XXV
It was all very much in keeping with his mood--the reposeful landscape,heavy with the solid green of the August foliage, the sweep of the low,grey sky, the warm, still rain which drew forth an indefinable fragrancefrom the pastures and hedgerows, the wayside flowers, and the underwood.Already the evenings had begun to shorten. The rambling village-streetand its inevitable commotion of boys and dogs left behind, Laurencelooked away, with a stirring of the heart, over this goodly land ofwhich he was owner, as the brown thorough-bred breasted the hilly roadleading up from the station to Stoke Rivers house. The prospect at oncesoothed and stimulated him. Emotion had been conspicuous principally byits absence lately; it was pleasant to feel again.
At the hall-door the two men-servants met him; and Renshaw's large,egg-shaped countenance bore an expression almost paternal.
"Excuse me, sir," he said, his complexion ripening to mulberry with theeffort of speech--"I do not wish to put myself forward, or go beyond myplace, but I must express the pleasure we take in welcoming you home,sir. I speak not only for myself, but for Mr. Lowndes and Mr. Watkins,and all the other servants--both upper and under, sir."
Lowndes, the grey-haired, long-armed valet, subsequently gave vent toeven more cordial sentiments.
"Excepting for the fire, we have been very dull during your absence,sir," he said, as he laid out the young man's dress clothes, with acritical eye to their packing which did not evidently quite commenditself to his taste. "Living in this house has been like living inside arun-down clock. I hope you have returned to make some stay, sir. We wanta head; we have forgotten how to take a holiday and amuse ourselves. Ourhabits have been so very regular for so many years, you see, sir, wefeel lost without our accustomed duties."
This too was pleasant. To be precious in the sight of those who serveyou lends a singular graciousness to the conduct of daily life. Laurencefelt at harmony with himself and his surroundings, and with that senseof harmony arose certain stirrings of hope. During the days and nightsof the past week, while the great ship ploughed her way eastward acrossthe mighty ridge and furrow of the Atlantic, he had not been whollyunconscious of that hope--the hope that even now all might not be over,and that he might once again be blessed by the vision, for however briefa space, of his dear fairy-lady. Yet he had kept that hope under with astern hand. It was present, but at the postern gate, so to speak, of thecastle of his reason and his will. He kept it there, doing his heartmuch violence by refusing it admittance and entertainment, since he knewthat, once admitted, it would have proved so dangerously absorbing andalluring a guest. He tried to deny it admittance still; yet he shuffleda little with his own conscience, permitting himself a renewing of theroutine which had marked his former sojourn at Stoke Rivers. He dressed,dined, and waited until the twilight had very sensibly closed in beforevisiting that which might remain of the room of mysterious and enchantedmeetings.
The near end of the corridor offered no noticeable signs of disturbanceor injury. Still it appeared to Laurence that, as on a former occasion,a spirit of disorder, the winnowing wings of a profound and elementalfear, had but lately swept through it. He could have imagined thesightless, marble faces of the Roman emperors less impassive, lesswholly scornful, their heads carried with something less of arrogant andinvincible pride. An acrid odour of burned stuffs, burned woodwork,pervaded the place. He had cabled instructions that nothing might beremoved, nothing renovated before his arrival. The tapestry curtainstill hung in its accustomed position; but it was blackened andshrivelled to the obliteration of the figures wrought upon it. The satyrno longer leered, from his monticule, upon the naked and reluctant womanhurried towards him by the company of naughty loves. Tongues of fire hadlicked away that pictured wantonness and purged its offence.
Behind the wreck of the _portiere_, the door--its panels split andtormented by flame--stood wide open, as on the night when, strainingevery muscle to carry that apparently so light and fragile burden,Laurence had lifted Agnes Rivers across the threshold. Once within theyellow drawing-room the desolation of that heretofore gracious andfriendly apartment touched hard on tragedy, seen, as now, in thefurtive, evening light. The rain had ceased, and through the remainingsheets of glass, in the partially boarded and barricaded bay-window, theflower-beds of the Italian garden showed in rich variety of leaf andblossom. The statues gleamed calm and graceful from their whitepedestals. The spires of the cypresses rose with a certain velvetsoftness of density towards the pensive and slowly clearing sky. But theroom itself was ruined in most unsightly fashion, stained by smoke,rendered clammy and dank in places by water. Wreckage of the pretty,costly furniture lay scattered in formless heaps upon the blackenedfloor--with here and there a shred of fine porcelain, the gilt handle ofa drawer, the pages of a book reduced to tinder, or the unlovely remnantof carpet or hanging. It was as a place that has suffered siege, andwhich relentless foemen have sacked and trodden underfoot. So that itcame to Laurence, very surely, that not here would he find his sweetfairy-lady, were he indeed destined, in this life, ever to find heragain. Her gentle spirit could never be subjected to the indignity ofdwelling amid this scene of destruction. Some incongruities areinadmissible to the imagination. They are too violent, too gross.Therefore the days of his beloved companion's pilgrimage were ended--itcould not be otherwise--in respect of this once so comely place.
