Of the first twelve keys, some slipped round without effect, some stuck
and were withdrawn with difficulty. But the wards of the thirteenth bit
into the lock, and the bolt gave with a click. Laying hold of the
cylindrical front of the escritoire, Laurence pushed it up and back.
Within, a row of arcaded pigeon-holes was disclosed; and on either side
these, a range of little drawers, the pale, bright wood of which
retained its pristine polish, while the colours of the painted
medallions adorning them were very fresh though frail. The cupids, the
little figures of lover and mistress, courtier and prince, were instinct
with vivacity and grace--the heedless vivacity, the artificial grace of
those over-ripe, luxurious periods which carry in their womb the seeds
of revolution and social catastrophe. Laurence was moved, observing it
all. Evidently the bolt had not been shot, the rounded front run back,
and this mimic world of fine-fanciful elegance displayed for many years.
And then this pretty toy of a thing seemed so slight and incongruous a
receptacle for the storage of momentous secrets. Yet that the secrets it
held were momentous, dealing with problems of life and death, subtle
transformations of flesh and spirit, the young man--notwithstanding the
soothing influences of a healthy night's rest, and the pre-eminently
unexciting ones of a grey, wet, March afternoon--felt no doubt. For he
had given in, as he believed, finally, to the adventure; and with that
giving in, his faith in the magnitude of it suffered, by natural
rebound, serious increase.
So reverently, and as one who approaches a long disused shrine
containing promise of strange and precious relics, he opened the shallow
drawers and examined their contents. The first three were filled with
packets of letters, written on thin, discoloured paper, and tied, some
with pink, some with yellow, sarsenet ribbon. Each packet was neatly
dated, the dates ranging, as Laurence gathered in a first hasty survey,
from the year 1802 to the year 1805. The remaining drawers contained a
collection of objects, miscellaneous in character but united in the
thought (as he divined) of whoso placed them there, side by side, by
some exquisitely tender sentiment.--A man's paste shoe-buckles, square
and bowed, the silver settings of them tarnished to blackness, reposed
beside a woman's striped, waist ribbon, cinnamon and white, embroidered
in buds and scattered full-blown roses. Here were seals cut from
envelopes, the cracked and blistered wax of them impressed with the
Rivers's arms and crest; and a store of semi-transparent, delicately
tinted shells, spoils of some far-distant, southern coast. There were
trinkets, too, rings and bracelets of intricate Indian workmanship; and
a cluster of coral charms, of Neapolitan origin, with the tiny golden
hand, first and fourth fingers stiffly extended, which keeps off the
Evil Eye. Next, little posies, such as a lover might pluck and his
mistress might wear for an evening, pinned, to please him, in the bosom
of her dress. These last were pressed and flattened, the several hues of
the once radiant blossoms faded to an ashen uniformity of tint. They
were sadly brittle, too; and though Laurence raised them with careful
fingers, crumbled to nothingness under his touch. Then he lighted on a
man's watch, a great, gold warming-pan of a thing, with a guard of
black lustre ribbon and a bunch of heavy seals attached. The back of the
case bore the Rivers's crest--a bird of doubtful lineage, its wings
extended for flight, its talons holding something, which to Laurence
always appeared to bear humorous relation to a fool's cap. The case was
also engraved with the initials L. R. in flowing and ornate lettering.
And over these initials Laurence paused. They piqued his curiosity. They
also, somewhat to his own amusement, provoked in him a feeling
suspiciously akin to jealousy. They were his own; yet he could not but
imagine that they were also those of a person closely connected with the
sweet and mysterious companion, who had walked the lawns and garden
alleys with him during the small hours, fled and vanished at cock-crow,
two nights back. A very definite purpose of learning more about this
same person--of whom, he divined, this pathetic store of objects to be
gifts or memorials--possessed Laurence. Had he wronged the gentle lady
in life, so causing her after sorrow? Or had some tragic happening
parted him from her, without fault of his? And what manner of man had
he been, while a dweller here, in ordinary fashion, upon earth? It
became of great moment to Laurence to answer these questions. Perhaps
those packets of discoloured letters would tell. Meanwhile, there
remained another shallow, painted drawer to be searched.
