The Gateless Barrier Part 16

"It lies with you to prevent that catastrophe," he answered. "Only be brave. Do as I ask you, and we can put all fear behind us for ever and a day. All the world may call me; I shall not go. It may howl at me, even, using foul names; but what does that matter? I have chosen. I abide by my choice."

As he spoke she moved a little further from him, while the thunder growled and muttered in the north, and the lightning showed fitfully, as with the glare of a burning town, low down in the night sky.

"What has taken you, Laurence?" she asked. "You are strange in manner and in voice. I hardly know you thus. Yet indeed I would do anything you ask, however difficult, if that which you would have me do is not in itself sinful or wrong."

"And this is right," he declared; "incontestably, everlastingly right.

Indeed, it is little more than bare justice--the rest.i.tution of that which was once ours, the paying of a long-owed debt. In past years happiness was s.n.a.t.c.hed from us by jealous fate. Fate has repented--though late--and gives us back our happiness. We should be fools not to take it."

He stood by her holding out his hand, his eyes alight as with a dull flame, the determination of conquest very forceful in him.

"See," he said hoa.r.s.ely, "I have loved you back into life again, Agnes; and so your life belongs to me as no woman's life has ever belonged to a man before. That which I ask, you must do; for, believe me, I comprehend this matter and all the issues of it best."

He led her towards the door and she came meekly, yet with a certain wonder and reserve in her bearing, as one who ponders and questions silently even while they obey. He threw the door wide open revealing the back of the leather-lined curtain. But on the threshold she hesitated and drew back.

"I have never crossed this," she said with gentle decision. "I cannot cross it."

"But you must cross it," he answered, "or all is lost."

A strong shuddering ran through her. The corners of her sweet mouth turned down and quivered, while her hand grew very cold.

"Ah, me! ah, me! my love," she cried, "then I fear indeed all must needs be lost. For to cross this threshold is to force some barrier which I have neither the strength or the right to force. I do not know its name, but it is ancient and venerable, and forbids my pa.s.sage with authority."

"All the more shall you force it then," Laurence replied. "Just now, sweetheart, I tell you I admit no authority but my own. And barriers are made to be forced, that's the use of them. The more apparently ancient and venerable, the more must they go; so that the new may supersede the decrepit and old, truth may supersede superst.i.tion, hope fear, and the living the dead."

He laughed a little, partly in defiance of that more sane and modest self of his, with whom for the time being he had parted company, partly to rally his dear companion's courage, and compel her faltering steps.

"Come," he said; "don't I love you better than my own soul? Would I, of all men, do you any injury, do you think? Surely you can trust me--come."

But still that strong shuddering ran through her and she hung back. Then Laurence lost patience.

"You foolish child," he said, "you are very much a woman. Your words are so wise; yet you prove so weak in action and scare yourself with self-invented terrors."

He set his back against the heavy curtain, pus.h.i.+ng it outward. Then he took her delicate body in his arms, lifted her over the threshold, and set her feet on the crimson carpet of the sombre and stately corridor without. The curtain swept back into its place across the door with a dull thud, which mingled ominously with the muttering thunder. Against the panes of the long range of windows the lightning peeped and flickered, as in malicious curiosity of that going forward within, while the Roman emperors looked on, supercilious, impa.s.sive, with sightless, marble eyes. His fairy-lady's delicate body had been light as a feather, so light that, lifting it, Laurence had trembled lest it should slip out of his encircling arms, as the little summer winds might slip should one strive to embrace them; and yet that same lifting of her had taxed every muscle in his frame, and set his heart thumping like a steam hammer. It was the very oddest sensation, suggesting that there was something very much more than a narrow piece of polished, oak flooring and deep, pile carpet to lift her across. He stood now, breathless, singularly shaken by the effort, notwithstanding his natural vigour and physical strength--shaken, yet triumphant.

"There, my beloved," he cried, "there! It's not such a very dangerous experiment after all, you see, to go out at an open door!--And now you are redeemed from slavery, free to range the pleasant earth at will and accept all the glad chances of it."

