Chapter XVI

The agitation pervading the house was sinister. Laurence felt as though witnessing the convulsions of some human body, seen only heretofore amid the restraints and graceful amenities of society; but now abandoned and indecently torn in its last agony. If indeed Mr. Rivers was dying, his soul was not merely quitting its fragile, fleshly tabernacle; but was also, very sensibly, quitting this larger tabernacle of house and household which it had informed through a long course of years, and moulded to express its tastes, flatter its idiosyncrasies, and forestall its every wish. It was fitting, therefore, though fearful, that this outer envelope of the owner's life should be shaken, and lose its habitual immutability and impervious calm; while his well-drilled servants, usually obedient as machines to the direction of his hand, ran distracted, scared and helpless as a flock of frightened sheep.

The men hurried aimlessly, spoke in whispers. Members of the establishment with whom Laurence was unacquainted invaded the corridor from the direction of the offices. At the foot of the staircase were grouped the stout, French _chef_, in spotless, linen cap and jacket, his attendant scullions, and a couple of men arrayed in long, green baize aprons and black, calico blouses, the full sleeves of which buttoned tight around the wrist. The coachman was there too, a stable helper, and the groom who had accompanied Laurence on his first visit to Bishop's Pudbury. All these persons were well on in middle life, some old, white-haired, and bent. All appeared deeply moved, an inarticulate confusion in their looks, as though finding themselves suddenly confronted by dire calamity. Laurence had seen men look thus in the breathless pause, between recurrent earthquake shocks, among the rocking buildings of a far-away, Spanish-American city. As he passed them, coming from that light, clear-coloured room, they stared at him, and slunk aside as though a fresh terror was added to those which already so unmanned them. In their present state of feeling the seemly decorum of respectful service was relaxed; and to Laurence, overwrought by his recent and strange experiences, it appeared that they shrunk from him as from one unclean and outcast.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Behind the table stood Lowndes, the long-armed, hard-featured valet. He apparently remained untouched by the spirit of anarchy let loose in the house. Laurence, drawing near, looked at him, silently asking instructions. The man fetched a chair and placed it close against the bedside.

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

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

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

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

"I have administered the prescribed restoratives. But Mr. Rivers ordered that no further measures should be attempted until after his interview with you, sir."

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

"I do not propose to ask further advice of physicians," he said. "Their science is but a mockery at this juncture; at least, in the estimation of a person of my habit of mind. That by the employment of drugs and of stimulants they might prolong a semblance of animation in this physical husk of me, I do not deny. But what advantage can accrue from that, when my mental activity is becoming paralysed, and the action of my brain grows sluggish and intermittent? When all that differentiates a human being from the brute beasts has perished, let the animal part perish also. The sooner, the better; for, in itself, it is far from precious."

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

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

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

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

His voice sank, in uttering the last few words, into a whisper of concentrated bitterness. His eyes closed, and for some minutes the dying man lay motionless.

Laurence could not bring himself to speak. The words to which he had just listened so nearly reproduced and rendered articulate those sensations he had himself so lately endured. The vision of all-absorbing Nothingness again arose before him, as background to those opulent forms, classic and pagan, upon which his eyes immediately rested. An unholy and voluptuous life seemed to move in those forms still. A smile curved the heavy lips of the sphinxes. The rounded, glistening arms of the caryatides appeared outstretched less in support than in solicitation; while the snake-locks of Medusa writhed, pushing upon each other amorously. The flesh, triumphant in vigour and in carnal invitation, seemed, indeed, to flout the intellect; as though the animal functions of mankind and the symbols of these alone had power to survive from age to age, were alone arbiters and architects of human fate. And yet, yet, somewhere--could he but have reached it--Laurence knew there was a way of escape. That he had come very near reaching it in the final moments of that silent struggle downstairs, when the sweet figure of his dear fairy-lady grew increasingly clear to his sight, he could not doubt. And once again, with a great desiring, he desired her; for his faith was strong that of all these things she somehow--how he could not say as yet--held the key.

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

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

But here Laurence roused himself to protest.

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

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

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

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

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

Laurence straightened himself up, laughing a little.

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

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

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

The question took the listener somewhat by surprise, and he hesitated before replying. The whole matter had become of such vital importance to him, personal, intimate, among the dearest and most reverently-held secrets of his heart. So he shrank, as before an act of profanation, from submitting the history of his fairy-lady and of his strange relation to her to the criticism of this cold-blooded, sceptical intelligence. Yet he was bound by his promise to report, if called on to do so--bound, too, in mere humanity towards one lying at the point of death, and to whom that history might, conceivably, bring solace and enlightenment.

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

"And the result?"

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

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

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

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

"Did you question this appearance?" he asked.

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

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

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

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

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

"Fables!" he said bitterly; "fables! I ask bread of you and you give me a stone. I offer you an unprecedented opportunity of psychological study, and you approach it in the spirit of a ballad-monger or a mountebank! I require from you close observation, scientific acumen, an unrelenting pursuit of truth; and you put me off with some old wives' tale of lost letters, the ravings of an hysterical girl, of re-incarnation, multiple identity, and I know not what farrago of sickly sentiment and outworn superstition! You trouble me with rubbish, which it would be an impertinence to offer as material for serious consideration to a peasant's child, of ordinary mental capacity, in a modern board-school. Nor can I, my dear Laurence, acquit you of insincerity, since you trick out this unworthy stuff in the extravagant language of an erotic poem, while claiming for yourself an attitude wholly platonic and superior to animal passion."

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

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

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

"Perhaps he is wiser so," Laurence said. "Perhaps--I speak subject to correction, sir--but perhaps he gets into touch, that way, with things not altogether unimportant in the long history of the human race."

"Here, within measurable distance of dissolution, I grow somewhat weary of _perhaps_. Yet I deserve that you should answer me this, since I have shown myself very weak. I had not courage to embrace the remarkable opportunity of investigating the phenomena of which we have spoken when it was offered me in my prime. Now, in my decadence, surreptitiously and at second hand, I try to acquire the knowledge I then repudiated. I clutch at straws, and the straws sink with me. It is just. For the second time I am untrue to my principles. I accept the rebuke."

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

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

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

"No, no, sir," he cried sharply, authoritatively, "the barrier is not gateless--that is, to any one of us who has ever, even dimly and passingly, known true-love, and that of which true-love is the everlasting exponent and blessed symbol, namely, Almighty God."

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

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

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

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

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

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