The light was gone; the panelled wall was dark again. Lavendale s.n.a.t.c.hed the poker, and stirred the logs into a blaze. There was nothing, nothing save that wildly-beating heart of his, to tell him there had been something there.

Next moment the door was flung open suddenly, and a bevy of his guests rushed into the room. A wild disorderly mob, as ribald a set as the crew in _Comus_, it seemed to him, after that unearthly presence which had that instant been there.

"What have you been doing, Lavendale?" asked Durnford. "Is this the way you treat your guests?"

"The ladies were out of humour at having to take their tea without your lordship," said Irene.

"And if it had not been for the most exquisite game at hide and seek, we should have all had the vapours," protested Lady Polwhele; "but we have had mighty fun in your corridors and closets, Lavendale, and I think we must have routed all your family ghosts, and given a good scare to your antique Jacobite rats. Of course you have no parvenu Hanoverians behind your respectable wainscots? We have not left a corner unexplored in our revelry."

"It was a scurvy trick in your lordship to desert us so long," said Mrs.

Asterley, "and I would have you look after Lady Judith, who is flirting with Lord Bolingbroke in the saloon."

"O, his French wife will take care there is no mischief done," said Asterley; "but indeed, Lavendale, you must join us at ba.s.set. We can have no fun without you."

"I am coming," said Lavendale, following them out into the hall.

Durnford looked at him uneasily when they came into the light.

"What were you doing, Jack, in that dark room?" he asked. "Had you fallen asleep?"

"No, I was brooding; brooding over my joy. Should a man not sit and nurse his happiness as well as his grief?"

"You have had a swooning fit, Jack. You are as pale as death."

"Well, I was near swooning with excess of joy; but 'tis over, and now I am ready for a riotous night. I will play you as deep, drink you as deep as in our wickedest days. There shall be no mirth too wild for me."

He went to the saloon, where his mistress was sitting at the harpsichord playing to Lady Bolingbroke, while the statesman stood with his back to the fireplace in a thoughtful att.i.tude. There were no signs of levity here, at any rate.

Judith sprang up at his entrance, and went over to him.

"Why have you abandoned us so long?" she asked complainingly. "It was cruel of you to leave me to myself all this time."

"Could I leave you in sweeter company? But indeed, dearest, I have not stayed away for pleasure. I was busy."

"You have no right to be busy when I am in your house. All labours should cease but the labour of pleasing me," this with the spoiled beauty's air; and then, becoming all at once earnest and womanly as she saw the change in his countenance, "but you have not been busy. You have been ill, fainting. You are as white as chalk. O Lavendale, what has happened?"

"Nothing in this world, sweet, to vex you. I rode too hard t'other day for the pleasure of keeping near you, and I am no Nimrod, like Walpole and his great rival yonder. The hunting tired me."

"You must be in bad health to be so easily tired."

"Easily, quotha! Why, 'twas a thirty-mile run, and a fourteen-mile ride home! 'Tis only a G.o.ddess who can make light of such a day. But are you going to play ba.s.set? and will you have me for your partner?"

"My partner in all things till death."

"Till death," he echoed solemnly; and they sat down side by side.

He seemed gay enough all that evening, and the wine brought the colour back to his face by and by; but every now and then in the pauses of the talk, when the others were intent upon the game, or at supper by and by in an interval of silence, he was thinking of the form and the voice that had been with him that night.

Could two worlds be so wide apart and yet so near--the world of life and the world of death? Not for an instant did he doubt that his mother's spirit had appeared to him; that her voice had warned him, and with no delusive warning. He told himself that he was to die to-morrow night.

There were but one night and day left to him upon this upper earth: one night in which to repent his sins; one day in which to settle his worldly affairs, and bid farewell to all he loved.

Should he confide in his beloved? Should he tell Judith of the vision?

No; she would make light of it, or pretend to do so. Nay, in all likelihood she would be really unbelieving; she was too steeped in this world and in worldly follies to believe in that unearthly visitant. She would tell him his brain was unstrung, would try to laugh him into scepticism.

