworthily.—I agreed to answer such questions as you might put to me. But perceiving those questions tended to revive a matter which has caused me one of the few humiliations and regrets I have suffered during my life, I shrank. I was tempted weakly to break faith with you and retract my promise."

"Pray, sir, don't take it so seriously," Laurence entreated. "Of course, I should never have approached the subject had I known it was disagreeable to you. It was just the idle curiosity of an idle man. What on earth does it matter?"

"To you very little, presumably, since you are, as you say, idle—your days, that is, filled with a round of amusements deadening—as I fear—to the intellectual and moral conscience. But with me the case is otherwise. The judgment of no human being is of moment to me. But my judgment of myself is of infinite moment."

Mr. Rivers laid one transparent hand upon the dome of the crystal skull, as though for support. His face had grown hard as steel.

"It is therefore incumbent upon me, not in satisfaction of your curiosity, my dear Laurence, but in satisfaction of my own sense of rectitude, that I should accept this opportunity of stating the following facts. I inherited this property—as you will shortly inherit it—from an uncle, a man very much my senior. I had prosecuted my studies abroad, in the learned centres of Germany and France, from an early age. My acquaintance with my uncle was slight. I knew little of his private life. But I had reason to believe him a person of an undisciplined mind, imbued with the extravagant socialistic views current during the French Revolution, unbridled alike in passions of love and of hate. Questions of character have never interested me; I therefore made no further inquiry regarding my predecessor's private life. My own tastes and habits were already fixed. I settled myself here and continued the studies in experimental physics, philology, and metaphysics, in which I had already engaged. I also added to the collection of pictures and objects of art that I found in the house. My life has been blameless, as most men count blame. I can assert, without fear of contradiction, that my moral and intellectual integrity have been complete. Only in one connection have I been guilty, have I failed—failed, as I now confess, miserably and grossly."

Mr. Rivers paused a moment. His fingers twitched as they rested upon the crystal skull.

"Miserably and grossly," he repeated. "The vulgar gossip which you have heard rests upon a basis of truth. I cannot deny the existence of supernatural manifestations, so called, in one quarter of this house. They are undeniable. I have witnessed them myself."

Laurence felt a queer shiver of excitement run through him. He sat very still.—"Then I wasn't asleep after all," he said to himself, "in that room last night."

"The said manifestations were not only disturbing and distasteful to me; but I perceived that their existence threatened the validity of some of my most carefully reasoned hypotheses, of some of my most ardently cherished beliefs. Of vulgar physical fear, I need hardly tell you, I was incapable; but I trembled before a dislocation of my thought. It followed that I became guilty of an act of flagrant mental cowardice. I refused to submit those manifestations to scientific investigation. I never mentioned them to my correspondents. I took elaborate precautions against ever witnessing them again myself. I made a determined effort to erase the memory of them from my mind. I almost succeeded in forgetting that I ever had witnessed them. Thus I tricked my own intelligence. I lied to my own experience. I committed a crime against my own reason—a crime which I can never hope to expiate."

Moved by the passion of the elder man's self-denunciation, Laurence had risen, and stood close to him.

"Ah! surely you take it too hard—far too hard, sir," he said.

But Mr. Rivers, looking up at him, answered sternly—

"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.

He checked his horse, and waited, looking at the place again,—at its dark, feathery yew-trees, its narrow mounds, ranged decently in line—on the surface of which the spring grass raised innumerable blades of vivid green—at its simple monuments, that showed not merely a name and date of departure, but time-honoured words of faith in the justice and mercy of Almighty God. There was an unoccupied space on the hither side of the enclosure, lying pleasantly open to the sun. The grey wall of the chancel, pierced by low, round-headed windows, backed it. A bush of Pyrus Japonica was trained around and between these windows; and the flowers, showing up against their black stems, spread garlands of pure, hot colour over the face of the rough stone. Laurence, to whom the disposal of his body after death had, heretofore, appeared a matter of extreme unimportance, was overtaken by a sudden eagerness to secure for himself rights of burial in this serene and sun-visited spot.

"After all, it must come to me, sooner or later, as to all the rest," he thought; "and why shouldn't I provide for the event according to my fancy? I'll talk to the poor little parson about it. Perhaps he'll be easier regarding the state of my soul and my prospects of salvation if I make provision for my latter end by staking out a burial-plot. I wonder what Virginia would say to that? Probably she's a little transatlantic weakness for embalmers and mausoleums. Mother Earth's lap is best, though, I think!"

