XIX

The disposition of Montagu Rivers's property proved--as Mr. Wormald had

already advised Laurence it would prove--of a simple and straightforward

description. All the servants connected with the house and stables would

receive a couple of years' wages. Lowndes, the valet, would in addition

draw a substantial pension. Outside these provisions, Laurence inherited

wholly and solely. A single clause in the brief will revealed somewhat

of the eccentric character of its maker. Mr. Rivers directed that within

forty-eight hours of his reported death a London surgeon of acknowledged

eminence should use means to ascertain, beyond all possibility of doubt,

that death had veritably and indeed taken place. He further directed

that Armstrong, the agent, and a local practitioner who had attended him

at intervals during his illness, should be present at this rather

ghastly demonstration. It was added that the corpse should receive

Christian burial not less than twenty-four hours after the autopsy had

been carried out. The clause concluded with the following words:--

"I desire these measures to be taken--childish and superstitious though

they may appear--as a precaution against that happening, in my own case,

which would appear to have happened in the case of a former inhabitant

of Stoke Rivers."

The eminent surgeon in question, hastily summoned from amid a press of

work, could spare but one evening for his visit. He proved to be a

courtly and agreeable person, an amateur of the fine arts, with a turn

for copper-plate engravings, a weakness for Italian ivories, and an

enthusiasm for antique and renaissance gems. His work in the

death-chamber accomplished, he readily turned his attention to more

pleasing investigations; and during the hour after dinner, before the

coming of the carriage to take him to catch the up-express at Stoke

Rivers Road, he examined the contents of certain glass cases in the

library, and looked at the engravings hanging in the lower corridor.

"I little imagined, when I left town this afternoon," he said,

addressing Laurence with a peculiarly charming smile, "that such

delectable entertainment was in store for me. I am proud of my

profession--no man more so; but I am not sorry to put it aside for a

time and forget injury and disease, and even successful dealing with

them, in favour of art. This collection of your uncle's, though not

large, is remarkable. It reflects great credit upon his judgment and

taste. It contains absolutely no rubbish, hardly, indeed, a single

object which it would be just to qualify as second-rate.--Ah! here is

another admirable thing, though less in my line than those delightful

gems."

The two men had reached the end of the corridor, and the doctor paused

in front of the tapestry curtain.

"This is a very fine example," he continued, "though I could not, off

hand, be sure of the date. How broad and yet how harmonious in

colouring! Just a trifle broad in subject, too, perhaps; but our

forefathers were blessed or cursed--I am often at a loss to decide

which--with a more robust taste in sentiment than ourselves. A witty

modern writer has spoken of 'the saving grace of coarseness.' There

have been times when I have been tempted to endorse his phrase."

As he spoke, he laid hold of the edge of the curtain.

"Dear me, how singularly weighty!" He looked at his host quickly,

inquiringly, and with heightened interest. "Singularly weighty," he

repeated. "This house enjoys a reputation for a certain originality, I

understand. Would it be indiscreet to inquire to what this splendid

_portiere_ either gives, or denies, access?"

Just for a moment Laurence hesitated, staring his guest very full in the

face. So far this new acquaintance had interested him greatly. His

conversation had been refreshingly varied; moreover, Laurence, in

listening to it, had become increasingly and pleasingly impressed with

the value and distinction of his lately acquired possessions. He

recognised a steadiness and sanity in the great surgeon's outlook; an

appreciation of things rare and beautiful, combined with a wisdom born

of wide practical experience; a large compassion, too, for the foibles,

and sufferings, and sins of poor human nature, unembittered by any

flavour of contempt. And so it happened that, during that moment of

hesitation, Laurence was sorely disposed to lay bare to this man--whom

he would in all probability never meet again--the abnormal situation in

which he, at the present time, found himself. If any one could grasp

that situation, and deal with it at once justly and sympathetically, he

thought this man could do so; since he appeared to have passed the

limits of denial and scepticism, and reached that composure and poise of

mind wherein revolt ceases and the capacity of acceptance and belief

becomes almost unlimited. But--perhaps unfortunately--Laurence put the

inclination towards free speech from him as a temptation. Was he not

bound by his promise to the dead? He was bound still more, perhaps, by

personal pride. It appeared to him free speech would be a yielding, a

weakness; so he answered suavely, yet with a sufficient loftiness to

leave no room for further question--

"Behind the curtain is that which, indirectly, has procured me the great

pleasure of receiving you here to-day."

As he spoke he turned, and led the way in the direction of the hall

again.

