VII
Though usually an excellent sleeper, Laurence passed a restless night.Like most sane persons, he was disposed to resent that which he couldnot account for; and, with the best will in the world to evolveingenious hypotheses explanatory of her disappearance, the manner of hissweet companion's going remained a mystery. He had examined theescritoire, and found it locked. He had also examined the wall-space inits vicinity. This was hung, from cornice to wainscot, with paleyellow-and-white brocade, as was all the room. But neither behind thebrocade, nor in the wainscot, was any door or sliding paneldiscoverable. Indeed, when he came to think of it, remembering thestructure of the house as he had seen it on his way along the southfront to the stables, that side of the room consisted of a blank wall,doorless and windowless. This fact, when he realised it, caused Laurencesomething of a shock. It was unpleasant to him. And so he took refuge inscepticism. He laughed at himself, declaring that the unwholesomeatmosphere of the house, and the lonely, uneventful life he wascompelled to lead, were breeding morbid fancies in him. All that talkabout woman and the relation of the sexes had stamped itself upon hismind in an exaggerated way, thanks to his surroundings. The musky scentof the orchids had a word to say in the matter too, no doubt. So had hisrevulsion from the gross suggestions of the scene represented on thetapestry curtain. Heavy sleep, amounting almost to torpor, induced bythe heavy atmosphere, had fallen upon him directly after he had enteredthat strangely engaging and familiar room. And, in that sleep,imagination had created a woman who should embody all that which theroom and its furnishings suggested--an ideal woman, far away alike fromthe brilliant young leader of smart society whom he had married--but onthis clause Laurence refused to allow his thoughts to dwell--and fromthe mere human brood-mare, whom his uncle pronounced to be the onlyadmissible exponent of the Eternal Feminine. He had dreamed a poem--oneof those poems he kept at the bottom of his despatch-box, and had neverfelt any inclination to read aloud to Virginia--had dreamed instead ofwriting it, that was all.
Laurence got out of bed and threw open the window. Where the easternangle of the house stood out dark against the sky, he could see thepallor of the dawn warming into rose, while overhead the stars died outone by one as the light broadened.
"Yes, the vision of a dream," he said to himself. "Only another of thosethousand exquisite things which belong to the language of symbol, andpossess, alas! no tally in reality--reality, that is, as most of ushide-bound victims of conventionality are destined to know it."--Helaughed a little grimly.--"Reality, as we know it, being precisely thebiggest illusion of all!"
He watched the fading stars, the deepening rose and gold of day, abovethe woods and lawns, the black cypresses and white statues upon thenorthern boundary of the Italian garden. Starlings chattered joyouslyfrom the gutters under the eaves; and then swept down, with a rush ofpassing wings, on to the grass. A keeper, gun on shoulder, with a busy,little, black cocking-spaniel, and a long-limbed, red, Irish setterbehind him, crossed the rough downward slope of the park; and the wide,blue-grey landscape began to grow definite, to assert itself right awayup to the horizon. The earth seemed to awake with a quiet smile from thekindly sleep of night.
Laurence drank in his fill of the moist, sharp air.
"Poor dear Virginia!" he said suddenly. And it was probably the veryfirst time in her whole life that this popular, admirably finished, andmuch admired young lady had ever excited pity.
After breakfast Laurence set forth to visit his clerical correspondent,and strive to ease the latter's conscience while refusing his request.The rectory, distant about three-quarters of a mile, stood on the risingground across the valley, backed by a fringe of high-lying woods. Thechurch, a small but very perfect example of Norman architecture, closelyadjoined the house. There were good details of carving about the narrow,round-headed windows of the chancel, and the low, heavy arch of theporch--the floor of which was sunk several steps below the level of thechurchyard. The tower, square and solid, but little higher than the roofof the nave, was surmounted by a squat, shingled spire. It struckLaurence as a calm, self-contained, little building, on which thecenturies had set but slight mark of decay. The churchyard,too--shadowed by a few ancient yew-trees--was singularly peaceful, fullfor the most part of unnamed, grass-grown graves. Death, seen thus, hadnothing awful, nothing repulsive, about it--quiet "rest after toil," itamounted to no more than that.
But then the charm of spring was in the air, and the young man waspleasantly beguiled by it. He sat down on the broad coping of thechurchyard wall, lighted a cigarette, and idly watched the rooksstreaming out from the rectory elms, and dropping on the fragrant,fresh-turned earth of a plough-field in the valley. He listened idly tothe nimble wind that blew up from the ten-mile-distant sea, sang in thewoodland above, and whispered through the dark, plume-like branches ofthe yews here in this sheltered piece of ground. The sky was a thin,bright blue, and across it wandered little clouds, like flocks of whitesheep, herded by that same nimble wind up from the Channel.
It seemed to Laurence that here, indeed, would be a pleasant enoughplace to lie when life was over. But then that time had by no meansarrived for him yet. He felt again--as he had felt that night on boardship--that he had never done complete justice to his own capacity.Whether the fault lay in himself or in circumstance, he could not say;but he knew that neither body, nor mind, nor heart, had worked up totheir full strength yet. Ambition of some notable and absorbingundertaking stirred in him. He looked out over the goodly land. Wouldthis by no means contemptible inheritance, on the threshold of thepossession of which he now stood, afford him his great opportunity? Andthen his thought harked back to the lovely and pathetic vision which hadblessed his sleep--for, of course, he was asleep--last night. A mancould find fulness of satisfaction in a great passion for such awoman--if so be she actually existed, instead of being only the idealvision of an ideal dream. Yes, a man could go very far down that roadif--if--And there Laurence, being a decent fellow, laid strong hands onhis imagination. To indulge it was just simply not right, since whateverwoman's existence might belong to the land of fancy, his wife,Virginia's, belonged, to the land of very positive fact. He got up,shook himself, and walked away to the rectory house, through thesunshine and shadow of the peaceful, country graveyard.