And then riding onward, all in the fair spring weather, though he tried to put the thought from him, his heart was somewhat troubled by that flitting, rose-clad figure once again—by the lovely, speechless lips, to which he had brought gentle gaiety, and the profound and serious eyes, to which he had brought human sympathy and trust. Silent or not, woman or disembodied spirit, she was a little too captivating for safety. Should he inquire no further? But, in renouncing all further intercourse with her, would he perpetrate an act of high moral courage, or merely commit one of intellectual cowardice, such as that already committed by his uncle? Here was a problem not easy of solution. Laurence straightened himself in the saddle, and pressed his horse a little. Bishop's Pudbury would be a relief, and should be reached with as small delay as possible. He would try to be amused, a little stupid, to laugh, gossip, and forget—for a time at all events.

Mrs. Bellingham, certainly, offered an excellent contrast to the spirit of his present perturbations. She was a notable example of modern civilisation, guiltless of all mysterious or primitive suggestion. Her prettiness was considerable, according to a neat and unaccentuated type. Her manner was vivacious, her attitudes many but sincere. She wore these—so to speak—to bring out the value of her conversation, as she wore her irreproachably constructed clothes to bring out those of her plump and carefully preserved figure. Her light-brown hair was parted in the middle, waved, and puffed out over the ears—this in imitation of the fashion lately patronised by Virginia Rivers. The set of her purple, boxcloth coat and skirt pleased Laurence's eye, as did that of her white satin and lace blouse. She was really admirably turned out—according to current standards of fashion. She greeted her guest, moreover, with that happy combination of self-consciousness and self-assurance, which has in it at once a flavour of compliment and promise of worthy entertainment. Mrs. Jack Bellingham would never do anything very great; but she aspired and succeeded in doing the small things of life remarkably well.

"Why, Mr. Rivers, this is quite too charming for anything," she said. "But, unfortunately, I am alone here with my children. I devote a great deal of time now to my children. My husband has gone up to town for the day."

"So much the better," Laurence answered cheerfully. "I didn't come to see Jack, dear Mrs. Bellingham, but wholly and solely to see you. Virginia charged me with innumerable messages. And then there are a whole lot of people we both know I want to talk to you about—a few multiplications, subtractions, and divisions, you know, not without a humorous side to them here and there. Will you keep me to luncheon? Oh! that's awfully good of you."

The Pudbury manor-house had lately undergone reconstruction, thereby gaining in convenience what it lost in distinction. It was now as well designed to meet modern requirements, as finished, as generally presentable and as little of an enigma, as its present hostess. Laurence contemplated the elegant, if slightly unhomelike, room with a movement of ironical satisfaction. Its contents were as agreeably obvious and unrecondite as the style and plot of a current magazine story. It made no demand upon the intelligence or the emotions. And Laurence had been in contact with quite other literary subject-matter lately—problems of love, morals, metaphysics, not unworthy to inspire the magnificent obscurities of Browning, or the fine frenzies of Shelley's lyrics. Therefore he hailed the emotional limitations of his existing environment. The indolent side of his nature was paramount. He settled down to chatter genially about Tom, Dick, and Harry, and the fair ladies interested in those worthies, or in whom those worthies were interested. He was amused and amusing, relished his luncheon, his hostess's smart talk, and enjoyed countless reminiscences of Newport and New York. And, as the ease of this attitude of mind began to grow on him, the question very forcibly presented itself:—why strain? Why not always drift thus pleasantly and comfortably down the smooth stream of worldly prosperity? Why try to plumb the depths lying below that smiling surface? For does not this, in the majority of cases, involve an expenditure of energy out of all proportion to the worth of the result? To be light-in-hand and light-of-heart—was not that after all the truest philosophy? To what a hopelessly dreary pass had not the elder Mr. Rivers brought himself by thinking otherwise; and taking his studies, his opinions, himself, in short, so seriously!

So, sipping his coffee in the drawing-room after luncheon, while Mrs. Bellingham maintained the flow of conversation in penetrating and emphatic tones, Laurence thought—yes, on the whole, he did think—it would be wiser and better, to retire upon the former lines of his life,—to eschew high ambitions of sorts, and fall back upon the works and ways of l'homme moyen sensuel, upon the great, good-natured, uninspired Commonplace, of which his uncle had accredited him with being so oblivious and complete an exponent. He thought—notwithstanding the tightening of some cord at his heart, perhaps moral, perhaps merely physical—yes, honestly he did think he had better do that, and make his decision here and now. Judging by past experience, he was doomed in all departments to be second, not to say third-rate. Well, then, best accept that doom smiling. To do so might hurt vanity a bit, yet undoubtedly there would be consolations. Laurence set down his coffee-cup with a little lift of the eyebrows and shoulders, and an expression of countenance somewhat cynical. He would coquet no longer with fairy, rose-clad ladies—he would decline the so strangely offered adventure.

"The truth is, I'm not big enough for it," he thought to himself ruefully.