Chapter IX

That afternoon Captain Bellingham called at Stoke Rivers. He was a large, fair, fresh-coloured man of about five-and-thirty--extremely well-groomed, addicted to field-sports, and an arrant gossip. This last characteristic was much in evidence during his visit. He gossiped of London, of New York, of Sussex, displaying a vast amount of knowledge of other people's affairs.

"Well, my dear fellow, it's uncommonly pleasant to forgather with you again. Those presents your wife sent my small daughter were princely. Sibyl will write to her. The child has a regular Yankee eye for value--and, I tell you, she was impressed. My wife was awfully disappointed at missing you yesterday. She's frightfully gone on Mrs. Rivers. I think she wants to have a look at you to satisfy herself that you're living up to your high privileges in that quarter. Come over to-morrow, can't you, and dine and sleep?"

Laurence explained that his evenings were bespoken.

"Ah, really--by the way, how is the old gentleman? Making headway towards--don't you know? Rather depressing business for you waiting on like this. Pity you can't come and dine and sleep, it would make a little break for you. I've never seen him, you know, but I hear he is rather a formidable, old person. My wife intends asking you a number of questions about him. Of course, you must know there are a whole lot of queer stories current."

"So I hear," Laurence said.

"Oh, it's not for you to hear; it's for you to tell," Jack Bellingham answered, his eyes twinkling. "Why, my dear fellow, your arrival is the excitement of the hour. The whole neighbourhood is sitting on the edge of its respective chairs just bursting for information about Stoke Rivers. You wait a little. I warn you, you're going to be handed round like a plate of cake at an old maid's tea-party; and my wife, in right of her relationship to Mrs. Rivers, means to have the first slice. She means to walk in, collar you, and then skilfully and economically retail you to her whole local acquaintance. To tell the truth, I've been rather worried about Louise lately. She has an idea--I've noticed nothing to justify it myself--that she has rather missed fire down here. She's taken that awfully to heart, you know. And I think she looks to you to give her her opportunity. She thinks if she gets possession of you and all these queer stories, she'll make the running--all the other women will be nowhere, you know."

Laurence laughed. He felt slightly embarrassed.

"But what the dickens is it all about?" he said.

"That's for you to tell us," Captain Bellingham repeated. "Perhaps you'll be rather glad of an audience in a day or two. Anyhow, come over and see my wife as soon as you can. She's great on spook-hunting, psychical research, all that sort of thing. So give her the first chance. Let her have a postcard in the morning. She'll be brokenhearted if she misses you again."

Laurence partook of another solitary dinner, admirably cooked and served, in company with the dancing, Etruscan figures, and the musky-scented orchids. Again, when the meal was finished, he went upstairs through the steady light and close, dry atmosphere to that stately and sombre sickroom. The last twenty-four hours had been very full of disquieting episodes and suggestions.

"I am inclined to reverse the order of proceedings to-night," he said to himself, "and cross-question my uncle, instead of letting him cross-question me. After all, that'll fit in to his scheme of observation well enough. My questions, no doubt, will be indicative of the depths of my native ignorance and the poverty of my powers. They'll enable him to draw conclusions. Conclusions!" he added, smiling--"a sufficiently fatuous occupation, when one thinks of the limited amount of evidence obtainable and the breadth of the inquiry?"

On the stairhead his uncle's valet, a thin, wiry man, long-armed, grey of hair and of skin, met him, and preceded him silently along the corridor. Laurence's relations with servants, and other persons in an inferior position to his own, were usually of a kindly and cordial sort. Such persons told him of their affairs; they admired and trusted him. But the servants in this house, though caring for his comfort with scrupulous forethought and punctuality, remained, so far, impossible of approach. They seemed to him like so many machines, incapable of hopes or fears, affections, even of sins, inhuman in their rigidity and silence. Now the valet announced him, and stood aside to let him pass, with a perfection of drill and an absence of individuality so complete, that it was to Laurence quite actively unpleasant. Immediately after, he met the hungry glance of those coldly brilliant eyes, looking out of the face fixed in outline, transparent, as the crystal skull lying on the table close by. And this house, so full of beings but half alive, of paralysed activities, defective or one-sided development, seemed to the young man, for the moment, terrible. The country churchyard, in which the wind sang, and the sunshine played among the graves with flitting, beckoning shadows, was gay by comparison. No wonder the place had an evil reputation, and that people invented weird stories about it.

