The funeral was over. Those few gentlemen of the neighbourhood who had
felt it incumbent upon them to appear in person, had departed. So had
the empty broughams of their more numerous neighbours, who proposed to
offer a maximum of respect to the dead with a minimum of trouble to
themselves. The Archdeacon also had started on his homeward journey to
Bishop's Pudbury. At Mr. Beal's earnest entreaty he had been invited by
Laurence Rivers to take part in the function. The young clergyman had
been sadly exercised by scruples regarding the propriety of consigning
the mortal remains of an admitted sceptic and scoffer to the grave, with
words of Christian hope and blessing. What was left for believers if
unbelievers thus benefited? The conscience of his superior officer was
happily of less flabby texture.
"Charity before all things, my dear Walter," the latter had said, in his
full, sonorous voice, when the ingenuous young man had unfolded his
difficulties. "It is not for you, or even for me, to judge and condemn
a fellow-creature. If not an active churchman, remember Mr. Rivers
displayed no leanings towards Rome or any other schismatic body. For
this we must be very thankful. There are occasions, moreover, as you
will learn in time, when the purely ecclesiastical attitude may fitly be
modified by the knowledge of the man of the world. We yield no point,
mark you; but we abstain from pressing a wrong point at a wrong time.
Judgment, statesmanship--therein lies the practical application of the
sacred injunction, 'Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves.' To
raise objections in the present case would be to increase rather than
mitigate the possibility of scandal--probably, moreover, it would be to
alienate the sympathies of young Mr. Rivers. We must learn never to
sacrifice the future to the present, my dear Walter. To do so is to fall
into errors of misplaced zeal--a very dangerous thing. Much, I cannot
but think, may be done with young Mr. Rivers. Wisely handled, he should
prove of considerable local service to the Church."
So the good young man's soul received comfort.
"What a privilege it is to talk with you, sir!" he said. "I always learn
so much."
Last to go, as he had been first to arrive at Stoke Rivers, was Captain
Bellingham.
"Poor old chap, I tell you, I've had him very much on my mind, Louise,
these last few days," he had said to his wife, that morning, at
breakfast. "It's only decent charity to see him through. I hear he's
looking uncommonly hipped. You thought him rather queer, you know, the
day he had luncheon here. Mercy for him the old gentleman died as soon
as he did--perfectly mad, too, I hear, and an infernal temper. It's
enough to make any one jumpy to be dancing attendance on such a deathbed
as that day after day; and in that gloomy, ghostly house too. I couldn't
have done it, I know, without getting most frightfully broken up. We
must try to get him over here for a day or two. Write him a nice note,
will you, Louise; it would be awfully good of you, and I will do my best
to bring him back with me to-night. Ought to be quiet to-morrow, I
suppose, for the sake of appearances; but the day after let's have
General Powys and the Westons to dinner. I want to rattle him up a bit."
But neither Mrs. Bellingham's neatly worded note, nor her husband's
hospitable entreaties, moved Laurence Rivers. He had quite other fish to
fry. All he asked for was solitude and sunset; and his courtesy was
slightly perfunctory and formal in consequence--so much so, indeed, that
on his return Jack Bellingham remarked to his wife:--
"Rivers always was such a good-hearted, sensible sort of fellow, that
it's hardly likely coming into this property would turn his head. He's
above any vulgarity of that kind. All the same, he really was curiously
stand-offish to everybody to-day. The Archdeacon meant to make an
afternoon of it, and was a little bit huffed, I think. Rivers was
perfectly civil, only he gave us pretty clearly to understand there was
no call for any of us to dawdle. I don't know, but somehow I tell you,
Louise, I don't quite like his look. We shall see. It would be an awful
pity if he followed in the footsteps of the late lamented and turned out
a crank."
"I know it," Mrs. Bellingham replied calmly. "But you omit Virginia. I
have never seen a woman less likely to tolerate a crank as her husband
than Virginia."
And so at length the accustomed quiet settled down on Stoke Rivers.
