The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Gateless BarrierThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: The Gateless BarrierAuthor: Lucas MaletRelease date: December 11, 2010 [eBook #34619]Most recently updated: January 7, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Delphine Lettau, David Clarke, Mary Meehan andthe Online Distributed Proofreading Team athttps://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from imagesgenerously made available by The Internet Archive/AmericanLibraries.)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GATELESS BARRIER ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: The Gateless BarrierAuthor: Lucas MaletRelease date: December 11, 2010 [eBook #34619]Most recently updated: January 7, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Delphine Lettau, David Clarke, Mary Meehan andthe Online Distributed Proofreading Team athttps://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from imagesgenerously made available by The Internet Archive/AmericanLibraries.)
Title: The Gateless Barrier
Author: Lucas Malet
Author: Lucas Malet
Release date: December 11, 2010 [eBook #34619]Most recently updated: January 7, 2021
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Delphine Lettau, David Clarke, Mary Meehan andthe Online Distributed Proofreading Team athttps://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from imagesgenerously made available by The Internet Archive/AmericanLibraries.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GATELESS BARRIER ***
PrefaceIIIIIIIVVVIVIIVIIIIXXXIXIIXIIIXIVXVXVIXVIIXVIIIXIXXXXXIXXIIXXIIIXXIVXXVBy the same author
"What is the book?"
"According to the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese characters of the title, we call itMu-Mon-Kwan, which means 'The Gateless Barrier.' It is one of the books especially studied by the Zen sect, or the sect of Dhyâna. A peculiarity of some of the Dhyâna texts—this (story) being a good example—is that they are not explanatory. They only suggest. Questions are put, but the student must think out the answers for himself. He mustthinkthem out but not write them. You know that Dhyâna represents human effort to reach, through meditation, zones of thought beyond the range of verbal expression; and any thought narrowed into utterance loses all Dhyâna quality.... Well, this story is supposed to be true; but it is used only for a Dhyâna question...."
LAFCADIO HEARN.
"Exotics and Retrospectives," pages 83, 84.
"Exotics and Retrospectives," pages 83, 84.
Laurence leaned his arms upon the broad wooden hand-rail of the bulwarks. The water hissed away from the side. Immediately below it was laced by shifting patterns of white foam, and stained pale green, violet, and amber, by the light shining out through the rounds of the port-poles. Further away it showed blue black, but for a glistening on the hither side of the vast ridge and furrow. The smoke from the funnels streamed afar, and was upturned by a following wind. The great ship swung in the trough, and then lifted—as a horse lifts at a fence—while the seas slid away from under her keel. As she lifted, her masts raked the blue-black night sky, and the stars danced in the rigging.
This was the first time since his marriage, nearly two years before, that Laurence found himself alone and altogether his own master. His marriage was a notable success—every one said so, and he himself had never doubted the fact so far. Yet this solitary voyage, this temporary return to bachelorhood, possessed compensations. He reproached himself, as in duty bound, for being sensible of those compensations. He excused himself to himself. He gave reasons. Doubtless his present sense of freedom and content took its rise not in his enforced absence from Virginia, from her bright continuous talk, her innumerable and perfectly constructed dresses, her perpetual and skilful activities; but in his escape from the highly artificial and materialised society in which she lived and moved and had her being. Laurence had certainly no ostensible cause of complaint against that society. Its members had recited his verses, given a charming performance of his little comedy—in the interests of a deserving charity—quoted his opinions on literature and politics, and waxed enthusiastic over his strokes at golf and his style at rackets and polo. He had, in fact, been the spoilt child of two New York winters and two Newport summers. No Englishman, he was repeatedly assured, had ever been so popular among the "smart set" of the great republic. It had petted andfêtedhim, and finally given him one of its fairest daughters to wife. And for all this Laurence Rivers was sincerely grateful. His vanity was most agreeably flattered. His natural love both of pleasing and of pleasure was well satisfied. Yet—such is the perversity of human nature—the very completeness of his success tended to lessen the worth of it. He even questioned, at moments, whether that success did not offer the measure of surrounding immaturity of taste and judgment, rather than of the greatness of his personal talent and merit. He was haunted by the conviction that he had never yet given his best, the highest and strongest of his nature, either in thought, or art, or adventure, or even—perhaps—he feared it—in love. The demand had been for a thoroughly presentable and immediately marketable article; and the Best is usually far from marketable, often but doubtfully presentable either. It followed that Laurence had, almost of necessity, kept the best of himself to himself—kept it to himself so effectually that he had come uncommonly near forgetting its existence altogether, and letting it perish for lack of air and exercise.
