The Gateless Barrier
Page 15
XV
For some minutes Laurence remained in the same position before thelibrary fireplace, while the rush and wail of the storm without offeredmarked contrast to the silence and close warmth reigning within. He knewall the facts of the case now, as far as they were attainable bytradition. They proved to be very simple; but, as he reflected, thesimplicity of the symbol by no means invalidates the profound characterof the mystery of which it may be the outward and visible sign. Nay, thevery simplicity, the tender, human pathos, of this story of love andsorrow, only engaged his heart and provoked his enterprise the more.Counsels of self-saving moderation he waved aside with a smile. Ofdanger, material, moral, or spiritual, he was defiant. With the Veil ofIsis there, visibly confronting him and inviting--in gentlest, mostconfiding fashion--his hand to lift it, would it not be unpardonablypoor-spirited, callous, and unfaithful to draw back?
But Virginia? Laurence moved impatiently from his place. He wished togoodness Armstrong had not referred to Virginia, or rather to thatcircumscription of his personal liberty which Virginia presented--to hismarriage, in short! He was very fond of her. Of course, he was very fondof her--not for a moment did he doubt that. But must it be a matter ofprimary duty and honour that he should relinquish the part of hero inthis piece--this noble and enthralling piece, which made vibrant hiswhole being, and stirred the finest of him into activity--simply becauseVirginia's name did not happen to be in the bill? Marriage cameperilously near a disaster if it clipped your wings as much as all that!And he would, indeed, be a bigoted moralist who should maintain that nocircumstances can be so extraordinary, no opportunities of knowledge orspiritual advancement so rare, that they justify a neglect ofconventional rules of conduct, or permit the relegation of ordinaryobligations--for a time at least--to the second place!
Thus did the young man argue--ambition, chivalry, and those hereditarytendencies towards a rather violent reduction of theory to practiceagainst which he had so lately been warned, all conspiring to oneresult. And so, at last, his head erect, and--though he knew itnot--that air of assured conquest about him which had sat so charminglyupon his namesake--perhaps his rival--the Laurence Rivers of the Coswayminiature, he swung down the still, crimson-carpeted corridor, pulledthe stiff tapestry curtain forward, passed behind it, and entered theroom beyond. He laughed a little to himself, he was all of a white heat,he would be as the Gods, working miracles, righting wrong, conqueringdeath.
Sharp disappointment awaited him. The yellow drawing-room wasbrilliantly lighted. The atmosphere of it was fresh, almost to the pointof chill. The miniatures lay side by side upon the escritoire, where hehad placed them some four or five hours earlier; but his sweetfairy-lady was not there to receive him. The room was vacant of allhuman, all visible, presence save his own.
The hours which followed were among the most poignant that Laurence hadever experienced. He had made so certain that he needed but to open thatdoor to regain the unreal world, yet world--as he believed--ofprofoundest reality, which enchanted, while it baffled and perplexedhim. He found himself compelled to admit, moreover, not without a senseof humiliation, that his attitude was not exclusively pathological orscientific. A good deal of the natural man, and the natural man'saffections and vanities, entered into it. He craved once again to seethat slender, flitting figure, to feel the vibration of that otherwiseimpalpable hand, to read the trust and exquisite sympathy of thoselovely eyes; he craved again to be aware of the fervour of his owneloquence, the rush and spring of his own thought. Moreover, he feltjealous, absurdly but increasingly jealous, of that other LaurenceRivers, of whom, for all his vitality and immediate consciousness ofliving energy and active will, he seemed to be but a second edition. Theman had forestalled him in face and semblance, forestalled him too inthe heart of the woman it would be--it was, he feared--only too easy forhim to love.
And so he wandered aimlessly, restlessly about the bright, empty room,almost as his sweet rose-clad lady had wandered on the night he firstmet her, searching, searching for some lost good; while, as timelengthened and his nerves grew strained by impatient waiting and want ofsleep, fears that by his own action he had procured this disappointmentbegan to assail him. He was always over-confident, blundering from toogreat self-belief. For might it not be that in opening her littletreasure-chest, in touching those objects so dear to her dead fingersand dead eyes, in reading her letters--nay, in striving to approach herand establish relations with her at all--he had outraged her delicacy,had, in a sense, assaulted her soul, had been guilty of spiritualinsult, as in grosser, material existence a man might assault or insulta woman's person? Had he, unwittingly, transgressed some law obtainingin the world of spirits, in the state of being which lies outside andbeyond the Gates of Death, and of which human beings, bound by theconditions of their earthly environment, have as yet nocognisance?--Why should not the mind and heart be sublimated to asexquisite a fineness of texture, in her case, as the body had been? Thisidea of possible outrage, of unwitting grossness towards her, washorrible to Laurence. It stabbed him with shame, and provoked in him apassionate desire for absolution. If she would only come--only come,that he might implore her pardon, gain forgiveness, or--stillbetter--receive comfortable assurance that he had not sinned!