But she shrunk against him, trembling, all her pretty pride humbled, like that of a little child detected in a fault. Her countenance had become shy and wild, moreover, and clear reason had ceased to sit enthroned in her serious and lovely eyes. She looked now, as she had looked on the night he first found her flitting to and fro in the yellow parlour, searching, searching, vainly and hopelessly, for the lost key of the satin-wood escritoire. And Laurence, seeing her thus, was smitten with self-reproach and alarm. Was it possible that, along with the restoration of her body, had returned that alienation of mind from which--as he had learned from her own testimony, and from the well-authenticated tradition of Armstrong, the agent--she had formerly and so pitifully suffered? As more than once before, an immense compa.s.sion filled the young man; so that, coaxing her, and using tender and endearing names--such as even the wisest of lovers weakly decline upon at times--he half-led, half-carried her past the doorways of all those brightly-lighted, silent rooms, through the square hall--its flying staircase gleaming upward step above step--until finally the dining-room was reached.

Here the musky odour of the tiger-coloured orchids met them, with the effect, as it seemed, of a presence rather than a scent. It was full of subtle suggestions, that seeming presence, wooing them with insidious provocations of sense to partake of the mysterious, sacramental feast set out before them--a feast designed to wed, irrevocably, the sweet spirit to its so lately recovered body, and rivet upon it once again not only the natural joys, but the inevitable cares and pains, all the grievous burdens of mortal life.

The cloth had been withdrawn and upon the dark surface of the bare table, doubled by vertical reflections, a service of costly china, antique silver, and fine gla.s.s, was spread. Rare wines filled the long-necked bottles and quaint high-shouldered decanters; while the painted and gilded dishes held velvet-skinned, hot-house peaches, red-gold nectarines, little black Italian figs, and pyramids of fragrant strawberries set in a fringe of fresh and l.u.s.trous leaves. The loaf of white bread was there also, a simple and humble item offering something of contrast to its ornate surroundings.

Laurence placed his fairy-lady in the carven armchair at the head of the table. Seated there, her slight figure, in its high-waisted, rose-red, silken gown and transparent lace and muslin cape, looked singularly youthful and fragile. Her graceful head and white throat showed up against the dark panelling of the wall. Her hands rested languidly upon the arms of her chair. The corners of her mouth still quivered, and her eyes were wide with inarticulate distress. And all the while, opposite to her, in at the windows at the far end of the room, the lightning, away there in the north, peeped evilly and flickered, and sometimes glared, a broad sheet of pale flame, behind the blackness of the distant woods crowning the rounded hills.

Laurence stood close beside her. He filled her gla.s.s with wine and placed fruit upon her plate, speaking to her very gently; possessed, meanwhile, by an adoration of her extreme and pensive beauty, a great resolution to complete his work in respect of her, and a distrust lest that work was going sorely amiss. But though he did his best to secure her attention, for many minutes she neither moved nor uttered any sound.

"See, dear love," the young man pleaded--"see, I have made you a dainty supper. Remember, this is the first time I ask you to eat a meal in my house. You were Dudley's guest often enough in old days, and did not refuse what was set before you. Surely it is pleasanter to you to be my guest than his? So do not wander off, even for a little while, to walk those dim and dreary inters.p.a.ces between two worlds. All that is over.

Don't become intangible and remote, or yield yourself to malign influences which would enthrall you and draw you away. Lay hold of your womanhood, sweetheart; and let human love wrap you about, and keep you safe and warm. There is nothing, nothing in all this to fear, if you will but believe me. Eat, my beloved, you have fasted long. You have come from very far--how far heaven only knows! You are faint and weary with the length of the way. Therefore eat, drink--let your body be refreshed and let your heart grow glad."

And presently, while he thus encouraged her, slowly, as one who shakes off the torpor of exhaustion, she stretched, sitting very upright in the great, high-backed chair. The distress and desolation of her expression began to give place to a gentle curiosity. She looked at the costly furnis.h.i.+ngs of the table, the dancing, golden figures in their flowing robes, the fantastic flowers, the delicious fruits; fingered a silver spoon, and seeing her own reflection in the bowl of it, quaintly distorted, smiled. Then suddenly putting up both hands and covering her face she gave a quick, little sneeze--sign in the East of Life, but in the West precursor of Death. Of whichever the sign in the present case, incontestible it was, that, with this same little sneeze a change was perceptible in her, which her lover noting, hailed as indicative of success. So he urged her yet more.