Now leaning his arms upon the hand-rail of the bulwarks, while the stars danced in the rigging, and the great ship ploughed her way eastward across the mighty ridge and furrow of the Atlantic, gratified vanity ceased to obtain in him. His thoughts travelled back to periods of his career at once more obscure and more ambitious—to the few vital raptures, the few fine failures, the few illuminating aspirations which he had known. The bottom dropped out of the social side of things, so to speak. He looked below superficial appearances into the heart of it all. Life put off its cheap frippery of fancy dress, Death its cunningly devised concealments and evasions. Backed by the immensities of sea and sky, both stood before him naked and unashamed, in all their primitive and eternal vigour, their uncompromising actuality, their inviolable mystery; while, with a sudden and searching apprehension of the profound import of the question, Rivers asked himself—
"What shall it profit a man—what in good truth—if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"
He had been summoned to England by the illness of an uncle whose estates and considerable wealth he would inherit. That illness had been pronounced incurable; but the approaching death of this near relation made small demand upon his intimate feelings. A decent seriousness of thought and speech, concerning the impending event, were all that could reasonably be required of him; for the elder Mr. Rivers was both morose and eccentric, and had given his nephew a handsome allowance on the express understanding that he saw as little of him as possible. A declared misogynist, he had received the announcement of Laurence's proposed marriage with an exasperating mixture of contempt and approval.
"I am sincerely sorry for you," he had written on this occasion. "The more so that you appear to labour under the impression that the step you have in contemplation is calculated to secure your happiness. This, you must pardon my remarking, is obviously absurd. I grant that you are under a moral obligation to perpetuate our family and secure the succession to our estates in the direct line. I cannot, therefore, but be glad that you should adopt the recognised means to attain the above ends. I should, however, respect both your motives and your intelligence more highly had you done this in a rational and scientific spirit, without indulgence in sentimental illusions which every sane student of human history has long since perceived to be as pernicious to the moral, as they are enervating to the mental health. I could say much worthy of your attention upon this point; but, in your present condition of emotional inebriation, it would be a waste of energy on my part,—I might add, a throwing of pearls before swine. Still, justice, my dear Laurence, compels me to own that, even so, I must ever consider myself in a measure your debtor, since the fact of your existence, your remarkably sound physical condition, your normal and slightly unintelligent outlook on life, have combined to relieve me of the odious necessity of sacrificing my time and my personal liberty to the interests of our family, by entering into those domestic relations, which you appear to regard with as much thoughtless complacency as I with reasoned repulsion and distrust."
This being the attitude of the elder Mr. Rivers's mind, it followed that when, by his request, Mr. Wormald, the family solicitor, summoned his nephew and heir to attend his deathbed, the young man's wife was not included in that gloomy invitation. And this Laurence could not by any means honestly regret. Virginia at a disadvantage was an idea almost inconceivable. Yet so immediate and concrete a being would not, he felt, shade quite gracefully into the mortuary landscape. She would not suit it, neither would it suit her. For she was almost amazingly in harmony with her modern, mundane environment; and, save in the way of costly mourning costumes, it seemed incredible that death should have any dominion over her. It struck him, moreover, that if he gauged the position aright, Virginia, notwithstanding her many charms and much cleverness, would have to take a back seat in his eccentric uncle's establishment. And Virginia in a back seat was again an idea almost inconceivable. So he said—
"It's an awful nuisance to have to leave you like this, but this is going to be a pretty dismal bit of business anyhow. I'd much better just worry through it alone. You'll join me later when it's all over, and we are free to take possession and knock the place in shape. Stoke Rivers is really rather delightful, though it is not very large. There used to be some good pictures and books and things in it I remember. I believe my uncle is a virtuoso in his way, though he is such a cross-grained old chap. You'll enjoy the place, at all events for a few months every year, I think, Virginia. And you can have all your own people over in turn, you know; and show them how the savage English do it in their savage little island. You'll make the neighbourhood sit up, I fancy. It'll be amusing."
But as Laurence leaned his arms upon the broad hand-rail of the bulwarks, in the chill of the March night, while the water hissed away from the side, and the engines drummed and pounded, and the bows of the great ship lifted against the far, blue-black horizon, he began to wonder whether he had not been somewhat over hasty in proposing chronic invasion of Stoke Rivers by all Virginia's smart friends in turn. They were well-bred, hospitable, amusing, very much up-to-date. He owed them thanks for a most uncommonly good time. But they seemed a trifle thin, a trifle superficial and ephemeral just now, in face of the immensities of ocean and sky, and of the ancient mysteries of Life and Death.
Not until after dinner, on the evening of his arrival, was Laurence admitted to his uncle's presence. The aspect of the room was rich though sombre. Long in proportion to its width, with a low, heavily-moulded ceiling, the walls of it were panelled in black oak three parts of their height. The space between the top of the panelling and the cornice was hung with dark blue silk-damask, narrow diagonal lines of yellow crossing the background of the raised pattern. The short, full curtains drawn over the wide window were of the same handsome material. So were the counterpane and hangings of the half-tester, ebony bed. This last was elaborately carved. Two couchant sphinxes, the polished surface of whose cup-like breasts glowed in the firelight, supported the footboard, as did a couple of caryatides—naked to the loins—the canopy. Near the fireplace stood an oaken table, on which lay a few well-bound books. The further end of it was covered by a cloth of gold and crimson embroidery—evidently fashioned from some priestly vestment—upon which rested amemento mori, about four inches in height, cut out of a solid block of rock crystal, the olive crown which encircled the brow being of pale, green jade.
In a deep-seated, high-backed armchair—placed between the table and the outstanding pillars of the chimney piece—propped up by dark silken pillows, his spare frame wrapped in a long, fur-lined, violet, cloth dressing-gown, a violet, velvet skull-cap on his head, sat Mr. Rivers.