"I'm uncommonly glad," he added, "that you have such a high opinion of

my uncle's little collection. Perhaps it may induce you to come down

here again sometime, from Saturday to Monday, and overhaul the contents

of these cases at your leisure. I am afraid I'm a bit of a barbarian,

and don't reckon with them as reverently as I ought. I am a good deal

better up in the points of polo ponies than in those of Popes' rings, I

know."

"That is no matter for regret," the doctor replied, in his most courtly

manner. "My esteem for the barbarian increases rather than diminishes as

I grow older. And I never forget that these delicacies of art are, after

all, the refuge of those who have outlived or injured their digestion

of, and appetite for, simpler and more wholesome diet. Such dyspeptics

are to be commiserated rather than commended. As long as the romance of

sport and travel holds you, as long as you still 'love the bright eyes

of danger,' you can very well afford to leave the consolations offered

by gems, and ivories, and such like sweepings from the ruins of departed

civilisations, to the physically and emotionally decrepit."

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Ah, youth," he said, "immortal youth, and the rather savage joys of

it!--I congratulate you far more profoundly upon the possession of

these, and upon the magnificent health which I cannot but perceive to be

yours, than upon your extremely interesting house and both its seen"--he

paused, looking rather hard at Laurence and smiling--"and unseen

treasures.--A cigar? Yes, thanks, I think I will permit myself that

indulgence on my way down to the station.--But to return to my

contention. Remember we only take to sweet-sop when our teeth are no

longer sound enough for ship's biscuit. Eat ship's biscuit and relish it

just as long as a merciful Providence permits you to do so, my dear

young gentleman. The days of sweet-sop, of the armchair, of what we are

pleased to call 'the judicial attitude of mind,' but which is really

nothing save the natural consequence of a sluggish and defective

circulation, will come all too soon in any case. Adieu to you--"

A flash of carriage lamps at the open hall door, the two

men-servants--restored to their habitual correctness of bearing--armed

with rugs, greatcoat, and narrow leather bag of slightly sinister

aspect--the snort of a horse in the night air, fresh from the

comfortable warmth of the stable--and, after further farewells, Laurence

went back into the hot, bright, silent house.

"No one need sit up, Renshaw," he said to the waiting butler. "I shall

watch in Mr. Rivers's room alone to-night."

For this was to be a night of abstinence, so the young man had decided,

from the dear sight of his fairy-lady and the delight of her

miraculously recovered speech. He had a duty to perform to the dead man,

lying solitary upstairs--though hardly more solitary now, than during

the long years past in which he had repudiated all solace of human

affection. To Laurence himself life had become almost terribly well

worth living since he had set foot in Stoke Rivers little more than a

week ago; and it was to this man, of cold and narrow nature, that, after

all, he owed this notable enlargement of interests and opportunity--not

to mention those material advantages of houses, lands, and costly

furnishings which had come to him. Gratitude was very much in place; and

it seemed to him that a silent vigil in that stately bed-chamber would

be only fitting, both as an act of piety, and as testimony to the

gratitude now no longer permitted expression either in spoken word or

kindly act. Nor could Laurence help hoping that during those solemn

hours he might arrive at a clear determination regarding the

future--ceasing merely to drift passive and acquiescent to the push of

circumstance, as a rudderless boat to the push of the tide. He would

direct his own course, be master of his own action, prepared to

take--for good or ill--all the consequences that action might involve.

For, all the while--and it was worse than useless to shirk remembrance

of that--all the while, across the Atlantic, under the bright American

skies, bright as they, immediate and modern as the civilisation on which

they look down, was the vivacious, young, society beauty, whom he had

believed he loved, whom he very certainly had married, and to whom--in

the opinion of both her world and his own--his honour and his whole

future stood pledged. The question of Virginia--for the whole situation

resolved itself fundamentally into that--the question of Virginia must

be reckoned with, and the results of such reckoning accepted once and

for all.

He had not visited that upstairs room since the night of his uncle's

death. The impression then received of the furnace-like fire, and the

apparent life and motion of those figures of enslaved and half-bestial

womanhood supporting the bed, were still present to his recollection.

But now, as he passed into the room, he found the change worked there

very arresting. All trace of that which had gone forward, earlier in the

evening, under the hands of the eminent surgeon, had been obliterated.

The room was orderly, stately as ever; but it was very cold. The hearth

was swept and empty. One casement stood wide open, and by it entered a

continuous breathing of bleak wind. A single electric burner was turned

on, and, in the low steady light shed by it, the carven figures of the

ebony bed offered no illusion of life or motion; they showed rigid as

the long, narrow body they guarded, the angular outline of which was

perceptible beneath the fine linen sheet--upon the surface of which

sprigs of rosemary and box lay scattered.

