The Gateless Barrier Part 2

"The subject of s.e.x in connection with human beings is distasteful to me," he said.

Laurence glanced at the speaker and then back at the carven sphinx again. His eyes were a little merry--he could not help it.

"Oh! no doubt," he said; "there are times when it is distasteful to many of us, and most infernally inconvenient into the bargain. Only you see, unluckily, it is the pivot on which the whole history of the race turns."

"A most objectionable pivot! An insult to the intellect, a degradation."

"That may be so," Laurence answered. "Still the thing is there--always has been, always will be, modern science notwithstanding, unless humanity agrees to voluntary and universal suicide, a consummation which does not seem immediately probable in any case.--'Male and female created He them.' An error perhaps of judgment, but one the Creator has never shown much sign of wishing to correct as yet. The most venerable religious systems recognise this. I need not remind you that it lies at the heart of their mysteries. Christianity too--Catholic Christianity--the only form, that is, of Christianity worth considering seriously--acknowledges the profound significance of it in the worship of the divine motherhood and the perpetually renewed miracle of the Incarnation."

"You interest me," Mr. Rivers said slowly.

"I am glad of that," Laurence answered. He had warmed up unexpectedly to his subject. "I am glad of that, for I can't help seeing--"

Mr. Rivers interrupted him.

"Pardon me," he said. "I would not have you labour even temporarily under a misapprehension. It is less your exposition that interests me than yourself. I note indications of thought and feeling for which I was not wholly prepared. Taking you as a fair example of the type, I perceive that the mind of the average member of society is of an even lower order than I had supposed. I had, in my ignorance, imagined that, even in the cla.s.s to which you belong, modern, scientific ideas had taken sufficient root to oust such effete superst.i.tions as those to which you have alluded. A more or less stupid Agnosticism, an utter indifference, would not have surprised me. From such a condition development is still possible. But here I recognise traces of a return to fetich worship, to savage standards--this indeed is hopeless, a degeneration from which revival is impossible. I admit, of course, the necessity of the existence of woman, since the perpetuation of the race appears at present desirable. It would be childish to argue the matter.

She must be kept and cared for by qualified persons, as are the other higher, domestic animals, but--"

"But, but," Laurence said, laughing, "I must protest. Perhaps his type of mind is too low for yours to be able to stoop to it; but, upon my word, sir, even with so thorough-paced a specimen as myself before you, you have not grasped the characteristics of the average man one bit. I don't say we are conspicuously n.o.ble, or virtuous, or G.o.dly creatures, and I don't say that the side of our lives which has to do with our ambitions, with public affairs, our profession, or our art--the side, in fact, in which woman counts least--may not give scope to that which is best in us. I have no end of belief in the life a man lives among men. I grant a good deal on your side of the question, you see. Only I know it will be a precious bad day when we keep our women merely for breeding purposes. We shall have degeneration in uncommonly full swing then.

There is an immense lot in the relation between man and woman beside the physical one; and--and--I'm not ashamed to thank whatever G.o.ds there be for that."

"Your wife--" began Mr. Rivers. Laurence looked hard at him, while the good temper, the geniality, died out of his face.

"My wife does not enter into our contract, sir," he said shortly.

The coldly brilliant eyes fastened on him with a certain voracity of observation. Then the elder man bowed slightly, courteously, contemptuously.

"You interest me extremely," he said. "I am obliged to you. But I must not presume upon your complaisance. You have supplied me with sufficient subjects of meditation for to-night. I will not detain you further. I thank you, my dear Laurence. Good-night."

"I was a fool to let myself go, and a still bigger one to lose my temper," the young man said to himself as he closed the door and pa.s.sed out on to the corridor.

Save for a ticking of clocks, silence prevailed throughout the house.

The electric light, clear and steady, revealed every object in its completeness. The temperature was some degrees higher than during the day, and airless in proportion to its increased warmth. Half-way down the shining oak staircase, Laurence was saluted by the musky odour of the orchids. Clinging, enfolding, it seemed to meet him more as a presence than a scent. The dining-room door stood wide open. The under-butler came forth and went noiselessly towards the offices. There followed a m.u.f.fled sound of baize doors swinging to. Then simultaneously, sharply, from all quarters, clocks struck the half hour.

"Only half-past ten!" Laurence exclaimed. "How villainously early! I wish to goodness I had not lost my temper though. It was slightly imbecile. If the poor, old gentleman enjoys being offensive, why shouldn't he be so? He has none too many opportunities of amus.e.m.e.nt."

He paused, looking down the bright, vacant, silent corridor, past the open doors of all the bright, vacant, silent rooms.

"If it comes to that, nor have I," he added, "when I come to think of it. There's a notable paucity of excitement in this existence, and this beastly hot air makes one too muzzy to read." He yawned.--"What a mercy Virginia didn't come! She would have been most extensively and articulately bored."