Laurence, who had not seen his uncle for the last five or six years, was conscious of receiving an almost painfully vivid impression at once of physical feebleness and intellectual energy. The elder man's face and hands appeared transparent as the crystalmemento morion the table beside him. His long, straight nose showed thin as a knife. His wide, lip-less mouth seemed to shut with a spring, like a trap. The bone of the face and hands was salient, as of one suffering starvation. Yet the blue-grey eyes, though sunk in their cavernous sockets, were brilliant, alert, full of an almost malevolent greed of observation. Laurence noted that a spotless cleanliness and order pervaded the room and the person of its occupant. The angular and attenuated face was shaven with scrupulous nicety. The finger-nails were carefully polished and pointed. An open collar and wristbands of fine lawn showed exquisitely white against the purple cloth and fur of the dressing-gown. It was evident that Mr. Rivers, whatever the peculiarities of his temper or of his opinions, treated illness and approaching dissolution with an admirable effect of stoicism and personal dignity.
As Laurence—himself conspicuously well-groomed, in evening dress, no mark of his long journey upon him, save in a complexion tanned by sun and sea-wind, and by the directness of glance and vigour of movement that remains, for a while, by every true sea-lover after he comes ashore—crossed the space between the door and fireplace, the old man raised himself a little in his chair.
"Believe me, I am very sensible of the consideration you show in so immediately gratifying my desire to see you, my dear Laurence."
"I was very happy to come, sir," the younger man answered. But he was not unconscious of a point of irony in the cold, level tones of the voice, or in the persistent scrutiny of the brilliant eyes. These appeared to regard him as they might some row of figures—mentally casting up, subtracting, dividing, intent on arriving, with all possible despatch, at a conclusive and final result. The effect was not precisely encouraging, nor were the words which followed.
"That is well," Mr. Rivers said. "But it is desirable you should understand from the outset that which you have undertaken. You may be detained here. The disease from which I suffer is, as you have been informed, incurable; though it is, I am happy to say, neither offensive or infectious. But though the final result is assured, the moment of its advent is uncertain. Neither I, nor the physicians who amiably expend their limited and somewhat empirical skill upon me, can determine the date at which this disease will prove fatal. I shall regret to cause you inconvenience, but the event is beyond my control. I may keep you waiting."
"The longer the better, sir," Laurence said, smiling, and his smile was sincere and genial, of the sort which inspires confidence.—"That is," he added, "if you do not suffer unduly."
"When the mind has realised the greatness of its own powers, and trained itself to their exercise, the will can almost invariably reduce suffering to endurable proportions," Mr. Rivers replied contemptuously, as dealing with a matter obvious, and so beneath discussion. He raised one transparent hand, pointed towards a chair, and then let his wrist drop again upon a supporting silken cushion. As he did so the two heavy rings he wore—one an amethyst set in brilliants and engraved with Arabic characters, the other a black scarab on a hoop of rough gold—slipped up the long phalange of his second finger to the knotted knuckle, and back again, with a dry rattle and chink.
"Oblige me by sitting down, Laurence," he said. "I wish you to labour under no misapprehension as to my intentions in sending for you. A certain amount of business may need attention; but all that you can discuss with my agent, Armstrong,—a very worthy, though prejudiced person. My affairs are in order. I am not called upon to waste any of the time remaining to me upon them. Let me explain myself. The disease—for, to do so, I must refer to it once again—which is in process of destroying certain organs, and consequently paralysing certain functions of my body, has in no degree affected my mind. This retains the completeness of its lucidity. Indeed, I am disposed to believe that my enforced physical inactivity, and the small number of objects presented to my sight—I never leave this room—tend to exalt and stimulate my intellectual powers. You recall the legend of the ancient philosopher who plucked out his eyes, that, undisturbed by the vision of irrelevant objects, he might attain to greater concentration of thought. Disease, in limiting my activities, has gone far to confer upon me the boon which the philosopher in question strove, rather violently, to bestow upon himself. I have ever been a student. I propose to continue so to the last. My interest is unabated. My passion for knowledge—the sole passion of my life—remains in full force."
Laurence sat listening, nursing his knee. The speaker's attitude was impressive, in a way admirable. His detachment, his calm, his acumen, commanded his hearer's respect.
"Yes, yes. I see—that's fine," Laurence said under his breath.
A slightly ironical expression passed across the elder man's attenuated face.
"I am, of course, glad that my sentiments meet with your approval. But I fear that approval may prove premature. I have not yet fully explained myself."
Laurence smiled at him good-temperedly. "All right, sir; I'm listening," he said.
"I must frankly admit I did not require your presence with a view to having you endorse my opinions. These are, I trust, too much the outcome of close and lengthened thought to stand in need of support from the agreement of another mind. I have never desired disciples, having the evidence of the history of all great religious, political, and scientific movements to prove conclusively that it is the invariable habit of the disciple to falsify his master's teaching, to attach himself to the weak rather than the strong places of such teaching, to betray intellectually with some emotional, some hysterical kiss. The disciple resembles those parasitic plants of the tropic forests, that strangle the tree upon which they climb upward toward the air and light."
He paused a moment, turned his head against the pillows, with a movement of almost distressing weakness. Then, gathering himself together by a perceptible exercise of will, he looked searchingly at Laurence again, and resumed his speech.