A sensation of loneliness, such as he had not known since early childhood, came over Laurence. Almost involuntarily he made an effort towards closer, more sympathetic, intercourse with his host.

"How are you this evening, sir?" he asked. "Better, I hope. It has been a wonderfully charming day."

"I am glad to learn you have found it so. Weather has always appeared to me an accident, unworthy, save in its scientific aspects, of attention. Yet I understand that it exercises strong influence on certain temperaments--emotional temperaments, I apprehend, undisciplined by reason. That the weather to-day has affected you agreeably is matter for congratulation, since it will have helped to mitigate the tedium of a small portion of this period of waiting."

"Oh! there's not much tedium," Laurence answered. He looked across at the elder man smiling very pleasantly.--"I'm beginning to find things here a little too dramatic, if anything. You were good enough to tell me that you found me interesting last night, sir. I only wish I could be half as interesting to you, as you, and your house, and the whole state of affairs here is to me."

"You find it distinctly interesting?" Mr. Rivers inquired, but whether in approval or disapproval Laurence could not determine.

"Unquestionably," he answered. "The house is cram full of treasures. And there are unexpected influences in it, which get hold of one's imagination. It stands alone in my experience, unlike any place I have ever known."

The elder man sunk further back against the pillows, and, with one long, thin hand, drew the violet, fur-lined dressing-gown closer across his knees as though cold.

"Indeed. Have I divorced myself and my surroundings so completely from the ordinary habits of my contemporaries?"

"You've been strong enough to follow your own tastes and lead your own life, and that has produced something unique, something as finished as it is apart. Of course, this provokes a lot of criticism. Other people, I observe, recognise that it is unique too."

"Other people?" Mr. Rivers said loftily. "I have never entertained."

"Exactly," Laurence answered. "That's where part of the uniqueness comes in. We mostly herd together like sheep in a pen, and can't be easy unless we're rubbing sides."--He paused a moment. "Your refusal to rub sides causes great searchings of heart, I assure you. The poor, little parson here, for instance, is tormented by the idea that it is his duty to the Almighty, and to the Church of England, and to his own abnormally developed conscience, to raid you and do a little spiritual gardening in the neglected flower-beds of your soul."

"My soul is my own," Mr. Rivers observed. "That is, if the term soul is, strictly speaking, admissible. Conscious consciousness is all that I can predicate of my other than physical existence."

"The little parson's point of view is quite different. He is by no means backward in predication. He is quite sure you have a soul; but whether it is your own, or whether it doesn't belong to him as curate-in-charge of Stoke Rivers, he is not at all sure. He has strong leanings to the latter belief, I fancy."

"These are puerilities."

"The average man is puerile," Laurence asserted cheerfully. "We carted away Woman last night, sir, you remember, in deference to your slight prejudice against her--though I still maintain she is by no means foreign to our inquiry. But I really can't consent to the carting away of puerility too, or you will never get hold of the average man at all. Forbid his affections and his ineptitudes both, and you don't leave the poor wretch a leg to stand on. Meanwhile, the little parson is not the only person a good deal worked up by the unique character of your habits and surroundings. These give rise, indirectly, to surprising legends."

"Indeed!"

"Yes, indeed. I think they would amuse you. And in connection with all this, sir, there are one or two questions I should most uncommonly like to ask you."

"You may do so," Mr. Rivers said. His nephew's rapid speech and breezy manner made him slightly breathless. He was unaccustomed to be treated in this light and airy fashion. He moved uneasily in his chair, as one who tries to avoid a draught. Laurence observing this, repented of his purpose.

"I don't tire you, sir, do I?" he asked kindly.

"Exhaustion is a consequence of the failure of the will. My will is still obedient to my mind, and my body to my will."

