The Gateless Barrier

by Lucas Malet

  XVI

  The agitation pervading the house was sinister. Laurence felt as thoughwitnessing the convulsions of some human body, seen only heretofore amidthe restraints and graceful amenities of society; but now abandoned andindecently torn in its last agony. If indeed Mr. Rivers was dying, hissoul was not merely quitting its fragile, fleshly tabernacle; but wasalso, very sensibly, quitting this larger tabernacle of house andhousehold which it had informed through a long course of years, andmoulded to express its tastes, flatter its idiosyncrasies, and forestallits every wish. It was fitting, therefore, though fearful, that thisouter envelope of the owner's life should be shaken, and lose itshabitual immutability and impervious calm; while his well-drilledservants, usually obedient as machines to the direction of his hand, randistracted, scared and helpless as a flock of frightened sheep.

  The men hurried aimlessly, spoke in whispers. Members of theestablishment with whom Laurence was unacquainted invaded the corridorfrom the direction of the offices. At the foot of the staircase weregrouped the stout, French _chef_, in spotless, linen cap and jacket, hisattendant scullions, and a couple of men arrayed in long, green baizeaprons and black, calico blouses, the full sleeves of which buttonedtight around the wrist. The coachman was there too, a stable helper, andthe groom who had accompanied Laurence on his first visit to Bishop'sPudbury. All these persons were well on in middle life, some old,white-haired, and bent. All appeared deeply moved, an inarticulateconfusion in their looks, as though finding themselves suddenlyconfronted by dire calamity. Laurence had seen men look thus in thebreathless pause, between recurrent earthquake shocks, among the rockingbuildings of a far-away, Spanish-American city. As he passed them,coming from that light, clear-coloured room, they stared at him, andslunk aside as though a fresh terror was added to those which already sounmanned them. In their present state of feeling the seemly decorum ofrespectful service was relaxed; and to Laurence, overwrought by hisrecent and strange experiences, it appeared that they shrunk from himas from one unclean and outcast.

  He turned rather sternly upon Renshaw. "What is the meaning of all thiscommotion? If I was wanted, why on earth was I not called sooner?"

  The butler's large, smooth, egg-shaped face turned from purple tosomething approaching grey.

  "We had looked for you everywhere, sir, both myself and Mr. Watkins," heanswered. "But until Mr. Lowndes suggested it, in consequence of someremark passed by Mr. Rivers, it had never occurred to us that you wouldbe in the yellow drawing-room, sir."--Renshaw cleared his throat,recovering some of his accustomed dignity of bearing. "The electriclight is switched on from the corridor outside, you will observe, sir.It has always been understood that no one--neither the upper or theunder servants, sir--are ever required to go into the yellowdrawing-room after dusk."

  And with these words, and their implication of commerce on his part withsomething unlawful and malign, sounding in his ears, Laurence passedinto his uncle's bed-chamber.

  As he did so, a blast of air, hot and dry as from the mouth of afurnace, met him. The fire upon the hearth was piled up into a mountainof blazing coal and wood. The light of it filled the room with a fitful,lurid brilliance such as is produced by a great conflagration. In it,the breasts of the couchant sphinxes glowed, seeming to rise and fall asthough they breathed. The caryatides supporting the ebony canopylikewise appeared imbued with life. Their smooth arms and bowedshoulders strained under the weight resting upon them; while the wreathsof fruit and blossom, girding their naked loins, heaved from thepainfully sustained effort of nerve and muscle. The snake-locks of theMedusa's head, carved in high relief upon the circular, central panel ofthe back of the bedstead, writhed, twisted, interlaced and again slidasunder, as in frustrated desire and ceaseless suffering.

  And along the middle of the great bed, surrounded by these opulentforms, and, at first sight, far less alive than they, lay Mr. Rivers.His face was so blanched, so unsubstantial, that, but for the glitteringeyes still greedy of knowledge, it would have hardly beendistinguishable from the white pillows supporting him. His shoulders andchest were muffled in a costly, sable cape; from beneath the lower edgeof which his hands, thin as reeds, protruded, lying inert upon thethickly-wadded, blue-and-gold, damask coverlet. On the oak table--movedfrom its place by the armchair to the bedside--were the few handsomelybound books, the crystal _memento mori_ resting on its strip of crimsonembroidery, and a silver bell, the handle of it shaped as a slender,winged Mercury, elegantly poised for flight.