"Yes, my beloved, you are tired," he said; "and it is so long since you have sat at table in this room, that very simple things appear perplexing to you. But that's a small matter. The old habits will soon re-a.s.sert themselves, and all be natural and obvious enough. For in the coming days I intend we shall very constantly sit here together, you and I; and perhaps others will sit here with us as time goes on"--Laurence paused, his voice shook a little--"our children, fair girls and handsome lads, whom we shall greatly love, and in whose youth our own youth will live again. But to secure all that, Agnes, you must eat and drink now in plain, honest fas.h.i.+on, sleep sound of nights, wake in the kindly suns.h.i.+ne, put morbid fears and fancies far from you and grow strong. You are compounded of too tenuous and sublimated stuff for motherhood as yet. Therefore eat, dear love. Delay no longer. The hours run on towards the morning and this matter must be a.s.sured before the morning comes. Do not be wayward. In the name of your love for me, and of all your sorrows, I entreat you, eat and be strong!"

Once again she covered her face with her hand and gave a quick, little sneeze. Then looking full at him, she smiled, though somewhat sadly.

"Let it be even as you wish," she said very meekly. "Give me bread."

Laurence, mightily rejoicing, cut the loaf, and placed the bread upon her plate. Tremblingly, as though putting a great force upon herself, she broke it into little pieces, carried one to her lips, then laid it back beside the others on her plate; next stretched out her hand for the gla.s.s of wine her lover held towards her, but shook her head, and set it down untasted. While he, eager to the point of desperation, yet dreading in any way to affright her and so defeat his own ends, fell to coaxing her once more, with a certain playful seriousness.

"See here," he said, "learn by experience. The threshold which you declared impa.s.sable was very easily crossed. And this affair of your little supper is exactly parallel. You are the victim of your own imagination. What after all holds you back?"

Once more she essayed valiantly to obey him; but once more laid the morsel of bread down on her plate. The thunder rolled from east to west along the northern heights, and the lightning flickered; but both had grown faint and very distant, while a soft, cool air wandered in at the open window, dispelling the clinging and insidious odour of the orchids, purifying the heavy atmosphere of the room, and lightly stirring the little lace frills of Agnes Rivers's muslin cape.

"What after all holds you back?" he demanded, with some agitation. For that cool draw of air, though pleasant, affected him unexpectedly. It appeared to blow across the valley from Stoke Rivers churchyard, where, in the spring morning three months before, he had watched the little shadows cast by the feathery branches of the age-old yew-trees dance and beckon among the gra.s.s-grown graves.

But his fairy-lady pushed her plate aside. All her gentle dignity had returned to her, and a wisdom born of knowledge more profound than that granted to most human creatures sat once again enthroned in her eyes.

There was an effulgence in her loveliness which almost awed him, yet she did that which during all their intercourse she had never done before.

Calmly, fearlessly, and as of right, she put up her sweet lips and kissed him.

"This holds me back," she said, "that at last all the confusion which oppressed my mind is gone, and that I understand who and what I am. I have striven, and ah! how gladly would I have proved victorious in that strife, for all my heart goes forth in natural desire, not only to obey your dear wishes, but to secure to myself those things which your wishes would bring. I perceive that to eat is to live, not the shadowy, unrelated life of a disembodied spirit, divorced from the activities of earth, yet--by some inherent wilfulness--still so wedded to earth that it cannot enter the peaceful regions of the Faithful Departed. To eat is to live, as you live--and rightly--in the shock and tumult of the world; to love as you love--needs must, dear heart--with all the pa.s.sions of the unstable flesh, as well as the pure and immutable pa.s.sion of the soul. I have dallied too long with temptation, and in my weakness brought sorrow on you--perhaps worse than sorrow, disgrace. But the temptation was so potent, the promise of it so enchanting, that, until to-night, I had not grasped its full significance and scope. As to our first mother Eve, ages back, in the mystic garden, so to me to-night to eat, O my love, is sin!"

Laurence straightened himself up, and all the fierceness, the relentlessness of his race, stiffened itself within him; yet he kept himself in hand because love still was paramount to all other emotions.

"And if it be sin, it is too late to vex ourselves about that. You have forced the barrier after all. The curtain, which closes the entrance to your not very cheerful Eden, has swung back into place. I have you, and I keep you. I have fought for you, won you, not wholly without personal loss. So you are to me as the spoils of battle, which a man having taken, is very certainly in no humour hurriedly to give up. And even were this so, had I not these claims on your obedience, to eat, my dear, couldn't be sin. On the contrary, it is bare common-sense--just the next move, logically necessary, in the particularly delicious game which you and I, for cause unknown, are ordained to play together. With logic and common-sense as backers, how can sin have a word to say in the matter?"

"Thus," she answered--"because now as once before, when the perfect hour had come, and things showed so fair that to better them appeared almost impossible, the call has come for you to leave me, and leave me you surely must."