But though convinced that here it was useless to await her presence,there remained somewhat for Laurence in all tenderness and reverence tosee. Since the electric light was now unavailable, he had orderedcandles to be placed upon the chimney-piece, which, though yellow anddisfigured, still remained practically intact. He moved across from theneighbourhood of the doorway--sad, little clouds of corpse-colouredashes arising about his feet as he stepped--and put a match to thecandles. Then, as the light of them strengthened and steadied, helooked, shading his eyes with his hand, towards that portion of the wallat right angles to which the painted, satin-wood escritoire, with allits pathetic store of cherished love-tokens, had formerly stood. Thehigh wainscot and brocade-covered panels masking this space had beenentirely burned away, disclosing a low, vaulted chamber hollowed out ofthe thickness of the outer wall. This chamber had been roughly andsomewhat clumsily ceiled. The whole construction showed unmistakeabletraces of hasty and unskilled labour.
Yet Laurence looked at this rough-hewn place of sepulture with aninfinite tenderness, a chastened reverence, while a very vital emotionclutched at his throat, and far-reaching questions of life past, lifefuture, and the august purposes of being through the abysm of the agesand on to the ultimate goal of things, held and sifted his intelligenceand his heart. For it was here, upon the morning following the fire,that Agnes Rivers's coffin had been found. And it was from here, fromthis hard and narrow bed--by what alchemy and agency he knew not--ittranscended his powers to conceive--that her sweet ghost had come forthnightly, through all those long and dreary years of which it sickenedhim to think, flitting impalpable, in vain endeavour to find the key toher little treasure chest, that was also the key to the love she had sopathetically lost. And it was here also, to this same hard and narrowbed, that she had returned with quick and innocently gladsome farewellsin the first flush of returning day, when that love, by unprecedentedcircumstance--circumstance trenching on actual miracle--had beenrestored to her.
Viewing that harsh and meagre resting-place which for the better part ofa century had held all that remained of her dear body, Laurence felthimself strangely reconciled to actual happenings. For it was better,ten thousand times better, that all now subsisting of her mortalinvestiture should rest in Mother Earth's lap--blessed and set apart bythe faith and piety of ages as was that pleasant plot of sun-visitedgrass, where the little shadows danced and beckoned, in the age-oldquiet of Stoke Rivers's churchyard. There he would go and watch for herpossible coming, and pay her the homage of his devotion, when the smallhours drew on towards to-morrow's dawn.
Meanwhile there was time to be passed, and he did not care to
leave thisspot, though its present desolation tore at his very vitals, withmemories of incalculable promise, and of unconsummated delight. As,awakening from his dream of satisfied love long ago, during that strangeformer existence, in the summer noon under the light, sibilant shelterof the lime grove, so now he hungered for completeness of possession,for the crowning of desire. Yet he kept himself in hand, even as he hadkept the young, brown, thorough-bred horse in hand, when, finding thelevel, would have broken its pace and run riot more than once on theroad up from the station. He moved away and sat down on the defaced andragged sill of the bay-window. The moon had risen, but its mild lightwas often obscured by softly-moving floats of thin, opalescent vapour.These crossed its face in apparently endless procession, herded up fromsouthward and the narrow Channel sea. Laurence watched them, at firstalmost unconsciously, his mind occupied with other, and, to himself,more immediate and vital interests. But at length their slow and statelyprogress began to work upon his imagination, and insinuate itself intothe very substance and foundation of his thought. He began to see inthem a procession of the souls of all those generations of men andwomen, whose efforts and emotions, power of intellect, fiercely pursuedambitions, passionate devotions, passionate revolts, had gone togenerate his own constitution, mental and physical, and determine hisultimate fate. And so he came to regard them with a sustained anddeepening attention, since their aspect seemed pregnant with suggestionof admonition, of encouragement, of warning, or restraint. Once again hedecided to keep vigil in this house, to watch with the unnumbered andunrecorded dead whose offspring and inheritor he was. Not until all ofthem should have passed by, and the moon ride solitary in the heavens,would he go across the valley--himself now somewhat bitterlysolitary--and visit Agnes Rivers's grave.
