In a deep-seated, high-backed armchair—placed between the table and the outstanding pillars of the chimney piece—propped up by dark silken pillows, his spare frame wrapped in a long, fur-lined, violet, cloth dressing-gown, a violet, velvet skull-cap on his head, sat Mr. Rivers.
Laurence, who had not seen his uncle for the last five or six years, was conscious of receiving an almost painfully vivid impression at once of physical feebleness and intellectual energy. The elder man's face and hands appeared transparent as the crystal memento mori on the table beside him. His long, straight nose showed thin as a knife. His wide, lip-less mouth seemed to shut with a spring, like a trap. The bone of the face and hands was salient, as of one suffering starvation. Yet the blue-grey eyes, though sunk in their cavernous sockets, were brilliant, alert, full of an almost malevolent greed of observation. Laurence noted that a spotless cleanliness and order pervaded the room and the person of its occupant. The angular and attenuated face was shaven with scrupulous nicety. The finger-nails were carefully polished and pointed. An open collar and wristbands of fine lawn showed exquisitely white against the purple cloth and fur of the dressing-gown. It was evident that Mr. Rivers, whatever the peculiarities of his temper or of his opinions, treated illness and approaching dissolution with an admirable effect of stoicism and personal dignity.
As Laurence—himself conspicuously well-groomed, in evening dress, no mark of his long journey upon him, save in a complexion tanned by sun and sea-wind, and by the directness of glance and vigour of movement that remains, for a while, by every true sea-lover after he comes ashore—crossed the space between the door and fireplace, the old man raised himself a little in his chair.
"Believe me, I am very sensible of the consideration you show in so immediately gratifying my desire to see you, my dear Laurence."
"I was very happy to come, sir," the younger man answered. But he was not unconscious of a point of irony in the cold, level tones of the voice, or in the persistent scrutiny of the brilliant eyes. These appeared to regard him as they might some row of figures—mentally casting up, subtracting, dividing, intent on arriving, with all possible despatch, at a conclusive and final result. The effect was not precisely encouraging, nor were the words which followed.
"That is well," Mr. Rivers said. "But it is desirable you should understand from the outset that which you have undertaken. You may be detained here. The disease from which I suffer is, as you have been informed, incurable; though it is, I am happy to say, neither offensive or infectious. But though the final result is assured, the moment of its advent is uncertain. Neither I, nor the physicians who amiably expend their limited and somewhat empirical skill upon me, can determine the date at which this disease will prove fatal. I shall regret to cause you inconvenience, but the event is beyond my control. I may keep you waiting."
"The longer the better, sir," Laurence said, smiling, and his smile was sincere and genial, of the sort which inspires confidence.—"That is," he added, "if you do not suffer unduly."
"When the mind has realised the greatness of its own powers, and trained itself to their exercise, the will can almost invariably reduce suffering to endurable proportions," Mr. Rivers replied contemptuously, as dealing with a matter obvious, and so beneath discussion. He raised one transparent hand, pointed towards a chair, and then let his wrist drop again upon a supporting silken cushion. As he did so the two heavy rings he wore—one an amethyst set in brilliants and engraved with Arabic characters, the other a black scarab on a hoop of rough gold—slipped up the long phalange of his second finger to the knotted knuckle, and back again, with a dry rattle and chink.
"Oblige me by sitting down, Laurence," he said. "I wish you to labour under no misapprehension as to my intentions in sending for you. A certain amount of business may need attention; but all that you can discuss with my agent, Armstrong,—a very worthy, though prejudiced person. My affairs are in order. I am not called upon to waste any of the time remaining to me upon them. Let me explain myself. The disease—for, to do so, I must refer to it once again—which is in process of destroying certain organs, and consequently paralysing certain functions of my body, has in no degree affected my mind. This retains the completeness of its lucidity. Indeed, I am disposed to believe that my enforced physical inactivity, and the small number of objects presented to my sight—I never leave this room—tend to exalt and stimulate my intellectual powers. You recall the legend of the ancient philosopher who plucked out his eyes, that, undisturbed by the vision of irrelevant objects, he might attain to greater concentration of thought. Disease, in limiting my activities, has gone far to confer upon me the boon which the philosopher in question strove, rather violently, to bestow upon himself. I have ever been a student. I propose to continue so to the last. My interest is unabated. My passion for knowledge—the sole passion of my life—remains in full force."
Laurence sat listening, nursing his knee. The speaker's attitude was impressive, in a way admirable. His detachment, his calm, his acumen, commanded his hearer's respect.