XII

Laurence drew himself up with a sharp sensation of annoyance, geniality

and wistfulness alike departing from his aspect. The matter had never

presented itself to him in this combination before, and it offended his

taste, even, in a degree, his sense of decency. He paused a moment, and

then took refuge in slight insincerity.

"Always assuming, dear Mrs. Bellingham, that there is a family spectre

for Virginia, or anybody else, to be on terms with?"

"Why, you do not really propose to call that thrilling fact in

question?" the lady answered, very brightly. "That would be too

mortifying. It would constitute the climax of the _ennui_ from which I

have suffered during the many months of this English winter. I had

promised myself at least one vital sensation when you and I should meet,

and you should tell me the true, inward history of that romantic, old

house of yours, Stoke Rivers."

She sat in an attitude, arranged the folds of her boxcloth shirt,

patted the lace into place about her neck.

"You make me feel very badly," she said.

Laurence objected to soiling his conscience by lying at least as much as

most men. But surely, he argued, there are cases of justifiable perjury,

as of justifiable homicide.

"I am awfully sorry," he said, "to dash your hopes of a sensation. But,

you see, neither the romantic, old house or its inward history are my

property as yet, so I can't give either away however much I may desire

to do so."

"I know it. I do not ask you to commit any indiscretion. I do not ask

you to tell me anything."

Laurence braced himself.

"How fortunate, since there's nothing to tell!" he said.

His hostess looked hard at him for a moment, and then at the floor.

"There was a time, before I lived among them, when I believed the

English to be a simple and undiplomatic nation," she said. "I know

better now."

Laurence was half-amused, half-irritated.

"Oh, come!" he retorted, "it's too bad to make it an international

question."

"I had promised myself such a fine time in that house," she continued,

still gazing abstractedly at the floor. "Virginia is, I consider--and I

believe you know that--the most perfectly lovely woman of my

acquaintance. She represents the last word of our American culture; and

I would advise every young girl, who was ambitious of social success, to

study her as a model. She catches right on to everything new at once,

and her power of repartee is great. My admiration for Virginia is so

overpowering, that it would really be a wonderful encouragement to my

self-respect to get a step ahead of her for once. Well, I concluded I

could do that in a perfectly legitimate manner. I planned to ask you to

let me go right around that house from cellar to garret, and acquaint

myself with the whole interior. I wanted to see it before Virginia had

brought our younger and more complex Western civilisation to bear upon

it. I promised myself great gratification from doing that."

As she finished speaking, Mrs. Bellingham raised her eyes. That she was

in earnest, keenly inquisitive, there could be no doubt.

"But, unhappily, in asking that you would be asking me to commit the

greatest possible indiscretion," Laurence answered, laughing a little.

"You see, my uncle is alive as yet. And while he lives I must obey

orders."

"Orders?"

"Yes; and they are such preposterously unchivalrous orders that I

tremble to mention them to you."

Mrs. Bellingham looked away. She grew a trifle anxious, having the

greatest fear of hearing anything even remotely, morally or socially,

incorrect. But the young man's manner tended to reassure her. He

appeared particularly engaging at that moment.

"Yes, it will shock you," he said, "shock you outrageously, coming as

you do from a country where no member of your delightful sex is ever

requested to take a back seat. My uncle is a brilliantly clever person,

but on some points he is a little mad. And simply at Stoke Rivers--I

blush to mention it--no woman is admitted, no woman is permitted to

exist."

Mrs. Bellingham's eyes positively flashed, her face went extremely pink.

"But this is the most unparalleled country!" she exclaimed. "Mr. Rivers,

do you seriously intend me to believe that no lady may enter that house?

Why, I ask you, how is it possible to conduct a domestic establishment

under such circumstances?"

"Ah! that's the worst of it," Laurence said. He was beginning to be

amused again. "I tell you, the condition of that house suggests the most

awful reflections."

"I am glad to hear it."

"Yes, awful," he repeated. "For it is the best mounted, the best served,

the best kept house I have ever stayed in. It is as clean as a new pin.

The whole thing moves on wheels--and yet never the trace of a petticoat!