He sauntered aimlessly along the pa.s.sage, past the fine, copper-plate engravings, and the impa.s.sive, Roman emperors, and drew up before the great, tapestry curtain. Again he looked curiously at the figures worked so skilfully upon it. The light took the silken surface, bringing the warm flesh-tints into high relief, against the dim, grey-green background of shadowy hill and grove.

"No wonder my uncle blasphemes if that represents his only idea of the relation of the s.e.xes."

He sighed involuntarily.

"Yes, but, thank G.o.d, there is more in it all than merely that," he said. Then he repeated:--"It is a mercy Virginia did not come. It would not have suited her from any point of view. She'd have been hideously bored, and she would have been offended and a good deal shocked. It is queer the way the Puritanic element survives over there, notwithstanding their modernity."

Laurence smiled to himself, becoming aware of the slight inconsistency of his own att.i.tude--his late heated championship of the claims of the Eternal Feminine, his self-congratulation at the fact that his own particular investment in the matter of womanhood was, at present, safely away on the other side of the Atlantic.

Then, taken by a sudden impulse--born in part of a desire of escape from the suffocating atmosphere around him--he pulled the edge of the heavy curtain outwards, pa.s.sed round it, letting it drop into place behind him. He stood a moment in a contracted, blind s.p.a.ce. The place seemed possessed of singular influences. Again he grew faint as he groped for the door handle; while a conviction grew upon him that he had stood just here, and so groped an innumerable number of times already, and that he should so stand and grope--either in fact or in imagination, just as long, indeed, as consciousness remained to him--an innumerable number of times again.

At last the handle was found and yielded. Breathing rather quickly, Laurence entered the lofty, fair-coloured room. It too was bright with electric light, but the air of it was sensibly purer than that of the corridor; while, standing before the painted satin-wood escritoire, at the further side of the fireplace, was a slender woman. Her back was towards him. She wore a high-waisted, clinging, rose-pink, silken gown.

Her dark hair was gathered up in soft, yet elaborate, bows and curls high on her small head, after the fashion prevalent in the early years of the century. A cape of transparent muslin and lace veiled her bare shoulders.

VI

The young man's astonishment was immense. Recovering from the first shock of it, he was taken with reprehensible irreverence towards the sick man upstairs.

"The old sinner, how he has lied!" he said to himself. "A pretty a.s.s he has made of me with this card up his iniquitous, old sleeve all the while!"

He debated momentarily whether good manners demanded his retirement before his presence was perceived; or whether he was free to go forward and make acquaintance with this unacknowledged member of his uncle's household. Strong curiosity, coupled with a spirit of mischief, provoked him to adopt the latter course. He owed it to himself, surely, not to neglect so handsome an opportunity of turning the tables upon old Mr.

Rivers. While, astonishment and levity, notwithstanding, Laurence was aware of a strong attraction drawing him towards the slender, rose-clad figure. He began to question, indeed, whether it, like the room and its furnishings, was not in a degree familiar to him? Whether it was not the embodiment of just all that of which he had been so singularly expectant when visiting the room this same morning?

Meanwhile the young lady's hands moved over the rounded cover of the escritoire as though endeavouring to open it. The lace frills, edging her muslin cape, flew upwards, showing her bare arms. These were thin, but beautifully shaped; while the movement of her hands was singularly graceful and rapid. She touched, yet seemed unable firmly to grasp the gilded handles of the escritoire again and again; clasped her hands, as it appeared to Laurence--for her back was still towards him--with a baffled, despairing gesture, and then moved away across the room. She appeared to flit rather than walk, so light and silent were her steps, bird-like in their swift and dainty grace. Watching her, Laurence was reminded of a certain Spanish _danseuse_, who, during the previous winter, had excited the wild enthusiasm and considerably lightened the pockets of the _jeunesse doree_ of New York. But the charm of the dancer had, for him at least, been spoilt by the somewhat unbridled pride of success perceptible in her bearing. Whereas the flitting figure now before him, notwithstanding the beguiling loveliness of its motions, struck him as penetrated with the sorrow of failure, rather than the arrogance of success.

She wandered to and fro, regardless or unconscious of his presence, searching--searching--as it seemed; pa.s.sing her hands over the work-table, sweeping them along the surface of the chimney-piece between the ornaments and china, fingering the music upon the piano. He caught sight of a delicate profile, a round and youthful cheek. But her movements were so anxious and rapid that he could get no definite view of her face. Indeed, her action was so quick that it was not without effort Laurence followed it.

At first the young man's att.i.tude had been one of slightly irritated amus.e.m.e.nt at the concealment practised on him by his host. But as the rose-clad lady's search continued, the sense of amus.e.m.e.nt was merged in one of sympathy. She was so graceful a creature. She appeared so sadly baffled and perplexed. A subtle anxiety laid hold of him--an apprehension that something momentous and of far-reaching consequence to himself was in act of accomplishment--that he was himself deeply involved, and pledged by a long train of antecedent circ.u.mstances to a.s.sist those delicately framed and apparently so helpless hands in their unceasing search.