Dinner was over, and the unwelcome daylight fairly flown. Abstinence had
gone to sharpen the edge of hunger, and Laurence made his way down the
corridor, pulled the curtain towards him, and entered the room of
mysterious meetings in a humour to venture much. At the escritoire stood
his fairy-lady, and at the sound of the closing door she turned and
extended her arms, a world of delicate welcome in her gesture and her
face. Then, as he came towards her, she drew back a little, as though
penitent of the fervour of her greeting. Her lips moved, but no sound
issued from them; and a quick fear went through the young man that,
through the action of some malign influence, she had declined upon her
former condition and once again become dumb. This raised the spirit of
battle in him, and reinforced his resolution to effect her emancipation
from the control of whatever opposing power--physical or
spiritual--might hold her in its grasp. The more so that, for all her
gladness, there was a hint of trouble, a little cloud of distress upon
her face, which provoked him to indignation. He hated that--be it what
it might--which held her sweet being in thrall.
"Agnes, why is this? Why don't you speak to me?" he demanded.
Whereat she smiled, as one who loves yet deprecates another's
unreasoning heat.
"How can I speak," she asked, "until you have first spoken to me?"
"But why not? I don't understand," he said.
"Nor I," she answered; "only I know that so it is. I cannot explain the
why and wherefore of this, or of much besides, to myself. I am to myself
at once real and unreal--as an echo, a shadow, the reflection in a
mirror, is at once real and unreal."
She looked at him seriously, wonderingly, as though trying to take
counsel with him against herself.
"I see with your eyes, I speak with your voice, I comprehend with your
mind when you are present. When you are absent, I become as the echo
unevoked by any sound, as the shadow when neither sun or moon look
forth to cast it, as the reflection in the mirror when that of which it
was the image has moved away. Only my heart remains to me; and it, when
you are absent, longs and searches, journeying from place to place,
formless, wordless, and blind, sensible only of its own infelicity,
while seeking that which alone can bring it ease and light."
"My poor love!" Laurence said gently, greatly moved; "my poor love!"
For a space he was silent, pondering upon her words, almost staggered by
the intensity of her innocent passion. He was not worthy to inspire such
devotion. Had that other Laurence Rivers, his predecessor and namesake,
been more worthy, he wondered. Shame covered him in face of the
deception he was in process of practising upon her. But he put the
thought of that from him fiercely. For was he not prepared to take all
the risks? Surely his action was justified--was it not a work of mercy
to rescue and restore this gentle and homeless ghost? And then, since
the air was mild and the young moon lent an added charm to the formal
alleys of the Italian garden, Laurence, hoping thereby both to allay his
own perturbation of spirit and dissipate the melancholy which still sat
in the clear depths of Agnes Rivers's lovely eyes, engaged her to come
out, once more, and walk. But though the charm of the garden was great,
he almost regretted that he had invited her to leave the shelter of the
house, she appeared so anxiously elusive and fragile a creature.
Watching her, though his courage was stubborn and his will fiercely set,
the task he had undertaken appeared hopeless of accomplishment. But if
the task was hopeless, all the more must it be fulfilled--that had been
the way of his people, and henceforth it was to be his way. And so he
talked to her with a certain lightness, looking at her and smiling.
"Are you happy, Agnes?" he asked her at last.
And she answered with a return to her daintily demure and old-world
manner--
"I should, indeed, be ungrateful were I not so, dear Laurence. Yet,
since you question me, I must own a distrust of the future works a black
thread through all the glad pattern of the present."
She paused, glancing back somewhat timidly at the house. Every window of
it was lighted, save those of Mr. Rivers's bed-chamber. These last were
dark and blank, producing an arresting effect, and recalling to Laurence
the empty eye-sockets of the crystal _memento mori_.
"You are here with me," she continued, "and again I taste happiness. Yet
I am oppressed by the persuasion that, as before, in some hour of
peculiar promise and security you will be called from my side. And that
this time--ah! I fear you may justly reproach my weakness and deride my
far-fetched alarms--this time, going, you will not return; or returning,
you will no longer find me here to greet you."
"Then very certainly I will never go--that is unless you yourself send
me," Laurence said. He walked on a few paces, and then added, speaking
almost sullenly, answering his own thoughts rather than her
words--"Thank Heaven, I am my own master at last. No one can compel me.