But that procession of low-floating vapours proved long in passing. Morethan once a break came in it, making the young man suppose that thewhole of them was gone by. And then again, out of the south, now onealone, now in close ranged companies, strangely shaped, as though drapedin dragging shrouds, that interminable procession crossed the vault ofthe sky. A terror of incalculable number, of unthinkable multitude,began to lay hold on him, as still they came, and came. Was itconceivable that each human life had this almost appalling vista ofhuman lives behind it, of which it was the outcome and result, and inwhich it had, consciously or unconsciously, taken part? There was acertain splendour in the thought, though it left but little room forpersonal vanity. Yet even while watching, and pondering of all this, thepersonal note remained--for he pondered also, not without profounddiscouragement, of his great adventure which just now appeared sosignally to have failed. At the half hours and hours the striking clockswarned him that the night was far spent, but still that endless andmystic procession passed before his watching eyes. As once before, inthis same room, his individuality seemed to sink away from him, while ahorrible sense of his own nullity and nothingness prevailed. But atlast, at last, when the first chill grey of the dawn began justperceptibly to lighten the horizon behind the lime grove, the last ofthese trailing vapours arose, passed over and disappeared. The moondeclined towards her setting, yet, though she hung low, the whole fieldof heaven was at length her own.
Then Laurence rose, and went away across the quiet park and up the deep,tree-shadowed lane to the churchyard, on the hillside across the valley,sheltered by the bank of high-lying woods. The grass was long, starredwith tall-growing buttercups, blue speedwell, and ox-eye daisies, heavyand hanging with wet. Only the plot beneath the grey wall of the littlechancel was neatly mown, while, on the near side of it, conspicuous fromthe smooth surface of the turf rising immediately surrounding it, was anew-made grave. The sods covering it were kept in place by a cage ofosier rods. Some one--and Laurence found it in his heart to bless thatunknown ministrant--had laid a spray of pink wild-rose upon the head ofthe grave, twisted into a little crown, at once of blossom and ofthorns.
Laurence stood at the foot of the long, narrow mound, and again he keptvigil--hearing the breathing of the moist earth, the quick sounds of thewoodland, and that strange, indeterminate, stirring of awakeninglife--beast, bird, insect, herb, and tree--which immediately precedesthe birth of day. More than once his heart thumped against his ribs, andthe love-light sprang into his eyes, for, deceived by the growing colourof the east, he fancied for an instant he again beheld the dear rose-redof his fairy-lady's clinging, old-world, silken gown. But that fonddelusion was soon dissipated. Wherever her light footsteps might nowtread, they would never, in visible fashion, tend earthwards again.
Then on a sudden, from the stables up at the house, came the crowing ofa cock, answered in gallant challenge from cottage and fromfarmyard--growing faint in the far distance, ringing out again close athand, lusty and vigorous, full of the joy of living. Stung by the merrysound, Laurence straightened himself up, looked away from theosier-bound, rose-crowned grave, over the fertile, peaceful landscape.The hops hung heavy upon the poles. The corn warmed to ruddy yellow. Thegrass and hedgerows, as the sun's rays touched them, glittered with athousand diamond points, even as his lost love's little, embroideredslippers had glittered when he first led her forth along the alleys ofthe Italian garden. A glad wind swept up landward, from that greatthoroughfare of the nations, that highway of stately ships, the narrowChannel sea. It raced through the woodland, swayed the sombre,plume-like branches of the ancient yew-trees, and passed, exultant, tofulfil its cleanly, life-giving mission elsewhere. Laurence took a longbreath, filling his lungs with it. It was good to taste, sane andwholesome. And then, somehow, those divine words came to him, spoken inthe far Syrian country nearly two thousand years ago.--"The wind blowethwhere it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tellwhence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born ofthe Spirit."