It follows that one is assailed by the unholy suspicion that woman may

be, after all, a quite superfluous luxury; and that the work of the

world, even in its humble, domestic aspects, can get along just as well

without her. My uncle entertains this opinion anyhow, and gives the most

convincing practical exposition of it. He has supplied me with a large

amount of information under this head; and, upon my word, I'm afraid I

am beginning to see the force of his arguments. After that, I'd better

go, hadn't I?"

"Well, I really believe perhaps you had," she answered. For once she

looked perplexed, almost flurried. Her face was still decidedly pink.

But she rallied herself, and fired a parting shot.--"Unless," she added,

"to make amends for having told me so very plainly that my presence

would not be tolerated at Stoke Rivers, you relent and give me the whole

story of that family spectre."

Laurence raised his head sharply, and once more his sense of amusement

evaporated. The return to this theme jarred on him. The lady's

persistence appeared to him in singularly bad taste. The reiteration of

that word angered him moreover. In hearing it he was sensible of a turn

in his blood, as though an insult were being offered to one very dear to

him.

"Spectre?" he said slowly. "Pardon me--I--I don't quite follow you. What

spectre?"

His hostess was roused in her turn.

"Why, Mr. Rivers, what has happened to you?" she inquired. "What have I

said to disturb your equanimity? I had not supposed you to be so

sensitive."

Whereupon the folly of his anger became extremely apparent to Laurence;

the more so that he had so recently concluded to eschew ambitious

adventures and decline upon the large and unexciting levels of the

Commonplace. In those regions hasty resentments, hot blood, the

fine-gentleman-duelling-spirit, in short, is clearly out of the picture.

And then, why quarrel with Mrs. Bellingham of all people? She was a very

charming, little person, specially when--as just now--her glance dwelt

fondly upon her red-coated babies and their escort of nurses, donkey,

and dogs. If she had trodden on his toes, it was unwittingly, and

without any intention of malice. So he proceeded to make _amende

honorable_ with proper despatch.

"Forgive me," he said; "I am an idiot. But the legends to which my poor

old uncle's crankiness have given rise really begin to get upon my

brain. Wherever I go they crop up. You can understand it becomes a

little exasperating.--Good-bye. I have had a delightful time. Love to

Jack."

The lady smiled upon him, yet with an air of criticism and slight

reserve.

"Oh yes," she said, "certainly, Mr. Rivers, love to Jack. But I am going

to write to Virginia and report on our interview. I believe it is

incumbent on me as a true friend to do that.--Yes, you may come again

just as soon as you like. Now, do I not display a perfectly lovely

spirit in inviting you here after you have done just all you know to

explode my romance? Mr. Rivers, this day will leave a scar. I know it. I

do regret that spectre."

Laurence smiled back, looking down at her.

"Yes, it's a pity, isn't it," he said, "ever to explode a romance? There

aren't too many of them about. Perhaps I too could find it in my heart

to regret that spectre."

And there, at least, the young man spoke truth, for regrets pursued him

on his homeward way. All this talk, moreover, was a nuisance, an

intolerable nuisance. And, though he did not stay to analyse the

probabilities of when and how, he apprehended up-croppings,

developments, and ramifications of the said nuisance in the future. Mrs.

Bellingham's question, as to the attitude Virginia might adopt towards

the occult element in her husband's fine inheritance, was more

uncomfortably pertinent than the questioner could by any means have

imagined. It suggested most disturbing complications. Thus Laurence rode

onward heedlessly, harassed by vexatious and perplexing thoughts.

"What a confounded bother it all is!" he exclaimed impatiently. "I wish

to goodness the poor old man would live for ever--outlive me anyhow.

That would be the simplest solution of the situation."