I can do as I think fit; and since I think fit to stay, stay I most
assuredly will, here among my own people, and in my own house."
He looked at his companion, instinctively desiring to read approval in
her eyes; but her expression was one of startled inquiry.
"Forgive me," she said, "either Mrs. Lambart has omitted to tell me,
fearing to shock me, or in my heedlessness I have forgotten. Are you
indeed master here, dear Laurence? How is that? Can it be that your
brother Dudley is dead?"
"Yes," he answered, "the old order has changed--and yet not changed
perhaps so very much after all, for it appears the owners of Stoke
Rivers, ancient and modern, are very much of one blood. But, in truth,
Dudley is gone, and others have gone--God rest both him and them--and I
reign in their stead."
"Yes, God rest his soul," she said; and then repeated softly--"Poor
Dudley! poor unhappy Dudley!"
But Laurence, noting her pensive bearing, and hearing the gently
regretful tones of her voice, was pricked pretty sharply by a point of
jealousy from out the long past.
"Is it a matter of so very much grief to you, Agnes," he asked, "to hear
the news of your cousin Dudley's death?"
Whereupon she turned on him eyes very reassuringly full of love;
while--after a little space--her lips curved into a delicious and almost
saucy smile.
"Ah! I feared you had grown old and wise," she exclaimed. "I was foolish
to vex myself. I see you are indubitably the same Laurence as ever."
She laughed very sweetly, sweeping him a delicate curtsey.
"The very same Laurence as ever," she repeated exultingly.
Then she flitted away--as though, child-like, joy of heart must needs
find relief in movement--down the long alley across the oblique shadows
cast by the sentinel cypresses, until she reached the great, stone basin
of the terminal fountain. Here she paused, gazing down at the smooth,
slow movements of the sleepless fish.
The borders on either side the walk were set out with bulbs and early
flowering plants. As yet the majority of these showed but bud, or
upstanding sheaths of leaf. The gilly-stocks only were fully in blossom.
The clean, homely fragrance of them hung in the still air; but the
moonlight had bleached their honest orange and russet faces, making
them, like all else of the scene, but varying degrees of light and dark.
Alone in this colourless world, frail though it was and ethereal, had
the sweet figure of Agnes Rivers retained its actual hues. The brown of
her hair, the warm pallor of her skin, the blue of her profound and now
laughing eyes, the soft rose-red of her silken gown, defied the chill of
the moonlight. And this, as Laurence moved towards her, deepened alike
the charm and the mystery of her appearance. It captivated his
imagination. It stimulated his ambition. It challenged the deep places
of his love. The hopeless task must indeed be accomplished. The
impossible must come to pass. Daring that which no other man had dared,
he would earn a reward such as no other man had dreamed. But he must be
cautious, and discreet, and very gentle. The diplomatist, for a long
while to come, must hold the lover in check if the end was to be gained.
And just then Agnes Rivers's voice broke into a little song, hardly
articulate, but clear and instinct with delight, even as the songs of
birds, very early in spring, when pairing time has but just begun. Yet
enchanting as the tones were, there was in them something remote and
beyond the compass of human thought, piercing the young man to the very
heart, so that he cried to her--
"Ah! my dear, come down, come near. Leave your singing, it is too sweet.
It has too much to do with spirit and too little with flesh. It cuts
like a knife. There--there--I am not blaming you, God forbid. Only, you
have lived so long on the borderland between those two worlds, of which
you once spoke, that you have a little lost touch with ordinary mortals
such as I. Come down, come near. Don't you see what I mean? Don't you
know what I want?"
And after gentle converse, when that morning the dawn broke and with
words of tender farewell, his fairy-lady crossed the yellow drawing-room
and passed at the back of the outstanding satin-wood escritoire, as her
habit was, it appeared to Laurence that, for the first time, a faint
shadow followed her little feet. And this filled him with great and
far-reaching hope--as the first dim greyness of land along the horizon
fills the sailor after long voyaging upon the open sea. Nevertheless,
she vanished as before, leaving him solitary, while of the manner of her
going there remained no sign.