Laurence moved across, intending to turn back the upper part of the

sheet and look on the face of the dead; but as he did so a bent form

rose silently from the armchair, set at right angles to the fireless

hearth, and took up its position on the far side of the bed opposite to

him. Though by no means addicted to nervous alarms, Laurence felt a

chill run through him, right up to the roots of his hair. Was it

conceivable that he beheld the Umbra or Corporeal Soul, of which Ovid

speaks, and that this phantom would keep watch with him over its own

unburied corpse during the coming hours? His sweet fairy-lady was one

thing, and this quite another, in the line of disembodied spirits. Stoke

Rivers, apparently, was not a comfortable place to die in. Laurence

registered a hasty vow that he, for one, would take precious good care

to arrange to die somewhere else! But as he gazed, somewhat fearfully,

at the intruder, it declared itself pathetically and pitifully

human--nothing more recondite, indeed, than Lowndes, the wiry,

long-armed, grey-faced valet.

"I thought it proper to wait till you should come, sir," he said, under

his breath. "Though Mr. Rivers has no need of my services now, I have

attended on him too constantly to feel it fitting I should be out of

call."--His voice quavered, and he cleared his throat.--"He was a

gentleman that rarely praised, sir. Some might have thought him harsh;

but that was because his mind was so engaged with study. In all the

forty years I waited on him, he never gave me an uncivil word; and it is

not many gentlemen of whom you can say that."

He lent across, carefully removed some sprigs of box lying high on the

sheet, then folded it down quickly and skilfully across the chest.

Laurence was aware of a jealous devotion in his attitude. No hands save

his own should again touch his dead master. But the sheet once arranged

to his satisfaction, he stepped back, a pace or two, into the shadow of

the damask curtains.

Then the young man looked long and silently upon the dead.

Notwithstanding its extreme emaciation, the face was gentler than in

life. This was not merely owing to the closing of the brilliant eyes. An

immense calm rested on it. The hunger of the intellect was stayed at

last; and the face was majestic in its composure--the face of one who

has passed, for ever, beyond the tyranny of desire. Looking on it,

Laurence bowed himself reverently in spirit, while the conviction rooted

itself in him, that of all virtues the most fertile, the most admirable,

is courage. For the weak, the dismayed, for skulkers, liars, and

dastards, in whatever department of action or of thought, there is small

hope--so he told himself--either here or hereafter. The battle is to the

strong; and, therefore, to be strong is the one and only thing which

really signifies.

And then it came to him, with a sense of sudden satisfaction, that this

most desirable thing, strength, was altogether part of his own

inheritance, did he choose to claim it. For the first time he

appreciated the value of that strain of fanaticism resident in his

blood. He had feared it a little, and apologised to himself for its

existence heretofore. He had made a prodigious mistake; for now that

strain of fanaticism revealed itself as among the most excellent things

of his birthright. He remained motionless, gazing, no longer at the

carven bed and its rigid burden, but away to the open casement--in at

which came the breathing of the bleak night-wind--his head held high,

and a singular compression about the corners of his mouth.

Virginia?--Just now Virginia, and all and any obligation he might have

contracted towards her, went for very little. He stood apart, complete

in himself, regardless of custom, regardless even of so-called morality,

should these interfere between him and his purpose. His sense of humour

in regard to himself--humour, eternal enemy of all exaggerations and

fixed ideas--was in abeyance. He knew that, knew it was dangerous. But

then, as the courtly surgeon had so lately reminded him, what so

adorable, after all, as those same "bright eyes of danger"--let danger

come, how and when it may?--Conventionalities? He bade them pack, all

the sort of them. Their day was over. The day of scruples was over

likewise. His position was unexampled. He took the risks, along with the

joys, of it. As his forefathers had been, so would he be. He felt an

extraordinary exaltation and freedom of spirit. And feeling this he

laughed a little, just as he had laughed when rallying his men amid the

roar of cannon and scream of the grinding ships, in the famous sea-fight

off the southern Spanish coast at Trafalgar.

But the old valet, hearing that most unexpected, and to him unseemly,

sound, emerged from the discreet shadow of the damask curtains and

stretched his long arms to draw the sheet again up over the face of the

corpse.

"You have done, sir?" he asked in accents of severity.

"No," Laurence answered, the excitement of his thoughts still strong

upon him--"I have only just begun; but, thank God, or devil, or what you

will, I have begun at last."