  Behind the table stood Lowndes, the long-armed, hard-featured valet. Heapparently remained untouched by the spirit of anarchy let loose in thehouse. Laurence, drawing near, looked at him, silently askinginstructions. The man fetched a chair and placed it close against thebedside.

  "Be so good as to lean down, sir," he said. "Mr. Rivers wishes toconverse with you; but he has had a seizure, which has slightly affectedboth his speech and hearing. He cannot raise his voice."

  Laurence did as he was bidden. He leaned towards the old man, restinghis right hand upon the haunches of the ebony sphinx, which feltsingularly warm to his touch.

  "The term of your probation and of mine alike draws to its close," Mr.Rivers said in a small, thin voice; and, for almost the first time intheir intercourse, Laurence saw him smile.

  "I hope this is only a passing attack, sir, and that you may rally," heanswered.--He looked up at Lowndes. "Has everything been done that canbe? Have you telegraphed for the doctors?"

  "I have administered the prescribed restoratives. But Mr. Rivers orderedthat no further measures should be attempted until after his interviewwith you, sir."

  The sick man raised his hand feebly, yet with an imperious gesture.

  "I do not propose to ask further advice of physicians," he said. "Theirscience is but a mockery at this juncture; at least, in the estimationof a person of my habit of mind. That by the employment of drugs and ofstimulants they might prolong a semblance of animation in this physicalhusk of me, I do not deny. But what advantage can accrue from that, whenmy mental activity is becoming paralysed, and the action of my braingrows sluggish and intermittent? When all that differentiates a humanbeing from the brute beasts has perished, let the animal part perishalso. The sooner, the better; for, in itself, it is far from precious."

  His voice had become very faint, and he waited, making a determinedeffort, as Laurence perceived, to rally his ebbing powers.

  "Tell Lowndes to go," he whispered. "I wish to be alone with you."

  Then as the man-servant noiselessly withdrew, the thin, but barelyaudible accents again stole out upon the fiercely heated air.

  "The body, its necessities, its passions, its perpetually impedinggrossness throughout life, is an insult to the mind. But the final actof this long course of insult, namely, the decay of this vile associate,is the culminating insolence, the most unpardonable insult of all. Ihave trained myself to ignore these thoughts, to disregard them as aproud man disregards some mutilation or personal disfigurement. Butthey crowd in upon me, refusing to be disregarded, to-night. Here liesthe sting of the insult! For as the strength of this vile, animal partof me lessens, far from setting the intellect free, it infects this lastwith its own increasing degradation. The lower drags the higher downalong with it. They grovel together. Contemptible doubts and fearsassail me. Discredited traditions press themselves upon my remembrance.And the burden of it all is this, that I have laboured in vain. As thebody dies, so dies the mind. All the garnered knowledge of years will belost, will drop infertile, into the void--the insatiable void whichyawns alike for high philosopher and for drivelling pothouse sot."

  His voice sank, in uttering the last few words, into a whisper ofconcentrated bitterness. His eyes closed, and for some minutes the dyingman lay motionless.

  Laurence could not bring himself to speak. The words to which he hadjust listened so nearly reproduced and rendered articulate thosesensations he had himself so lately endured. The vision of all-absorbingNothingness again arose before him, as backgrou
nd to those opulentforms, classic and pagan, upon which his eyes immediately rested. Anunholy and voluptuous life seemed to move in those forms still. A smilecurved the heavy lips of the sphinxes. The rounded, glistening arms ofthe caryatides appeared outstretched less in support than insolicitation; while the snake-locks of Medusa writhed, pushing upon eachother amorously. The flesh, triumphant in vigour and in carnalinvitation, seemed, indeed, to flout the intellect; as though the animalfunctions of mankind and the symbols of these alone had power to survivefrom age to age, were alone arbiters and architects of human fate. Andyet, yet, somewhere--could he but have reached it--Laurence knew therewas a way of escape. That he had come very near reaching it in the finalmoments of that silent struggle downstairs, when the sweet figure of hisdear fairy-lady grew increasingly clear to his sight, he could notdoubt. And once again, with a great desiring, he desired her; for hisfaith was strong that of all these things she somehow--how he could notsay as yet--held the key.

  Just then Mr. Rivers raised his eyelids slightly and turned his headupon the pillow.

  "It is very horrible," he said slowly, speaking to himself rather thanto his companion. "The quantity of matter is stable. It for ever seeksits own, and finding it re-unites. The destruction of one form is butthe necessary prelude to the development of others, and in this processof perpetual redistribution not a fraction of the sum total is lost.There is no waste save in the higher aspects of man's constitution--"

  But here Laurence roused himself to protest.