It contained, wrapped face to face, in a lace and lawn handkerchief, two
very exquisite miniatures by Cosway. And then, though he courted
surprises, agreeing with himself to expect nothing save the unexpected,
and to accept all possible extravagance of improbability that might
arise with as little dislocation of mind as one accepts the
extravagancies of a dream, Laurence stood for a moment speechless,
absolutely confounded.
For one miniature represented his fairy-lady, her lovely eyes and lips
smiling with discreet gladsomeness, her expression an enchanting union
of sprightliness and of content. An azure ribbon was threaded through
the soft masses of her elaborately-dressed hair, little curls of which
strayed down on to her forehead. The string of pearls was clasped around
her throat. She wore her transparent, white, frilled cape and rose-red,
silken gown. Her graceful head and slender figure--to the waist--were
seen against a background of faint dove-coloured cloud. The painter had
painted fondly as a friend, it would seem, as well as a master of his
craft.--And the other miniature, by the same hand, showing the same
delightful sympathy of artist with his subject, touched by the same
poetic insight and grace, was a portrait of whom? Well, of
himself--himself, Laurence Rivers, not as he was to-day, but as he had
been, ten years ago, at one-and-twenty. With astonishment, bordering
very closely on alarm, he observed that colouring, features, the square
cutting of the nostrils, a certain softness in the lines of the mouth,
the shape of the head, the straight set of the shoulders, all these were
perfectly exact. While the countenance was instinct with that inimitable
charm of unsullied youth, that fearlessness and happy self-confidence,
the attractive power of which he had only fully realised as they had
begun to fade out of his aspect in the course of his passage from early
to maturer manhood, while the boundlessly generous aspirations of
inexperience were in course of being discredited by increasing knowledge
of the standards and habits of this not altogether noble or virtuous
world.
Laurence took the miniature in his hand, and considered it closely, with
a twinge of self-abasement. Endowed with so ingratiating a personality,
so admirable a physical equipment, he ought surely to have made a
definite name and place for himself in contemporary history! And what of
moment had he to show, after all, for his thirty-one years of living?
Practically nothing, he feared. And the young man of the miniature made
better play with his handsome person, and the qualities and talents
which might be expected to accompany it? He had been a sailor
apparently, for he wore the dark-blue, naval uniform of the early years
of the century, his brown hair being tied back into a queue. But for
these details the resemblance to himself was absolute. And then,
suddenly, with a sense of faintness as though his identity were slipping
away from him, and his hold on actuality loosening as he imagined it
might loosen in the moments immediately preceding death, Laurence
remembered that he had worn a precisely similar costume--that of a
naval lieutenant of the time of Nelson--at a fancy dress ball given in
his honour, at the country house of certain of his mother's relations,
on the eve of his twenty-first birthday. He had been mightily chaffed
about his good looks and air of assured conquest upon the occasion in
question; and had laughingly replied that he, too, intended to fight his
battle of Trafalgar and win it, only that he should take jolly good care
not to fall in the hour of success, but to survive and thoroughly enjoy
the fruits of victory.
The miniatures were oval, each set in a plain gold band. Laurence turned
them over in search of a possible inscription. Upon the reverse of the
one were engraved the words--"Agnes, a gift to her dear cousin," and the
date, "August 1803." Upon the other--"Laurence, a gift to his dear
love," and the same date.
Rain had followed on the stormy splendours of the preceding evening; and
as the young man raised his eyes absently and stared out of the great
bay-window, he became sensible that the outlook was comfortless enough.
