"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.