He raised his head and looked about him, then became aware that he must

have taken some wrong turn in the labyrinth of cross-country roads

between Bishop's Pudbury and Stoke Rivers, that he must have struck too

far southward and so lost his way. The mouth of the steep, rutted lane,

shut in by copse on either hand, which he had been following, now

debouched on a high-lying table-land. Small, rough fields bordered the

road, their crumbling, ill-kept banks bare of trees. Some fifty yards

ahead, where four roads crossed, stood a lonely, one-story, turnpike

house; it was six-sided, white-washed, and had a slated roof, rising

extinguisher-like to a single central chimney. Placed in an angle of the

intersecting roads, it was without garden ground. The turnpike-gate had

long ago disappeared; and the house, a thing that had lost its use and

become obsolete, was in a half-ruinous condition. An air of cheap

desolation pervaded it. Bundles of rags bulged from the broken

window-panes. Long-legged, high-shouldered fowls pecked and squatted in

the dust before the half-open door. Yet, seeing it, Laurence was

sensible that this unsightly building had a tally somewhere in his

memory, and claimed recognition. And this impression received unexpected

reinforcement when suddenly its squalid walls changed from dirty-white

to warm primrose, while the surviving glass in its rickety windows gave

off dazzling splendours of light.

Anxious to learn the cause of this transformation, the young man drew

up, and, laying his right hand upon his horse's sleek quarters, turned

half round in the saddle, and stayed thus, looking and listening.

The view was very noble. Southward the fall of the ground was

sufficiently abrupt to exclude all middle distance, with the result that

the rough grasses, withered bents and sorrel-stalks of the near

pasture-field were outlined against the immense sweep of the flat

coastline far below--this last, mauve, and russet, and dim green, was

broken here and there by a pallor of sandhills and the shimmer of

seaward-tending streams. Looking west, the suave contours of the Downs

and Beachy Head rose, in indigo and purple, against a great space of

saffron-coloured sky. Above them, but with a bar of strong light

between, heavy masses of purple-grey cloud gathered, from out which the

freshening wind blew chill. The sea, steel-blue and dashed with

white-capped waves, lifted a hard, serrated edge against the horizon.

All this Laurence saw. It made a rather splendid picture, big with the

drama of approaching storm. Yet he was persuaded something was lacking.

As three days ago upon first entering the yellow drawing-room at Stoke

Rivers, he had, after the first moment of surprise, instinctively looked

for certain ornaments and pieces of furniture, and derived a singular

satisfaction from the conviction that they still occupied their

accustomed place--so now and here, though to his knowledge he had never

before ridden across this piece of exposed and but half-reclaimed

common-land, or seen the great view under its existing aspect,--he

instinctively gazed seaward in search of that which should support his

half-awakened memory, and complete the scene to his satisfaction. For

surely--yes, surely--bowling up Channel, under crowded canvas, before

the freshening breeze, he should behold a fleet of some eight or ten

square-rigged East Indiamen, their carven poops standing high out of the

water,--vessels of about a thousand tons' burden, laden with tea and

spices, bales of delicate muslins and silks, flasks of utter, porcelain,

ivory fans, bright-hued parrots, and unseemly, little apes.

And as convoy of these rich cargoes, to secure them, their merchant

captains and bronzed and sturdy crews, against the rapacity of

privateers sweeping out from St. Malo and other ports of Northern

France, he should behold--yes, surely he should--a couple of smart

English frigates, square-rigged too, whose clean scrubbed decks and the

black mouths of whose port holes displayed grim argument of cannon,

ready for action should occasion so demand. The ships, hugging the land

for greater safety from alert and hungry foes, seemed--while the wind

filled the bellying sails, straining their tall masts, as they heeled

upon that uneasy, blue-grey sea--like some flight of huge,

golden-plumage birds; for all the saffron glory now streaming from

beneath the gathering storm-clouds in the west must lie full on them.

For such gallant sight Laurence watched, singularly moved, and with a

singular eagerness. And so clear was the vision to his mind, so

necessary to the completion of the scene upon which his eyes rested,

that for some moments he failed to distinguish where actuality ended

and hallucination began. He contemplated the creation of his own brain

in absorbed interest; then turned and looked at the rough road and

dilapidated turnpike house, and then again out to sea. Only a

black-hulled, ocean-going tramp, her deckhouses piled up amidships close

against her reeking funnel, laboured slowly down channel in the teeth of

the gusty breeze. This was all; and then the young man understood, not

without amazement, that the gallant show had been a thing of the

imagination only,--at most a thing remembered, but how and whence

remembered he could not tell. For how, upon any reasonable hypothesis,

could the memory of a man like himself of but just over thirty, put back

the clock by close upon a century, and disport itself with incidents

belonging by rights to, at least, two generations ago? It was all most

exceedingly strange. It amounted to being disquieting. Really he did not

half like it. Yet the imagined spectacle had been very inspiring all the

same. It had made his blood tingle, and had effectually (or

disastrously) exorcised that spirit of indolence and _laisser aller_

which he had solicited to take up its abode with him. He sent his horse

forward at a sharp trot, while once again he proceeded to revise the

situation.