"Nor have I required your presence here during these last days or weeks—as the case may be—with a view to offering to you, or receiving from you, that which is usually termed affection. I am not aware of any demand, or supply, in myself of that very much overrated commodity. I deny the actuality, indeed, of its existence. Subjected to analysis, it can always be resolved into workings of self-interest, or into the gratification, more or less gross, of the animal passions. It is the generator of all the practical folly and intellectual sloth which go to retard the progress of science, and the rule of high philosophy among men. As between ourselves, my dear Laurence, any pretence of affection would be transparently ridiculous. We are barely acquainted. My departure will very clearly be to your advantage. Moreover, our tastes and characters are so divergent, that any real community of interests, any real bond of sympathy, is clearly out of the question."
During the course of this address the young man's pleasant smile had broadened almost to the point of laughter.
"I understand, I really do understand," he said. "And now that we've cleared the decks for action in this very comprehensive manner, I grow—if I may mention it—most uncommonly curious to learn what you did send for me here for."
"I sent for you because there is one matter regarding which my information is conspicuously defective, and because your conversation, your habits, your very appearance, and gestures may serve to enlighten me. I have lived among books, and objects of art of no mean value. I have enjoyed communion, both by letter and in speech, with many of the most distinguished minds of the present century. But I never associated, I have never cared to associate, with the average man of the world, of the clubs and the racecourse, the man of intrigues, of, in short, society. He appeared to me to weigh too lightly in the scale to be a worthy object of study. I ignored him, and in so doing dropped an important link out of the chain of being. For these persons breed, they perpetuate tendencies, they influence and modify the history of the race. Not to reckon with such persons, is not to reckon with a persistent and active factor in intellectual and moral evolution."
Laurence had risen to his feet. He stood with his hands behind him and his back to the fire. He was amused, but he was also slightly nettled.
"Ah!" he said, "exactly. And so you sent for me. You took for granted I was that sort. You wanted to see how we do it."
"Yes," Mr. Rivers answered, "it did appear to me that you were calculated to fulfil the conditions. In any case you were the only example of the type available. Our connection by blood, and the relation in which you stand to my property, gave me certain claims upon your time and your consideration. I wish very much to observe you. I wish to study you from the psychological and other points of view. You need not attempt to assist me. Be yourself, please. Be passive. I need no co-operation on the part of my subject. This will really give you very little trouble, while it will afford me interesting occupation during the period—whether short or protracted, I know not—which must elapse before disease has run its course and procured dissolution."
Laurence listened in silence; and while he did so, he ceased to be nettled, he ceased even to be inclined to treat these singular proposals humorously. For there appeared to him a certain pathos in the earnest desire of this recluse and student now, at the eleventh hour, to acquaint himself with just that which he had so arrogantly despised, namely the Commonplace. It was slightly wounding to personal vanity to be thus selected, from among the millions of mankind, as a fine, thorough-paced example and exponent of the Commonplace. But Laurence was kind-hearted. He also possessed a fund of practical philosophy. No—decidedly the position was not a flattering one! Yet it was rather original, and, moreover, how could one in common charity refuse any little pleasure to a dying man?
"Very well, sir," he said. "I think I quite grasp the necessities of the inquiry. I'm quite willing to be operated on, and I promise to play fair and not let the evidence be faked. But I'm afraid you'll get bored first. I am likely to be more illuminated than illuminating."
"I am obliged to you," Mr. Rivers said. "To-night I will not further detain you. Pray give any orders you please to Renshaw. He is a well-trained and responsible servant. There are horses in the stable. Good-night. I repeat that I am obliged to you."
Finding it unlikely that his uncle would ask for him before evening, and that consequently he had plenty of time at his disposal, Laurence embarked after breakfast upon a survey of the house. When a boy at school he had occasionally passed a couple of nights at Stoke Rivers. His recollections of these visits were not gay. He had been glad enough to go away again. It followed that his impressions of the house itself were vague and confused. He now found that it was constructed in the shape of a capital L reversed. The base of the letter, facing east and west, contained kitchens, offices, and servants' quarters. The main building—at right angles to it—was two stories in height, and consisted of suites of handsome rooms opening on to a wide corridor. The windows of the latter looked south, those of the rooms north. The colouring and furnishings resembled, in the main, those of Mr. Rivers' bedroom. Dark panelled walls, rich, sombre hangings of dark blue, crimson, or violet obtained throughout. In the drawing-rooms were some noble landscapes by Cuyp, Ruysdael, and other Dutch masters of note. There was also an admirable collection of Italian ivories, small figures of exquisite workmanship; and several glass cases containing fine antique and renaissance gems. The walls of the libraries were lined with books—a curious and varied collection, ranging from ancient black-letter volumes down to the latest German treatise, on natural science or metaphysics, of the current year. Laurence promised himself to make nearer acquaintance with these rather weighty joys at a more convenient season. Meanwhile, in contrast to the otherwise distinctly old-fashioned character of the house, he remarked a very complete installation of electric light, and an ingenious system of hot-air ventilation, by means of which a temperature of over seventy degrees was maintained throughout the whole interior. This produced a heavy and enervating atmosphere of which Laurence—fresh from the strong clean air of the Atlantic—became increasingly and disagreeably sensible. It made him at once restless and inert; and as he wandered, rather aimlessly from room to room, he was annoyed by finding a slight nervousness gained on him—he, whose nerves were usually of the steadiest, happily conspicuous by their absence, indeed, rather than by their presence!