Laurence looked at him with a certain admiration. He was true to his creed, such as it was, and his pride had, consequently, rather a superb quality.

"Well, then," he said, "since I may ask you--I have found from conversation with several of our neighbours that this house, which I took to be a sort of Temple of Reason, is regarded with a good deal of vulgar suspicion."

Though the room was warm, the atmosphere of it close as that of a thundering night in the tropics, Laurence instinctively leaned forward, spreading out his hands to the glowing wood-fire on the hearth.

"I am not superstitious," he continued; "and you very certainly, I take it, are not so. We shall agree in that. Still, I confess, the whole subject of the occult and supernatural is rather fascinating to me. I can't quite keep my hands off it. I find an idea is prevalent that there are manifestations here, queer things are seen, you know, which cannot be put down to natural agency. I want to know if you--"

But Mr. Rivers interrupted him with unaccustomed vehemence of speech and manner.

"Stop!" he said, "stop if you please. This subject is exceedingly distasteful to me."

"Then we won't pursue it," Laurence answered quickly. Yet he wondered; his interest, already considerably aroused, being sensibly increased by the violence displayed by his companion. It was singular; and he paused a little, thinking, before embarking in further conversation. During that pause, Mr. Rivers leaned sideways, slowly and with difficulty raised the crystal skull from its place on the table beside him. He held it in front of him in both hands, and gazed, as though performing some religious rite, into the cavities of the empty eye-sockets. Then stiffly, letting his hands sink, he rested it upon his knees.

"Pardon me," he said, looking full at Laurence, while a shadow, rather than a flush, seemed to pass over his attenuated face. "I was tempted to act unworthily.--I agreed to answer such questions as you might put to me. But perceiving those questions tended to revive a matter which has caused me one of the few humiliations and regrets I have suffered during my life, I shrank. I was tempted weakly to break faith with you and retract my promise."

"Pray, sir, don't take it so seriously," Laurence entreated. "Of course, I should never have approached the subject had I known it was disagreeable to you. It was just the idle curiosity of an idle man. What on earth does it matter?"

"To you very little, presumably, since you are, as you say, idle--your days, that is, filled with a round of amusements deadening--as I fear--to the intellectual and moral conscience. But with me the case is otherwise. The judgment of no human being is of moment to me. But my judgment of myself is of infinite moment."

Mr. Rivers laid one transparent hand upon the dome of the crystal skull, as though for support. His face had grown hard as steel.

"It is therefore incumbent upon me, not in satisfaction of your curiosity, my dear Laurence, but in satisfaction of my own sense of rectitude, that I should accept this opportunity of stating the following facts. I inherited this property--as you will shortly inherit it--from an uncle, a man very much my senior. I had prosecuted my studies abroad, in the learned centres of Germany and France, from an early age. My acquaintance with my uncle was slight. I knew little of his private life. But I had reason to believe him a person of an undisciplined mind, imbued with the extravagant socialistic views current during the French Revolution, unbridled alike in passions of love and of hate. Questions of character have never interested me; I therefore made no further inquiry regarding my predecessor's private life. My own tastes and habits were already fixed. I settled myself here and continued the studies in experimental physics, philology, and metaphysics, in which I had already engaged. I also added to the collection of pictures and objects of art that I found in the house. My life has been blameless, as most men count blame. I can assert, without fear of contradiction, that my moral and intellectual integrity have been complete. Only in one connection have I been guilty, have I failed--failed, as I now confess, miserably and grossly."

Mr. Rivers paused a moment. His fingers twitched as they rested upon the crystal skull.

"Miserably and grossly," he repeated. "The vulgar gossip which you have heard rests upon a basis of truth. I cannot deny the existence of supernatural manifestations, so called, in one quarter of this house. They are undeniable. I have witnessed them myself."

Laurence felt a queer shiver of excitement run through him. He sat very still.--"Then I wasn't asleep after all," he said to himself, "in that room last night."