  "Matter returns to matter, sir, granted," he said. "Then why not spiritto spirit? Are you not assuming a waste which you cannot prove? And ifspirit does return to spirit, what better than that, after all, can weask?"

  "Spirit?" Mr. Rivers retorted, with a fine inflection of irony, andmomentary brightening of those half-closed eyes. "You, my dear Laurence,employ words glibly enough which I hesitate to pronounce! Matter I know.It is evident to the senses. Its actual existence--Berkeley, certainOriental and other philosophers notwithstanding--is, within certainlimits, susceptible of proof. And intellect I know. Its existence,though on other lines, is equally susceptible of proof. Its action canbe registered and ratified. But spirit?--I will thank you to informme--what is spirit?"

  The young man bowed himself together, resting his elbows on his knees.He smiled with a half-humorous air of apology.

  "That I cannot tell you, sir," he said. "I'm better at conviction thanat explanation, I'm afraid. I only know--not with my reason, but with myheart--that spirit is, and has been, and must be everlastingly."

  "And its mode of expression, its mode of self-revelation?" the otherinquired drily.

  Laurence straightened himself up, laughing a little.

  "One way, the old why--childish, perhaps, yet really rather charming. Inand by love, sir--only so, by love."

  Tremulously Mr. Rivers drew the rich, sable cape closer about him,though the heat of the room was intense.

  "I become very abject," he said at last. "I procrastinate and riskletting slip the opportunity still permitted me. For in my abjection, Iown I clutch at straws, miserably anxious for support. I am ashamed thatany other human being should witness the mental prostration to whichphysical illness has reduced me. But time presses, and compels me todelay no longer in confessing my object in calling you to me to-night.Tell me, Laurence, have you investigated those abnormal phenomena ofwhich we spoke, and have your investigations yielded any result?"

  The question took the listener somewhat by surprise, and he hesitatedbefore replying. The whole matter had become of such vital importance tohim, personal, intimate, among the dearest and most reverently-heldsecrets of his heart. So he shrank, as before an act of profanation,from submitting the history of his fairy-lady and of his strangerelation to her to the criticism of this cold-blooded, scepticalintelligence. Yet he was bound by his promise to report, if called on todo so--bound, too, in mere humanity towards one lying at the point ofdeath, and to whom that history might, conceivably, bring solace andenlightenment.

  "Yes, I have investigated the phenomena in part," he answered.

  "And the result?"

  "Briefly, I think, that which I ventured to state to you just now--thatlove is the language of the spirit, the only medium through which spiritcan declare itself and be apprehended, the one element of our poor humanconstitution which promises to continue and to preserve to us a measureof coherence and individuality even after death."

  The young man leaned forward again, and laid his hand on the warmhaunches of the ebony sphinx with a movement of slight defiance.

  "Listen," he said, "please, sir, and I'll do my best to tell you exactlywhat has happened since we spoke of this subject last."

  He steadied himself to his task, trying to keep his narrativecircumstantial and restrained, to offer nothing more than a baldstatement of fact. But the charm of it, once he had started, was alittle too much for him. His speech grew lyrical against his will. AndMr. Rivers listened, his eyes closed, his brow drawn into hard lines bythe effort of attention. Once he held up his hand.

  "Did you question this appearance?" he asked.

  "It was useless," Laurence answered, with a queer break in his voice."She never spoke--that is in words. She was dumb."

  "That is unfortunate," Mr. Rivers said coldly. "Well, pray, go on."

  And Laurence obeyed; recounting, with but slight reservation, all, evento the events of the last few hours, when he and his sweet companion hadvainly sought to reach each other in defiance of some mighty, opposingforce, and how, at the crucial moment of the struggle, Mr. Rivers'ssummons had come.

  "There, sir," said he finally--"now you have it all as far as I can giveit you. I don't attempt to explain, though I may have my own ideas onthe subject. I've tried to put it quite honestly before you, and mustleave you to thrash the meaning out of it for yourself."

  For some little space the sick man remained silent; then he raised bothhands and let them sink back upon the coverlet with the gesture of onewho bids farewell to hope.