"Upon my word, this beats the American abomination of steam heat," he said to himself.
His visit to the library, where the smell of old leather bindings added to the deadness of the air, nearly finished him. He went out on to the corridor, and paced the length of it, past the flying staircase of black oak leading to the upper corridor, and back again. A broad strip of deep-pile, crimson carpet was spread along the centre of the polished floor. On one hand, between the doors of the living-rooms, hung a collection of valuable copper-plate engravings, representing classic ruins in Italy and Greece. While on the other, in the spaces between the windows, were ranged a series of busts—Augustus, Tiberias, Nero, the two Antonines, Caligula, and Commodus—set on tall columnar pedestals of dark green or yellow marble. The blind, sculptured faces deepened the general sense of oppression by their rigidity, their unalterable and somewhat scornful repose.
Out of doors the March morning was tumultuous with wind and wet, offering marked contrast to the dry heat, the almost burdensome order and stillness reigning within. The air of the corridor was perhaps a degree fresher than that of the library he had just quitted. Laurence leaned his arms on a stone window-sill, and glanced in a desultory way at the day'sTimes, which he had picked up off the hall table in passing. But Chinese railway concessions, plague reports from Bombay, even the last racing fixtures, or rumours of fighting on the North-West Indian Frontier, failed to arouse his interest. In his present humour, these items of news from the outside world seemed curiously unimportant and remote. He stared at the wide, well-wooded, rain-blurred landscape. The scene at which he had assisted last night, the intimate drama moving forward relentlessly even now to its close in that well-appointed room upstairs—and the extraordinary character of the chief actor in that drama—his over-stimulated brain and atrophied affections, his greed of experiment and of acquiring information, even yet, in the very article of death—depressed Laurence's imagination as the close atmosphere depressed his body. It was all so painfully narrow, barren, hungry, joyless, somehow. And meanwhile, he, Laurence, was required to play the fool—not for the provocation of laughter, which would after all have had a semblance of cheerful good-fellowship in it. But in cold blood, as an object lesson in the manner and customs of the average man; a lesson the result of which would be tabulated and pigeon-holed by that unwearying intelligence, as might be the habits of some species of obscure, unpleasant insect. The young man had developed slight intolerance of the exclusively worldly side of things lately. It seemed by no means improbable he might develop equal intolerance of the exclusively intellectual side before long, at this rate.
"I seem qualifying as a past-master in the highly unprofitable act of quarrelling with my bread and butter," he said to himself. "If I chuck society, and proceed to chuck brains as well, for a man like myself, without genius and without a profession, what the devil is there left?"
Meditating thus, he had left his station at the window, and walked to the extreme end of the corridor farthest away from the servants' wing of the house. It was closed by a splendid tapestry curtain, whereon a crowd of round-limbed cupids drove a naked and reluctant woman, with gestures of naughty haste, towards a satyr, seated beneath a shadowy grove of trees upon a little monticule, who beckoned with one hand while with the other he stopped the notes of his reed pipe. The tapestry was of great beauty and indubitable worth; but the subject of it was slightly displeasing to Laurence, a trifle gross in suggestion, as had been the sphinxes and caryatides of the carven ebony bed.
"Oh! of course there's that sort of thing left," he said to himself, recurring to his recent train of thought. "But, no thank you, I flatter myself I can hardly find satisfaction in those low latitudes at present."
Having, however, an appreciation of all fine artistic work, he laid hold of the border of the curtain, wishing to feel its texture. To his surprise, it was of very great weight, padded and lined with leather, as are curtains covering the doors of certain Roman churches.
Laurence pulled the corner of it towards him and passed behind it. The curtain fell back into position with a muffled thud, leaving him standing in a narrow, dark, cupboard-like space, closed by a door, of which it took him some stifling seconds to find the handle. He fumbled blindly in the dark, an almost childish sense of agitation upon him. He felt as in dreams, when the place to be traversed grows more and more contracted, walls closing down and in on every hand, while the means of exit become more maddeningly impossible of discovery. To his surprise, he turned faint and broke into a sweat. It was not in the least an amusing experience.
At last the handle gave, with a click, and the door opened, disclosing a large and lofty room quite unlike any one which he had yet visited. It was delicately fresh both in atmosphere and colouring. It wore a gracious and friendly look, seeming to welcome the intruder with a demure gladsomeness. A certain gaiety pervaded it even on this unpropitious morning. The great bay-window, facing east, gave upon a stately Italian garden, beyond the tall cypresses, white statues, and fountains of which spread flat, high-lying lawns of brilliantly green turf. These were crossed by a broad walk of golden gravel leading to an avenue of enormous lime-trees, the domed heads of which were just touched with the rose-pink buds of the opening spring.
