Volume Iii Part 22 (1/2)

Herrick went to his own room sorely troubled about his friend. The vision, or the fancy--dream, trance, catalepsy, or whatever name it might be called--had taken too strong a hold upon Lavendale's mind to be thought of lightly by his friend.

”There must be something done,” thought Herrick, ”or the very fantasy will kill him. He will die by the strength of his own imagination. I must consult Bolingbroke, who is the cleverest man in this house, if not in Europe, and he may suggest some way of diverting Jack's mind.”

To Irene he said not a word, but after breakfast next morning, while Lavendale and Lady Judith were in the stables with a chosen few, inspecting the small stud and discussing future additions, Mr. Durnford found an opportunity to draw Bolingbroke aside.

”I have to speak with your lords.h.i.+p on a very serious matter,” he said; ”will you honour me with your company in the grounds for half an hour?”

”I am yours to command, my dear Durnford; but I hope your serious matter is nothing unpleasant. You are not an emissary from some unhappy devil among my creditors, who complains that my patronage is ruining him? I have spent three times as much on Dawley as prudence would have counselled, and I fear I shall have to sell the place in order to pay for its improvement, so that some greasy cit will profit by my taste and extravagance. It is the curse of sons that fathers are plaguily long-lived. Lord St. John is a glorious example of patriarchal length of years. He has gone far to convert me to Biblical Christianity. I can believe in Methuselah when I behold my honoured parent.”

”I should not be so impertinent as to obtrude the claims of a creditor upon so great a man as Lord Bolingbroke, were he even my own brother,”

answered Durnford. ”Alas! my lord, the matter of which I would speak to you is one that money cannot mend or mar.”

”Then it must be a very strange business indeed, sir, and I am all ears.”

Herrick told Bolingbroke all that had pa.s.sed between him and Lavendale last night; and then the two men talked together earnestly for a considerable time, walking up and down the wintry alley, where two rows of clipped pyramid-shaped yews wore as verdant a livery as if it had been midsummer.

”One can scarce conceive that imagination could be powerful enough to kill a man,” said Bolingbroke, after a long discussion, ”yet I apprehend there is a state of the nerves and organs in which a mental shock may be fatal. I own I do not like the look of your friend this morning. There is a deadly pallor relieved only by a hectic flush which may deceive the inexperienced eye with the semblance of health, but which to me indicates an inward fever. The fancy about the vision of last evening may be hallucination, monomania, what you will, but the influence upon him is full of peril. All we can do is to try and distract his mind from dwelling on this one idea. Let us be as gay as ever we can to-day, and let the fair Judith exert her utmost power of fascination to make the hours pa.s.s quickly.”

”And what if we shortened this fatal day by at least one hour, and thus curtailed his nervous agony of apprehension?” suggested Durnford. ”We might easily put on all the clocks towards night, so that they should strike twelve when it shall be but eleven; and then we can tell him the fatal moment is past, and that the ghostly warning has been belied by the pa.s.sage of time. 'At midnight he was to die.' That was the doom the unearthly voice p.r.o.nounced for him. He harped upon that word midnight: 'This is my last day upon earth,' he said: 'this night at twelve o'clock I shall be gone from you all.' If we could but delude him as to the fatal hour, laugh him into good spirits and forgetfulness, those shattered nerves of his might recover, and the poor over-strained heart beat evenly once again.”

”I see your drift,” said Bolingbroke, ”and will do my best to help you.

It would be difficult to take an hour clean off the night without detection. We must begin to doctor the clocks soon after dusk: say that we put them on ten minutes before they strike six, and that from that time to eleven we gain ten minutes in each hour. It will need some subtlety to manage the job, unless there are any of the household whom you can trust to help you.”

”I would rather trust no one but you and my wife,” answered Durnford.

”Surely we three could manage the matter: there are only two clocks that need be doctored: the eight-day clock in the hall and the French timepiece in the saloon.”

”But there is his own watch, if he carries one: how are we to manage that?”

”He has half a dozen watches, all out of order; I have not seen him carry one for the last six months.”

”Then there are our lively friends, who doubtless all wear watches, and who will betray us unless they are warned.”

”True: they must be told something that will make them hold their tongues. I will tell them we have hatched a practical joke--or that it is a wager--cheat Lavendale out of an hour.”

”You may leave them to me, I think,” said Bolingbroke gaily, for to him the matter scarcely presented itself in its most serious light. ”I know how to drive that kind of cattle.”

”So be it: your lords.h.i.+p shall settle with every one except Lady Judith.

I should like to confide my fears to her ear alone. She loves Lavendale devotedly, and if a woman's love could s.n.a.t.c.h a man from an untimely grave, she is the woman to save him.”

His last day upon earth. Lavendale told himself that it was so, and listened nervously to the striking of the distant church clock, though he affected a gaiety which was wilder than a schoolboy's mirth. His feverish unrest alarmed his mistress.

”My dearest Lavendale, you have an air that frightens me, and you are looking horribly ill,” she said suddenly in the midst of a conversation, as they paced an Italian terrace together in the noontide suns.h.i.+ne.

There had been a light fall of snow in the night, and the drifts lay in white ridges against the dark boles of the trees in the park, and the great gabled roof showed patches of white here and there under a bright blue sky.

”I vow it is scarcely courteous to cut me short with such a speech as that,” cried Lavendale, ”when I am doing my very best to entertain you with my good spirits. Would you have me as solemn as a mute at a funeral?”

”I would have you only yourself, Lavendale,” she said, laying her hand upon his arm, and looking at him searchingly. ”You have an air to-day as if you were acting.”