The gardens and the distant view were blurred and blotted by driving
mist; while, in the room itself, there reigned a singularly blear and
cheerless light. A damp, earthy odour, moreover, pervaded the
atmosphere, as though the moisture prevailing out of doors had gained
access to the house. Carefully, rather sadly, Laurence laid the two
miniatures side by side upon the filmy handkerchief. The radiant,
pictured faces, the two graceful, young heads turned slightly towards
each other as in mutual tenderness and sympathy, offered, he thought,
pathetic contrast to the melancholy of this tearful morning. That this
young man had in no way wronged the fair and gentle woman, he now felt
assured. But that assurance, so perverse is human nature, did not serve
to elate him. Far from it. As he looked first at the charming pair, and
then at the driving mist, a sense of great loneliness, almost of
desolation, came over him; while the word spectre--which, when employed
yesterday by his lively hostess Mrs. Bellingham, had seemed of such
meagre and even vulgar significance--now occurred to him with a new and
immediate meaning. Spectral--that this room was in the present dreary
light. While, if the idea called for further and concrete presentiment,
he could--looking on the fearless and hopeful countenance of that other
Laurence Rivers--offer it in his own person. Involuntarily he shivered,
since, for the moment, his tenure of name, person and individuality,
seemed so questionable, a matter of sufferance merely--amounting to no
more, in fact, than a remote reversionary interest in another man's
goods.
At random he picked up a couple of packets of letters off the top of the
escritoire, where he had laid them, and moved across to the window. It
was not wholesome to look at those happy faces--one his own--any longer.
The letters tied with a pink ribbon were in a woman's hand, sloped and
pointed, but with a peculiar elegance of lettering and evenness of line.
Then for an instant he debated, questioning whether he could without
breach of honour, and of the respect in which all decent-minded persons
hold the dead, open and read these letters. The position was
extraordinary to the point of abrogating accustomed rules of conduct;
yet he felt a certain delicacy in reading a woman's letters and
surprising the secrets of her heart. But as he turned them over,
glancing at the first page of each, he perceived that in every case they
were addressed to himself; for at the top corner of each was
written--"To Laurence Rivers, Esq.," and below either "Dear cousin" or
"Dear love." Then the irony of the thing taking him, he smiled to
himself and said:
"Oh, well, come along, surely I have a right to the smooth as well as
the rough. If I am such a very second-hand affair any way, with not so
much as a name or face of my own to be proud of, I'll at least have the
advantages of my disabilities. I will know how my other, first-hand,
self was made love to and made love."
Yet no sooner had he begun to read, than he became aware that he knew
that already. For as he perused the thin, deeply-creased pages, he felt,
with a certainty independent of and passing all proof, that he had read
these sweet effusions, these innocent chronicles of home life, of
meetings and partings, pretty pleasures and junketings, not once but
many times already. He remembered them. He could almost tell what words
would meet his eye as he straightened and turned the fluttering sheets
of paper.
"--I am much concerned," wrote Agnes Rivers, "that so many months must
elapse before I can again receive news of you. I preach Patience to
myself; but that virtue, though a good servant, is but a sorrowful
master. I am pursued by fears on your account, which often move me to
tears when I am alone, or have retired to my chamber at night. You will
reprove my feminine weakness and bid me take courage. Yet I defy you to
maintain such fears are wholly misplaced, in face of the wild scenes of
tempest and of battle which you may be called upon to witness."
Again--"It grieves me that I cannot write to you of my affection with
the freedom dictated by my heart. But my means of communicating with you
amid the convulsions of the present terrible war are so uncertain, that
I constantly tremble lest my letters should fall into other hands than
yours. My good Mrs. Lambert, who, as you will remember, is ever
solicitous for the maintenance of propriety, impresses this danger upon
me, and urges reticence and circumspection. I therefore entreat you,
dear Laurence, not to measure the depth of my regard by my present
expression of it. Recall, rather, all the happy and unclouded hours we
have enjoyed together, and let them speak for me."