The furniture of the room was of satin-wood, highly polished and painted with garlands of roses, true-lovers' knots of blue ribbon, dainty landscapes, ladies and lovers, after the manner of Boucher. The chairs and sofas were upholstered in brocade, the predominating colours of which were white, pale yellow, and pale pink. An old-fashioned, square, semi-grand piano—the case of it in satin-wood and painted like the rest—stood out into the room. On a spindle-legged table beside it lay a quantity of music, the printing very black, the pages brown with age. Close against these was a violin case covered with faded, red velvet, on which were stamped initials and a crest.
Laurence's eyes dwelt on these things. And then—surely there should be a harp in the further left-hand corner, the strings of it covered by a gilded, stamped leather hood? Yes, it was there right enough.—And a tall escritoire, with a miniature brass balustrade running along the top of it, should stand at right angles to the chimney-piece, upon which last, doubled by the looking-glass behind, should be tall azure and goldSèvresjars, an Empire clock—the golden face of it set in a ring of precious garnets—figures in Chelsea china and branched, gold candlesticks.
Laurence looked for and found these objects, a prey at once to surprise and to a sense of happy familiarity. He was perfectly acquainted with this room—but why or how he knew not. He was filled, too, by a singular sense of expectation. It was to him as though some exquisite presence had but lately quitted this apartment and might, at any instant, return to it. He apprehended something tenderly, delectably feminine. The china ornaments, and many little fanciful silver toys, spoke of a woman's taste. So did a tambour frame, and an ivory work-box, the lid of it open, disclosing dainty property of gold thimble, scissors, cottons, and what not—and a half-finished frill of cobweb-like India muslin, a little, gold-eyed needle sticking in the mimic hem. On the small table beside the work-box lay a white vellum-bound copy of theVita Nuovaof Dante, and theIntroduction to the Devout Lifeof St. Francis de Sales.
Perplexed by his own sensations, possessed too by a sudden, gentle reverence and longing which he could not explain, Laurence touched the pretty trifles in the work-box; fitted the thimble on the tip of his little finger; turned the pages of the Dante, and read how the poet came near swooning at first sight of the maiden of eight years old whom, though she was never destined to be his mistress or wife, he loved ever after, and made immortal in immortal verse. He unlocked the worn red-velvet violin case and drew the bow—not for the first time—he could have sworn not—across the wailing strings. What did it all mean? Yes, what, indeed,—in the name of common-sense, of New York and Newport, of his golf and polo, and cotillions, of crowded opera-house and shouting racecourse? In the name, too, of those hard, brilliant, dying eyes, and that cold, hungry intellect upstairs, what did it mean? He had no recollection of having been into this room on his former visits to Stoke Rivers in his boyhood. And yet, of course, he must have been here—otherwise? But then this overmastering sense of expectation, this apprehension of an exquisite feminine presence, this—
"Upon my word, I'm playing the fool to some purpose," he said, half aloud.
He crossed the room, threw wide the French window and went onto the head of the semicircular flight of stone steps without. The wind buffeted him roughly. The rain spattered in his face. On the left, the lawns were divided from the downward slope of rough park and woodland by a sunk fence. Beyond was outspread an extensive tract of rolling, wooded country—red and white hamlets half buried among trees, here and there the spire of a village church, flat, green pastures lying along the valleys, brown patches of hop-garden and ploughland, and uplifted against the grey, storm-drifted horizon a windmill crowning some conspicuous height. Suddenly the cry of hounds, running, saluted Laurence's ear. Then the whole pack, breaking covert, crossed the open park. The field followed, horses pulling, riders leaning forward, squaring their shoulders to the wind—a flash of scarlet, chestnut, black and bay, behind the dappled joy of the racing pack.
For a moment the strange influences of this strange day made even the merry hunt appear to Laurence as the pageant of an uneasy dream. But soon the honest outdoor life claimed him again, forcing him back upon unquestioned realities. He closed the French window behind him, stood on the wet steps spending some anxious moments in the lighting of a cigar, and then strolled, hatless, round to the stables to make inquiry as to what his uncle might own in the matter of horseflesh.
In the afternoon Laurence drove over to Bishop's Pudbury, some eight miles distant from Stoke Rivers. An English soldier—by name Bellingham—whom he had known in New York, and who had married a Miss Van Renan, a cousin of Virginia—had taken a house there for the hunting season. His wife had impressed upon Laurence the duty of making an early call on these connections—he being the bearer of certain gifts to a small daughter of the family, Virginia's godchild. A revulsion in favour of the ordinary ways of ordinary modern life, in favour, indeed, of that very Commonplace of which last evening he had supposed himself so unwilling an exponent, was upon him. He wanted to get in with his accustomed habits, his accustomed outlook, again. The last twenty-four hours had been somewhat of a strain, and Laurence was as lazy as are most healthy Englishmen. He hated energising, specially of the super-induced, involuntary sort. And Mrs. Bellingham's society would be helpful. She was an agreeable woman, of this world worldly. He could have a good, square gossip with her. She was possessed, moreover, of a cult for Virginia—for her beauty, her clothes, her social ability. And in the back of his mind, somehow, Laurence was conscious that it would be an excellent thing for him to hear Virginia's praises sounded loudly. Mrs. Bellingham would count his blessings to him. That recital would be at once humbling and bracing—altogether salutary. But, unfortunately, neither the lady nor her husband were at home; so he could but deposit Virginia's immaculate parcels, tied with flaring bows of amber ribbon, and drive homeward through the rolling Sussex country—now engulfed in its deep, narrow lanes, now climbing its breezy, wooded hills, catching glimpses of the smooth, open downs ranging away to Beachy Head, and of the grey turmoil of the dirty Channel sea.
