The Gateless Barrier Part 5

"Well, then," he said, "since I may ask you--I have found from conversation with several of our neighbours that this house, which I took to be a sort of Temple of Reason, is regarded with a good deal of vulgar suspicion."

Though the room was warm, the atmosphere of it close as that of a thundering night in the tropics, Laurence instinctively leaned forward, spreading out his hands to the glowing wood-fire on the hearth.

"I am not superst.i.tious," he continued; "and you very certainly, I take it, are not so. We shall agree in that. Still, I confess, the whole subject of the occult and supernatural is rather fascinating to me. I can't quite keep my hands off it. I find an idea is prevalent that there are manifestations here, queer things are seen, you know, which cannot be put down to natural agency. I want to know if you--"

But Mr. Rivers interrupted him with unaccustomed vehemence of speech and manner.

"Stop!" he said, "stop if you please. This subject is exceedingly distasteful to me."

"Then we won't pursue it," Laurence answered quickly. Yet he wondered; his interest, already considerably aroused, being sensibly increased by the violence displayed by his companion. It was singular; and he paused a little, thinking, before embarking in further conversation. During that pause, Mr. Rivers leaned sideways, slowly and with difficulty raised the crystal skull from its place on the table beside him. He held it in front of him in both hands, and gazed, as though performing some religious rite, into the cavities of the empty eye-sockets. Then stiffly, letting his hands sink, he rested it upon his knees.

"Pardon me," he said, looking full at Laurence, while a shadow, rather than a flush, seemed to pa.s.s over his attenuated face. "I was tempted to act unworthily.--I agreed to answer such questions as you might put to me. But perceiving those questions tended to revive a matter which has caused me one of the few humiliations and regrets I have suffered during my life, I shrank. I was tempted weakly to break faith with you and retract my promise."

"Pray, sir, don't take it so seriously," Laurence entreated. "Of course, I should never have approached the subject had I known it was disagreeable to you. It was just the idle curiosity of an idle man. What on earth does it matter?"

"To you very little, presumably, since you are, as you say, idle--your days, that is, filled with a round of amus.e.m.e.nts deadening--as I fear--to the intellectual and moral conscience. But with me the case is otherwise. The judgment of no human being is of moment to me. But my judgment of myself is of infinite moment."

Mr. Rivers laid one transparent hand upon the dome of the crystal skull, as though for support. His face had grown hard as steel.

"It is therefore inc.u.mbent upon me, not in satisfaction of your curiosity, my dear Laurence, but in satisfaction of my own sense of rect.i.tude, that I should accept this opportunity of stating the following facts. I inherited this property--as you will shortly inherit it--from an uncle, a man very much my senior. I had prosecuted my studies abroad, in the learned centres of Germany and France, from an early age. My acquaintance with my uncle was slight. I knew little of his private life. But I had reason to believe him a person of an undisciplined mind, imbued with the extravagant socialistic views current during the French Revolution, unbridled alike in pa.s.sions of love and of hate. Questions of character have never interested me; I therefore made no further inquiry regarding my predecessor's private life. My own tastes and habits were already fixed. I settled myself here and continued the studies in experimental physics, philology, and metaphysics, in which I had already engaged. I also added to the collection of pictures and objects of art that I found in the house. My life has been blameless, as most men count blame. I can a.s.sert, without fear of contradiction, that my moral and intellectual integrity have been complete. Only in one connection have I been guilty, have I failed--failed, as I now confess, miserably and grossly."

Mr. Rivers paused a moment. His fingers twitched as they rested upon the crystal skull.

"Miserably and grossly," he repeated. "The vulgar gossip which you have heard rests upon a basis of truth. I cannot deny the existence of supernatural manifestations, so called, in one quarter of this house.

They are undeniable. I have witnessed them myself."

Laurence felt a queer s.h.i.+ver of excitement run through him. He sat very still.--"Then I wasn't asleep after all," he said to himself, "in that room last night."

"The said manifestations were not only disturbing and distasteful to me; but I perceived that their existence threatened the validity of some of my most carefully reasoned hypotheses, of some of my most ardently cherished beliefs. Of vulgar physical fear, I need hardly tell you, I was incapable; but I trembled before a dislocation of my thought. It followed that I became guilty of an act of flagrant mental cowardice. I refused to submit those manifestations to scientific investigation. I never mentioned them to my correspondents. I took elaborate precautions against ever witnessing them again myself. I made a determined effort to erase the memory of them from my mind. I almost succeeded in forgetting that I ever had witnessed them. Thus I tricked my own intelligence. I lied to my own experience. I committed a crime against my own reason--a crime which I can never hope to expiate."

Moved by the pa.s.sion of the elder man's self-denunciation, Laurence had risen, and stood close to him.

"Ah! surely you take it too hard--far too hard, sir," he said.