Laurence stood erect and very still, his head held high, his face keen,his lips parted in silent laughter, his whole being vibrant with thesurprise of a great conviction, a great discovery. For at length he toosaw and understood. He perceived that his love far from being lost washis, close and intimately, as she had never been before, in either thislife, or that other half-remembered life, in both of which he had lovedher so well. He perceived that his amazing and desperate experiment, farfrom being a failure, was on a high-road to a success hitherto undreamedof. He perceived that his splendid adventure, far from being ended, hadbut just begun; and that, could he but keep faith with his presentseeing, it would not end until he too had pushed back the heavy curtain,and finally crossed the threshold of so-called death. Nor would it endeven then, were light lived in the light of this his present seeing. Thefuture was illimitable, since the goal of it was nothing less than unionwith the Divine Principle itself. However innumerable the company ofhuman lives that had gone to produce his own, his individuality wassecure henceforth, since he had recognised and embraced the life whichalone eternally exists and subsists--the life in, and of, God.
Five months ago, crossing the Atlantic, in the chill of the March night,while the big ship steamed eastward and the stars danced in the riggingas she sunk and swung in the trough and then rose--as a horse at afence--at the coming wave, he had asked himself the question as to theprofit of gaining the whole world, if in so doing a man should lose hisown soul. All his experience since then had been a setting of that vitalquestion at rest for ever. For he had found his soul. The matter wassimply to the point of laughter, when once apprehended. In bidding himfarewell, his sweet companion had promised him that she and he would atlast be made one, being one with Almighty God. He had heard that as hemight mere rhetoric, idle though pretty words, placing it in someunimaginable future, his mind still in bondage to human conception oftime and space. Now he beheld this consummation as already accomplished,immediately present, constant, here, now, permanent. All that it neededwas just an attitude and habit of mind, and then work. Work, not so muchfor any great benefit derivable by others from that work (though thedesire of the welfare of others must be a fundamental element in thatw
ork); but for the maintenance of the said all-important attitude andhabit of mind in himself. Almost any work would do. There was hisproperty; and, happily, sufficient of the feudal idea still remains inEngland to make the possession of a great landed-estate fruitful inhumane relations between class and class. There was the dear earth, too,to till and sow, and render more fertile, and more useful to man. Therewere politics and public affairs. In the light of his presentillumination he dare approach these things, strong to carve out a careerfor himself, yet for ever keeping his secret against his heart.Salvation is for the individual, each individual must find it for him orherself. Souls cannot be saved in batches. But to each and all it may,and will, come, if they have courage, and fortitude, and the single eyewhich refuses illusion.
"And so farewell, yet never farewell, my first, and last, and onlylove," he said, looking at the osier-bound grave, while the shadows ofthe feathery yew-trees danced and beckoned upon the churchyard grass."There have been partings before, cruel to be born; there may bepartings again, but they will be transitory. I am not afraid that Ishall ever lose you, or you me. I am secure in that. Meanwhile for yoursake, O dear soul of me--for so indeed you are--I will make the best useof the years I may still have to live here on earth. And since you oncewere woman, no woman shall ever suffer at my hands--all womanhood beingsacred thenceforth since you once were woman.--Now the work of the worldcalls, and, God helping me, I will help to do it. After all, dear love,we go forth together,--amen."
* * * * *
There are things Virginia does not quite comprehend in her husband. Shetells the Van Reenan family, that "the English character is veryobscure." But she has had no more dramatic moments in respect of thatcharacter. She pays a long visit yearly to "the other side," and is aspopular as ever. On this side too she has had her social triumphs. Theyellow drawing-room at Stoke Rivers has been rebuilt, but Laurence keepsit for his own use. He has moved the books into it from the libraries,thus giving Virginia a large suite of rooms for social entertainments.Lately, when the red flame of war threatened the integrity of theBritish Empire, Laurence went south; and for a time lived that largerlife--in which woman takes her place, perhaps her safest one, as a hopeor a memory merely--the life a man lives among men. Jack Bellinghamvolunteered also. He thinks Laurence a better fellow than ever; yet isperplexed at moments as to whether he has, or has not, developed--likeso many of his family--into a thorough-paced crank.
THE END
_By the same author_
THE WAGES OF SIN THE CARISSIMA MRS. LORIMER A COUNSEL OF PERFECTION COLONEL ENDERBY'S WIFE LITTLE PETER
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