"I fancy it a land of romance and of opera, and that I shall hear the reapers singing a chorus as they stoop over their sickles, and see a cl.u.s.ter of dancers at every turn in the road; and that the innkeepers will all address me in recitative, and the postboys will all roll out buffo songs," she protested laughingly.

"That playhouse world is not Vincenti's Italy," said Lavendale: "_his_ country is the land of science and philosophy, of Galileo and Giordano Bruno, of Vesalius and Sarpi."

The Christmas dinner exhibited a profusion which would have shocked Lady Dainty, but which was the only idea of hospitality when George II. was king. Hams and turkeys, chines and shoulders of veal, soup and fish, jellies, mince-pies, and the traditional plum pudding, with Burgundy and champagne in abundance; and even, for those who were coa.r.s.e enough to ask for it, strong home-brewed ale, ale of a dark tawny brightness, betwixt brown and amber, the very look of which in a gla.s.s suggested a swift progress from uproarious mirth to drunken stupor.

Lady Polwhele drank the home-brewed with the gusto of a chairman or a ticket-porter.

"After all, there is a true British smack about a gla.s.s of ale that beats your foreign wines hollow," she said, as she finished her fourth tumbler.

Lady Judith only sipped her champagne, just touching the gla.s.s with her ruby lips, smiling at Lavendale as she sipped. She sat in the place of honour at her host's side, and amidst that profusion of beef and poultry they two dined upon nectar and ambrosia, and were only intoxicated with each other's looks and smiles, and stolen whispers unheard in the clatter of voices.

For the evening there were cards and music; and anon the hall-doors were flung open to the cold night, and the village mummers came trooping in to perform their Christmas fooleries, and to be regaled afterwards with the remains of the feast. Then came Christmas games in the great hall: blindman's buff and hunt the slipper, at which last game Lady Polwhele disported herself with a vivacity which would have been particular even in Miss Hoyden.

"The Dowager forgets that though 'tis meritorious in her to appear five-and-twenty, 'tis foolish to try to pa.s.s for five," murmured Judith, in her lover's ears, as they sat in a recess by the fireplace, watching those juvenile revels.

Buxom Mrs. Asterley rivalled the Dowager in exuberance, and contrived to be caught and kissed at blindman's buff oftener than she need have been, in the hope of rousing some lurking demon of jealousy in her husband's breast. But Captain Asterley only resembled Oth.e.l.lo insomuch that he was not easily jealous; so the harmony of the evening was not interrupted by his evil pa.s.sions.

Next morning came the fox-hunt. Lady Judith and her lover both rode to hounds, and his lordship sent a couple of led nags in their train, while he contrived to find a decent mount for Miss Vansittart. Judith rode as straight as an arrow, and, reckless in this as in all things, went at the biggest fence with a careless easy grace which delighted her lover.

"I did not know you were a hunting-woman," he said, as they rode neck and neck across a field.

"I am an everything woman. I should have died of the spleen at Ringwood, if I had not hunted."

"You did not while I was there."

"_You_ were there; and I had something else to think about."

"And yet you seemed so cold, so indifferent," he said, slackening his pace as he grew more earnest.

"I had so much to hide, love, I had need to put on a show of scorn. Come on, sir; we shall lose the hounds if you talk to me."

The Christmas week was nearly over. It was the thirtieth of December.

Lord and Lady Bolingbroke had joined the party: the lady something of an invalid, but infinitely gracious and devoted to her husband, who loved her pa.s.sionately, yet delighted in boasting of his old conquests in her presence, a self-glorification which she suffered with much good-humour.

Nor was she offended at his exuberant compliments to his old flirt, Lady Judith, whom he reminded how pleasantly they had got on together at Ringwood Abbey, when his wife was nursing her gout at the Bath. He had elegant compliments even for Lady Polwhele, whose white lead had been laid on thicker than ever in his honour, and whose family diamonds blazed upon a bosom of more than Flemish development. He had not succeeded in bringing the poet. Mr. Pope had an invalid mother in his house at Twitnam, and could not trust himself away from home for above twenty-four hours at a time. There was some disappointment at his non-arrival, yet a general feeling of relief. Those bright observant eyes saw too deep into the follies and pettinesses of society.

It was in the after-dinner dusk of that thirtieth of December, and while his guests were all talking and laughing in a joyous circle round the hall fire before repairing to the tea-tables in the adjacent saloon, that Lavendale visited his friend in the laboratory. He had stolen away from that light-hearted circle while Judith was occupied with Bolingbroke's gay badinage, and now he sank with an exhausted air into an old oaken settle opposite the table at which Vincenti sat reading.

Here there was no gloaming hour of rest and respite from daily cares.

The student lighted his lamp directly daylight began to fade. He could brook scarce a minute's interruption of his studies. The lamp shone full upon Lavendale's face.

"How pale and tired you look!" said Vincenti. "I hope you are not ill?"

"I hardly know whether I am very ill or only very tired," answered Lavendale. "I ought not to have hunted the other day. I have not been my own man since. My London doctor told me I must never hunt; but I have no faith in physic or physicians. However, the fellow was right so far. I am not strong enough for a tearing cross-country gallop. And my blood was up the other day, and my second horse was fresh as fire. It was a glorious run: Lady Judith and I were with the hounds to the last, though three-fifths of the field were left in the lurch. No, I must hunt no more."