But Mr. Rivers, looking up at him, answered sternly--

"A sin is heinous, not in itself, but in relation to the level of virtue habitually maintained by whoso commits it. And so, even were I not disabled, were I still capable of carrying out these investigations, the unsparing prosecution of which could alone give proof of the sincerity of my repentance, that could not really wipe out the iniquity of the past. In morals I cannot logically admit the possibility of cancelling a wrong once done. In the realm of physics we know that vibrations, once generated, ring out everlastingly through s.p.a.ce. To send forth a contrary set of vibrations is not to limit, or cause the first generated to cease. Their circles may intersect, yet they are practically independent, and cannot neutralise one another. In the realm of morals it is the same. The act once committed pa.s.ses into the region of persistent and indubitable fact. Of sins, both pa.s.sive and active, this is equally true. And consequently I am doomed--so long as I retain conscious individuality--to remain hopelessly lowered in my self-esteem."

The sick man spoke with a fierceness of conviction, his voice usually low and even swelling into full sonorous tones; his attenuated frame vibrant with energy; his face illuminated, as though a lamp burned behind that thin invest.i.ture of flesh and bone. Laurence saw in him, for the moment, a great orator, more probably a great preacher, wasted. And the thought of that waste of force, waste of power, stung him out of indolence, out of mere easy good nature. He, at least, would s.h.i.+lly-shally no more with life, but play the game--whatever the game presenting itself--whole-heartedly. And again that queer s.h.i.+ver of excitement ran through him; while again he reminded himself he had now reliable testimony that he had met with something far stranger, more incalculable and mysterious, than any vision of a dream, in that clear-coloured room downstairs last night. He stood silent, thinking intently, feeling keenly, his whole nature alert. But a small rustling sound, as of a chill wind among dry leaves in a winter hedge, recalled him to his immediate surroundings. Mr. Rivers had sunk back against the silken cus.h.i.+ons, which rustled under his weight. The light had died out of his face, his hands clutched tremblingly at the crystal _memento mori_ resting on his knees. For the first time Laurence realised how very near--but for the indomitable strength of will which supported him--he was to death. Laurence bent over him.

"This is heavy, sir," he said, touching the crystal skull. "May I put it back on the table?"

Mr. Rivers bowed his head in a.s.sent.

"We have talked too much. It would be wise, I think, for me to leave you."

"It would be so."

"May I call your man before I go--I hardly like to leave you alone."

"Thank you; he will come at the accustomed hour. I do not deviate from habits once formed except under stress of necessity."

Laurence was pushed by the desire to say something gentle, something expressive of the honour in which he held his host's rect.i.tude and sincerity. But Mr. Rivers lay back motionless, his eyes closed. It was difficult to find just the words he wished. He turned away towards the door, when the elder man's voice recalled him.

"Laurence," he said, "Laurence--one word before we part. If you should see fit to undertake those investigations of which we have spoken, and in face of which I showed myself unfaithful and a craven--remember I press nothing upon you, I leave you free to undertake them or not as you please--I have one request to make of you."

"Yes, sir," he answered.

"It is this--that you will under no circ.u.mstances communicate the result of those investigations to any person save myself, and only to me should I definitely ask you to do so. Will you give me your word?"

"I give you my word, sir."

And with the feeling that he had bound himself to an engagement of unlooked-for solemnity, the young man went out into the steady brightness of the corridor, while--as last night--the odour of the orchids met him, enfolding him in their thick, musky sweetness, half-way down the dark, s.h.i.+ning, oaken-stairs.

X

As he pulled the edge of the heavy, leather-lined curtain towards him, Laurence laughed a little, in part at his own eagerness, in part defiant of scruples. Waking in the small hours, as a baby-child, he had often imagined that, could he climb the high rails of his cot and steal back unperceived to the day-nursery, he would find all his toys alive and stirring, at play on their own account. And this conception of the reversal of the natural order of things, while it frightened him, yet enchanted his fancy. Something of that childish alarm and enchantment arose in him now. He felt about to bid farewell to common-sense, possibly--to usual established habits of thought, a.s.suredly. He was about to commit himself to an untried element; offering himself as sport to seas unsounded as yet, to unknown forces which might prove malign and merciless. While the promise, by which he had so lately bound himself, introduced into the coming experience an element of secrecy that made--as enforced secrecy so often does make--for a rather dangerous degree of personal liberty.

So he turned the door-handle not without expectation. And this time expectation suffered no disappointment. In front of the tall, satin-wood escritoire, her back towards him, her delicate hands wandering anxiously over the painted and polished surface, he beheld once more the slender, rose-clad figure.

Laurence drew in his breath with a sigh of satisfaction. He crossed the room boldly to-night and stood beside her; and her pale, ethereal loveliness entranced him as he spoke.