"The said manifestations were not only disturbing and distasteful to me; but I perceived that their existence threatened the validity of some of my most carefully reasoned hypotheses, of some of my most ardently cherished beliefs. Of vulgar physical fear, I need hardly tell you, I was incapable; but I trembled before a dislocation of my thought. It followed that I became guilty of an act of flagrant mental cowardice. I refused to submit those manifestations to scientific investigation. I never mentioned them to my correspondents. I took elaborate precautions against ever witnessing them again myself. I made a determined effort to erase the memory of them from my mind. I almost succeeded in forgetting that I ever had witnessed them. Thus I tricked my own intelligence. I lied to my own experience. I committed a crime against my own reason--a crime which I can never hope to expiate."

Moved by the passion of the elder man's self-denunciation, Laurence had risen, and stood close to him.

"Ah! surely you take it too hard--far too hard, sir," he said.

But Mr. Rivers, looking up at him, answered sternly--

"A sin is heinous, not in itself, but in relation to the level of virtue habitually maintained by whoso commits it. And so, even were I not disabled, were I still capable of carrying out these investigations, the unsparing prosecution of which could alone give proof of the sincerity of my repentance, that could not really wipe out the iniquity of the past. In morals I cannot logically admit the possibility of cancelling a wrong once done. In the realm of physics we know that vibrations, once generated, ring out everlastingly through space. To send forth a contrary set of vibrations is not to limit, or cause the first generated to cease. Their circles may intersect, yet they are practically independent, and cannot neutralise one another. In the realm of morals it is the same. The act once committed passes into the region of persistent and indubitable fact. Of sins, both passive and active, this is equally true. And consequently I am doomed--so long as I retain conscious individuality--to remain hopelessly lowered in my self-esteem."

The sick man spoke with a fierceness of conviction, his voice usually low and even swelling into full sonorous tones; his attenuated frame vibrant with energy; his face illuminated, as though a lamp burned behind that thin investiture of flesh and bone. Laurence saw in him, for the moment, a great orator, more probably a great preacher, wasted. And the thought of that waste of force, waste of power, stung him out of indolence, out of mere easy good nature. He, at least, would shilly-shally no more with life, but play the game--whatever the game presenting itself--whole-heartedly. And again that queer shiver of excitement ran through him; while again he reminded himself he had now reliable testimony that he had met with something far stranger, more incalculable and mysterious, than any vision of a dream, in that clear-coloured room downstairs last night. He stood silent, thinking intently, feeling keenly, his whole nature alert. But a small rustling sound, as of a chill wind among dry leaves in a winter hedge, recalled him to his immediate surroundings. Mr. Rivers had sunk back against the silken cushions, which rustled under his weight. The light had died out of his face, his hands clutched tremblingly at the crystal _memento mori_ resting on his knees. For the first time Laurence realised how very near--but for the indomitable strength of will which supported him--he was to death. Laurence bent over him.

"This is heavy, sir," he said, touching the crystal skull. "May I put it back on the table?"

Mr. Rivers bowed his head in assent.

"We have talked too much. It would be wise, I think, for me to leave you."

"It would be so."

"May I call your man before I go--I hardly like to leave you alone."

"Thank you; he will come at the accustomed hour. I do not deviate from habits once formed except under stress of necessity."

Laurence was pushed by the desire to say something gentle, something expressive of the honour in which he held his host's rectitude and sincerity. But Mr. Rivers lay back motionless, his eyes closed. It was difficult to find just the words he wished. He turned away towards the door, when the elder man's voice recalled him.

"Laurence," he said, "Laurence--one word before we part. If you should see fit to undertake those investigations of which we have spoken, and in face of which I showed myself unfaithful and a craven--remember I press nothing upon you, I leave you free to undertake them or not as you please--I have one request to make of you."

"Yes, sir," he answered.

"It is this--that you will under no circumstances communicate the result of those investigations to any person save myself, and only to me should I definitely ask you to do so. Will you give me your word?"

"I give you my word, sir."

And with the feeling that he had bound himself to an engagement of unlooked-for solemnity, the young man went out into the steady brightness of the corridor, while--as last night--the odour of the orchids met him, enfolding him in their thick, musky sweetness, half-way down the dark, shining, oaken-stairs.