Shortly after dinner fatigue passed the point at which it could be struggled against.  Long waking, the harassment of fears at length consoled, and the exhaustion consequent upon his journey, besieged him with invincible drowsiness.  Mrs. Baxendale, observing it, begged him to discard ceremony and go to rest.  Gladly he suffered himself to be led to his room; once there, he could not note the objects about him; the very effort of taking off his clothes was almost beyond his strength.  Sleep was binding his brows with oblivion, and relaxing every joint.  His dearest concerns were nothing to him; with a wave of the hand he would have resigned an eternity of love; cry to him blood-chilling horrors, and his eyelids would make no sign.  The feather-softness moulded itself to his limbs; the pillows pressed a yielding coolness to his cheek; his senses failed amid faint fresh odours.  Blessed state!  How enviable above all waking joys the impotence which makes us lords of darkness, the silence which suffers not to reach our ears so much as an echo of the farce of life.

CHAPTER XV

MRS. BAXENDALE’S QUESTS

A servant went to Banbrigg each morning for tidings; Emily, so the report said, moved steadily towards recovery.  On the second day after Wilfrid’s arrival Mrs. Baxendale took him with her in the brougham, and let him wait for her whilst she made a call upon Mrs. Hood; Wilfrid saw an upper window of which the blind was down against the sun, and would gladly have lingered within sight of it.  Beatrice had excused herself from accompanying the two.

‘I believe,’ Mrs. Baxendale said on the way, ’she has gone to some special service at St. Luke’s.’  She was mistaken, though Beatrice had in truth been diligent at such services of late.  ‘Now there,’ she added, ’is a kind of infatuation I find it difficult even to understand.  How can a girl of her sense and education waste her time in that way?  Don’t think I have no religious belief, Mr. Athel; I’m not strong-minded enough for that.  But this deliberate working of oneself into a state of nervous excitement seems to me, to speak plainly, indecent.  Dr. Wardle, with whom I chat rather wickedly now and then, tells me the revivals are quite a windfall, subsequently, to him and his brethren.  And, do you know, I begin to see bad results even in my niece.  I certainly wouldn’t have had her down just at this time if I had suspected her leanings that way.  Didn’t you notice how absent she was last night, and again at breakfast this morning?  All revival, I assure you.’

‘It’s the want of a serious interest in life,’ remarked Wilfrid, remembering, with a smile, a certain conversation between Beatrice and himself.