His restless wanderings brought him at length to the bay-window, and helooked out into the night. The storm had not abated. Dimly he couldperceive, in the light streaming outward from the window, therain-washed steps, the pale balustrades and statues of the garden; thenear cypresses, too, bowed and straining in the gale which shriekedacross the open lawns and bellowed hoarsely in the woodland like somefierce beast let loose. And Laurence, viewing this tumult and listeningto it, suffered further humiliation. He became but a small thing in hisown estimation, weak, futile, incapable. For to what, after all, did hisforce of will and power of compelling events amount? He thought ofArmstrong, the level-headed and circumspect Scotch agent; of his uncle,dignified, and even in mortal illness faithful to the clear purposes ofhis long life. He thought of Virginia, strong in virtue of her verylimitations, glittering as a well-cut jewel, concrete, complete. Allthese persons occupied a definite place, served, in their degree, adefinite end. Whereas, for himself, was he not the veriest sport ofnature and of circumstance, endowed with just sufficient wit, sufficienttalent, to court failure in any and every direction? His initiative,that had lately showed god-like, now shrivelled to microscopicproportions; while a further unwelcome question presented itself. Forhad the gracious spectre--he no longer quarrelled with thatdefinition--lived, as he had fondly supposed, through his life, regainedreason and glad, human sympathy through the influence of his will, orhad the case, in very truth, been precisely the reverse? Had not shebeen the active, he the merely passive principle? Had he not reached ahigher development, and gloried--for a little space--in consciouspossession of genius, had he not lived, in short, through her--and thisnot by exercise of direct intention on her part, but merely in obedienceto the might of her love for another man--a man long dead, but whosename he chanced to bear, and whose appearance he chanced to resemble?
And thereupon a hideous persuasion of his own nullity and emptiness tookhold of Laurence. Individuality fled away, disintegrated, dissolved, andwas not. The component parts of his physical being returned to theiroriginal elements--flesh to earth, gases to air, heat to fire, blood towater. While all the qualities of his mind, his tastes and affections,suffered like dispersal, being claimed and absorbed by the members ofthose many generations, whose earthly existence had contributed to theeventual production of his own. And the terror of this was augmented, inthat, although every atom of his being was thus scattered andappropriated, every smallest fraction of that which had gone to composehis personality was dispersed, yet annihilation of thought did notfollow. He was reduced to absolute nothingness; but knowledge ofdisintegration, knowledge of loss, knowledge--rebellious anddespairing--of that same nothingness remained.
Appalled, with the instinct of flight upon him as from some men
acing andimmeasurable danger, Laurence turned and groped his way back--as a blindman gropes--into the centre of the brightly lighted room. Thepersuasion of his own nothingness seemed to extend itself to hissurroundings. All partook of the nature of illusion, from which sense ofsight and touch alike seemed powerless to redeem them. And this begot inthe young man an immense desolation and a corresponding need of comfortand of quick human sympathy. Involuntarily, in his extremity, histhought fixed itself, stayed itself, upon Agnes Rivers. Ah! if she wouldbut show herself--she, his well-beloved fairy-lady--he was convincedpeace and clear-seeing would follow in her train, that this terror ofnothingness would depart, and that sanely, calmly, he should enter intopossession of himself once more!
And then, presently, as he moved to and fro in restless search for her,it appeared to him that a rose-red gleam of silk, a just perceptiblewhiteness of muslin and lace, the faintest vision of a vision of hersweet and lovely face, moved beside him as he moved. It was as though anindefinable tenderness yearned towards him from out some impassabledistance, striving to declare itself, to make itself seen and felt, yetwithout force to master some opposing influence and accomplish itsobject. And this awoke in Laurence not only an answering tenderness, butan answering struggle. He stood quite still, yet with every nerve, everyfaculty strained to attain and overcome. He felt braced by a suddenexhilaration of battle. Silently, fiercely, he fought with some awful,unseen enemy,--with dimly apprehended powers of time and place, ofdeath, of things spiritual and things material, which intervened betweenhim and the love which sought to reach him. Never had he desiredanything as he desired this love. His individuality was actual enoughnow; and his whole body ached with the effort to penetrate thatresistant medium, to be face to face with that love, and look on it, andso doing to read the riddle both of his future and his past.
But when the warfare was at its height, and the unseen enemy seemed toyield a little, while the slender form of his rose-clad lady grew moredistinct to Laurence's eyes, unaccustomed noise and confusion arosewithin the dead-quiet house. Doors opened and slammed, as with thehurry of panic. Men's footsteps echoed imperatively down the corridorsand upon the stairs.--Another moment and he would overcome allresistance, and his dear companion would stand before him, smiling,gracious, full of consolation and of help; but just then voices wereraised in quick discussion without. Suddenly the door was thrown open.Upon the threshold was Renshaw the butler, bereft of his usualcorrectness of demeanour, his eyes starting, his skin mottled withpurple stains. Behind him stood Watkins holding back the leather-linedcurtain to the utmost of its length, thereby disclosing a triangularvista of dark-panelled passage and the proud heads and arrogant,impassive faces of the rulers of Imperial Rome.
Evidently both men dreaded to venture one step further into the room.
"Will you please to come at once, sir," Renshaw called hoarsely. "Excuseme, sir, you are wanted. Mr. Rivers is very ill. He has asked for you.Mr. Lowndes fears he is dying."