"You are mistaken," Laurence answered hoa.r.s.ely. "You confuse both the events and obligations of the past with those of the present. The call has not come."

Then Agnes Rivers rose up, pus.h.i.+ng the carven chair away from her, and standing with a certain graceful independence before the sumptuously spread table, in the centre of the highly-lighted room, between the open window and the open door. Her person, thus seen, suggested some clear jewel of infinite value in a dark and heavy though splendid setting; or some tender, solitary flower amid the lifeless magnificence of a desert city, rich with the tombs of long-dead kings. A gentle daring, a self-a.s.sertion strong as steel yet soft as a silken thread, seemed to animate her whole being.

"Rather is it you that are mistaken," she answered; "but whether with your consent or against it, I cannot tell. It is you that dream just now, my love, and suffer, perhaps subscribe to, delusion--strong man though you are--and I that wake. For the call has come to you; and though you should employ all the eloquence of all the sages to convince me it is otherwise, I could not be convinced."

"You are very stubborn," he said.

"And yet, I spare you," she replied, in a tone of half mirthful, half tender, reproach; "for I only a.s.sert the fact. The exact nature of the call I do not know, and I do not ask you to tell it me. I am sufficiently human--you have brought me so far on the backward road, which my naughty feet were only too willing to tread--to greatly long to know the exact nature of that call. Yet, did I know it, I fear it might provoke a wicked spirit of jealousy in me, and of envy towards one who has, in the natural sequence of things, that which I have not, yet fain would have. Therefore do not try me too far, lest my courage fail and I decline from right, and break the perfect circle of our dealings with one another, so painting both past and future with the ugly colours of remorseful regret. You told me you would never leave me again unless I bade you do so. Well, now, the time has come. Redeem your word."

Laurence would have spoken; but, still with that air of almost heavenly mirth, she laid her hand upon his mouth. There was hardly perceptible substance or weight in it; and once again--now with despair, though the sensation was in itself delicious--he felt that fluttering, as of the wings of a captive b.u.t.terfly, against his lips.

"No, no," she protested, "do not speak, for I am woman enough to be resolved to have the last word. Put away delusion and all extravagance.--Think, after all, what do you leave? Not much, believe me. For I am but a ghost. I have no right to any earthly dwelling-place, no right to lie in the arms of living man. It would be monstrous, a thing abhorrent to nature, an insult to the awful and unbroken order of cause and effect that has operated from the beginning of being and of time, that I should force the barrier completely, and project myself, at once unburied and unborn, for a second time into the arena of earthly life. It would be an act of rebellion, of self-seeking, beside which that of Lucifer grows pale--for he at least was an archangel, which might give reasonable cause of pride--whereas I?--No, G.o.d in His infinite mercy has granted me fulness of understanding just in time; and I have no fear but that, since I voluntarily resign myself, curb my imperious will and forego the desire of my heart, He will further grant me access to that place of refreshment, light, and peace, in which souls wait until their final beat.i.tude. In G.o.d's hands are all things, and I now see that behind the loves of earth, just in proportion as those loves are n.o.ble and have in them a seed of permanence, stands for ever the love of G.o.d Himself, sure and faithful, full of a satisfaction that can never lessen or pa.s.s away. I have been blind and very wilful, loving Him too little, loving you too much. But He who made all men and sees how beautiful they are, so that in loving them--they being made in His image--we unconsciously all the while but love His image evident in them--He will surely understand me and forgive."

There Laurence broke in madly--"Ah, stop talking, stop talking! What are words at such a time as this? You are mine by right of conquest, as I have already told you. For G.o.d and the eternities I care not, just now, one little bit. You belong to me. I have bought you at a great price. I love you and will enter into possession of my own."

And he essayed to lay hold of her, his blood on fire, for the moment, with frustrated pride, the agony of relinquishment, and pa.s.sion baulked.

"And I love you too," she answered fearlessly, "so greatly, so absorbingly, that I have broken all bonds of time and s.p.a.ce, and defied all laws of life and death, to find you, and behold you, and speak with you again--"

Yet even as she made this declaration, she slipped away from his urgent embrace, even as a rosy snow-wreath slips from the cliff edge, when the sun climbs high in heaven, drawing back to itself, by the power of its strength and heat, snow and vapours, dews and fair, dissolving mists, such as cling at dawn along the water-courses and haunt the quiet unders.p.a.ces of the woods. There were tears in her sweet eyes, and that airy frame of hers was shaken by sobs; yet her face very brave and of a marvellous brightness.