"I must go down and see where our things are," he said, rising. In the
hall he stopped before the tall clock whose striking was a part of his
early memories. Below, the house seemed empty; and, instead of turning to
the front door and his purpose, he went into the drawing-room.

The long glass doors to the garden were open, and the interior was filled
with the scent of lilacs. The room itself had always reminded him of
them--it was pale in color, cool gilt and lavender brocade and white
panels. Nothing had been moved or changed: the inlaid cylinder fall desk
with its garlands of painted flowers on the light waxed wood stood at the
left, the pole screen with the embroidered bouquet was before the fire
blind, the girandoles, scrolled in ormolu and hung with crystal lusters,
held the shimmer of golden reflections on the walls.

He had remembered the drawing-room at Java Head as a place of enchanted
perfection; in his childhood its still serenity had seemed a presentment
of what might be hoped for in heaven. The thought of the room as it was
now, open but a little dim to the lilacs and warm afternoon, had haunted
him as the measure of all peace and serenity in moments of extreme
danger, his ship laboring in elemental catastrophes and in remote seas.
Its fragrance had touched him through the miasma of Whampoa Reach,
waiting for the lighters of tea to float down from Canton; standing off
in the thunder squalls of the night for the morning sea breeze to take
him into Rio; over a cognac in the coffee stalls of the French market at
New Orleans, the chanteys ringing from the cotton gangs along the levees:

_"Were you ever down in Mobile Bay?
Aye, aye, pump away."_

As he left the room he saw Laurel, William's youngest child, and he