For the idea presented itself that perhaps he had been over

self-confident, arrogating to himself a far greater freedom of will than

he, in point of fact, possessed. It was all very fine to foreswear

adventure, but what if adventure refused to be foresworn? He might

easily propose to decline upon modernity, mediocrity, and the

Commonplace; but what if these, as seemed just now highly probable,

asserted in unmistakable language their determination to have none of

him? He reflected that temperament may constitute your genius or your

fate, your opportunity or your ruin, as you have the wit to deal with

it; but that temperament is indestructible, and that escape from

it,--however inconvenient and contrary to your desire that temperament

may be,--is obviously and inherently impossible.

As he meditated thus, the road he followed dipped slightly, leaving the

bare upland and passing along the under side of a thick belt of wood,

which cut off the seaward view. On the left, between the interspaces of

the hedgerow trees, the inland country now lay disclosed for many miles.

Clouds had gathered so rapidly in the last ten minutes that the sun was

obscured, and all the wide expanse was drowned in heavy violet and

indigo shadow. Only a ridge of hill, some three-quarters of a mile

distant, was caught by long shafts of wild, rainbow light, so that it

floated as a narrow, fish-shaped island upon the ocean of stormy colour.

And upon that island, uplifted, transmuted, etherealised, rendered at

once unreal yet insistent, vividly defined by the unnatural and

searching light, Laurence beheld Stoke Rivers--the long, low house, and

its double range of windows, its avenues, and carriage-ways, the block

of stable buildings; every detail of the Italian garden, its cypress

spires as of full-toned amethyst, its white balustrades and statues

iridescent as though made of long-buried Roman glass, its great lawns

green as malachite, the dome of its lime-grove touched by a dim glow as

of uncut rubies. In this strange and unearthly radiance, Stoke Rivers

seemed to call upon Laurence, to challenge his admiration, to assert its

existence and its claim upon his heart, with a singular power. It was

part of him, and he of it. It laid hands on his past and his future

alike. It refused to be taken lightly. As a woman wears her jewels to

startle and enthral a desired lover, so this dwelling-place of his

people arrayed itself in marvellous wise to conquer his wavering

allegiance and command his thought. It would force him not to disregard

its secrets. It wooed him to intimacy, to discovery. It cried to him

out, as it seemed, of some unplumbed depth of experience in himself.

That night Mr. Rivers engaged his nephew until past midnight. His manner

was gracious, his mind, apparently, unusually at peace. His conversation

was remarkably brilliant, both in range of subject and readiness of

expression. First dealing with the earliest known examples of art, and

displaying critical acquaintance with Chaldean cylinders and stelae, he

passed on to the persistent influence of Eastern ideas upon Western

religious thought. He discoursed of Hindu sacred literature and the

crowded pantheon of Hindu gods, noting how certain practices connected

with their worship and certain symbols pertaining to it have passed into

the common use of the Catholic Church. He discoursed of the Gnostic

sects, and their influence upon African and Syrian Christianity. Then,

invading the Spanish peninsular in the train of the Moors, he delivered

himself of a spirited disquisition upon Averrhoes, the lawyer

philosopher of Cordova, his doctrine of the Universal Reason and denial

of the immortality of the individual soul.

Laurence went forth onto the bright, hot corridor, and paused at the

stairhead. He was honestly tired both in mind and body. He needed, and

would take, an honest night's rest. But one thing was sure. Whether he

had decided or merely yielded, whether he represented the positive or

negative element, he knew not; but this he did know, that the

Commonplace, and all the ease of it, might wait. He was not ready for

that just yet.