  "Fables!" he said bitterly; "fables! I ask bread of you and you give mea stone. I offer you an unprecedented opportunity of psychologicalstudy, and you approach it in the spirit of a ballad-monger or amountebank! I require from you close observation, scientific acumen, anunrelenting pursuit of truth; and you put me off with some old wives'tale of lost letters, the ravings of an hysterical girl, ofre-incarnation, multiple identity, and I know not what farrago of sicklysentiment and outworn superstition! You trouble me with rubbish, whichit would be an impertinence to offer as material for seriousconsideration to a peasant's child, of ordinary mental capacity, in amodern board-school. Nor can I, my dear Laurence, acquit you ofinsincerity, since you trick out this unworthy stuff in the extravagantlanguage of an erotic poem, while claiming for yourself an attitudewholly platonic and superior to animal passion."

  "You are harsh, sir," Laurence was permitted to remark.

  Mr. Rivers turned his head on the pillow. His expression was distinctlymalevolent.

  "I begin to gauge the average man," he replied calmly. "I begin torecognise that he is a willing, probably wilful, self-deceiver--that heis incapable of mental advance, that he will never expunge themythological element from his religious outlook, or learn todiscriminate between emotion, the product of the senses, and accurateknowledge, the product of laborious enquiry and elevated thought."

  "Perhaps he is wiser so," Laurence said. "Perhaps--I speak subject tocorrection, sir--but perhaps he gets into touch, that way, with thingsnot altogether unimportant in the long history of the human race."

  "Here, within measurable distance of dissolution, I grow somewhat wearyof _perhaps_. Yet I deserve that you should answer me this, since I haveshown myself very weak. I had not courage to embrace the remarkableopportunity of investigating the phenomena of which we have spoken whenit was offered me in my prime. Now, in my decadence, surreptitiously andat second hand, I try to acquire the knowledge I then repudiated. Iclutch at straws, and the straws s
ink with me. It is just. For thesecond time I am untrue to my principles. I accept the rebuke."

  During the last half hour there had been a lull in the storm; but nowthe wind, shifting to a point north of west, hurled itself against thehouse-front with renewed fury, and screamed against the shudderingcasements as though determined to gain entrance. The effect was that ofpersonal violence intended, and, with difficulty, repulsed. To Laurencean inrush of the tempest would have been hardly unwelcome, for the heatof the atmosphere oppressed him to the point of distress. Nor was thisall. Once more he became aware, so it seemed to him, of the tremendous,unseen presence with which he had struggled earlier this same evening inthe yellow drawing-room below. He was aware that it stood on the farside of the great, ebony bed, waiting, and the young man's heart stoodstill. He saw Mr. Rivers gather the sable cape more closely about him,as he lay staring out into the austere yet luxurious room; and herecognised that for all his mortal weakness there was a certainmagnificence in the dying man's aspect.

  "And beyond the superb, and always unredeemed, promise of human life, ablank," Mr. Rivers said at last, his voice hollow, and, though sosmall, asserting itself strangely against the tumult of the storm."Reason, learning, the senses, carry us thus far, only to project usagainst a gateless barrier at the last!"

  But Laurence's whole nature arose in fierce revolt. Again he renewedthat awful struggle, but this time in articulate speech.

  "No, no, sir," he cried sharply, authoritatively, "the barrier is notgateless--that is, to any one of us who has ever, even dimly andpassingly, known true-love, and that of which true-love is theeverlasting exponent and blessed symbol, namely, Almighty God."

  "And I have known neither," Mr. Rivers answered. "Love I have neverfelt. God I have never needed, either as an object of worship, or asincentive to prayer. Therefore, for me, on your own showing, the barrierneeds must remain gateless."

  He bowed his head slightly, smiling upon the young man with a fine,ironical courtesy.

  "I will ask your pardon for any weariness I may have caused you,Laurence," he added. "And now I think we have nothing further to say toone another. I have no quarrel with your fulfilment of your part of thecontract. It has been only--possibly--too complete. So I will detain youno longer. You can leave me. I bid you good-night."

  The young man would have answered with some kindly words of farewell;but as the other ceased speaking, he became aware that, under theglistening, outstretched arms of the caryatides, that tremendous unseenpresence bent downwards, extending itself sensibly over the bed.Suddenly, and with a surprising effect of strength, Mr. Rivers startedinto a sitting position.

  "Lowndes," he called imperatively, and reached out for the handle of thesilver bell.

  But before Laurence could render him any help he sunk down sideways--asthough under the weight of a heavy blow--the upper part of his bodyhanging over the edge of the bed, and his thin, reed-like hands, withtheir ancient and mysterious rings, dragging upon the carpet--dead.