"Listen to me," he said. "We are strangers to one another--so strangely strangers that I half distrust the evidence of my senses, as, only too conceivably, you distrust the evidence of yours. I don't pretend to understand what distance of time, or s.p.a.ce, or conditions, separates us.

I only know that I see you, and that you are unhappy, and that you search for something you are unable to find.--Look here, look here--listen to me and try to lay hold of this idea--that I am a friend, not an enemy; that I come to help, not to hinder you. Try to enter into some sort of relation with me. Try to cross the gulf which seems to lie between us. Try to believe that you have found some one who will keep faith with you, and do his best to serve you; and believing that, put sorrow out of your face--"

He stopped suddenly. When he began speaking he might have been addressing a sleep-walker or a person in a trance. There was no speculation in her sweet eyes. They were wild with a wondering distress, looking on him as though not seeing him. But as he continued to plead with her--speaking slowly, pausing at the close of each sentence in the hope that the sense of his words might so reach and arrest her--a gradual change came over her aspect, as of one awakening from prolonged and troubled slumber. There was a dawning of intelligence in her expression, as in that of a little child first struggling to apprehend and measure, not by means of its senses merely, but in obedience to the conscious effort of its mind. The drooping corners of the mouth straightened, turned upward, the lips breaking into a timid, questioning smile. She stretched herself a little, clenched her fists gently, rubbed her eyes with them in innocent, baby fas.h.i.+on, stretched again, and then looked full at Laurence--a woman shy, diffident, but in possession of her faculties, expectant, and alive.

"Yes--yes--there, that's right. Now you look, as you used to, look as you should," he exclaimed, his voice low, shaken with very vital excitement. He felt as when--once or twice--bringing a racing yacht in to the finish, a fair spread of blue water between her stern and her compet.i.tor's bows, he had felt her pace quicken while the tiller throbbed and danced under his hand. A buoyancy of heart, a delicious conviction of successful attainment was upon him. Sportsman and poet alike rejoiced in Laurence just then, and the spiritual side of his nature was touched as well. He seemed to have witnessed a glad resurrection, enforcing belief in the immortality of the soul, as he gazed on this lovely face in which reason, hope, even gaiety, were so visibly born anew.

"Never mind about that which you have lost," he said. "Let it be for the present. We will arrive at it in time sure enough--leave all that to me.

You want these drawers opened, their locks picked?--Well, that shall be done all in good time. But whatever treasures we find there will be but a trifle, it strikes me, compared with that which we have already found to-night. For I have found you--found you once more--and you, thank G.o.d, have found yourself."

Again his companion stretched, and pa.s.sed her hands across her eyes, while her lips parted in a soundless sigh. Silence held her yet, but that appeared to make singularly little difference in their intercourse.

For he perceived that she understood, that she sympathised, that she too was penetrated with quick, intimate joy, and an exquisite and innocent good-fellows.h.i.+p, as plainly as though a very torrent of eloquent explanation and a.s.severation had issued from her mouth. Indeed, this wordlessness had for him an extraordinary charm. Far from a power being lacking, it was to him as though a new power had been granted, and that the most subtle and convincing to the heart.

Laurence stood tall, upright, in the full pride of his young manhood, of his virile energy and strength, before this slender fairy-lady, with her softly gleaming jewels, her dainty frills and laces, her clinging rose-red, old-world, silken gown, and held out his hands to her.

"Come," he said, "the night is fair and windless and full of stars.

Shall we go out into it and read the great poem of the sky and the woodland while all men sleep, you and I--good comrades, old friends, though as most mortals count meeting, we have met each other, it would seem, but twice?--You have known sad things. Well, forget them. You have searched vainly for lost things. Well, forget them too. The finest house at best remains somewhat of a prison, and this room is pervaded by melancholy memories. Leave it. Let us give the past, give convention, give reason even, the slip for once--and go."

For a minute or more she hesitated, looking at Laurence profoundly, as though trying to read his inmost thought. Then she laid her hand in his.

It had neither weight nor substance, but touched his palm as a light summer wind might have touched his cheek, or a b.u.t.terfly's wings might have fluttered, with a just perceptible pulsation, within the hollow of his hands.

And so Laurence threw open the high French window, and together they pa.s.sed out onto the grey, semicircular flight of steps. Immediately below lay the Italian garden--its formal flower-borders, its faintly dripping fountains, its black, spire-like cypresses, white bal.u.s.trades and statues, vague, mysterious, in the starlight. The great lawns stretched away beyond, crossed by the broad gravel walk, which showed pale for some fifty yards, and then was lost in the dusky shadow of the grove of lime-trees. In the north was a wide, white light travelling--since the March nights now grew short--along the horizon, through the quiet hours, from the last death-flush of sunset to the first birth-flush of the dawn.