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
_Sevres_ 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.