XI
Something drummed and drummed; and, in obedience to that sound, it appeared to Laurence that he returned—whence he knew not—across the most prodigious spaces ever traversed by the spirit of man. Then the matter explained itself. He was on board ship once again, awakened to the familiar pounding of the engines and drum of the screw. Opening his eyes, they would rest on the white iron and wooden walls of his state-room, and the alert figure of his bedroom steward, announcing—"Fair morning, sir; bath ready, sir." And this impression was so distinct that it took him some seconds to focus his actual whereabouts—the stately and serious bed-chamber at Stoke Rivers, and the portly person of Watkins, the under-butler, standing at the bedside, a silver tea-tray in his large, soft hands.
"I beg your pardon, sir, but I have been up twice already and received no answer," he said, his manner correct and respectful as ever, but his face wearing, for once, an expression of quite human solicitude—or was it curiosity? "I spoke to Mr. Renshaw and Mr. Lowndes, and they considered it advisable that I should enter, sir. Mr. Renshaw and Mr. Lowndes felt, with me, not quite comfortable, sir, knowing your habit of early rising."
Watkins set down the tray carefully, turning out the corners of the fine napkin which covered it.
"Your tea, your letters, sir," he added, and then paused.
Laurence tried to rouse himself. Shipboard and the pounding engines were a delusion clearly. But was the night of sweet converse, and the flitting away of a rose-clad, slender figure at the first flush of dawn, a delusion likewise?
"Oh yes, thanks, Watkins, I am all right," he said absently. "I've slept late, have I? What time is it?"
"Between ten minutes and a quarter past eleven when I passed through the hall," the man answered. "Any orders for the stables, sir?"
Laurence was tearing open his letters. One was addressed in his wife's large and elaborate hand. Laughing at her, one day before their marriage, he had declared that did she possess half the amount of character suggested by these opulent hieroglyphics, there would positively be no getting to the end of it, so that his work clearly was cut out for him for the rest of his natural life. Now the sight of that handwriting—though he had possibly ceased to regard it as a perfectly trustworthy index to its writer's personality—affected him with a movement of vague self-reproach. For, as sleep left him, Laurence entertained less and less doubt of the actuality of the existence of his rose-clad fairy-lady; or of the fact that he had spent hours with her—hours, blameless it is true, yet beautiful beyond all remembered hours of his experience. And though he had done no wrong, yet the very beauty of those hours—since she had not shared it—constituted a certain subtle, subjective infidelity towards his wife. This pricked his conscience the more, that he perceived Virginia must have written to him by the very next mail, but three days after he had sailed. And that was rather charming and thoughtful of her, for she had innumerable engagements claiming her time and attention, and was by no means addicted to anxiety regarding the absent. "Why should she worry," as she remarked at parting, "everybody was always crossing now, and you hardly ever heard of any one not getting to the other side safely enough." Therefore it seemed to Laurence it would be a duty, perhaps also a little salve to his conscience, to do something pleasing—however remotely—to Virginia. He had an order for the stables. He would ride over to luncheon with her friend and admirer, Mrs. Bellingham, at Bishop's Pudbury.
Once on his feet, Laurence was somewhat surprised at his own sensations. He found himself singularly tired, as a man may be by some prolonged concentration of brain or of will. He felt as though he had made some tremendous mental effort; and, now that it was over, depression held both his mind and body. His spirits were not as buoyant as usual, nor was his thought clear. He felt dazed, and incapable of grappling with the strange problems raised by the events of the last twenty-four hours. The swing of possibility they suggested was too great. The average, the banal attracted him, as a narcotic attracts one in pain. For the moment he suffered something approaching repulsion towards his recent exaltation and amazing, half-realised discoveries. He wanted to get back on to the ordinary lines of things—be amused, be a trifle stupid, laugh, gossip, forget.