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.