"You will be wise if you stick to that resolution. Do you think if I had squandered my strength upon follies as young men do that I should be alive to-day? I have garnered the sands of life, my lord; I have measured every grain."

"I too will turn wiser. My days are precious to me now. Vincenti, do you remember drawing my horoscope t'other day?"

"Yes, I remember."

"And I told you not to show it to me, d'ye remember? A foolish, nervous, brain-sick apprehension made me shrink from the knowledge of my fate.

But now I think I should like to see the result of your calculations: not that I promise to believe implicitly."

Vincenti's brow darkened.

"I would rather not show you the horoscope," he answered curtly.

"Why not?"

Vincenti was silent.

"And you had rather not tell me why not, I suppose?" said Lavendale, with a faint laugh.

"No, there could be no good--I can scarce define my reasons."

"Do you think I cannot guess them? The fate foretold was diabolically bad, and you would spare me the knowledge of evil."

"There was nothing diabolical--nothing exceptionally bad--nothing--"

"But the common lot of man," interrupted Lavendale--"death! Only the common lot; but for me it is to come earlier than to the lucky. It is to fall just when I am eager to live--just as the gates of paradise are opening to me. I am standing at the gate--I see that paradise beyond, with the sun shining on it, the sunlight of pa.s.sionate, happy, satisfied love--for me the unsatisfied. I am so near, so near--'tis but one step across the threshold and I am in the enchanted garden. But there lurks the king of terrors--there stands Apollo with his fatal shaft: I am not to taste that ineffable bliss, the cup is to be s.n.a.t.c.hed from my thirsting lips--that was what the stars foretold, was it not, Vincenti?"

"'Tis your own eagerness shapes the fear that torments you."

"Tell me that I have guessed wrong, that the stars promise long life."

"I will tell you nothing."

"Nay, you have told me enough. Your reticence is more significant than words," said Lavendale, rising and leaving the student hastily.

He went no further than the adjoining room, the old Gothic library, faintly lit at this hour by a wood fire, which had burnt low and was almost expiring. He seated himself by that lonely hearth in silence and darkness; sat brooding there, a prey to a kind of angry despair.

It was hard, it was hard, he told himself, a cruel sentence issued by the implacable Fates; hard and bitterly hard, now that his heart and mind were purified of all evil, now that he was free from sin, repentant of all his old follies, intent upon leading a good life and being of some use in his generation--hard, very hard, that the decree should go forth, "Thou shalt die in thy pride of life; thou shalt perish when thy heart is full of hope and love." The foreboding of evil was so strong upon him that he accepted the presage as it were a fiat that had gone forth. He struggled no longer against the despair, the conviction of doom. All was over. These brief hours of courtship, this blissful fever-dream was to be the end of all; and then must come the grave, to lie in cold obstruction, and to rot.

He sat for more than an hour in the darkness and silence. The faint gray twilight outside the long meadows faded to the thick gloom of wintry, night. He had flung on some fresh logs, and fitful sparks flashed out from these now and then, and filled the room with a bluish light that seemed almost sepulchral, as it were in unison with his thoughts of death. He sat brooding over the fire, with his elbows on his knees, staring at the slowly kindling logs. A ripple of laughter came upon his ear now and again from the distance. They were merry enough without him, hardly conscious of his absence, perhaps. Even _she_ might forget him for the moment, now she had her adorer Bolingbroke to breathe honeyed words into her ear.

Would she forget him by and by, when all was done? Would she grieve for a little, and then be gay again, and marry some one else, and go dancing gaily down a long perspective of idle foolish fashionable years till she became even as Lady Polwhele, and took to white lead and ratafia, and quarrelling at cards and a led captain, and so on to unhonoured old age and grim death? He felt as if he could scarce trust her upon this planet without him, she was so light and frivolous a creature.

"She loves me pa.s.sionately now, I know," he told himself; "she is mine, heart and mind and being, mine utterly, as though we two were moved by the same pulses, lived by the beat of one mutual heart; but these impa.s.sioned natures forget so easily. She will be dancing and masquing and flirting again before the gra.s.s can grow upon my grave."

He sat on till the logs had burnt and blazed and crumbled away on the hearth, and the fire was again just expiring. The clock struck eight. He had been brooding there for over two hours. He sprang to his feet suddenly, cold as death, great beads of sweat breaking out upon his forehead, and a strange tremor at his knees.

What was it--fainting or fear that so shook him? He turned almost as if to rush from the room in an agony of terror--and, lo! that strange soft light, that faint brightness he knew so well, floated in the distance yonder, just within the furthermost window.

It was the figure he had seen before, a woman's form dimly defined against the dark panelled wall, like a luminous cloud rather than an actual shape; and the voice he had heard before spoke again in accents so unearthly that it seemed less a voice than the faint moaning of the wind which fancy shaped into words and meaning:

"To-morrow, at midnight, Lavendale, thou shalt be as I am."