"I would rather believe, even though it is to accept the message of doom," he told himself. "To know that there is a G.o.d, and a world beyond, is better than long life upon earth. Man's life, did he live to a hundred years, were no better than the life of a worm if it ended here. But she who has been with me gives me a.s.surance of a future. Where she is I shall be."

It was after midnight when the party dispersed; but, late as it was, Durnford followed Lavendale to his bedroom.

"I want you to tell me all about it, Jack," he said earnestly, as they stood together in front of the fire.

"About what?"

"The thing that has unhinged you. Something has, I know. You were frightened, you saw something, or dreamt something, in the library before we found you there, half fainting, almost speechless. There was something, Jack; I know you too well to be deceived."

"There _was_ something, but I cannot tell you what."

"O, but you must, you shall. What is the good of our being brothers by adoption if you cannot confide in me? You have had no secrets from me, Jack. Till to-night I have shared even your guilty secrets, at the risk of being called Sir Pandarus by this good-natured world of ours. I have the right to be trusted. You told me about a warning last summer, a warning dream that saved you from a great sin. Was this another dream?

Had you dropped asleep by the fire, and did you wake in a panic, as children do sometimes?"

"No, Herrick, I was broad awake."

And then, little by little, Durnford got the truth from him: the story of the vision as it came to him in the summer night, as it had reappeared in the winter gloaming. To him, evidently, the thing was real, indisputable, an actual appearance, and not a projection of his own mind.

"I have tried to be sceptical about that earlier vision; I had almost schooled myself into disbelief," he said in conclusion, "but now I know it is real. I know that my mother's spirit watches over me with a sweet protecting influence; I know that she has warned and guarded me, and that I shall be with her to-morrow night among the dead."

Durnford attempted no strenuous argument; his office was to soothe rather than to reason with his friend. He stayed with Lavendale till late into the long winter night; they two sitting in front of the fire, and talking of their past life together, and something of Herrick's future.

"I shall execute a new will to-morrow morning, Herrick, and I shall leave this place to you. It is not entailed, and although it is heavily mortgaged there is a margin, just enough to keep out the rats and mice.

It will not be a millstone round your neck, will it, friend?"

"Jack, why insist upon talking thus, as if your immediate end were a certainty? It agonises me to hear you."

"But it is a certainty. To-morrow--nay, this day is my last, for the new day has begun in darkness. At midnight I shall have pa.s.sed from your sight. Do not let Judith look upon me when I am gone, Herrick. There is something horrible in the aspect of death, which might poison her memory of the man she loved. I would have her recall this face only as it was while that subtle indescribable something which we call soul still illumined it. Promise me this."

"I will promise anything that can content you. Yet I wonder that a man of your strong sense can talk of a vision which had its source only in your shattered nerves, with as much gravity as if it were a revelation from the Almighty. But I am resolved not to argue with you."

"It would be useless. I am perfectly serious, and convinced beyond all argument."

"I will laugh with you at your conviction after midnight."

"I pray G.o.d that we may have occasion to laugh. Do not suppose that I accept my doom with content, Herrick. I go from a world that is full of delight. A year ago, I think I could have welcomed the summoner, but now--Let me finish what I was saying. I have a presentiment that you are going to become a great statesman--the Whigs will have it all their own way, Herrick; the Tories have had their hour and 'tis past--so this place will be a proper abode for you. It will give you an air of stability, and be a pleasant home for your holidays. Irene will like it, because it is so near the home of her childhood, and she and you may make your after-dinner stroll as elderly married people to the trysting-place where you wooed each other in the flower of your days.

This old birthplace of mine, with its burdens upon its head, is all I have to leave to my adopted brother."

"I will remind you of your promised bequest when we are old men, Jack,"

said Herrick gaily; "and now good-night, or good-morning, as you please.

Get to bed and rest, if thou canst, my fever-brained friend, or thou wilt have a sorry countenance for a lover at breakfast-time."