All this was not very exciting, it must be owned, but it afforded him relief from the singular sensations he had experienced during the morning. He came into the house in excellent spirits, bringing the clean chill of the March evening along with him—came in to meet the same dry, dead atmosphere, the same dark, glossy walls, and rich, sombre colours, the same at once unemotional yet almost voluptuous suggestion from objects of art. A lonely dinner followed, admirably served by two silent, middle-aged men-servants. Their faces were sallow and without expression, their manner was correct to the point of absolute nullity of character, they moved as automata. The dinner itself was a littlechef-d'œuvre, and was served on remarkably handsome silver plate. As centre-piece, three dancing female figures in silver-gilt—copied apparently from those on some Etruscan vase—supported a cut-glass bowl, in which floated fantastic orchids, some mottled, dull, brown-green, toad-like, some in long sprays of mauve, or tiger-colour, striped with glossy black. These last gave off a thick musky scent.
Towards the end of the meal Renshaw, the butler, delivered a note to him, which Laurence read not without kindly amusement. It was from the curate-in-charge—the Rector of Stoke Rivers preferring to dwell amid the social excitements of Cheltenham, and but rarely, on the plea of bad health, visiting the parish. Laurence judged the curate-in-charge to be a very young man. His letter ran thus:—
"Dear Sir,—I trust I am not presuming upon my official connection with this parish by hastening to express to you the great relief which I feel in learning that you have arrived at the Courthouse. As representative of the incumbent of this parish, I hold myself responsible for the spiritual welfare of all persons resident in it, whether of exalted or humble station. I have, therefore, suffered much anxiety regarding your uncle's, Mr. Rivers, spiritual condition, in his present very serious state of health. I know that his views are regrettably latitudinarian, and that his attitude is far from conciliatory towards the Church. These sad facts, however, far from relieving me of responsibility, only increase it. I would so gladly read and pray with him, and reason with him of those things necessary to salvation. The time permitted him may, I understand, be short. It is my duty first to warn, and then to console. I cannot reproach myself with negligence in calling at the Courthouse. I do so regularly three times a week. Unhappily, Mr. Rivers is persistent in his refusal to receive me. This is not only very shocking, as precluding the possibility of my offering either the warnings or consolations of religion to the invalid; but it injuriously affects my position with my parishioners, who, seeing me thus slighted by the principal landowner in the parish, show a painful disposition to treat my ministrations with levity, and my person with disrespect. I trust to your sense of justice to obtain my admittance to the sickroom, both in the interests of your uncle's eternal welfare and in those of the Church, of which I am a humble, but, I trust, efficient minister.—I have the honour to remain, dear Sir, yours obediently,"Walter Samuel Beal."
"Dear Sir,—I trust I am not presuming upon my official connection with this parish by hastening to express to you the great relief which I feel in learning that you have arrived at the Courthouse. As representative of the incumbent of this parish, I hold myself responsible for the spiritual welfare of all persons resident in it, whether of exalted or humble station. I have, therefore, suffered much anxiety regarding your uncle's, Mr. Rivers, spiritual condition, in his present very serious state of health. I know that his views are regrettably latitudinarian, and that his attitude is far from conciliatory towards the Church. These sad facts, however, far from relieving me of responsibility, only increase it. I would so gladly read and pray with him, and reason with him of those things necessary to salvation. The time permitted him may, I understand, be short. It is my duty first to warn, and then to console. I cannot reproach myself with negligence in calling at the Courthouse. I do so regularly three times a week. Unhappily, Mr. Rivers is persistent in his refusal to receive me. This is not only very shocking, as precluding the possibility of my offering either the warnings or consolations of religion to the invalid; but it injuriously affects my position with my parishioners, who, seeing me thus slighted by the principal landowner in the parish, show a painful disposition to treat my ministrations with levity, and my person with disrespect. I trust to your sense of justice to obtain my admittance to the sickroom, both in the interests of your uncle's eternal welfare and in those of the Church, of which I am a humble, but, I trust, efficient minister.—I have the honour to remain, dear Sir, yours obediently,
"Walter Samuel Beal."
Laurence finished his glass of claret and his cigarette with a smile. He sat a minute or two, gazing at the dancing, golden figures and at the rather malign loveliness of the orchids.
"Poor little Padre Sahib!" he said to himself. "I'll go and see him to-morrow and do my best to quiet his worthy conscience. Funny mixture of soul and of self in that letter! But he's very much too mild a Daniel to fling into the lion's den upstairs. He little imagines what he's asking. Well, he won't get it anyhow, so that doesn't much matter. Pah!—how hot this room is!"
Laurence rose from the table, folded up the letter, and put it in his pocket.
"Now for processes of vivisection. It's the most original fashion of paying succession duty I ever heard of. My word, if I ever do come into possession, won't I just open the windows in this house!"
The conversation that evening did not move very smoothly. Laurence brought all the good temper and practical philosophy at his command into play. But the elder man was captious. His blank scepticism, his keen, unsparing statements jarred on his companion. An inclination towards revolt arose in Laurence.