And again--"Your brother Dudley, though, I grieve to say, not less harsh
and imperious towards others, continues to treat me with all brotherly
consideration and courtesy. He is very thoughtful of the improvement of
my mind, and we still follow our studies in the Italian and Spanish
languages. His great knowledge and intelligence are of incalculable
advantage to me, and I trust that I prove a docile, if not a very
brilliant, pupil. I own my thoughts at times wander, though I strive, in
gratitude to my kind preceptor, to keep them fixed upon my tasks. Mrs.
Lambert is, unfortunately, as much alarmed by Dudley's opinions and
conversation as ever. I could myself wish that he would express himself
with less violence on the subject of politics and of religion. But his
early travels in the unfortunate country of France, and his intimate
association with Mr. Robespierre and other leaders of her sanguinary
revolution, have, I much fear, permanently warped his mind and
prejudiced his judgment. Yesterday, at dinner, he entered into a
discussion with our new rector, Mr. Burkinshaw--a scholarly and
estimable person--upon the Rights of Man, and the nature and attributes
of the Deity, asserting subversive and atheistical views with so much
heat and intemperance of language, that Mrs. Lambert fled from table in
tears, while Mr. Burkinshaw was, I could not but see, seriously offended
and hurt."
Once more--"The weather recently has been continuously wet and stormy.
Dudley reports great destruction of timber in the park. I have been
unable to leave the house, and have spent many hours in the east
parlour, which your brother kindly bids me regard as my exclusive
property. I have read much, I trust with profit. Nor have I neglected my
music, though the melancholy character of the season and ever-present
fears for your safety have rendered me but a joyless performer. For the
songs you most admire, I cannot find voice. Indeed, I struggle with my
weakness, and make every effort to present a serene exterior. But Memory
is never, perhaps, a more sorry companion than when she speaks of happy
scenes."
And finally--"My own dear love, your packet from Madalena has at last
reached us. What can I say to you save that my heart dances with
rapture? I cannot sit still, but must needs run from place to place for
very gladness. Mrs. Lambert reproves my lack of occupation. But she is
mistaken. I am fully occupied in reading and re-reading your letter, and
in thanking our Merciful Creator for this unhoped-for assurance of your
safety. I have retired to the stone bench beneath the lime-trees. They
are in blossom now, and their agreeable fragrance fills the air. Here I
write to you, while the sun shines, and summer winds play lightly with
the leaves. Do you remember our sitting here the evening you stole the
new black ribbon from my embroidered bag with which to tie your hair?
Dear love, now I am convinced that you will be permitted to return to
me, and that we shall add yet other happy hours to those already
treasured in our hearts. All will be well. Nay--what am I writing?--all
is well already. But for my past anxiety and all my cruel fears, I
could not have known the rapture of the present. My heart overflows. I
would not have one unhappy creature breathe to-day. I have emptied my
purse to a beggar; and have expended unpermitted dainties upon my
cage-birds, and Dudley's horses and dogs. The servants smile upon me,
rejoicing in my joy. Ah! my love, I am half ashamed to wear so gay a
face. Dudley has withdrawn to the library. He is preoccupied and silent.
Mrs. Lambert, for all her affection, regards me, I fear, with
disapproval. But how can I feign indifference? You are safe. You will
return to me. In six months I shall attain my majority, and then your
brother Dudley can no longer, as my guardian, legally prohibit our
marriage. Of that dear union, the consummation of all our prayers and
hopes, I can scarcely dare trust myself to--"
And here Laurence found himself forced to cease reading. The page was
blotted, the writing obliterated, by rusty stains of the nature of which
he could be in no doubt. The further record of Agnes Rivers's pure
passion was smothered in blood.
He folded the letters together, tied them up, put them back in the
drawer, closed and locked the escritoire. Well, it must have been worth
while to have been loved like that! Did women ever love so still, he
wondered? He opened the tall French window, and once again went out,
hatless, into the driving wet.