"Pardon me, but what have you lost?" he asked her at last, speaking gently as to a timid and unhappy child. "Tell me, and let me try to help you find it."

At the sound of his voice the flitting figure paused, stood a moment listening, as though striving to collect the purport of his address.

Then it turned to him. For the first time Laurence saw his companion's face clearly, and he shrank back, penetrated at once by a great admiration and a vague dread of her. For it was a very lovely face, but shy and wild as no other human face he had ever beheld. The sweet mouth drooped at the corners, as with some haunting, but half-comprehended distress. The eyes were serious; blue-purple--as are deep, high-lying, mountain tarns, set in a soft gloom of pine-trees and of heather. A gentle distraction pervaded the young lady's aspect. And this was the more arresting, that each bow and curl of her pretty hair was in place; every detail of her dress fresh and finished, from the string of pearls about her white throat, to the toes of her rose-pink, satin slippers, sparkling with an embroidery of brilliants, which showed beneath the small flounce edging her rose-pink skirt.

Laurence had lived at least as virtuously as most men of his cla.s.s; yet it would be idle to declare Virginia his first and only flame. He had married her, which const.i.tuted the difference between her and all those other flames--and at times it occurred to him what a prodigiously great difference that was! Since his marriage he had been guiltless of looking to the right hand or to the left even in thought. But, before that event, it must be owned, he had had his due share of affairs of the heart. He was thoroughly conversant with the premonitory symptoms of that fascinating disorder, commonly known as "falling in love." And, to his dismay, as he looked on the sad and lovely person before him, he was conscious that some of those premonitory symptoms were not entirely absent. An immense pity and tenderness took him; a deepening conviction, too, of recollection, as one who after a long lapse of years hears again some almost forgotten melody, or sees again a once well-known and well-beloved landscape. The sad face was new to him, not in itself, but in its sadness only. The corners of the sweet mouth should not droop, but tip upward in soft, discreet laughter. The serious eyes should dance, as the surface of these same mountain tarns in sunlight under a rippling breeze. The face, remembered thus, had indeed never been wholly forgotten--he knew that. It formed part of inherent prenatal impressions, of which, all his life, he had been potentially if not actively aware.

All this flashed through him in the s.p.a.ce of a few seconds; while he repeated, somewhat staggered by the fulness of emotion which the tones of his own voice implied--

"Only tell me what you have lost--tell me; and let me help you find it."--Then he added more lightly, smiling at her with his sincere and kindly smile:--"Really, my services are worth enlisting. I've always been a rather famous hand at finding things, you know."

She gazed at the young man for a minute or more, a tremulous wonder in her expression, while she fingered the string of pearls about her rounded throat. Her lips moved, but no sound came from them. Her att.i.tude changed. She stood with her head raised, apparently listening.

Then reluctantly, as in obedience to some unwelcome summons, she moved swiftly across the room to the outstanding, painted satin-wood escritoire, pa.s.sed at the back of it, and the young man found himself alone.

VII

Though usually an excellent sleeper, Laurence pa.s.sed a restless night.

Like most sane persons, he was disposed to resent that which he could not account for; and, with the best will in the world to evolve ingenious hypotheses explanatory of her disappearance, the manner of his sweet companion's going remained a mystery. He had examined the escritoire, and found it locked. He had also examined the wall-s.p.a.ce in its vicinity. This was hung, from cornice to wainscot, with pale yellow-and-white brocade, as was all the room. But neither behind the brocade, nor in the wainscot, was any door or sliding panel discoverable. Indeed, when he came to think of it, remembering the structure of the house as he had seen it on his way along the south front to the stables, that side of the room consisted of a blank wall, doorless and windowless. This fact, when he realised it, caused Laurence something of a shock. It was unpleasant to him. And so he took refuge in scepticism. He laughed at himself, declaring that the unwholesome atmosphere of the house, and the lonely, uneventful life he was compelled to lead, were breeding morbid fancies in him. All that talk about woman and the relation of the s.e.xes had stamped itself upon his mind in an exaggerated way, thanks to his surroundings. The musky scent of the orchids had a word to say in the matter too, no doubt. So had his revulsion from the gross suggestions of the scene represented on the tapestry curtain. Heavy sleep, amounting almost to torpor, induced by the heavy atmosphere, had fallen upon him directly after he had entered that strangely engaging and familiar room. And, in that sleep, imagination had created a woman who should embody all that which the room and its furnishings suggested--an ideal woman, far away alike from the brilliant young leader of smart society whom he had married--but on this clause Laurence refused to allow his thoughts to dwell--and from the mere human brood-mare, whom his uncle p.r.o.nounced to be the only admissible exponent of the Eternal Feminine. He had dreamed a poem--one of those poems he kept at the bottom of his despatch-box, and had never felt any inclination to read aloud to Virginia--had dreamed instead of writing it, that was all.

Laurence got out of bed and threw open the window. Where the eastern angle of the house stood out dark against the sky, he could see the pallor of the dawn warming into rose, while overhead the stars died out one by one as the light broadened.