"I am half afraid, sir," he permitted himself to say at last, while his eyes rested on the gleaming breasts of the ebony sphinxes,—"that we have made a radical mistake and put the cart before the horse. To understand the average man, and his relation to things in general, must not you begin with the study of the average woman? Is notcherchez la femme, after all, the keynote of our inquiry?"
Mr. Rivers raised his thin hand almost as in warning, and the heavy finger-rings chinked as he let it fall again on the arm of his chair.
"The subject of sex 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 class to which you belong, modern, scientific ideas had taken sufficient root to oust such effete superstitions 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 noble, or virtuous, or godly 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 gods 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 passed 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 muffled 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 amusement."
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 passage, past the fine, copper-plate engravings, and the impassive, 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 sexes."
He sighed involuntarily.
"Yes, but, thank God, 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 attitude—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, passed round it, letting it drop into place behind him. He stood a moment in a contracted, blind space. 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.
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 ass 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 Spanishdanseuse, who, during the previous winter, had excited the wild enthusiasm and considerably lightened the pockets of thejeunesse doréeof 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; passing 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 attitude had been one of slightly irritated amusement at the concealment practised on him by his host. But as the rose-clad lady's search continued, the sense of amusement 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 circumstances to assist 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 class; yet it would be idle to declare Virginia his first and only flame. He had married her, which constituted 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 space 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 attitude 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, passed at the back of it, and the young man found himself alone.
Though usually an excellent sleeper, Laurence passed 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-space 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 sexes 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 pronounced 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.
"Yes, the vision of a dream," he said to himself. "Only another of those thousand exquisite things which belong to the language of symbol, and possess, alas! no tally in reality—reality, that is, as most of us hide-bound victims of conventionality are destined to know it."—He laughed a little grimly.—"Reality, as we know it, being precisely the biggest illusion of all!"
He watched the fading stars, the deepening rose and gold of day, above the woods and lawns, the black cypresses and white statues upon the northern boundary of the Italian garden. Starlings chattered joyously from the gutters under the eaves; and then swept down, with a rush of passing wings, on to the grass. A keeper, gun on shoulder, with a busy, little, black cocking-spaniel, and a long-limbed, red, Irish setter behind him, crossed the rough downward slope of the park; and the wide, blue-grey landscape began to grow definite, to assert itself right away up to the horizon. The earth seemed to awake with a quiet smile from the kindly sleep of night.
Laurence drank in his fill of the moist, sharp air.
"Poor dear Virginia!" he said suddenly. And it was probably the very first time in her whole life that this popular, admirably finished, and much admired young lady had ever excited pity.
After breakfast Laurence set forth to visit his clerical correspondent, and strive to ease the latter's conscience while refusing his request. The rectory, distant about three-quarters of a mile, stood on the rising ground across the valley, backed by a fringe of high-lying woods. The church, a small but very perfect example of Norman architecture, closely adjoined the house. There were good details of carving about the narrow, round-headed windows of the chancel, and the low, heavy arch of the porch—the floor of which was sunk several steps below the level of the churchyard. The tower, square and solid, but little higher than the roof of the nave, was surmounted by a squat, shingled spire. It struck Laurence as a calm, self-contained, little building, on which the centuries had set but slight mark of decay. The churchyard, too—shadowed by a few ancient yew-trees—was singularly peaceful, full for the most part of unnamed, grass-grown graves. Death, seen thus, had nothing awful, nothing repulsive, about it—quiet "rest after toil," it amounted to no more than that.
But then the charm of spring was in the air, and the young man was pleasantly beguiled by it. He sat down on the broad coping of the churchyard wall, lighted a cigarette, and idly watched the rooks streaming out from the rectory elms, and dropping on the fragrant, fresh-turned earth of a plough-field in the valley. He listened idly to the nimble wind that blew up from the ten-mile-distant sea, sang in the woodland above, and whispered through the dark, plume-like branches of the yews here in this sheltered piece of ground. The sky was a thin, bright blue, and across it wandered little clouds, like flocks of white sheep, herded by that same nimble wind up from the Channel.
It seemed to Laurence that here, indeed, would be a pleasant enough place to lie when life was over. But then that time had by no means arrived for him yet. He felt again—as he had felt that night on board ship—that he had never done complete justice to his own capacity. Whether the fault lay in himself or in circumstance, he could not say; but he knew that neither body, nor mind, nor heart, had worked up to their full strength yet. Ambition of some notable and absorbing undertaking stirred in him. He looked out over the goodly land. Would this by no means contemptible inheritance, on the threshold of the possession of which he now stood, afford him his great opportunity? And then his thought harked back to the lovely and pathetic vision which had blessed his sleep—for, of course, he was asleep—last night. A man could find fulness of satisfaction in a great passion for such a woman—if so be she actually existed, instead of being only the ideal vision of an ideal dream. Yes, a man could go very far down that road if—if—And there Laurence, being a decent fellow, laid strong hands on his imagination. To indulge it was just simply not right, since whatever woman's existence might belong to the land of fancy, his wife, Virginia's, belonged, to the land of very positive fact. He got up, shook himself, and walked away to the rectory house, through the sunshine and shadow of the peaceful, country graveyard.