“Good-night, Joe. Shake hands.”
When Joe was gone, accompanied by the unwilling Blink, turning her beautiful dark eyes back to the last, Mr. Lavender sat down at his bureau, and drawing a sheet of paper to him, wrote at the top of it.
“My last Will and Testament.”
It was a long time before he got further, and then entirely omitted to leave anything in it, completely preoccupied by the preamble, which gradually ran as follows:
“I, John Lavender, make known to all men by these presents that the
act which I contemplate is symbolical, and must in no sense be taken
as implying either weariness of life or that surrender to misfortune
which is unbecoming to an English public gentleman.” (Over this
description of himself Mr. Lavender was obliged to pause some time
hovering between the two designations, and finally combining them as
the only way out of his difficulty.) “Long and painful experience
has convinced me that only by retiring from the former can I retain
the latter character, and only by retiring from both can I point the
moral ever demanded by my countrymen. Conscious, indeed, that a
mere act of private resignation would have no significance to the
body politic, nor any deflecting influence on the national life, I
have chosen rather to disappear in blue flame, so that every
Englishman may take to heart my lesson, and learn from my strange
fate how to be himself uninfluenced by the verbiage of others. At
the same time, with the utmost generosity, I wish to acknowledge in
full my debt towards all those great writers and speakers on the war
who have exercised so intoxicating an influence on my mind.” (Here
followed an alphabetical list of names beginning with B and ending
with S.)
“I wish to be dissociated firmly from the views of my chauffeur Joe
Petty, and to go to my last account with an emphatic assertion that
my failure to become a perfect public gentleman is due to private
idiosyncrasies rather than to any conviction that it is impossible,
or to anything but admiration of the great men I have mentioned. If
anybody should wish to paint me after I am dead, I desire that I may
be represented with my face turned towards the Dawn; for it is at
that moment so symptomatic of a deep adoration—which I would scorn
to make the common property of gossiping tongues—that I intend to
depart. If there should be anything left of me—which is less than
probable considering the inflammatory character of the material I
design for my pyre—I would be obliged if, without giving anybody
any trouble, it could be buried in my garden, with the usual
Hampstead tablet.
“'JOHN LAVENDER,
THE PUBLIC MAN, WHO DIED FOR HIS
COUNTRY'S GOOD, LIVED HERE.'
“In conclusion, I would say a word to that land I have loved and
served: 'Be not extreme! Distrust the words, of others. To
yourself be true! As you are strong be gentle, as you are brave be
modest! Beloved country, farewell!'”
Having written that final sentence he struggled long with himself before he could lay down the pen. But by this time the port he had drunk had begun to have its usual effect, and he fell into a doze, from which he was awakened five hours later by the beams of a full moon striking in on him.
“The hour has come,” he thought, and, opening the French-window, he went out on to the lawn, where the dew lay white. The freshness in the air, the glamour of the moonlight, and the fumes of the port combined to make him feel strangely rhumantic, and if he had possessed a musical instrument he would very likely have begun to play on it. He spent some moments tracking to and fro in the dew before he settled on the centre of the lawn as the most suitable spot for the act which he contemplated, for thence he would be able to turn his last looks towards Aurora's bedroom-window without interference from foliage. Having drawn a twelve-foot circle in the dew with his toe he proceeded in the bright moonlight to the necessary accumulation of his funeral pile, conveying from his study, book by book, journal by journal, pamphlet by pamphlet, the hoarded treasures of the last four years; and as he carefully placed each one, building up at once a firm and cunning structure, he gave a little groan, thinking of the intoxications of the past, and all the glorious thoughts embodied in that literature. Underneath, in the heart of the pile, he reserved a space for the most inflammable material, which he selected from a special file of a special journal, and round the circumference of the lofty and tapering mound he carefully deposited the two hundred and four war numbers of a certain weekly, so that a ring of flame might lick well up the sides and permeate the more solid matter on which he would be sitting. For two hours he worked in the waning moonlight till he had completed this weird and heroic erection; and just before the dawn, sat down by the light of the candle with which he meant to apply the finishing touch, to compose that interview with himself whereby he intended to convey to the world the message of his act.
“I found him,” he began, in the words of the interviewer, “sitting upon a journalistic pile of lovely leaves of thought, which in the dawning of a new day glowed with a certain restrained flamboyance, as though the passion stored within those exotic pages gave itself willingly to the 'eclaircissement' of the situation, and of his lineaments on which suffering had already set their stamp.
“'I should like you,' I said, approaching as near as I could, for the sparks, like little fireflies on a Riviera evening, were playing profoundly round my trousers, 'I should like to hear from your own lips the reasons which have caused you to resign.'
“'Certainly,' he replied, with the courtesy which I have always found characteristic of him in moments which would try the suavity of more ordinary men; and with the utmost calm and clarity he began to tell me the inner workings of his mind, while the growing dawn-light irradiated his wasted and expressive features, and the flames slowly roasted his left boot.